Friday, October 31, 2008 The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of, the people peaceably to [I- assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Let's get creative By Jennifer Juncosa perspectives editor jdjso6l@psu.edu First of all, Happy Halloween. Most of my generation has heard of, seen, or love the movie Mean Girls. At one point of the movie, it is Halloween and the girls are going to a party. Cadi (Lindsay Lohan) narrates how "Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about So while looking for bumblebee wings, at the last minute, I learned two things. This is not the year to be a bum blebee, and there are no tasteful cos tumes, anywhere. I went with a friend into five different Halloween stores in the area looking for the last touch to her costume. Just for future reference, you can't get wings by themselves; you can get them as part of a bumblebee outfit. The outfit has your cleavage busting out the top, a skirt that stops where it should start, and distasteful boots with striped leg gings. Don't want to be a bumblebee? That's fine. There are about a million different costumes that look just like it but are different colors. Get it in red? Halloween pros and cons By Neil Peters staff writer njpsoB3@psu.edu Since we were kids, every year, as the leaves began to change and the —.vie,ather cooled, our anticipation grew our favorite fall night, Halloween. .4sctied our bags and finalized our costumes as the wondrous night crept closer. Then, when the time arrived, we ventured out into the crisp darkness, seeking our fortune in candy. However, Halloween wasn't always fun and games. Like everything else, it has its upsides and downsides. So here they are, the highs and lows of the spookiest night of the year. Trick-or-Treating: the classic Halloween activity that we all wish we could do again. After hours of work and sprinting to the best houses, you'd return with your stash, pour it onto the floor and wallow in your achievement. The upside was that you could stuff your 8-year-old face with all the Snickers bars you could handle. The downside was the candy corn. There was always a house that gave it out and every year you still went back. Maybe in your Halloween high you forgot or you were just hoping to get lucky, but every year you still got a ton of that tri colored crap. And what was the first place it went after it spilled out of your goodie bag? The trash can. End of story. Costume parties: now that we are grown up, trick-or-treating is no longer an option. But it is made up for with the Halloween Costume party. The upside is that men go as funny/crude represen tations of sexual acts or organs. Women go wearing nothing but underwear and furry ears and go as a sexy animal. The downside is that women who should NOT wear underwear and bunny ears do. Carving pumpkins: jack-o-lanterns are sweet in general. They look cool at Beacon Thumbs Up • I I 41...% 4.0111 % * l°. - Halloween parties - First snow - Twilight - Zombies vs. Humans Ladybug. Get it in blue? Dorothy. As much as Tiny Fey, who wrote Mean Girls, meant the comment about being a slut on Halloween to be a joke, it's 100 percent true. It's not about how clever you can be anymore, it's how provocative you can dress. Halloween is also about going out as someone you have always wanted to be. It's an excuse for the mathlete to dress up like a cheerleader and get a few laughs when deep down she thinks the uniforms are cute. It's a chance to be someone different without being called a poser. If the majority of the female population wants to be a prosti tute, then fine; we all have dreams. Halloween is about dressing like your alter ego. It's about going out for a night as someone you would never want to be on a regular basis. If you wear cardigans and pearls everyday, you go out for Halloween like a biker chick with fake tattoos all over your body. That's what makes a costume clever and entertaining. If you wear "short shorts" year round and your cleavage pops out on a daily basis, Halloween is just you going out as you. So as a Halloween challenge, go out in a clever costume. Don't go out like you only accept cash. night, you can make whatever you want and can show it off to the neighbor hood. The upside is that it's a blank easel. You can do whatever you like as long as you don't screw it up. For the past few years, I've attempted to make the Penn State logo, though I was, sadly, unsuccessful in my endeavor. The downside is that the insides smell like your roommates laundry. It's one of the foulest stenches I've ever encountered. The first time I ever carved one, I threw up inside the thing as I was gutting it. Candy: awesome. Pure and simple. As a kid you took every chance you could get to eat some and you didn't stop until there was sticky stuff all over you. The upside was the fact that it's candy. What more do you want? The downside is that they gave you "Fun- Sized" bars. What's fun about three centimeters of chocolate? How about you stop and give me a real candy bar or just hand over the whole bag? Horror movies: a pure Halloween tra dition. Once Oct Ist hits, they begin to flood the TV channels. If you missed the Friday the 13th marathon on TBS, don't worry. It'll be on AMC next weekend. The upside: there's always one that comes out every couple of years that really freaks you out. You don't sleep for days, you refuse to walk outside at night, and you sprint down dark hallways. They are the best of the best, and we cannot help but love them. The downside: for every Saw and The Ring made, four dozen other terri ble movies are pumped out as well. Movies that have a budget of about $37 and look as though they were filmed with a camera phone are much more frequent than the good ones. Do you guys remember, Shutter, Cursed, or Dark Water? I rest my case. So there you have it, the upsides and downsides of Halloween. Though you may now realize the underbelly of this great holiday, don't let it get you down. It's still a blast. So go out and enjoy it. PERSPECTIVES Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter Thomas Jefferson The news media has come under intense scrutiny throughout this elec tion. In many ways this election will be the harbinger of how Americans will consume information. There has been a proliferation of websites, blogs, and, online newspapers and magazines. Long gone are the days the only news paper of the day came out in the morn ing and the half-hour evening news suf ficed for information. In some ways, this could be a result of an increasingly complex world. With more issues at the forefront and tighter schedules for many