Month: October 2013

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News

NYT best seller William Powers speaks

ALEXANDER GAO | The Bucknellian

Ben Kaufman
Editor-in-Chief

A New York Times best-selling author, and the writer of this year’s first-year reading assignment, said that time away from technology should be essential in modern life.

“In today’s world, nobody is off the grid,” said William Powers, author of “Hamlet’s Blackberry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age.” 

Every weekend for five years, Powers and his family would hold a “Digital Sabbath,” during which they would step away from all forms of technology.

Powers, who spoke in Trout Auditorium on Oct. 8, said that stepping away from technology gives you time to think, and therefore allows you to bring more to the table.

“The more you step away from the digital life, the more you can contribute,” Powers said.

Powers also said that he tries to promote nonconformity to everyone around him. Individuals should find ways to avoid conformity in their lives, both in the technology sphere and in general, as a way to find who you truly are, Powers said.

“Make your story original,” Powers said. “Help us stay human.”

Powers graduated from Harvard University with a degree in U.S. history and literature, and later studied for a year at the University of Madrid. Powers has worked as a researcher for Bob Woodward and later as a staff writer for the Washington Post. He now works as a media columnist and speaker.

Power’s book was used as this year’s first-year Common Reading, an assignment that was given to all incoming first-years for the previous four years.

“One of the goals of the Common Reading is to provide a topic and point of reference that is universal to all first-year students, allowing each individual to express his or her thoughts about a shared idea,” said Beth Bouchard, director of New Student Orientation and Student Leadership Programs. “For the last three years, first-year students have met during New Student Orientation to discuss various aspects of the book with a faculty or staff and peer facilitator.”

“I believe that Powers was able to get the audience to think about the relationship that we all have with our electronic devices without suggesting we completely remove ourselves from the digital world,” Jessica Maguire ’14 of the First-Year Common Reading Committee said.

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Arts & Life

Seniors learn proper etiquette in preparation for graduation

ALLY BONI | The Bucknellian

Steph Bernabei
Contributing Writer

Crystal Bailey, the director of the Etiquette Institute of Washington, spoke to a room full of eager, soon-to-be graduates on the evening of Oct. 9. She presented the basics of how to “wine, dine, and act fine” throughout various courses.

Over 200 members of the Class of 2014 crowded into the Terrace Room for the Senior Etiquette Dinner. The dinner, hosted by the Career Development Center (CDC) as an installment of their “Life After Bucknell” series, comprised of a cocktail hour followed by multiple courses.

This year’s dinner had an outstanding turnout compared to previous years, with students actively engaging in the presentation throughout the night. During the cocktail portion of the evening, students were free to mingle throughout the room and practice their conversational skills with friends.

Bailey and various other faculty members from the CDC engaged in conversation with the students, giving them personal attention and addressing their questions before the formal presentation.

After everyone sat down, Bailey commenced the presentation, debunking myths about how to properly shake hands, stressing the importance of seasoning your food only after tasting it, and emphasizing how important it is to follow up personally with people you have met.

Bailey projected her demonstration in the front of the room for the students to follow along throughout the soup, salad, main, and dessert courses. During the presentation, she fielded questions from the students. While the talk mostly covered basic etiquette, those who were more experienced were happy to brush up on their skills in a somewhat informal manner with their friends.

After the dinner, the attendees felt more confident in their next steps in the search for a job after graduation.

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News

Q&A with William Powers

Ben Kaufman
Editor-In-Chief

Q: You began your career in writing as a journalist for The Washington Post. How did you wind up writing about technology? 

A: I started at The [Washington] Post and then worked for a number of magazines. I became basically a journalist who writes about the media–a media critic. I realized around the turn of the century that the devices themselves were becoming more important than the content of journalism. I realized that the digital revolution was the big story. I got a fellowship out of the blue at Harvard in 2006 for a semester–very open-ended–and I could write about any topic I wanted. I decided to write about a little piece of the digital revolution which fascinated me: the claim that print is about to become obsolete.

I wrote an essay arguing that paper as a media is not going to go away. That was a controversial thing to say amidst the digital revolution, so I got some attention for that and I was on National Public Radio, and this led to publishers asking me if I wanted to write a book.

 

Q: How did you go about writing the book?

A: I feel like we spent the first few decades of the digital era living by a stupid philosophy that I called ‘digital maximalism,’ where the more connected you are, the better. I think that’s a dumb way to live and run a society because the more ways we get connected by these devices, the more we get fractured and divided into slim slices and never go into deeper conversations with our focus and relationships. It is something that everyone is talking about now, but in 2006 nobody was talking about it.

