Our "nation of whiners" has evolved a novel way to express its discontent with what it already has. It incorporates a concept as hip with the young generation as live DJing: passive aggression.
One of the toughest parts about becoming an adult is the realization that life doesn't always have those fairy tale endings you read about growing up.
A musician may win an award, an academic receives a grant and an athlete finds him or herself glorified by fans and the media. Jericho Scott, undoubtedly the best pitcher in his New Haven, Conn., league, received his accolades in the form of banishment from the sport of baseball for being "too good."
Despite what some scientists claim is the next great mass extinction, a new species has emerged after Sen. Barack Obama was named the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party. This fierce, new species, called the PUMA, is a mammal in the Hillary Clintonae family and is native to the Americas.
For years, I have encouraged others my age to participate in the unfolding, unique experience of a government by the people.
Don't get me wrong. I love baseball as much as the next guy.
After months of speculating, waiting and politicking, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama has finally selected his running mate. Now that Sen. Joe Biden has completed the Democratic presidential ticket, the question is rapidly turning toward the Delaware senator's ability to serve Obama on the ticket. Without a doubt, Biden was the most complimentary choice Obama could have made given his available options.
During my two years at the Alligator, I've heard all the criticism UF students and Gainesville residents have to offer.
Oh, to be young again, when I thought homework was for pansies, a fake ID was golden, withdrawing from a class would never come back to haunt me and hangovers only lasted an hour, if at all. Just as I did, all you incoming freshmen will have ample opportunities to make mistakes (and hopefully learn from them). And as someone who has been at UF for six years, at the very least I can pass on a little wisdom to all you whippersnappers to help you get the most out of your undergraduate experience.
If you didn't know UF was a big football school the day you submitted your application, you probably figured it out sometime in between jumping up and down in your parent's living room after tearing open your admission letter and watching your mom tear up as she sets your brand new Macbook Pro on your spiffy dorm room desk.
There's a lot of advice I could give you about the next four years of your life. There's a ton of stuff I could tell you that you should or shouldn't do and a mass of truisms I could throw at you about how important education is or whatever. I'm sure you've heard it all before.
Given their Nixon-esque polling numbers, it's safe to say that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are not exactly the most popular pair to grace 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. In fact, only about 25 percent of people think our feckless leader is doing a good job. Incidentally, the same percentage of people predicted that the second coming of Jesus would occur in 2007. I've got a hunch that there's a lot of overlap in those two groups.
About a month ago, Florida's new "guns-at-work" law went into effect. The law allows employees with valid concealed weapons licenses to keep their guns in their cars while at work.
There are 3.7 million Floridians without health insurance. That means if you are under the age of 65, there's about a 1 in 4 chance that a serious illness would drive you into bankruptcy. But fear not - Gov. Charlie Crist has a plan. He calls it Cover Florida, and with it, he hopes to reduce the number of uninsured by offering them affordable premiums.
If your experience has been anything like mine, you've been surrounded by Obamamania for the better part of the past several months. It's not related, as much as you might expect, to spending most of the day on a college campus, where support for the master orator is pervasive and contagious. Rather, like most Americans, I've been bombarded with thinly veiled propaganda from the mainstream media in support of the hope-monger for longer than I care to remember.
There won't be any more opportunities to giggle at former Mississippi coach Ed Orgeron and his gruff Southern accent. If you want to see what I'm talking about, just search for his Hummer ad on YouTube.
The fact that most of us don't hold a mortgage, work a full-time job or have kids to support makes it pretty easy to ignore the current economic crisis. It doesn't help that for all but a few of us, economics is more boring than an episode of "Book TV" on C-SPAN 3 featuring an interview with Alan Greenspan.
Solutions by The State News
