FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2000
A day late
and a dollar
short
wjg Ben Kundman
began its life as a
cynical look at
American politics. Unfortunately, I ran
out of metaphors and colorful anecdotes
at the 400 hundred-word mark. It wasn’
out of lack of material, (I think even a
half-wit such as myself could write
thousands of words on just ONE of the
Presidential candidates) I just started to
realize I was too stressed out about
school to focus my anger at anything
besides my professors (for giving home
work like their class is the only one I
have) and myself (for putting off all of
this homework until the last possible
second).
At work today I realized that I am not
the only one stressed beyond belief.
Everyone: Engineers, English majors,
Business majors, Frisbee majors, all have
tons of work to do. Finals are approach
ing, late drop will be over by the time this
is printed, and I (hopefully) will know if
Em on the five year plan or not.
I think what we, overworked, under
laid, overcharged, students of Behrend
need to do is stop for a moment and think
about all the good things in life. In order
to help all (both?) of my loyal readers get
started on some of the better things in
life, I decided to compile a list of a few
things that make me happy, and maybe
make other people happy too.
1. Puppies - Actually, I think puppies are
really annoying, but most people seem to
think that they are the cutest things on
earth. Puppies make me smile for about
two seconds until they start barking and
peeing all over the place.
2. Movie Popcorn - Although consum
ing a large buttered popcorn at
Tinseltown is the fat and caloric equiva
lent of munching on a ball of lard for two
hours straight and washing it all down
with pints of Guiness, there’s something
special about munching on some greasy
movie popcorn while watching a flick.
Plus, you can always pull “the popcorn
trick” on unsuspecting dates.
3. Keggers - There’s something to be
said about paying $3 for unlimited (albeit
cheap) beer and hanging out with your
friends till the wee hours of the morning.
4. Finding money - There’s nothing
quite like finding money. Almost as
exciting as knowing that you’re twenty
dollars richer is knowing that someone
else is twenty dollars poorer. A side note
to “finding money” is being under
charged for something. Today at work, I
put my fifty cents into the pop machine,
pressed “Pepsi,” and out popped my can
of pop. After that, the coin return starting
spitting nickels at me. I thought I was in
Las Vegas!
5. Sunsets - Erie might have lousy
weather nine months out of the year, a
complete and utter lack of social activi
ties, and a ban on full nudity strip joints
within city limits, but man, oh, man, do
we have some beautiful sunsets.
6. Sleeping Late - Not having to worry
about your parents finding out you slept
until 4 p.m. the fourth consecutive
Saturday in a row makes going away to
college worthwhile.
7. Having someone let you ahead of
him or her in line at the bathroom at a
party when you really have to pee. Self
explanatory
8. Pizza - Breakfast, lunch, or dinner,
Pizza is the Swiss Army Knife of foods.
9. Watching any movie Kevin Smith
directed - An ex-mallrat/agnostic such as
myself with more relationship problems
than a season’s worth of As the World
Turns can find solace in watching Clerks,
Mallrats, Dogma, or Chasing Amy any
day of the week.
10. A big, cleanly caught frontside flip
- (If you have to ask, you couldn’t
possibly understand) Everyone has at
least one thing they are truly passionate
about, whether it’s athletic, intellectual or
other. What is important is to find that
passion, embrace it, and keep the fire
alive.
Kundman ’.v column appears every three
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Al Gore’s presidency, on a silver platter
I felt rather strange sitting in my political
science class this past week, talking about
the voting procedures in Florida and all
across this country of ours. It sort of felt as
if I was in a classroom from the 18 lh century,
the way we were discussing paper ballots
and punch cards as a way to count votes.
We are in an age where technology is
booming. Everything is electronic, from
shopping carts to pet dogs’ We can talk to
friends through a computer, watch television
clips through the Internet, and give people
heart transplants from the organs of a dead
man or woman. For God sakes, we can
clone goats! Yet, we can’t accurately tally
votes.
I’m sure this past week has been a
complete roller coaster ride of interest for
everyone in the political scene; from not
much interest before Election Day, to an
election night of being “glued to the tube,” to
extreme anger with the Florida situation, to
just plain embarrassment for living in a
country with 18 lh century techniques of
counting votes.
Let me give a quick briefing. We have had
an Election Day vote. We have counted the
votes, recounted the votes and then re
recounted the votes in the four most
Democratic counties in Florida. But before
you even start to think that this is over...let
me tell you what will happen next.
There will be a lawsuit from whichever
party ends up losing the recount of the first
recount of the original count of the original
election. That losing party will request
another count of the four most Republican or
Democratic counties in Florida (pending the
party) as well as a recount of the overseas
Shut up and drive!
Last week 1 was almost hit by an idiot on
the road. Now, many of you may have a
theory on who this “idiot” is. Some men
might say that it was a woman (and I’ll admit
it, women ARE dumber drivers than men are),
And some of you might say that it was
someone either a) trying to shave (face, legs
or underarms) or b) trying to apply makeup
in the car, in either case leaning precariously
over the wheel in order to see themselves in
the rearview mirror. No, that is not the
answer, either.
It is the idiot who was talking on their cell
phone that almost crashed into me on 1-90
East last week. Yes, that annoying, desperate
loser who sits and yaks away on their little
compact cordless, oblivious to the cautious
drivers that swerve desperately out of the way
in order to avoid them. And it just might be
you that’s doing the talking.
Ok, so maybe you have an ‘emeirgency’
(note: an emergency does not constitute
catching up on the day’s gossip) and that
’emergency’ just happens to be, for example,
strange sounds coming from the hood of your
car. Well, guess what, people? THIS IS
WHY CONSTRUCTION WORKERS
BUILD THAT SHOULDER ON THE ROAD
SO YOU CAN FREAKING PULL OVER!
Pull over for the two minutes that it takes to
complete your call to whomever you wish,
and then proceed to hang up and drive away.
And the benefits also come in e special
double feature: You have also saved an
EDITORIAL
isentee ballots that
/ere probably
—■ counted by
machines that only could officially count the
ballots that were marked in #2 pencils.
The butterfly ballots that confused the old,
incompetent voters of Palm Beach will then
be recounted, giving the votes that went to
Pat Buchanan to Al Gore because,
apparently, everyone that accidentally
marked their ballots wrong were Gore
supporters. But all the ballots in the
Republican areas of Florida were counted
accurately because Bush supporters must
know how to read and follow instructions
better. That should tell you a little bit about
the Florida voters that are currently deciding
the fate of our country.
Well, when more lawsuits are filed, the
decision will be made by the Republican
Secretary of State Katherine Harris to have
second graders from Georgia assist in the
revote of all the counties in Florida that use
the unreadable and unbelievably confusing
butterfly ballot. Second graders?
Exactly.. .the 74 second grade experts on
the butterfly ballot who all accurately
punched in the hole for their favorite Disney
character the way they wanted to. These
genius students will supervise as our elderly
voters from Palm Beach attempt to make out
which hole is for which candidate.
tn license; you got to drive whenever you
ctM ' 1 * wanted, wherever you wanted. And you kept
CgyS* J?pn JjtV a c ' ean record, didn’t get into accidents, et
Weindorf eea
assistant photn editor
Ml
innocent life by taking into
consideration that you are not able to drive
while talking on the phone.
Simply put, the human race will never
master talking on the phone and driving at the
same time. We can’t even evolve into a
superspecies that can do two complex things
at one time - why? Because humans are
easily distracted. Our attention is constantly
being diverted - ever try to listen intently to a
speaker for more than ten minutes? It’s hard,
isn’t it? And that same type of concentration
is needed to drive a car safely and alertly.
Talking on the phone is a diversion of that
concentration.
Let’s take something into consideration
here. When you were sixteen years old, you
learned how to drive a car. It was hard,
wasn’t it? (This does not include the idiots
who had high school seniors for best buddies
and hit the road at fourteen years of age - you
do not count.) Anyway, you started out at the
bottom of the pile - no license, no experience,
no nothing. You were the freshman of
drivers.
And the years passed by. You got your
ht in the
der ’web
on Snyder
Now sure, this is all out deception from a
George W. Bush fan. But this is also from a
fan of the laws of our land. I believe that
laws were not made to be broken. They were
made to be enforced and upheld throughout a
process. If there are laws going into an
election, as unfair as they might be, they
must be enforced throughout and until the
very end of that election. If laws have been
unfair for years before this election, then
they could have been fixed by our Vice
President himself, before the process even
began.
The bottom line is that both candidates
will do whatever it takes to win this election
invention of the cell phone. And you got
one because it’s only $3O a month with all the
fixings: email, internet access, free nights and
weekends, four hundred free minutes per
month, voice mail, everything. So now you
can talk whenever you want - at home, at the
grocery store, at the restaurant, at the movie
theaters... oh the places you’ll go with that
thing!
But as soon as you enter your car, the one
thing that took you years to master - driving -
will virtually disappear. Because talking on
the phone takes away just enough
concentration for you to “forget” about that
red light, and you run it. Sometimes it’s a
fluke - the alert driver sees you, and you
don’t get run over. But sometimes there is an
accident.
And maybe you’ll be the one who gets
charged with manslaughter of the three-year
old child that was killed on impact. How
about getting charged with just more than a
misdemeanor? At least those are easier to get
wiped off your record than a felony. Say
goodbye to your license for thirty days...
ninety days... hell, let’s just say goodbye
forever to the license you earned when you
were sixteen. All because of a cell phone at
your ear.
‘The Hot Debate of The Week
Round 'em up, count 'em down...
Is the manual recount n’t
With four mainly Democratic counties in
Florida in questionable situations. Vice
President A 1 Gore is requesting a recount in
those counties. So far, in Volusia County,
Gore has received an additional 90 votes and
4 additional votes in Broward County. This
brings Governor George W. Bush to a small
lead of around 300 votes. In this election, it
has bei ints.
There/
allow;
compi
in the
A Bush supporter, Florida Secretary of
State Katherine Harris, set a deadline for 5
p.m. on Tuesday, November 14, to bring
manual recounts to a halt. This could
prohibit many Democratic votes from being
counted. Another judge said, “the Secretary
of State may ignore such late filed returns
but may not do so arbitrarily; rather only by
the proper exercise of discretion after
consideration of all appropriate facts and
circumstances.”