My family invented a ritual to leave behind our ‘here and now’ called the ‘internet Sabbath,’ where every weekend, my family would unplug from the internet completely. We didn’t know anyone else was thinking of doing this, we just made it up.

 

Q: Was it hard to break away from the digital world?

A: In the beginning it was so hard that it was comical. The first few weekends we felt like we were stranded on an alien planet. It was like an existential crisis because the internet was removed. It was tears and frustration and panic. That told my wife and me that we were really on to something and that we needed to do this because we had become so codependent. After about two months, we eased into it, and at the very end of the day we unplugged, and it became very natural. It became our identity, like we were that family.

It got to the point where a few weekends in the first year, it was Monday morning and we realized that we forgot to unplug. But we never bothered to look. We stopped the habit of making our way to our screens because we stopped that habit. The ritual ended two years ago, but because we did that for five years, we all now have our personal rituals, like I stay offline on Saturdays and some days during the week. It’s a little bit of a risk; you know you could miss something, but often is something truly urgent?

 

Q: Do you think that in the future the dependence on technology will get better or worse?

A: I’m really an optimist; I think that we’re just in the early stages of this. I think we’re going to look back at these times and realize how primitive these devices are because they are going to involve. Newer applications don’t feel that way because we are learning.

 

Q: You’ve seen technology usage in other countries, how do they compare to the United States in dependence to technology?

A: We’re not the most digitally addicted. Most famously is South Korea. South Korea is really intensely into gaming, so much so that there are internet addiction centers all over the country. I’ve also heard that Australia has the highest capita use of Facebook than any other country. We’re not the most extreme, but we’re also leading the revolution. The inventions are almost all ours. So in that sense, we are defining the future, even if we are not the biggest users of technology, which means that we have a big responsibility that we need to be thoughtful about.

This interview was edited for length.

Categories
News

Interfaith council hosts discussion

Alexandra Rosen
Contributing Writer

The Interfaith Council sponsored a discussion on Oct. 9 that involved issues about religious apathy. The talk, called “Why am I None,” was open to members of all religious denominations and encouraged participants to voice their opinions about what several members of the council consider to be a trend toward students not identifying with a particular religion.

University Chaplain John Colatch led the conversation. Colatch said that 27 percent of college students are apathetic toward religion. Many people today don’t need religion to encourage them to do good works, and Colatch allowed part of the discussion to build from that prompt.

“It seems that the numbers are rising with each passing year,” Colatch said. “It’s not really news.”

Colatch also said that conversations about religion have become taboo.

“Teaching in the classroom has changed,” Colatch said. “Students feel uncomfortable with the religious aspect of colonialism.”

People are hesitant to bring up the subject of religion today, even during a mature discussion, Colatch said.

Colatch created the Interfaith Council during his first year at the University as a group for multiple religious traditions to converse. The council includes representatives from many of the religious affiliations found on campus, Courtney Nelson ’15, a member of the council, said.

“I hope we can have other conversations like this,” Colatch said.

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Arts & Life

Guest filmmakers provide insight into creation of cinema

Jen Lassen
Senior Writer

The Campus Theatre is well known for its impressive events, and it has not disappointed this year. Recently, the theatre hosted two filmmakers, Jem Cohen and Alla Kovgan, to speak about their most recent films for the Fall 2013 Bucknell Film/Media Series.

Cohen, a New York City-based filmmaker, known for his observational portraits of urban landscapes, visited the Campus Theatre on Oct. 1. His visit was sponsored by the University’s Art and Art History Department.

Cohen spoke about his newest film “Museum Hours,” which captures the beauty of Vienna in winter as perceived by a Canadian woman and a quiet, middle-aged museum guard who develop a friendship throughout the film. The film mainly takes place in Austria’s Kunsthistorisches Museum and focuses on how artwork reflects our world.

B-roll, which is typically referred to as background or extra footage in a film or television show, takes the spotlight in “Museum Hours.”

“We live in the B-roll,” Cohen said, referring to the the many shots of scenery in the film, some accompanied by music, others by silence.

On Oct. 8, New York-based filmmaker Alla Kovgan gave a presentation about her dance films and documentaries at the Campus Theatre. Kovgan has been programming for the St. Petersburg Dance Film Festival since 2000, as well as other venues worldwide, and she currently creates intermedia stage performances for the KINODANCE Company.

Kovgan showed clips from her films “Nora” and “Ritual in Transfigured Time,” along with some of her other clips, and she mainly discussed the relationship between dance and cinema. Her visit was sponsored by the University’s Theatre and Dance Department.

Rebecca Meyers, the academic film programmer for the University, highlighted the importance of participating in the opportunity to not only see films projected on-screen at the Campus Theatre, but to meet and learn from the filmmakers themselves.

“The opportunity for audiences to hear a filmmaker speak about his or her work enriches the cinematic experience, as does the space and time for reflection offered in a post-film discussion. In that setting, the dialogue between students, faculty, film-goers from the community, and the artist himself or herself illuminates how a specific film communicates the filmmaker’s intentions; equally important, we learn from this kind of conversation how to be careful, engaged viewers,” Meyers said.

Both Meyers and Associate Professor of English Eric Faden hope to bring more students to these filmmaker events so that anyone–Film/Media majors and Biology majors alike–can experience film in a unique way and actually meet the people who envision, direct, and produce the films projected on-screen.

“Over the last several years, [the University’s] Film/Media Studies department has hosted screenwriters, sound designers, visual effects artists, producers, as well as filmmakers. We bring these professionals to The Campus Theatre for two main reasons. First, films require a huge amount of craft and labor that’s not necessarily obvious on the screen. Thus, film professionals illuminate the work carried out behind the scenes so students and the community can understand how films create meaning and mood. Second, visiting film professionals provides an important networking opportunity for students. The media industry is super competitive and it is important for students to make connections with working professionals early in their careers,” Faden said.

Categories
Opinion

Government shutdown impedes functioning of vital social and economic programs

Nicole Della Cava
Senior Writer

Changing the lives of over one million preschool children across the country, Head Start is one of the social programs which are left vulnerable as a result of the government shutdown. 18,795 children in twenty-three programs in Florida, Connecticut, Alabama, and Mississippi are in dire jeopardy. The government has the immediate responsibility to make sure impoverished children receive an education. While private philanthropy made generous contributions to reopen the seven programs that closed, it is not a solution and if the shutdown persists, children will fall behind in their education and parents will have to scramble for child care. In addendum to this serious result of the government shutdown, as of Tuesday, October 8th, the regional offices of Veterans will be closed due to furloughs of 7,000 employees.

The effects of the government shutdown continue to expand as the United States is already into the second week of the shutdown. It will remain closed until Congress can reach an agreement on a spending bill. Republican House majority leader, John Boehner, insists that they will not fund the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, or increase the debt ceiling. Apprehensive Republicans, as of October 1st when Obamacare became implemented, know that when each day that goes by, more people are signing up for Obamacare and it will be harder to overturn. Having already voted over forty times to rescind the Affordable Care Act since 2010, Republicans are not giving up. The debate has escalated to where Democrats insists that Obamacare be fully funded and a discharge petition to pass a “clean” CR be signed. Congress uses a stopgap continuing resolution, called a CR, that maintains spending at current levels for all or part of the year – a resolution without policy change.

The United States is on the verge of maxing out a $16.699 trillion credit limit but the President must ask Congress to raise the country’s credit limit before the deadline on October 17th. It is not rare that the President seeks to raise the debt ceiling. In fact, there have been 111 instances where the government has raised the debt ceiling since Clinton was in presidency in 1993. On Monday, October 6th President Barack Obama said that in order for the “clean” CR to pass, 217 House members must vote favorably. If the CR is passed, President Obama will continue to receive money for the next six months to one year to continue daily operations. John Boehner is demanding that a clean CR will not pass although fifty to seventy-five Republicans already vocalized their support including Lous Barletta, Peter King, Charlie Dent, Frank Wolf, Michael Grimm, Ro Wittman, and Frank Lobiondo, says MSNBC News. In addition to the 195 Democrats supporting the clean CR bill, Boehner cannot prove that the vote will not pass and he is pushing the United States into default.

Republicans are violating Democratic norms – they have to allow majority to rule. The Supreme Court supports Obamacare, the House and Senate already signed off on it; therefore, it can only go through legislative process to repeal it. The President is correct; he will not negotiate with a gun to his head because Obamacare already came into law in 2010. Are Republicans holding our country hostage? Brian Kessler, economist with Moody’s Analytics estimates that a three to four week shutdown would cost the economy about $55 billion. The affects are not static because additional programs are running out of money each day such as food banks, Arizona TANF, college sexual assault investigations, approval of new home mortgages, and CDC tracking of disease outbreaks. 21,000 national park workers have been laid off and millions of visitors are prevented from entering any of the 410 parks. Facing the fact that 800,000 government employees, viewed as non-essential might not ever get repaid is detrimental to the confidence that people have in this country. Is it fair that so many innocent Americans are faced with unemployment once again? Are we creating jobs or compounding our problem?

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Opinion Uncategorized

Lack of decisions causes government shutdown

Justin Marinelli
Writer

As I have established in previous pieces this year, I believe that the legitimacy of a government derives from its capacity to govern the populace. A government that refuses to govern, like ours, quickly hemorrhages its legitimacy, contingent on the arising societal dysfunction. Luckily, though, things seem to be carrying on just fine for the most part, so I see no need to declare the illegitimacy of the current government, and I look forward to the day it resumes its duties. Still, it does concern me that it was allowed to shut down in the first place.

It strikes me as downright absurd that our government can just stop functioning without our elected officials suffering any sort of repercussions. If a business were to shut down due to internal disagreements, would there not be lay-offs and reorganizations to prevent such a thing in the future? Yet, does anyone really expect that similar measures will be adopted by our government with its unperturbed functioning?

It seems that the incentives for our elected officials to avoid a government shutdown are simply too ambiguous to be reasonably effective. While it is possible that there will be reprisals in the next election, I suspect that Democrats will blame Republicans, Republicans will blame Democrats, and there will be no unified condemnation of both parties for their childishness and immaturity. It is because of this that I have decided to propose a few measures that should be implemented to ensure that we do not again suffer the embarrassment of having a non-functional national government.

First off, in the event of a government shutdown, all members of Congress should become immediately ineligible for re-election. They may finish serving the rest of their tenures, but that should be the end of their political careers. They should be banned from holding any other political office in the future, whether it is a federal, state, or local position, since they have demonstrated their inability to live up to the responsibilities of public service.

Additionally, Congressional pay should be suspended for a year. Why should we pay people who refuse to work? Our taxes pay their salaries so that they can make laws and govern our country. If they refuse to hold up their end of the bargain, they should not receive compensation. The contract is violated, and thus rendered void.

Finally, there is nothing like public shaming to keep people in line and really hammer home the impropriety of certain behavior. I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to putting politicians in the stocks for a day as punishment for this kind of impropriety, but I prefer a more subtle approach. Why not make them wear a scarlet letter, at least until the shut-down is over? Nothing like a little social opprobrium to keep people within the  bounds of responsible and reasonable behavior.

This may all sound extreme, but is not the very idea that our government can simply stop governing in the event of sufficient disagreement an extreme possibility in itself? This is such a departure from historical norms of governance that the overwhelming majority of humanity throughout time would be unable to comprehend it. Moderate solutions cannot fix extreme problems. We need strong measures in place to discourage politicians from shirking their duties, and strict punishments in place for those that do. To do anything less is to invite dysfunction, squabbling, and an ineffectual government.

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News

Economics student researches effect of the recession on the Susquehanna River Valley

ALLY BONI | The Bucknellian

Shannon Beauregard
Contributing Writer

Economics major Darby Hamilton ’15 is conducting research this semester on the impact of the 2007-09 recession on the Susquehanna River Valley Region.

“This research project is meant to ascertain how different levels of income, wealth, or other support systems might have caused the families within the Susquehanna River Valley Region to handle the impact of the Great Recession more severely,” Hamilton said.

The research considers a range of variables, in addition to income, to assess how local families were affected. Some of these variables include the size of the family, whether or not there are disabled family members that require increased health costs, transportation costs associated with each family, whether the family owns a home, and how gender or racial discrimination impacted the family during the recession.

“There’s very little data on specific regions because of quantities that aren’t taken into account on traditional measurements,” Hamilton said.

At the end of the previous spring semester, Hamilton asked his adviser, Associate Professor of Economics Nina Banks, if he could begin his own research project. He came up with the research idea on his own.

“Darby’s project will provide valuable information on the unmet needs of low-income households in the local community as well as provide a broader measure of poverty,” Banks said. “Mr. Hamilton’s research is also important in that he has been researching poverty effects on a broad cross-section of the poor; most studies restrict their analyses to households comprised of single moms and their children since they have been so adversely affected by welfare reform.”

Hamilton worked on a survey questionnaire on campus during the summer. The survey was designed through working in the Susquehanna community so that it would touch upon a variety of topics. Hamilton conducts the surveys by interviewing families throughout the Susquehanna River Valley Region.

“This certainly limits the scope of my research, but will allow me to get a clearer picture of a family’s position within the community, rather than simply knowing they’re technically considered poor,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton hopes the research will also reveal how differently a rural community is affected by a recession from a suburban or urban community.

“I have become fascinated with the topic. I love to learn how people are actually affected by hard times. Everyone knows the recession left people very poor, but there is little data on how people coped with the very real effect of the economic recession in the rural community,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton will present the results of his research at the Kalman Research Symposium. He also hopes to present his findings at the National Undergraduate Research Symposium in April.

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News

Lewisburg to host Woolly Worm Festival

Cooper Josephs
Contributing Writer

The Lewisburg chapter of the Kiwanis Club will host the Woolly Worm Festival on Oct. 12 from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Hufnagle Park on Market Street, which will include free craft stations for children and several dozen food and craft vendors.

“This is a year-round planning event. It is a very anxious moment for us because we (the Kiwanis Club) never really know how many people are going to show up,” Ken Kulish said.

He and his wife have coordinated the Woolly Worm Festival for the previous three years.

“When the Kiwanis Club first started the Woolly Worm Festival … there might have been probably a couple hundred people there. Now there are a few thousand people coming to it throughout the day,” Kulish said.

The festival is named for the small, orange and black caterpillars that appear during the summer and later metamorphose into the Isabella Tiger Moth.

During the annual “Weather Prognostication Ceremony,” young scientists do various tests on the woolly worms, including measuring and weighing them, and try to predict the conditions for the upcoming winter from the data obtained.

“There is a lot of showmanship to the prognostication process, but the kids have a good time having the chance to pick up the 100 or so woolly worms we bring out … and hearing how many snow days they are going to have,” Kulish said.

The proceeds from the festival go to the Kiwanis Club for several charitable works, including scholarships, school supplies for needy children, and projects for the benefit of the Lewisburg community. The proceeds also go toward a project called The Eliminate Project, which is designed to help prevent and eliminate neonatal tetanus, a disease that affects newborn children.

Due to budget shortfalls, grant money from the Lewisburg Visitor Center and Arts Center for the festival was stripped back, and organizers turned to the local community for donations.

“This year we didn’t really know what was going to happen with the festival … We weren’t able to advertise much this year, but we made it through with the help of the townspeople. We made a plea to the Lewisburg community to help support this festival, and they responded in a huge way. We raised about $3000 in start-up money, which was enough to get our bands and our advertising paid for. It was a feel-good moment when the people of Lewisburg came through to us,” Kulish said.

Lewisburg Mayor Judy Wagner praised local donations and volunteer participation in the event.

“We continue to enjoy festivals and parades, and people continue to put in the time so the whole community can enjoy themselves … We make fun for ourselves here, and we do quite well. We think of new reasons to celebrate the seasons, our town, and ourselves,” Wagner said.

Categories
News

Music professor to perform at Russian electro-acoustic concert

Hannah Paton
Writer

Assistant Professor of Music Paul Botelho will perform at an electro-acoustic concert in Russia at the end of this month.

Botelho has been working with renowned composer Jon Appleton for several months, and the two will depart on Oct. 24 for the Urals Conservatory’s Festival of ElectroAcoustic Music in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

During their 10-day trip, the pair will be performing a set at the international festival, teaching workshops at the Conservatory on electroacoustic music, and even judging other music competitions.

To prepare for their upcoming performance, Botelho and Appleton have spent the last few months collaborating and producing numerous new tracks.

“At first we just came up with a time—seven minutes—Jon wrote the voice part, which I sang, and I wrote the piano part, which he performed,” Botelho said.

Botelho defines electroacoustic music as any sort of music made through technology. According to him, electroacoustic techniques have become increasingly popular over the last few decades and are bound to be the music of the future.

“We’re approaching the point where technology is just another instrument,” Botelho said. “There’s an entire wing dedicated to electroacoustic music at the conservatory. It’ll get there.” 

Botelho will teach one workshop about ChucK Audio Programming language, which is essentially a form of computer software like JavaScript or C++ that makes it easy to develop musical software and produce sound very quickly.

His other workshop will cover the future of electroacoustic music. He will also experiment with a theremin, an electronic musical instrument consisting of two different metal antennas that make sound based on the position of the player’s hands relative to the antennas. 

The  main goal and hope of the trip is to make connections for collaborations in the future. He even hopes to try to set up a future student exchange program with a focus in electroacoustic studies. 

“We both hope to end the ghettoisation of electro,” Botelho said.