The Emporia Gazette

The dark side of college athletics

I feel your righteous anger, but honestly, has your head been in the sand all your life? Schools -- from elementary on up -- are always looking for someone to give them an edge over their alleged competitors, whether on the playing field or in the spelling bee, and the kids who succeed there (I was more of a spelling bee kid) get what is essentially a free pass. Even as I was bullied by the athletes, I was able to get away with all kinds of misbehavior as long as I kept bringing in academic awards for the school. And the coaches -- when I had them in class, they were leering, racist, misogynistic, ignorant pricks, yet they were *required* to teach classes they knew little about in order to keep coaching, and they could keep coaching as long as they kept winning. So this is anything but an isolated incident -- it's not just Penn State, and it's not just college athletics. It's the whole culture of competition among schools that makes misbehavior OK as long as it gives somebody an edge.

November 16, 2011 at 9:17 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Our test drive

Electric cars never went away, for those who knew where to look. My parents in Oklahoma have been driving electric cars almost exclusively since the late '80s. Hobbyists go to EVWorld.com.

I'm very glad to hear the Volt is coming to Emporia! I'll be even more glad when they're available used! ;-)

November 12, 2011 at 6:30 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Setting the record straight

By the way, the address given for the statistics, www/ipsr.ku.edu/ksdata/ , has a typo in it (a slash instead of a period). It should be http://www.ipsr.ku.edu/ksdata/

November 10, 2011 at 8:25 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Internet scam

From the headline I thought the article was going to say the Internet itself is a scam.

November 8, 2011 at 9:36 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Life after high school

While I support the public schools and the intent of the letter above, I wonder at the example of Steve Jobs. He did not learn about computers in high school, and he dropped out of college. He's not an example of good formal education, he's an example of good parenting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jo...
So by all means the schools should hold up his example... for the parents!

November 3, 2011 at 9:30 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Your Money: Feel secure by Banking locally

Two words: Credit Union.

November 1, 2011 at 9:43 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Fair Trade Halloween chocolates

I'm amazed people on this forum can be so matter-of-fact about child slavery. This is not an exaggerated issue where child workers are being called slaves. They are actual slaves, and every unfairly-traded chocolate you buy helps to keep them enslaved. This includes our precious Granada, by the way.

"No one is going to stop eating chocolates, no matter their origin," you say? Were you asleep in the 1990s when the world boycotted South Africa to stop apartheid? It worked! Boycotting slave chocolate can work, too. Drop your lazy cynicism for a moment and do this tiny tiny thing to stop enslaving children.

November 1, 2011 at 9:42 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

It’s extortion

It's not a remote possibility, James, pro sports teams do it all the time.

October 7, 2011 at 7:18 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

About Town

Um, actually the sheet mulching class was canceled due to lack of enrollment. But anyone who would like to learn about sheet mulching during that time can meet up with me at the new community garden just west of the United Methodist Campus Ministries building, on 13th St. west of Merchant, at that same time (1-4 pm Saturday). --Ben

October 6, 2011 at 3:34 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Proper lawn nutrition

Thanks, Amy! But all the benefits you list for lawns are done much more effectively by trees or bushes or pretty much any perennial plants larger than grass. When you say lawns have these benefits, what are you comparing them to -- concrete? gravel?

If you do have a lawn, a polyculture (a mixture of multiple types of groundcover) will outperform a monoculture in all but the most perfect weather conditions. Look up and down your street and see who has the greenest lawn after this summer's brutal drought -- if your street is like mine, it will be the lawn full of crabgrass and clover that's green and healthy, while the zoysia and bluegrass are dead and brown.

If you do grow just grass, there are organic alternatives to the nitrogen fertilizer you recommend -- notably compost -- that don't have the downside of polluting our streams and rivers if you overshoot. I can't speak to the quantity of compost one would need to equal the nitrogen content of chemical fertilizer, but I know that you have given advice on that topic in the past. It's a shame it didn't make the cut for this column, but I hope you'll address it in a future column!

September 22, 2011 at 1:38 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )