Staff Editorial: It’s Time for Equal Rights

Published April 4th, 2013

**Award-Winning**

 

Editor’s Note: The following represents the opinion of the editorial board of The Signal. It is not necessarily the official view of Ouachita Baptist University. In it, we are not advocating homosexuality; we do not dispute that it is a sin. However, under the United States Constitution, we do believe that same-sex couples deserve the same financial and legal standing as male-female couples. As a reminder, our Letter to the Editor policy is listed at the bottom of this page. Please be respectful.

For the past week, Americans of all backgrounds have been watching the Supreme Court as it considers whether California’s Proposition 8, which bans same-sex unions in that state, is in line with the spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

Many Americans believe same-sex unions are wrong, and therefore should not be legal. Others see this as discriminatory; marriage, no matter to whom, is a fundamental right for everyone. According to TIME, 53 percent of Americans favor same-sex unions today; that is compared to just 27 percent in favor in 1996.

Those arguing in favor of same-sex unions say Prop. 8 violates the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses under Section I of the 14th Amendment, which states:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Many Christians say allowing same-sex unions compromise and threaten some of our most well-established moral standards and values.

We are Christians at The Signal. We believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. However, we realize that it is not our place to condemn those who believe otherwise, or to promote judicial restrictions that discriminate against anybody who is a citizen of the United States and who is guaranteed equal rights under our Constitution.

Marriage is in its basic form a contract between two people. It gives spouses control of each other’s resources and responsibility for each other’s debts. It establishes powers of attorney and guardianship over children. Marital status is relevant in more than 1,100 federal laws from taxes to healthcare, according to Fox News.

Marriage brings along with it tax breaks, surviving spouse benefits and the ability to buy health insurance through your spouse’s employer. Because the federal government does not currently recognize same-sex unions, these couples are not afforded benefits such as these. The New York Times estimated that this costs same-sex couples as much as half a million dollars over a lifetime.

For example, when Edie Windsor’s wife (they were married in Canada) died, she had to pay $363,000 in federal estate taxes, simply because her marriage didn’t count under federal law. Fox News said, “There is no dispute that if Windsor had been married to a man, her estate tax bill would have been zero.”

Marriage itself is a unique mix of church and state. For many of us, a marriage is a religious ceremony performed by members of the clergy. However, marriage licenses are still required and the officiant must be licensed for the union to be recognized by the government. We are not asking for religious institutions to be forced to provide or recognize same-sex unions, because the majority of religions believe homosexuality is wrong. However, the government — as a non-religious entity that is supposed to extend the same opportunities to all of its citizens — should recognize same-sex unions as having the same legal standing as traditional marriages.

A common fear among many who want to protect the family unit and not allow same-sex unions is that, among other things, a same-sex couple’s lifestyle will infect and plague every facet of society and will tear apart the fabric of a “normal” family. This would cause our society to spin into one that thrives on immorality and sin.

However, we have just as much power to make a difference in our society as anyone else does. We as Christians are called to spread the Gospel; would the downspin of our society not reflect a failure on our part to evangelize?

If we honestly believe that homosexuality is wrong, then it is our duty to teach others why we believe it is wrong in a rational and loving manner. However, far too often, it seems our “teaching” turns into hate of an entire person just because of one lifestyle choice: Chick-fil-A Support Day ― need we say more? What may have started as a legitimate way to show support for traditional family values quickly escalated to a hate-filled war against the homosexual community by Christians that was covered by every news outlet under the sun. This was nothing other than homophobia on display for all to see.

Perhaps if we were more loving towards homosexuals, they would be more open to our beliefs and more apt to listen to our Gospel. A good first step would be acknowledging their right as American citizens to be in a legally-recognized union with one another.

For Christians to say marriage should exist only by our definition, and to not let anyone outside our beliefs enjoy it, is unfair. We aren’t giving people the same freedom that we enjoy: the freedom to make our own choices, no matter how sinful. It’s time for equality.

Allowing marriage equality does not compromise our evangelical convictions, nor will it change the way we choose to live our lives. In fact, it shows that we Christians have evolved to a point in our faith where we believe that our convictions aren’t threatened by the choices of others or the sin of society. It will cause us to hold more tightly to our convictions and will make us that much stronger in our beliefs as we spread the Gospel. So instead, we should live by what we believe to be righteous and allow other people the freedom to do the same, even if they believe differently.

Unfortunately, it seems all too common that what society deems as “progress” is really nothing more than another step away from the values and moral standards that have bound this nation together for the better part of two centuries and that Christians have lived by for 2000 years. But we must remember that it is not so much the need to uphold these standards that drives us to live righteously, nor is it the threat of what might come if we allow these standards to be broken.

What we are truly threatened by, is really nothing more than a lapse in memory. In the heat of all this, we forget to live with a spirit of forgiveness and acceptance. We must remember that if we force a person to make the “morally right” decision then that decision loses all of its moral value, whether we put a gun to their head or use the government. We must give people the freedom to make decisions for themselves, just as God gave us the same freedom, and allow them to learn from those decisions.

We must have faith in God and in our fellow Americans that whatever choices people decide to make, that we can find good in whatever comes from those choices and that we never stop doing good.  And that whatever choices are made, we remember to love, as Christ loved, and forgive as God forgave us and to forever reach out with an open hand and the willingness to call someone “friend.”

