Recently, an Alligator editorial apologized for a column the newspaper published. In the appropriately titled column, "Mediocre Advice," the writer joked, because it is difficult to get a tan in Gainesville due to the daily downpour of rain, being "pale is better."
Emrah Sahin is the Turkish studies lecturer at UF’s Center for European Studies. For our full interview on Ottomans, Islam, Syria and more, visit ceseurogator.blogspot.com/.
ost internships, paid or unpaid, are incredibly beneficial. They are a chance to learn and make valuable connections. More importantly, they allow you to test-drive a career and gain work experience. Even if you ultimately decide you don’t want to pursue a job in your internship’s field, many of the skills you honed will be useful in a different position down the road. While unpaid internships can have many of the same positive attributes as paid ones, they can also be problematic. Depending on the internship length, type of work, hours and chances of employment, they range from being a helpful learning experience to outright exploitation.
A few weeks ago, my poor, innocent mother asked me the dreaded question: "What is Tumblr?" Considering how long the blogging platform has been around, it’s odd that we had avoided talking about it up until this point. I walked her through the basics, but I felt bad when I left her unprepared for the things she might stumble upon when browsing the site for scrapbooking ideas.
In the current news cycle, the issue of immigration is drawing more attention than usual. This is partly due to what is going on in our own country, namely, our upcoming presidential election. It doesn’t help that the current GOP frontrunner is the most explicitly nativist public figure since Daniel Day-Lewis’ character in "Gangs of New York."
As noted in last week’s Darts & Laurels, a Kentucky clerk has been jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She appealed her case all the way to the Supreme Court — who ruled this summer that marriage is a right to be enjoyed by all — and was denied an appeal. Despite being effectively ordered to do so by the highest authority of law in the U.S., she still refused to issue licenses.
As we take pause Friday to reflect on the horrors of terrorism and to commemorate the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, our outrage and grief are morally obliged to cross national boundaries. The tragedies of Sept. 11 provide an opportunity for us to reflect on human cruelty, as well as the role the U.S. plays on a geopolitical scale.
The thought crossed my mind as I was reading French philosopher Michel Foucault’s "The History of Sexuality" for one of my English classes. Despite its attention-grabbing title and academic acclaim, the book was an insanely difficult read due largely to its dense jumble of terms like "tactical polyvalence" and "juridico-discursive." It was while flipping through these pages and practically giving myself a brain aneurysm that I thought to myself, "When the hell am I ever going to use this?"
Mediocre: adjective. Definition: of only moderate or ordinary quality, neither good nor bad. Language of origin: Latin, from the word mediocris. However, the French adopted this word in the 1580s in the form of mediocre, in search of a term more adequate to describe their culture. Let’s be real, the only good things the French have given to society have been crunchy, fried potato strings and those cute little bulldogs.
Picture this: It’s Saturday morning and you desperately need a break from studying. So, you head to Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park to enjoy some fresh air and look for bison and alligators. But instead, you find industrial feedlots. And instead of the calls of sandhill cranes and hawks, you hear rifle fire and all-terrain vehicle engines from nearby hunters. The turkeys, ducks and deer you always used to see are nowhere to be found.
One of my classes started the way one can only hope, with my professor saying, "This semester, we’re going to have some fun."
The topic of public schools has always laid heavily on the hearts and minds of this country’s politically active, conservative, evangelical Christians. Conservative ire over public schools has revolved mostly around our science curriculum. But in the last year or so, these activists have fought for control over how American history is taught, with the disturbing aim of controlling the narrative of American history itself.
Last week I discovered that my alma mater, Florida State University, had blocked me from commenting on any of its social media websites. This meant anything posted by its official Facebook page, writing on its wall or commenting on photos posted by the school’s official Instagram account. As far as I understand it, this occurred because I had exercised my rights and been critical of the school and the image it attempts to maintain in social media.
So, the MTV Video Music Awards happened.
My name is Kalyani Hawaldar, and I am your Access Party President. The beginning of September means the start of football season, but it also means the beginning of another Student Government election cycle.
With the beginning of the Fall semester comes a myriad of UF activities, but perhaps the most discussed is rush. Whether it’s news coverage, Snapchat stories or traffic halting hordes of impeccably dressed girls, you simply can’t escape it. Consequently, the criticisms of Greek life seem to reach a fever pitch this time of the year.
Happy Tuesday, gang! What a week it’s been. After last week’s column, some of you may have wondered: "Why mediocre advice? Why would anybody listen to you?" Well, in a world where people still religiously eat Olive Garden, listen to Fall Out Boy, watch MTV and read Buzzfeed to find out if their boyfriend is cheating on them, it seems as though mediocrity is still in.
Common wisdom holds for one to be true to thy self. If you’re a self-described Southerner, odds are good you might still be licking your wounds from the flogging the north dished out 150 years ago.
Every once in a while, a website or service finds a new creepy way of gathering data online, and it seems earth-shattering until the next stalkerish way of data collection emerges. In an ideal world, none of this would come as a surprise, as everyone would actually read the terms and conditions when they agree to things — or at least those pesky updates sent out ahead of major changes to a site.
In the summer of 2015, following my first year of law school at IU-Bloomington, I was fortunate enough to be selected for an internship in Israel with Shurat HaDin, Israel Law Center. As a Marine Corps veteran, my unit confronted terrorists in Afghanistan, and when I returned home, I learned about groups that fight terrorism in different ways. Shurat HaDin is a nongovernmental Israeli organization with the stated mission of bankrupting terror — one lawsuit at a time.
Solutions by The State News
