Opinion | Editorials - The Independent Florida Alligator

OPINION | EDITORIALS

Survey Design 101

Feb. 19, 2017

Everyone at UF is familiar with the time of semester (actually right around the corner) when the students taking Introduction to Statistics 2 hit the Facebook group pages and post survey links, urging fellow students to click on the link and fill out the questions so they can properly study t-tests. These survey questions are pretty simple, and the surveys themselves are short: “Year? Gender? How many alcoholic beverages do you consume per week?”

OPINION | EDITORIALS

The curse of living in ‘interesting times’

Feb. 15, 2017

There’s an old quote — attributed to Chinese philosophers for some reason, even though the exact origins are dubious — that wishes to the listener, “May you live in interesting times.” This wish is called the “Chinese curse.” Now, at first that might seem a little odd. Don’t we want to live in interesting times? But it doesn’t take much reflection to get what the quote actually implies.

OPINION | EDITORIALS

Get in touch with your emotions: Let yourself feel

Feb. 14, 2017

It feels like modern society idolizes logical thinking over emotional thinking. Bring feelings into an argument and you get labeled overemotional and hysterical. Gush about how much you love something and you’re given a side-eye for being too enthusiastic. Vent about how much you hate something and you’re told you’re being too passionate. It’s not clear when this preference for subdued emotions became the norm. It’s not even that society prefers totally logical thinking to the emotional way — we’re expected to have emotions, of course, but we need to keep them in check.

OPINION | EDITORIALS

Tell someone you love them today

Feb. 13, 2017

Valentine’s Day gets a lot of backlash nowadays. And you know, some of it is warranted. Why are we reducing love to pink hearts, stuffed bears, dozens of roses and expensive restaurants? Why do we compare what we give our signicant others to what our friends give theirs and vice versa? Somehow, Valentine’s Day has ingrained itself in our culture; it was a day for class parties in elementary school, awkward dances in middle school, embarrassing singing telegrams in high school, television specials, dinner deals, sales on candy, and so on. It’s as if we try to cram all this obsession with romance into one day.

OPINION | EDITORIALS

Don’t let celebrity opinions distract from real issues

Feb. 12, 2017

Nowadays it’s increasingly common for celebrities and entertainers to take a public stance on politics. With the ability to air their thoughts and opinions on social media with a few clicks, everyone is mostly aware of what celebrities have to say. It’s an interesting phenomenon.

OPINION | EDITORIALS

Darts & Laurels - February 10, 2017

Feb. 9, 2017

We’re interrupting your weekly Darts & Laurels today in light of the news of President Donald Trump’s infamous travel ban being blocked by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. From the looks of it, it’s well on its way to the Supreme Court, so we’re going to have to reschedule our regularly planned musings on pop culture and shift aside for this week’s (specialized)…

OPINION | EDITORIALS

Judicial review is government at work

Feb. 8, 2017

In today’s lesson plan, we are going to be covering the U.S. Government. It’s become clear in the past few weeks that a lot of Americans are not entirely aware of how the government functions. It has, after all, been a long time since seventh-grade civics or senior-year Advanced Placement U.S. Government. And unless you have some aspirations in politics or listen to the “Hamilton” soundtrack regularly, there might be some holes in your memory.

OPINION | EDITORIALS

Navigating the realm of political memes

Feb. 7, 2017

On this day and age of fast and constant information, news and important facts tend to get diluted. After all, most people turn to Facebook for news, scrolling through their feed and clicking on whatever bit of news interests them. Of course, there are positives to this new way of getting information. News travels a lot faster and is more accessible. People can do research on almost any topic by just sliding open their phone and pull up the internet. This information can be accessed at one’s own pace, convenience and frequency.

OPINION | EDITORIALS

Bernie Sanders wouldn’t have won the Super Bowl

Feb. 6, 2017

Sunday night was one of the most watched events on American television. No, not “Harry Potter” weekend. It was the 51st Super Bowl. Now, this heralded American tradition comes around once a year, and people gather for parties with seven-layer dip and a six-pack of beer. Some people follow their teams with a fanatic devotion. Others look at the two playing and pick the one that they like the most (or hate the least). A few non-sports people who still want in on the excitement double up on their friends’ opinions. Whatever the method of picking teams, more than a hundred million Americans gathered around their televisions for a night of high-stakes rivalry and entertaining commentary.

OPINION | EDITORIALS

How Donald Trump seduced America

Feb. 5, 2017

Enough with the Adolf Hitler, Voldemort and Emperor Palpatine comparisons. We’re going to go a little old school now, like pre-20th century. We’re going to do an old-fashioned literary analysis by comparing our president to a Byronic hero.

OPINION | EDITORIALS

A disclaimer: Don’t romanticize darker aspects of fiction

Feb. 1, 2017

What I say today might sound a little hypocritical. I am going to discuss why people should stop comparing the current political climate to fiction. This seems a bit counterintuitive, since I spent the past few Thursdays comparing aspects of American politics and culture to two staple dystopian novels.

OPINION | EDITORIALS

Make art, not war: the aesthetics of a Asocial movement

Jan. 31, 2017

As celebrities make bold statements about social movements and activism, sometimes we wonder: What good does it all do? There have been calls to use art to spread a message, as a call to action, but what good is a story or a picture in the long run? Though actors,

OPINION | EDITORIALS

Rage, rage against the dying of the light — A message to activists

Jan. 30, 2017

It has been a hard week, that much is evident. On an international, national and local scale, there’s been so much fear, hate and uncertainty. Some of you, dear readers, want to fight back, but it feels like you are yelling into a vast, empty canyon, your voices resonating loud and clear but eventually disappearing into the air, drowned out by the wind. Some of you are tired. Perhaps you fought once, perhaps you kicked and roared and screamed, perhaps your voices, too, were lost to the wind. And some of you carry on, unaware, unconcerned, because this fight isn’t yours, this battle is one you kind of wanted to win in the first place — though you won’t admit that now as the discontent grows.

OPINION | EDITORIALS

The dystopian reality we now face

Jan. 25, 2017

When we first started comparing the future of America to a dystopian nation, it stemmed mostly from curiosity — from a desire to expose you, dear reader, to dystopian novels outside of the stereotypical “1984” — and to challenge you to think critically about the

OPINION | EDITORIALS

On adding coding to kids’ curriculums

Jan. 24, 2017

This past weekend UF hosted its third annual hack-athon, SwampHacks. More than 500 college students attended this event, not just from our campus, but from places all over Florida and Georgia. For those of you not familiar with what a hack-athon is, it goes a little something like this: You and three other students have a set amount of time (in this case it was 36 hours) to code something — literally anything. This sounds intimidating to those not familiar, but don’t be fooled. You don’t have to sit at your computer for 36 hours straight. There are workshops, activities and plenty of food. And, believe it or not, you don’t have to come in with any coding knowledge.

OPINION | EDITORIALS

Learn, evaluate and reason your opinion

Jan. 23, 2017

There is a lot of political news going on right now. You could say that about the whole year, but it seems that in the last few days there have been protests and protests of those protests. There have been things signed and things allegedly signed. There has been praise of the protests and criticisms of the protests. There has been praise of the signed things and also criticisms of those same signed things. It’s an information overload.

OPINION | EDITORIALS

It’s our job to keep America great

Jan. 22, 2017

On Friday, Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of our nation, and the winds of change have begun to blow across the country — we felt them quite literally Sunday.

OPINION | EDITORIALS

Stand up for your beliefs

Jan. 19, 2017

Today, the nation’s 45th president will place his hand on the Bible, swear the oath of office and assume the presidency. In turn, Michelle, Malia, Sasha, Bo and Sunny Obama will leave the White House. From this day forward, we’ll refer to Barack Obama as our former president.

OPINION | EDITORIALS

A guide to preventing a (hypothetical) dystopia

Jan. 18, 2017

Welcome to another discussion about the potential dystopian fate of the U.S. Last week, we discussed how the nation combines elements of a Huxleyan and Orwellian dystopia — a mix of gratification and censorship. This is all completely hypothetical, of course,

OPINION | EDITORIALS

Maintaining the Gainesville spirit as the city expands

Jan. 17, 2017

Walking through this city, one notices quite a few places of business that, more than any others, scream “Gainesville.” Satchel’s Pizza, Maude’s Cafe and the Hippodrome State Theatre are among the most well-known of these hyper-local joints. Though much of the city is structured around UF, if you want to get a look at the real Gainesville, you need to step beyond the comforts of campus and frequent the wide array of small, local businesses Gainesville has to offer. Sure, we’re no big city like Atlanta or San Francisco, but there is a unique flavor to Gainesville — a combination of small-town America and big-name campus — and the businesses and events that make it a one-of-a-kind city.