Student voices motivate change in campus safety

By Samuel Cushman, Signal News Editor

Ouachita began a contract with a new company to serve as campus safety on June 1 this summer, making the switch from Securitas to Whelan Security.

Junior philosophy major Dave Fair was on campus over the summer working for the IT department when the change was made.

“It seemed to happen overnight, really,” he said. “All of a sudden there was a new safety truck driving around.”

Fair said that his past run-ins with the previous safety were relatively uneventful, despite the seemingly bold nature of some of the stunts they caught him pulling.

“They were pretty relaxed,” he said. “I got caught climbing roofs a couple of times with people, and they let us go. I also got caught with fireworks a couple of times and they still let us go. So maybe this safety will be more strict.”

According to Brett Powell, Vice President of Administrative Services, the Ouachita administration had been thinking about making the change for quite some time.

“Really we were just looking for the best possible service for students,” he said. “Overtime it seemed we weren’t quite getting the service we were expecting and that we thought students really deserved.”

Powell said the Ouachita administration had explored other options and made the decision to switch early last spring. As far as what triggered the administration to begin looking for other options, Powell said there was not a specific event but that they had monitored the interaction between students and campus safety and over time they came to their present conclusion.

However, Powell mentioned that the long term enmity between students and campus safety played a large role and was a major factor in the decision to change.

“One of the final factors that made us get pretty serious about making the change was the student satisfaction survey in the fall semester,” he said. “And those results were really poor for the students’ opinion of the work that safety was doing.”

The survey contained a lot of negative comments about safety’s performance, Powell said. After taking this into account, Ouachita administration deliberated making the change for about 12 months. After talking with Whelan security, Powell said they were really impressed with their philosophy.

“They understand that it’s client first— which is what we want— that it’s students first,” he said. “A high priority for them was that they put students’ needs and student safety above all else and it matched up with what we were looking for.”

“They also put a big emphasis on hiring the right people and training those people to be successful,” Powell continued. “So we just saw the right things in the company.”

With the change in safety also came a lot of changes in its staff, although Ouachita recommended that Whelan Security retain Daryl Baumgardner as head of safety. Whelan took heed of this advice and Baumgardner remains on staff.

According to Powell, safety will undergo an annual evaluation before the yearly contract is renewed. He is confident that Whelan Security will perform satisfactorily.

“I’m very positive about it,” he said. “I’ve seen some very good changes so far. I think they’re going to be successful, but only time will tell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Senior spends summer interning, volunteering in Beijing

MOLLY BOWMAN poses for photos with three of her Chinese friends. Bowman spent the summer in Beijing interning for CCTV, working for ZDL and volunteering with different Christian ministry outlets.

 

By Samuel Cushman, Signal News Editor

By the time summer rolls around, most students can be classified into two main groups. Once the school year ends, the first group will spend their well-earned vacation time to relax, spend time with friends and family and rest their minds before embarking on another year of academic pursuits.

For the second group, the school year never really ended. These students will instead choose to invest their time working to gain real-world experience through a job or internship in their field of study.

Ouachita senior mass communications and Christian studies major, Molly Bowman, belongs to the second group.

From June 10 to August 14 of this past summer, Bowman spent her time interning for CCTV, a state-run media outlet; working for ZDL, an organization that translates Christian literature into Mandarin and volunteering at a women’s rehabilitation shelter called Starfish in the 3000 year old Chinese capitol city of Beijing.

“CCTV is the big media conglomerate in China that was started by the Communist Party,” Bowman explained. “And when we think of an internship, we think of it as being super crazy and busy. But apparently, this was the first international internship they had done. Because of that there were a lot of security issues – they didn’t want a college student to work in the newsroom. So I worked in human resources and did outsource work. They would give me a project and I’d meet with my boss, and then they’d give me another project and so on.”

Once she had been given a project, she would work on it separately and come back once a week to start the process over.

“They called it circuit work,” she said. “Which is just a fancy way of saying that they give you a project and let you run with it.”

Bowman’s work with human resources included putting together publications for future foreign employees to help them adapt to Chinese culture and living in Beijing. Bowman compared her work to that of a journalist for a travel blog because she got to experience and write about many of the things to do in Beijing.

This summer wasn’t the first time Bowman has spent an extended period of time in Beijing. Bowman went to China as a sophomore through a program similar to Ouachita’s study abroad program. While there she was involved in discipleship and ministry. She said her previous experience in Beijing definitely prepared her for this summer.

“It was so much easier going back because I had already adjusted my expectations,” she said. “I also had a basic grasp of the language, so that helps a ton, because everything is so foreign and frustrating when you can’t communicate. It was definitely a very good thing. I had already found a church family from the time I spent there before. So it was almost like coming home in a lot of ways. I got to reconnect with a lot of people.”

Bowman had said her decision to work in China this summer had been motivated by several factors, including a desire to return and reconnect with some of the people she had met before. She had begun to look for opportunities to work in a media-related field where she could utilize the skills she had. She said she sent a lot of cold emails and used LinkedIn, because the website isn’t blocked in China.

“I found this [opportunity] through a friend of a friend,” she said. “I got the contact information of the guy who was the head of the HR department. I emailed him and said ‘Hey, I’m gonna be in China this summer, so if you’d like some help, I’d love to come intern.’”

Mr. Deborah Root, professor of mass communications, said that Bowman’s internship was an excellent opportunity for a Ouachita mass communications student.

“It’s wonderful that Molly had the opportunity to experience first hand the world of international communications,” she said. “She is extremely self-motivated, has a love for the people and culture of China and seizes every opportunity to better herself and those around her.”

In addition to working at CCTV, Bowman also took on a second internship because her work at CCTV was very “low key.” Through another friend of a friend situation, she was able to work at a Christian publication group called ZDL, which is a romanized initialism of the Chinese phrase “Zhao dao la,” which in English, translates to “I found it.” This name reflects their Christian intentions in reaching lost souls.

“ZDL is really cool,” Bowman said. “I didn’t even know it existed until I was in Beijing this time. They take theology books and Bible study books and they translate them into Mandarin and republish them legally in China.”

ZDL has published over 150 titles in the past 10 years and they have just recently finished the first John Piper book to be translated into Mandarin. For ZDL, Bowman would work on their graphic design and projects teams, but she also said her job went beyond mere publishing work.

“While I was there, they were putting together a camp for Chinese high school students to come to California for two weeks during their Spring festival in January,” she said. “They’re going to do a Young Life camp and tour some universities and the Google and Apple campuses. They’ll also spend a week at the Young Life English camp where they’ll also hear the Gospel.”

Her job at ZDL also involved coordinating with Young Life to help make this happen. Bowman also spent time volunteering. One of the people she met was Grace Lee, the head of a ministry called Starfish. Starfish is a Christian organization that ministers to and builds relationships with women in brothels.

“They basically try to convince them that they can make a better life for themselves,” she said. “So then, once the women decide to come out, they offer a shelter home for them and teach them English and small business skills. They also teach them how to make and sell jewelry.”

In addition to working at Starfish, Bowman also spent time volunteering for an orphanage for the visually impaired, called Bethel, where her friend Chloe Banks serves as the communications director.

Bowman’s schedule involved working for CCTV or Starfish and Bethel on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays and ZD on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She said her routine would change everyday. While in Beijing, she lived on the fifth floor of an apartment building in a three-bedroom apartment with two other American girls. The neighborhood she stayed in was in inner-city Beijing and is known as Wu Dao Kou. It is a condensed and heavily-populated area with a large number of universities.

Beijing had millions of university students in the city,” she said. “Which is one of the reasons my international church is located there. They want to reach this population of international students. It kind of gave me a new appreciation for being on the other side of the international community.”

When it came to navigating Beijing and the Chinese culturescape, Bowman utilized public transportation and a bicycle to get her to destinations. She said her most valuable asset in all of this was having a base understanding of Chinese.

“It’s a really difficult language,” she said. “But life in Beijing is so much easier if you have those basic terms down. Like if you can tell a taxi driver where to go, it makes the whole thing way easier than trying to explain it to him without language. Or just knowing how to order off of a menu or just doing those basic daily tasks. The culture stress is way higher if you don’t know the language.”

“It’s also important to understand that people should never be the background. Often when you’re in such a populated place it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the people crowding around you, especially when you’re in a hurry. Which isn’t a good way to live.

“I would often catch myself and be like ‘this is stressing me out because I’m not seeing these people as people.’ The most important thing, I think, was to remember that each person has a story and each person has a life.”

 

Halaby to present paper, ‘Crystal Bridges,’ in Denmark

Raouf Halaby, professor of English and visual arts, will present his paper on Crystal Bridges Museum in Denmark. Photo Abbey Jamieson, The Signal. 

By Samuel Cushman

Dr. Raouf Halaby, professor of English and visual arts at Ouachita, has been invited to present a scholarly paper at the Sixth International Conference on the Inclusive Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the Statens Museum for Kunst, the National Gallery of Denmark, on April 22-23.

According to the Inclusive Museum’s website, Halaby’s paper “explains the important role the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art plays in providing museum goers the opportunity to view a rich concentration of American art.”

The paper, under the title  “The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Silences Snobbish Critics,” defends the Crystal Bridges museum from criticism that harshly attacks it and that Halaby believes to be “chauvinistic and ethnocentric, if not downright biased.” The paper also praises the museum’s architecture and its art collection; it also praises the role Alice Walton has played in helping place a great collection of American art in the heart of  America. In the paper, Halaby writes:

“I would like to state that what the Medici’s were to Florence and to the Renaissance, Alice Walton is to the United States and American art. And just as the Medici’s were criticized for their vast wealth and the power they wielded in Tuscany and Italy, the Waltons continue to be criticized for a myriad of things.”

According to Halaby, many of the critics would not delineate between the Crystal bridges museum, Alice Walton, the Walmart Corporation and the Walmart Foundation.

“I wish that they had refrained from conflating  Walmart and its practices with the museum itself,” he said. “Although, I might add, that one or two critics were justified. For example, one critic pointed out that there is not a good representation of folk art or naïve art. In that regard, I fully agree because folk art is not only a very legitimate artistic expression, but it is also an integral part of a rich genre in American art.”

According to Halaby, the criticism of Walton started back in 2005 when she bought the painting “Kindred Spirits” by Asher Brown Durand. The painting was hanging in a New York public library and Walton wanted to buy the work. When the transaction became public, she was criticized harshly. There were two subsequent controversial events when Alice Walton wanted to purchase “The Gross Clinic” by Thomas Akins and the Georgia O’Keefe collection from Fisk University.

Halaby also said that some criticism ensued shortly before and right after the opening of the museum.

“Some critics questioned whether ‘a world class museum in such a remote area of the country’” made sense,” he said. “The attitude of a lot of the critics from the Northeast was that if you are going to have a world class museum, then it should either be in New York, Boston, Philadelphia or maybe Chicago. In fact, one critic referred to Arkansas as ‘a fly-over state.’ I took issue with this and felt that this was an elitist attitude and that this criticism was unjustified.”

This research, Halaby said, consisted of four years’ worth of gathering information from a variety of sources, including newspaper clippings, professional journals, magazines, radio interviews and the Internet. He would find and read these articles,  clip them, print and Xerox all relevant information and file them by content.

In addition to this, Halaby joined his three art colleagues and a group of 12 art majors on a trip to Bentonville for the museum’s 11-11-11 opening back in November 2011. Halaby said that the trip proved to be a historic and fruitful experience for art majors and for the art faculty.  Halaby said that he was very impressed with the museum and has subsequently made other trips.

“I think it’s a great museum that exhibits a great and rich collection of American art in a chronological manner and in one location,” he said. “The other thing that impressed me was the beautiful architectural design. It blends in with the environment. It’s a modern architectural design; the inside is very inviting.”

“Besides,” Halaby added, “This museum affords folks who live in the American heartland the opportunity to view great art that delights and instructs. My highest praise for Alice Walton’s efforts to bring culture to rural America.”

The name of the museum Crystal Bridges comes from the name Crystal Creek, which runs through the land on which the museum rests.  When they built the museum, they dammed the creek and created two pools on which the major structures rest. The museum’s architecture gives it the appearance of bridges. Halaby says that from a distance the impression he gets of the museum is of giant turtles perched in a creek.

“For me there is something symbolic about that,” he said. “A turtle carries all of its vitals on the inside and so you have this beautiful structure with a lot of beautiful artwork in the interior space.”

While studying Art History, Halaby took two courses on museum studies and he said his interest in museums comes from a professional perspective.

“Once a year the International Inclusive Museum organization brings together museum staff, scholars, artists, art educators, UNESCO officials and government officials from across the globe to present new research findings that deal with all aspects pertaining to museums, large or small,” he said.  “You wouldn’t believe the wide range of papers that will be presented.”

Halaby said that after a brief introductory narrative on the Waltons, Walmart, the structure and the museum’s collection, the concentration of his presentation will be on the caustic criticism that the museum received by “ethnocentric, effete and downright pompous” critics.

While at the conference, Halaby will attend two receptions, a tour of the Statens Museum for Kunst and a tour of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen. Coincidentally, scholars have indicated that the latter Danish museum’s design influenced  Moshe Safdie, the architect of Crystal Bridges. Halaby also plans to visit Tivoli Gardens, the second oldest amusement park in the world. He also said that while he is there, he plans to “immerse himself in Danish culture.”

Cigar smoking is a bridge between cultures, backgrounds

By Samuel Cushman

Around two years ago, I found myself sitting on the back porch of a very lovely, and large, home. It overlooked a back yard with green, manicured grass and beyond the backyard, there was a lake. The water was placid and a pleasant hue of blue. The sun was falling in the west, and in a few hours it would have set beyond the tree-covered hills in the horizon. It was a balmy summer evening that brought to mind thoughts of sweet tea, church potlucks, summer fish fries and southern cookouts. I was feeling good. I had just eaten a great meal, it wasn’t too hot and to top it all off, I had a cigar in my hand.

I brought the cigar to my mouth. The leaf it was wrapped in was oily and a deep, smooth brown – a testament to its sun-grown past. The cigar had been aging for a long time, over twenty years, if memory serves. I inhaled a rich, complex set of flavors that made my taste buds sing of coffee and cocoa but also of something more exotic, something that echoed with the musical earthiness of Cuban soil. Even to this day it was without a doubt the best cigar I’ve ever had. And since then I’ve smoked everything from Cohibas to Rocky Patels and Casa Magnas to Opus X, the jewel of the Arturo Fuente franchise and nothing yet compares to the sweet and earthy flavors of that cigar.

A curious thought fleeted through my head. The cigar I held in my hands had been aged for at least 20 years. When it was made, I wouldn’t have been born for another two years at the very least. And now that it had been cut, lit and smoked halfway through it seemed almost a waste. I looked at it more closely. This time I examined the veins in the brown leaf and the embossed red and gold wrapper that read “Cuban Parejo.” I felt a sense of loss similar to what one feels when breaking the seal on a time capsule, or eating a wonderful dinner that one spent hours cooking or like finishing the final book in great series.

For two decades that cigar would have been sitting in a humidor, oblivious to the events of the world, waiting for the moment when it would be picked up by its owner, handed to me, cut, lit up and smoked. Almost needless to say, I resolved myself to commit every detail of that evening to memory.

The man who gave me the cigar, and who owned the house – we couldn’t have been more different. I was only a few months into being 18 years old and he was in his fifties. I was about to go off to Ouachita to study mass communications and he was a seasoned doctor of medicine. I was a middle class white kid who had been raised in the states and him? Well, he was born in Cuba, the son of two (formerly) very wealthy parents who personally knew Fidel Castro but were forced to come to the U.S. as refugees when things got rough over there.

Heck, this was the first time I met him and he gave me one of the most treasured pieces of his cigar collection. And I wouldn’t have met the guy were it not for my close friend. He was just at their home, cleaning their carpets one day for a summer job he was working. He happened to notice his huge cigar collection, and being a cigar smoker himself, mentioned it to the guy’s wife and she invited him over to smoke with her husband. He brought me along about the second or third time he went to visit.

But this guy didn’t even know me, and I’ve only had the pleasure of meeting him that one time, almost two years ago. I was a complete stranger, almost completely different. But for all our differences there was something that we did have in common, he, my buddy, and I. We were cigar smokers. Aficionado’s, if you will. And it is these experiences that we live for: discovery, meeting fascinating people who share the same passion that we do and exploring a centuries old fraternal bond that every connoisseur of fine cigars shares with one another.

We cigar aficionado’s are a certain breed of men. Despite our differences, we are men of class. We are refined and have tastes tempered for the highest quality; cigar aficionados don’t settle for anything less than the best. We are adventurers; we savor new challenges and the reward that comes with new discoveries. We won’t just smoke a cigar because it’s there or because we crave the nicotine that any petty cigarette smoker craves. When we smoke a cigar, it becomes something more than mere casual indulgence. It becomes a celebration. For each cigar contains so much history, tradition and attention to detail that the men who smoke them are not just smoking a roll of tobacco manufactured in a Havana sweatshop. You see, when we smoke a cigar, we are participating in something far greater. We are participating in a centuries old, fraternal celebration of artisanship and the deep pleasures of life.

Cigar smoking, as trivial, as it might seem at first, serves as a bridge between cultures. It offers the opportunity, as I said earlier, to explore a bond that transcends those same cultures and backgrounds.

I cannot count the number of times I’ve gone into my favorite tobacconist up in Bentonville. It’s called Romeo’s Uptown Pipes and Cigars. There is always someone, a complete stranger, in there that I‘ll spark a conversation with. And we’ll talk about all kinds of things. Usually they’re much older than I am so they have a lot more to share. But there’s always something fascinating that I get to take with me and I never leave disappointed. And that makes all the difference and it makes your cigar that much better.

If you ever become interested in smoking cigars, just go into your local tobacconist shop and I’m sure there will be someone in there who is worth talking to. Even if you never see them again, if you just chat with them while you smoke -– and just talk about life or about anything, really – you will take the pleasure of that experience with you forever.

Navigation and Usability report

Article: Republicans Keep Filibuster on Tap

The Wall Street Journal

Photo from libertynews.com

This media package was very effective in my opinion with its level of interactivity and navigational ease. The main text body of the article was an easy top-to-bottom scroll and all I had to do to follow along was read how I would naturally. I like how, in addition to placing a tab towards the top that leads the person to their interactive display, they also place a smaller version towards the top of the body of text in such a way that honors the AP inverted pyramid style and also provides an interesting supplement to the article. Now the article itself was more about the fact the Republicans in Congress are not ruling out filibuster tactics to delay President Obama from appointing his supreme court nominee after Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement. With this in mind, there might be more than one potential candidate for the spot and to answer the question who will be the next Supreme Court Justice, WSJ Online made an interactive graphic featuring a list of potential nominees with a photo and a short biographical sketch of each, highlighting their career. The graphic had names that you could click on to read about each person, and the name of the person you’re reading about would be highlighted to let the reader know where they are. In addition to the tabs on the side, there were arrows at the bottom right of the pictures of the potential nominees that you could click on. Having these two options (the arrows and the tabs) allows readers to navigate through the graphic in a non-linear (tabs) format that gave them more control and both a linear format that would have ensured they view all the content.

The package did a very good job of letting the reader get back to a previous section. For example, if I scrolled all the way down on the page that had the text of the article, there was a speech bubble that gave me the option to add a comment to the article. If I clicked on it, it would take me to the top of the comment page, which also had the tabs for the Article and Interactive Graphic so it would let me know where I was at and how I might get back to where I came from. What I didn’t like what that this speech bubble was right next to another speech bubble that was filled in the same hue of orange as this bubble was outlined with, and it had rather small white colored font in the middle. When I scanned the page, my eyes wouldn’t catch the text in the filled-in bubble unless I looked directly at it, which disturbed the “feel” of the website. In my opinion it should have just been the same as the other one. In addition to this, their choice of ads combined with the placement threw off the smooth fluidity of the site because their color schemes would clash with that of the package and other parts of the web page.

All in all I liked it, and I’ll look to it in the future as a guide for what I might do.

Press Release

Genesis Naturals, Inc.

3789 Terah Dr.

Eden, TX 76359

800-665-0001

www.genesisnaturals.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:                        

November 30, 2012

Natural foods company announces release of new product

Genesis Naturals has developed a new dietary supplement that will sweeten food and offer significant health benefits for consumers

Genesis Naturals, a leading maker of nutritious and organic foods, has announced today the release of a new sugar substitute called Completely Sweet that, in the right measure, also serves as a daily multivitamin.

“Completely Sweet is exciting and very unique,” said Shelby Longnecher, CEO and founder of Genesis Naturals. “It’s created with herbs and other natural resources and is completely designed for healthy living.”

Completely Sweet is an all-natural, zero-carb, zero-calorie product with a zero-glycemic index. Its base component is Stevia, a naturally sweet plant native to Paraguay. Stevia have been used for decades in the United States as a dietary supplement and the pure glycosides that are extracted from the plant are 250 to 400 times sweeter than sugar.

“You can sweeten your drink without any of the health problems associated with using sugar or any of the harmful chemicals prevalent in artificial sweeteners,” Longnecher said.

Other sweeteners are known to contain harmful chemicals such as formaldehyde, acetic acids and even chlorine. To date, more than 1,000 scientific studies and abstracts prove Genesis Naturals Completely Sweet as a safe and healthy alternative to sugar and artificial sweeteners.

“We have a philosophy here at Genesis Naturals that the human body is a natural system and that it needs a natural fuel to sustain and promote optimal health,” Longnecher said.

The new formulation of Completely Sweet has achieved GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status enabling Genesis Naturals to expand the product beyond dietary supplements and market it alongside sugar and other sweetening alternatives.

Completely Sweet contains four essential amino acids known to promote health and strength of muscles, which can lead to more energy and improved weight control.

Benefits of the multivitamin include cardiovascular health, healthy hair growth, increased energy levels, and powerful disease-fighting antioxidants. If taken in a specific measurement, Completely Sweet can provide the recommended daily percentages of nutrients needed in the average child or adult as suggested by the Recommended Dietary Allowances chart from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Genesis Naturals is a leading maker of nutritious and organic foods, drinks and high quality natural supplements. Focused on nutrition and healthy snacks, the employee and family owned company is committed to sustaining it people, brands, business, community and planet.

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Flip Side: Death Penalty Debate (Sept. 2012)

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FOR:

As people, one of the most important things we can do is ask questions about the world we live in and weigh the arguments regarding people’s belief systems — even if you believe the same way they do. Asking these questions and playing devil’s advocate is a great way to become more cemented in your beliefs. And knowing that you can adequately defend your beliefs will bring you a great sense of satisfaction when you are challenged. As it happens, doing this kind of thing is one of my favorite activities and I would like to counter last week’s column regarding capital punishment. I would also like to say that I am largely anti-capital punishment primarily for reasons based upon my faith and this article is purely for recreational purposes. I also acknowledge many realities concerning the topic.

The first thing last week’s column pointed out was the amount of money that Mississippi taxpayers spend on housing death row inmates as opposed to normal inmates. The amount was $102.27 per day for death row and $41.61 per day for other inmates. At first this is indeed a shocking statistic if Mississippi is representative of the U.S. — it seems we spend over two times as much money keeping people in death row than we do other inmates. The column suggests that we use life imprisonment as an alternative. But we fail to realize one thing: people on death row are there for a shorter time than people with a life sentence.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average time between sentencing and execution for death row inmates is 15 years (rounding up from 178 months) as of 2010. They also report that there is a sharp peak in the age distribution of murderers between the ages of 18 and 30. From this we can infer that the average cost of putting someone on death row for Mississippi taxpayers will be will be $560,000 per inmate if we round up. The Central Intelligence Agency reported in 2010 that the average human life expectancy in the United States is 78.2 years (both male and female, but it’s important to note that prison inmates are disproportionately male).  In order to calculate the cost of an inmate we take 78.2 and subtract their age, then multiply that number by days in a year and take the product multiplied by cost per day. If we accept the alternative of life imprisonment and calculate the then Mississippi taxpayers will be paying at the least on average $732,000 per 30-year-old convicted inmate (rounding down) over the course of their life in prison and at the most on average $914,000 per 18-year-old convicted inmate (rounding down again) over the course of their life in prison.

The column last week mentioned that people wonder why it’s so expensive to live in the U.S and mentioned the death penalty as a cause. Perhaps capital punishment is a part of that problem but we can now say for certain that, at least in Mississippi, housing permanently imprisoned inmates is a far bigger one.

The column also asked how we can be certain that the person being executed isn’t innocent, as humans are prone to deceit and mistakes. It also mentions the case in North Carolina of how Jonathon Hoffman was wrongly convicted on a charge of first degree murder and robbery that he committed with his cousin. It mentions how Hoffman’s cousin wrongfully testified against him in open court and how Hoffman was wrongfully convicted of those charges. But Hoffman and his cousin weren’t actually innocent of committing the crime — a jewelry store was still robbed and a man, Danny Cook, still murdered. But Hoffman was released on a mistrial because his cousin accepted money and immunity from an attorney to testify against Hoffman without the judge’s and jury’s knowledge. Hoffman’s cousin eventually recanted his testimony and received his just desserts for his deception.

Hoffman was released from death row and prison because of a mistrial for a crime that he, at least in part, actually committed. He now walks free.

There is a huge difference that the law recognizes between those “legally” innocent and those actually innocent. Yes, there is a difference between “I had no connection to the murder” cases and “I did it but I got off because of legal error” cases. Many death penalty opponents tend to combine these two conflicting groups to increase their “innocents” number.

The column last week mentions Amnesty International in citing the number of people released from death row in the U.S since 1973 (130 inmates). Amnesty International, an anti-death penalty group, draws this statistic from The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), another anti-death penalty group, who conducted the study, thereby negating objective confidence in the results. Richard Dieter, head of the DPIC, has confirmed, again, what their “innocent” means:

“. . . according to death penalty opponents, who say they make no distinction between legal and factual innocence because there is no difference between the two under the law and because there is no objective way to make such a determination. They’re innocent in the eyes of the law,’ Dieter said. ’That’s the only objective standard we have.’

The number of people convicted who were actually innocent and had no connection to the crime when compared to the other group is virtually non-existent.

The very fact that more and more people are being released from death row is proof that the number of wrongfully convicted (not innocent) people on death row is becoming smaller and smaller and the proportion of properly convicted inmates is growing larger. If the trend continues, then soon the number of wrongfully convicted people will also be virtually non-existent.

The column also weighs things in a religious perspective, asking if we are God and what rights do we have to decide who lives and dies. We obviously aren’t God and to believe as such would be the height of arrogance. But we do have a responsibility to society and its people to deliver justice to those  who make that decision under incriminating circumstances. Humans are made in the image of God and capital punishment instills within people a respect for that image. Human life is sacred; to destroy human life is to attack the image of God. Such a terrible offense can only be rectified by offering the life of the murderer back to God.

Many death penalty opponents play up the angle that human life is sacred but without such a standard that calls for capital punishment, human life would be cheapened and humane causes such as civil rights, gender rights and children’s rights would suffer.

Many death penalty opponents also tend to play up the recipients of capital punishment as victims of the justice system’s failures and victims of the targets of vengeance from the families of the people they killed.

I agree that the justice system has flaws that need to be fixed, and there are many people and more than a handful of activist groups who are trying to make that happen. And I make no concession to the belief that vengeance is a human institution that should be freely exercised but I am not so naïve to believe that justice cannot serve as an adequate substitute for people. Justice began with revenge and still revenge is the only justice some people will ever receive.

New Yorker publishes Curlin poem in July Issue (Sept. 2012)

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On Jul. 30, 2012 Dr. Jay Curlin, professor of English, had a poem that was featured in The New Yorker. Dr. Curlin never submitted the poem but after a remarkable set of circumstances The New Yorker’s poetry editor Paul Muldoon, contacted Curlin and asked him whether he might publish it in the magazine. The poem, entitled “Evidence of Things Not Seen,” was written in the Fall of 2010 to feature two words that appeared in the Daily Word Game utilized by professors to enhance students’ vocabulary. The words were “Higgs-Boson,” the legendary god particle and “hirsute,” a word meaning hairy. The poem’s title is a reference to the Bible verse Hebrews 11:1.

“After a couple of years of playing the daily word games [Jay] would incorporate [them] in his reading quizzes in poems he wrote that he called lexical rhymes,” said Johnny Wink, professor of English. “He started sending me these and I thought they were so first rate that I asked him whether he would mind me sending them out on a mailing list because I thought there would be people, in addition to students, who would like to see them. And indeed there were. That then set up this amazing thing that happened with The New Yorker.”

Wink was driving in his car this past July while listening to NPR when he heard a story about how people at CERN had thought they spotted the Higgs-Boson while working at the supercollider. After hearing this, Wink then emailed Curlin and told him about what he heard and Curlin sent Wink a copy of the poem. Wink then sent out the poem to the people on the mailing list.

“I thought they’d might like to see it again now that the Higgs-boson is in the news,” Wink said. “Now you have to remember that Jay is a really good poet but he has not really made any attempts in the direction of becoming a known poet. Years ago I talked him into submitting a poem to a magazine called the Plains Poetry Journal. Jay doesn’t submit poems to places and any poet who is out to make a name for himself lusts to get in The New Yorker. The competition is fierce with all the people writing poetry for the English language and realizing that this is the Cadillac of magazine publications.”

Among the members of this mailing list was Douglass Hofstadter, Pulitzer Prize winner and College of Arts and Sciences distinguished professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature at Indiana University. Hofstadter enjoyed the poem and sent it to some friends of his asking if any of them had any idea of where it might get published. A few of these worked at CERN where the Higgs-Boson was spotted, and one suggested that they look to an online source of publishing. After a number of days they didn’t hear anything about the poem until Curlin was emailed by Muldoon asking him for permission to publish “The Evidence of Things Not Seen.”

“What we found out was this,” Wink said. “Douglass Hofstadter knew some general editor at The New Yorker and sent the poem to him. As it turned out the general editor apparently liked the poem a lot and sent it to Muldoon, the poetry editor. Muldoon liked it a lot and that’s how Muldoon came to write Jay. [He] never submitted a poem to The New Yorker and he must be in a very rare category of people who get asked by The New Yorker [to have there poems published]. This is something that might happen to famous people and well known writers, but Jay’s only published one poem. He is an utterly unknown poet beyond his circle of admirers – the people on the list. And yet because of a strange set of circumstances, The New Yorker asked Jay Curlin if they could publish a poem of his. I just think that is a great thing.”

Because of the recent news regarding the Higgs-Boson The New Yorker rushed to get Curlin’s poem printed within the month.

When he first received the email from Muldoon, Curlin said that the shock was like “a lightning bolt.” He said he was balancing his checkbook in the middle of a Saturday morning when he got the email.

“The title of the message was simply ‘Your Poem,’” Curlin said. “I looked and the text said it was from this Paul Muldoon. It said, ‘Mr. Curlin, I was very taken with your poem and was wondering how you’d feel to have it published in the New Yorker if it hasn’t appeared elsewhere.’ I immediately responded, ‘Good Heavens! I’m mystified Mr. Muldoon that you would want to publish this poem. Indeed this will be its first appearance.’ I was absolutely thunderstruck but also immensely honored and deeply flattered.”

Curlin has been writing poetry since his childhood. He also incorporates much of his poetry in some of his course work and classes. He has written close to 500 poems solely through his efforts to incorporate the daily words in his lexical rhymes. He writes about 42 poems per semester.

Upon speaking of how he felt when he learned who was reading his poem, Curlin said he felt like crawling under a rock. He laughingly recalled the moment in “The Odyssey” when Odysseus fools Polyphemus by calling himself “Nobody.” When he learned that the people at CERN would be seeing his poem and Hofstadter’s positive remarks regarding it, Curlin said he was embarrassed and wanted to say that “Nobody wrote these poems,” similar to Odysseus.

“The week after my poem was published, one of the poems that appeared was by Margaret Atwood. When I looked at these bylines of the type of people who were being published, all of a sudden  I felt very very small. I wanted to crawl under a rock and hide.”

Curlin’s poem has received strong responses from his readers and both positive and negative criticism. He says that when he wrote the poem, it was at a point when the  Higgs-Boson was purely hypothetical. Curlin said that he thought at the time how amazing it is that scientists say we should have faith in the things we can’t see but still know that they have to exist, but do have a problem with the Christian form of faith.

“That’s exactly what faith is,” Curlin said. “It’s the evidence of things not seen. A lot of people say that now we know that everything about the Christian theology must be wrong [because of this discovery]. But by no means does it does the discovery this July do anything to our faith. To me, it’s a beautiful reminder that our faith is built on what we cannot see. And every once in a while this supercollider will give us a reminder that there are all sorts of things out there that we cannot see, but nonetheless have faith that they exist.”

Curlin’s poem is posted in Lile Hall in front of the English department.

Feel the chemistry: students present at national meeting (May 2012)

 

 

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Students from Ouachita’s American Chemical Society (ACS) student chapter went to the 243rd ACS National Meeting at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, Calif., from March 25-29. There, students presented the research they have done and participated in a Chemistry Demonstration Exchange (Chem Demo Exchange) as well as present an annual report on the student chapter’s activities during the past academic year.

“The American Chemical Society is a very large professional organization,” said Dr. Joe Jeffers, dean of the Patterson School of Natural Science. “Every spring we take students who have done research — as we’ve for 15 years now. The average attendance of those meetings will be 15,000-16,000. So we’re looking at academic chemists, industrial chemists, chemists of every type that attend these meetings.”

The meeting also hosts a large undergraduate symposium. Eleven Ouachita students who attended presented their research on a poster.

“In essence what they do is they stand by their poster, and as people come through they explain what they’re doing and answer questions — that’s the typical pattern,” Jeffers said.

In addition to the students, several professors also made presentations; Jeffers gave a “History of Chemistry” lecture.

Each of the ACS meetings has a different theme, and this spring’s theme was “The Chemistry of Life.” Jeffers’ presentation gave background information on how DNA was found as genetic material, and how the genetic code was developed.

“We flew out on Friday, and on Sunday morning we started with demonstrations,” said Kasa Cooper, a senior chemistry and biology major and president of Ouachita’s ACS student chapter. “Sunday night we got to go to the award ceremony and we got an award for all the things our ASC chapter did in the last year.”

At the Chem Demo Exchange, the ACS chapter had a table set up to show chapters the demonstrations that they do with children at local elementary schools.

“We did what we call ‘fireworks in a glass,’ which is where we mix water-based food coloring and oil on top of water,” Cooper said. “The food coloring and the oil goes down to the water and  looks like it is exploding. We also did [a demonstration] that we call ‘magic milk’ with food coloring and milk. We dip a Q-tip with stuff on it into the milk and it changes the way the food coloring interacts and makes it look like the food coloring is just running away from the Q-tip.”

Also at the conference, the students were also able to attend technical symposium sessions and lectures, including “Chemistry in a Cup o’Java,” where students learned about the chemistry in coffee, and “Nuclear Power Generation — Lessons from Fukushima, Daichi and Future Directions,” as well as an Eminent Scientist lecture. There were also a number of graduate schools represented.

“It allows them to see what chemists do outside of this academic bubble here at Ouachita,” Perry said. “It gives them the chance to present their own work in that environment and see that chemistry is a lot bigger than what we do here at Ouachita.”