people, a single source for news is no longer sufficient. The lines between entertainment, infor mation, and journalistic bias have become increasingly blurred. With the proliferation of sources, one must also be careful of what they are reading, especially on the internet. With print media, bias is less of an issue. The New York Tunes is "liberal," the Washington Post a little more "con servative," the Wall Street Journal, def initely "conservative." or at least that is what I'm told. However, the fact of the matter is, if you pick up and actually read all three, a pattern emerges: they Cartoon contributed b) Frank 14'eltner /k 1 D 6.3 yrio dTAC (o;r‘cfcti,s rcknind youVo P---•//‘ Whenever I write things, I wonder to myself, "who will actually read this?" And then I continue writing. So now I'm addressing the reader. Right now, I'm sitting in my bathroom (I live in Senat) with everything all pale and flu orescent, listening to Panic at the Disco (they got a bad rep for a really terrible first CD; give their new one a chance), and I've decided to change the topic of my article. Since I ran out of things to chat about in my Vermont article, I've made a shift in format. Now, instead of my former dirty hippie "Vermont is so cool" article, I'm going to write what some might call a philosophy column. I'm going to ask all sorts of weird ques tions that I think about every day. I have so many I forget most of them. This is going to be what goes through my head Reading between the lines By Christopher Brown contributing writer embs3 13 @psu.edu By Jeff Kramer staff writer jsksl6l@psu.edu all report the same stories. And if one paper publishes a unique story, within a few days the others will be reporting on the story as well. On the internet, bias can be hidden. And, if one reads only the few same sources over and over again, reality can become skewed. Two sites come to mind most, The Buffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com) and Drudge Report (www.drudgereport.com). The coverage of these two news blogs are polar opposite. During this election cycle, Drudge Report has been prone to post links or poll results that would seem to be damning to Obama. On Oct. 17, he posted the results of an AP-Yahoo poll that supposedly showed Obama with a lead over McCain, 42-39. However, as Nate Silver, poll guru from fivethir tyeight.com, pointed out, it was two weeks old, internet based, and failed to screen the people actually taking the poll. On the opposite end of the spectrum, The Huffington Post, is almost unabashedly liberal in the way it choos es what news stories to link to. As I am writing this article, their headline reads, "Republicans on the Ropes." Meanwhile, there are multiple men tions of Palin and Republican smear tactics in the stories on the front page. Compare to Drudge who has over 13 headlines mentioning Obama, none of them in a flattering way. Most of them either insinuate he is hiding something or follow McCain campaign talking points. This isn't to say that neither site does n't have good or important information. `'N.,_ Deep thoughts on a very common basis to the deepest of topics. My definition of serendipity is differ ent than some that I've heard. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines serendipity as a noun that is the faculty or phenomenon of finding valu able or agreeable things not sought for. My version of serendipity is pretty akin to the one in the dictionary, but I view it more as how something good can almost always come out of some thing bad. I don't mean something good could come out of big things like mos quitoes or the Crusades, but for smaller things, there's usually a bright side. Thus, serendipity: finding something in something else. You know how about 15% of all your friends have that tradition where his or her family goes to Disney World or some wild amusement park each and every March vacation? Well, all of those parks—beaches in South , ,-,.- 1 , , . ; 4 -' \:-..., •- ( , 4- B-.„ -t , ik-.1,-, L. , _:: - ._ i-fl - n_ - •,- --_,.- 7 i 4 i, if r #'/ / /i, 4. t (../ ~~. The Behrend Beacon I 5 But, people need to he increasingly cau tious of where they get their informa tion. If I only read Drudge. I would probably feel like McCain is winning the election, and if I only read Huffington Post. I would feel like this election is all but over. Neither conclu sion is right, but if a person is limited in what they read, they could probably feel that way. What may be most troubling about news coverage over the election is that. while this election has created a great enthusiasm among the electorate, news papers and print media are still suffer ing. The Audit Bureau of Circulations reported a decline in subscriptions of over 4.6% over the last 6 months alone. The LA Times laid off 75 staffers last week and the Christian Science Monitor, which will have been around for 100 years next month, is dropping its print edition and going paperless. This is a disconcerting development. If newspapers and print media are hang ing on by a thread during this election. how will they cope after the election? You can lead a horse to water, but vou can't make it drink. And you can give a newspaper to an American, but you can't make him or her read it. While any newspaper can he accused of bias, it would he a hard task to prove it in the newsroom. The same cannot he said for news sites on the internet. Like Uncle Ben told Peter Parker, "With great power comes great responsibility . ' and people must become wary con sumers of information from dubious sources VI '.: 7 Ji l t , 1 1 , ; /050',! Carolina, Six Flags, and most of all Disney World—manufacture family tra ditions. I'm not saying that that's a had thing; the places do a great job and that's why people keep coming back. But they manufacture it. People pay money for their own custom. and both sides are happy about it. That's the per fect buyer and seller relationship. If you keep the customer happy, they'll always come hack. It's not about satisfying the user and nothing else. To make a killing in business, sell ritualistic family tradi tions. Everybody should have a short period during which you don't have any fun. A dry spell in fun, just so you can appreci ate how good the good life really is. Another thing; you never really know how good the good life is until you're in the good life. You can't tell how much greener the grass is until you get to the other field. Beacon Thumbs Down :-.• , . 7.: i .. .... 11 ," 6 1.. .. ‘ N. - No halloween party invites - First snow - Last-minute corrections - Misunderstandings
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers