Kolbert discusses immediacy of global warming

ELON, N.C. – Elizabeth Kolbert bemoaned the state of global warming and its adverse effect on the nation’s food supply in a speech Thursday evening at McCrary Theatre. The award-winning journalist honed in on the increased global temperatures and their effect on the climate as a whole while urging people to be active the fight against climate change.

“I really urge all of you not to throw up your hands,” Kolbert said, “but get involved on a personal level, a university level and a national and political level.”

Kolbert, a staff writer for The New Yorker who primarily writes about climate change, used a slideshow with pictures and graphs to illustrate her points, which were based on what she emphasized as the important facts about global warming.

One thing of her big points was the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and how it heightens the temperature of the earth. Kolbert said the more carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere, the more heat is going to be trapped, therefore increasing temperatures. She cited a study done at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, that showed the carbon dioxide concentrations increasing significantly since 1960, when the study started.

She also showed an image of the Arctic ice cap in 1979 and 2010, which displayed a significant decrease in the size between those years. Kolbert mentioned predictions that the Arctic Ocean will have no ice in it by the year 2030 due to the increased global temperatures.

Kolbert continuously lamented the average man’s lack of concern for the environment as a reason why climate change continues to evolve. She referred to a couple that approached her after she spoke at Washington University in St. Louis and asked her why people should care about the environment. She said that if somebody would like to eat, they should care about climate change.

“If we’re ever going to get a solution,” Kolbert said, “it’s going to have to go hand-in-hand with agriculture.”

She implored people to be personally involved in making sure that folks in power know about these facts.

“The problem is really big, it’s global,” Kolbert said. “It can only be solved on a global level.”

The United States, Kolbert said, is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide and therefore the leading contaminator of the environment. She encouraged people to be involved politically because individual efforts need national backing to be effective.

Kolbert particularly criticized North Carolina politicians whom she said do not “acknowledge” the existence of global warming. She asked people to go home and write their representatives, asking them to take this more seriously.

“We have an obligation to not throw up our hands and say, ‘Let someone else deal with it,’” Kolbert said.

Levin displays technological art, encourages creation

ELON, N.C. – With a laptop in front of him, Golan Levin looked at home.

It’s fitting. Levin’s job is using a computer to create art. And he encourages others to do the same.

“You too can be making software,” Levin told an audience at LaRose Digital Theatre in the Koury School of Business at Elon University Thursday night. “You have the capacity and power to make software that would only even be used once in its entire existence in the universe.”

Levin showed the crowd some of the original software he’s created and how he has used them to create art.

He says he has three “core concerns” with his art: “to develop provocative and sublime new interactions with information, to expand the vocabulary of human action and to allow people to discover their own potential as creative actors and curious agents.”

“Performance allows an audience such as yourself,” Levin said, “to appreciate interaction vicariously. The art that I produce is a result of a collaboration between myself and the consumer.”

The bulk of his presentation was his description of his software and their genesis. He warned, though, that “there’s not a lot of money” in the work, even though “it’s really wonderfully untrammeled territory.”

One of these interfaces is a project called “The Dumpster.” Levin developed the software in 2005 with Kamal Nigam and Jonathan Feinberg. “The Dumpster” collected blog postings from the year 2005 of people who had just gone through a breakup. He searched for posts that contained the words “dumped me” and “broken up” and developed a work that displayed a bar graph describing how many posts were made on each day and a waveform-type bar on the left side that allows users to select a random post from a blog and read it.

Another project, titled “Re:FACE,” was installed at an Anchorage high school library. Borrowingfrom the Victorian parlor game “Exquisite Course,” “Re:FACE” took a picture of the eyes, forehead, nose, mouth and chin area of the face, saved it and mixed each area with other slides already on the server. Four screens sit above the doors to the library showing the mixed up heads.

A third project Levin described is called “Opto-Isolator.” Levin and collaborator Greg Baltus created a robot eye that follows a person’s eyes and blinks exactly one second after the person looking at it blinks.

“The world has changed a lot the past five years,” Levin said. “Now people are able to make things in different ways.”

He also emphasized that people should be constructing their own software and artwork. By showing his own pieces, he encouraged those in attendance to do the same.

Board approves upcoming Elon changes

ELON, N.C. – The Town of Elon Board of Alderman approved several motions at its meeting Tuesday night that will facilitate Elon University’s several upcoming building projects.

The board, led by Elon Mayor and former Elon University football coach Jerry Tolley, voted unanimously to grant the school a special use permit to build four four-story dormitories.

“They will be on the same footprint as Colclough, Chandler and Maynard and Staley and Moffitt,” said Ken Mullen, the assistant vice president for business and finance for the university.

He said that the first story of the buildings would be “programmatic,” while the other three would be for residents. The university plans on completing the construction of these buildings within 36 months of this May’s graduation.

The Elon Commitment, the university’s strategic plan, highlights a series of dorms “The Global Neighborhood.” Brad Moore, associate director of planning, design and construction, said that the plan is to have Phase I completed by December 2012 and full completion by fall 2014.

The board also passed a proposal to allow construction to begin on “The Station at Mill Point” at Firehouse Field. The Station will have, besides residence areas, recreational facilities, gardens and an amphitheater.

Mullen said the Station will be “different than residence halls.” It will be mostly for seniors, and it will feature two-story town homes that will house 324 students. Phase I on that project will be completed July 2012 and Phase 2 will be finished in July 2013.

The board also:

• Approved a rezoning of the properties at 762 Haggard Ave. and 764 Haggard Ave. from Industrial Zoning Districts to Public and Institutional Zoning Districts. This means that Elon University can now build on those areas. The proposed Senior Village is among the construction projects.
• Approved moving from and dissolving the Piedmont Triad Council of Governments and the formation and membership in the Piedmont Triad Regional Council. Tolley explained the move was a way to bond more local governments together. The move will combine the Triad and Triangle areas.
• Approved the appointments of John Peterson and Brenda Morris to the Parks and Recreation Commission.
• On a lighter note, everyone present was invited to the wedding of alderman Lawrence Slade’s daughter.

iPad makes waves among teachers, students

By Zachary Horner

To think that Apple CEO Steve Jobs invented personal computing in 1976, only to begin the end of it a mere 34 years later.

With the release of the iPad 2 last week, Jobs’ Apple Inc. has the edge on the tablet market right now. The second edition of the tablet computer is a large improvement over the previous version released last year. The numerous upgrades include a decrease in thickness by 33 percent, a decrease in weight by 0.2 pounds, two different cameras (one in the front for FaceTime and a 720-pixel camera on the back) and a processor that is twice as fast as the processor on the original.

“It’s really just not a computer,” says Randy Piland, a senior lecturer at the Elon University’s School of Communications. “It’s another method that’s more mobile.”

Piland received the first iPad when the university’s School of Communications faculty and staff received the device last summer in an attempt to get professors acquainted with the latest technology. When the second one came out, he went and bought one for himself because he says he’s excited about its potential in the classroom.

“How can you beat this as far as a learning method?” he asks.

Piland pointed out specifically and app called “Lights-Camera-Capture,” which is actually a textbook. In each chapter of the book, there are pages that contain embedded videos that can be used to help explain further the topics being discussed.

“We can deepen our content in the books by having video be a companion to the text,” Piland says.

Interactivity is one of the biggest draws for iPad owners, including Baden Piland, Randy’s son.

“The iPad is pretty much the hottest thing out right now,” Baden says. “The innovations for it are being created daily.”

Baden who received his iPad from his father, said his favorite app is called Flipboard.

“It takes your Twitter feed and your Facebook and current news and everything,” Baden says, “and makes it into a newspaper-like format.”

Baden’s other favorite applications include Project, a pop culture magazine from Virgin that uses video, pictures and text to create a one-of-a-kind magazine. Well, maybe not one-of-a-kind.

Randy pulls out his iPad 2, a slick, sleek piece of hardware that looks very similar to the first iPad. Now he shows me an app developed by CourseSmart with e-books. It is similar to the Project application and the Lights-Camera-Capture in that it mixes text, pictures and video. Except it’s a textbook.

A new feature with the iPad 2 is that it can project what’s on the screen onto a background as a computer can, which especially excited the elder Piland.

“Now that I can project this,” he explains, “I can emphasize what’s in the book. It’s a quick way to take it one more level and utilize a real visual content that you normally wouldn’t.”

Randy says that the student would benefit from using an iPad as much as a teacher.

“I think it would be a way to help engage the student even more,” he says. “They can search (the Internet) the normal way with the browser, or they can get apps that would help enhance the topics that they’re studying.”

The professor is trying to get other departments involved in using the iPad for teaching. But Randy warns against the potential disruption that an iPad provides.

“It’s becoming a tool just like any other tool,” he says. “You can enhance things, or it can be a distraction. You’re consuming so much time on it that it can stop being productive. Once you put these in a student’s hands, they become a magnet.”

Despite the distraction, Baden emphasizes the positives of the device.

“Over the year that it’s been out,” Baden says of the iPad, “it’s morphed and it’s grown into something that is pretty vital to modern life.”