So, according to this judge, the only way
these votes can be thrown out is for ample
reasoning behind that decision. In conclu
sion, in this race that is “too close to call,”
votes should not be dismissed due to
computer failures. Every vote counts to
choose who the next president will be to
represent this great country, and having the
wrong man in office due to a lack of manual
recount would be a travesty to what we call
DEMOCRACY.
Every week, two editors from the staff will debate a topic that is hot. Students, faculty and
staff are encouraged to email suggestions for the hot topic. Send ideas to
behrcoll2 @ aol. com
The final story will be this: after the
recount and re-recount of the original
election, we will count and recount, then
hand recount the overseas ballots, then
revote in the most Democratic counties in
Florida, then count and recount those votes
under the supervision of the elderly people of
the most Democratic counties of Florida.
Yes, the same elderly people that were
befuddled by the infamous butterfly ballot
will be supervising over this process.
If Bush still leads, there will then be a law
changed that says that there must be a 20-
year span before the son of a former
president can be elected to the White House.
Who knows...it’s probably not
Constitutional or by the law now, but what in
this entire process has been anyway?
This will ensure A 1 Gore’s presidency,
which is what most of the people in the most
Democratic parts of Florida wanted anyway.
And the headlines can finally read
accurately, “A 1 Gore’s Presidency, On a
Silver Platter.”
Until you found the newest
This won't be a lecture on what's
Constitutional in our country because
everything in our Constitution could be
argued one way or another. This is a brief
point on fairness and the law. The word
“law” in our country has slowly gone from
being meaningful to being meaningless. The
sad thing is that the people that are elected, 01
soon to be elected, to uphold the laws of this
land are theories breaking the laws of this
land. Laws were rpade to,encourage fairness
in our country. The Jaws passed for elections
were made for faimess in elections. Whether
the laws were passed over 200 y ears ago or
passed two days ago, they aie still law s,
which should be held in high regard. They
are the rules of our nation. Without rules,
there is chaos.
int of
iy occur
otes.
Case and point: our 200(1 Election. I’uneh
card ballots and butterfly ballots were
approved by Republicans and Democrats
before the election started. They were
approved.. .therefore they should be
followed. The plan was to count the votes
through unbiased machines that don't lean
one way or the other. The votes w ere
counted, the results were final. Manual
recounts are simply a count done by the
hands of biased people. It’s not by the rules
and it’s not fair. We might as well give the
two candidates half of the ballots and have
them determine who wins.
We need to follow the rules and select our
president based on the rules set forth before
this process began. No manual recount 1 It's
not “fair or accurate” and w ill never be •
finalized
Gore supporters want laws to be broken
courtrooms turned upside down, and every
vote counted no matter the rules. Hush fans
want unbiased machines counting the votes,
and only the ballots counted by those
machines to count toward our results.
This point should make us look at our
candidates a little closer. Gore campaigned
with the implication that he was a supporter
of the federal machine —a type of
government that tells the people how things
will run and who will gel what under
different legislation. Bush campaigned with
the implication that he trusts the American
people.
We now have Al Gore trusting the people
to count votes, and Bush trusting the
machines. These candidates didn’t really
need, or even want your respect.. they want
your vote and they demand this election.
No matter who wins the election, it will he
tainted. Ironically, the first ordei of business
won’t be education, social security.
prescription drugs, the environment or tax
cuts/increases. It will be election reform, a
topic ignored before this election, but
overbearing after it
There will have to be an abolishment of
the Electoral College and a total revamping
of our country’s voting methods. Right now.
we have seven different types of voting in
different counties of different suites all over
the U.S. We need one 2T' century ballot that
will accurately count the people’s votes in a
CONSTITUTIONAL and DEMOCRATIC
way. Our Constitution was w ritten to
enhance democracy, not to prevent it.
Snyder’s column appears every three
weeks
Don’t think it can happen? I’ve known
people on both sides of the story - those who
were hit by careless, cell-phone-toting drivers
and those who were the careless, cell-phone
toting drivers. It happens all the time, not just
in New York or in the big cities. It happens in
Erie, too. And people are killed, for pity’s
sake! Do you know that when you are talking
on the phone, you are putting someone’s life
in danger? You’re putting a lot of people’s
lives in danger - including your own.
Cell phones are yet another invention of
humankind that has been hailed as the dawn
of the Information Age we are living in right
now. But like so many other inventions that
have been churned out by us. it has also
turned against us, because so many people use
it abusively, without consideration of other
people on the road. Operating a car takes all
of one’s concentration - even though we do it
every day, you’d be surprised how fast you
can run over a mailbox or hit a curb w hen
you’re doing something else. While that can
be a humorous experience, remember this:
running over a child or hitting another car is
So, if you were the idiot on the cell phone
that almost ran into me last week on the
interstate, shut up and drive. Your immediate
gratification of talking to a friend is not worth
my life - or yours.
Weindorf’s column appears every three
weeks.