Summer’s finally winding down, and you made it. Without further ado, let’s begin our end-of-the-summer edition of...
Darts & Laurels
The first LAUREL of the week goes to you! Congratulations on making it this far. If your time here in Gainesville is just getting started, then be ready for plenty of adventures in the heart of the Gator Nation. Hard work is ahead, but you can overcome anything. If you’re leaving Gainesville, then good luck on all of your new adventures.
Moving on, President Obama has decided to cancel a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The reason: Snowden. Russia recently granted the whistleblower one-year asylum. If there’s any remedy to be found for this situation, it’s not going to be found by closing the doors of communication with Russia. How does this make us look in the eyes of other countries throughout the world? For taking steps in the wrong direction, we give President Obama a please-change-your-mind-on-this-one DART.
Speaking of Russia, it will host the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. In a surprising turn of events, Russia’s sports minister said that a new law forbidding “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” from being distributed to minors would be enforced. Gay pride rallies are banned along with TV and Internet expressions of this nature. Is Russia trying to prove that it’s just as totalitarian as many Americans make it out to be? Maybe. Actor George Takei recently called for the Olympics to be held in another county. Maybe this is a good idea. We give Russia an it’s-okay-to-be-gay DART.
On Snowden, his Wikipedia page was recently edited by a user from the U.S. Senate building. The article was revised from reading “American dissident” to “American traitor.” The change was reverted quickly by Wikipedia due to the bias of the edit. For keeping it not so classy, we give the anonymous user a not-on-my-Interwebs DART.
Here’s a good one: The world’s first lab-grown burger was eaten. Scientists grew a beef patty from cow stem cells. Food critics commented that while the taste of the meat was authentic, it lacked some juiciness. This could be the start of a revolution in eating. For expanding human potential — and potential appetite — we give professor Mark Post and his peers a thanks-for-all-the-meat LAUREL.
The Mars rover, Curiosity, recently hit the one-year mark of its mission. Already, it has found evidence that water was once flowing on Mars, became the first robot to drill into another planet, and found some of the elements that are essential for life on our own planet. For all of the hard work and advancement, we give a to-Mars-and-beyond LAUREL to NASA.
Finally, we’d like to hand a LAUREL to the “Colbert Report” for turning a crappy situation — getting stood up by Daft Punk because of his own network — into an even more hilarious episode featuring the *other* song of the summer, “Blurred Lines.” Here’s a tip of the hat to you, Stephen Colbert.
See you next semester!