This is what Michael Soucy, a Sophomore communications major, has found.

“It keeps my life together,” Soucy says. “I have my calendar on it, my to-do list on it and both of those are just used continuously to remember what I have to do every day, make sure that everything that needs to get done gets done.”

For his economics class, Soucy subscribes to the iPad editions of the Wall Street Journal and Baron’s Magazine. He finds it easier to find particular articles in the virtual versions than the hard copies, which helps greatly for homework assignments.

For Dr. T. Kenn Gaither, the associate dean of the School of Communications, his iPad experience has been a little slow-going, but remarkable nonetheless.

“I’ll admit that I have not unlocked mine to its potential or full power,” Dr. Gaither says.

He admits he is behind the curve when it comes to interactive, iPad-only applications such as Project. He also says that he will at some point use his device as a teaching tool, but for now, it’s just for leisure.

“It’s a good travel companion,” he says. “It’s got the music, it’s got the movies. I’m not totally convinced that iPads are the way of the future, but something like them.”

*  *  *

“It may be a fad, who knows?” Randy Piland says. “But I think you’re going to see a lot more of these used in commercial America, a lot more in education, a lot more in the medical field.”

Piland added that a friend of his in the medical field has been using the iPad so much for demonstrations to students or residents before surgeries that doctor’s lab coats sometimes now have pockets that fit the iPad perfectly.

But, Bill Horner III, the publisher of The Sanford (N.C.) Herald, a small daily newspaper, is a little skeptical of the work-related uses of the device.

“The iPad isn’t a great tool is you’re looking to do real work,” Horner says, “such a word processing or handling spreadsheets. But it’s great for the basics of computer use. Apps cut down on the need to browse, and that’ll be even more common as the number of apps grow.”

Horner got an iPad after his laptop crashed about a year ago and says that he really has not missed his computer because of the iPad’s ease of use. He is a self-described “news junkie” and commonly uses applications for sites such as NHL.com, the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, and an e-Reader.

“And I wouldn’t think to travel anywhere without it,” he adds.

Minor Tripp leads to major leagues for Tracy

(Note: I wrote this for my Media Writing class for Elon University for a personality profile assignment.)

By Zachary Horner

Earlier this season, Carolina Hurricanes forward Zach Boychuk tweeted a picture of Tripp Tracy, the color commentator for the Hurricanes’ television broadcasts, doing pushups before a game. In his suit.

Recalling the incident, Tracy laughed.

“Zach’s a good guy,” he said. “I really hope he finds the consistency. He could be making $1 or $10 million and his attitude would be the same. He loves the game.”

Typical Tripp. He understands players. He gets along with players.

Maybe because he was once a player himself.

Tripp Tracy suited up for one National Hockey League game. January 3, 1998, for the Hurricanes versus the Dallas Stars.

“To be on the ice with a team who was a premier team in the league in Dallas.” Tripp shakes his head in amazement. “So we’re down 4-1. Pat Jablonski (Carolina goaltender) was not playing well. Paul Maurice (Hurricanes coach) looks down at me. And I give him a look like…” Tracy re-creates the look, the one when you are not sure someone’s looking at you. You silently ask, “Me?”

Maybe that hurt his chances.

“I don’t know,” Maurice says now. “Sometimes it is the feel of body language. Am I gonna put a guy in against the best team in the league when we’re already shelled?”

Tracy ended up not playing. A couple of days later, before he was sent down to the minor leagues for good, then-Hurricanes defenseman Sean Hill told him, “I saw what you did when Mo looked down.”

“Looking back now,” Maurice says, “I would have put him in. It would have been a great memory for him to have played in an NHL game.”

“Many years down the road,” Tripp says, “I say to myself, ‘I don’t care if I had gone in and stunk the joint up.”

Tracy, 37, uses the experience to tell young kids to enjoy their moments in the NHL and not be afraid of making a mistake on the big stage. Because he was once there.

Tracy hails from the Detroit area. His parents were not hockey fans initially, and neither was he. One day in his youth he ended up at the rink in his hometown of Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

“I saw these players wearing helmets and cages and I thought they looked cool,” he says.

After taking parental-required figure skating lessons, he played and turned out to be a good offensive player. Then one day his team’s goalie wasn’t there. He volunteered. By season’s end, a couple of travel teams were interested in Tracy’s services.

“That was a huge vote in our house,” he says of the move.

Tracy went on to play high school hockey at Milton Academy with his good friend and current Hurricanes assistant general manager Jason Karmanos. His freshman year, he went to the Beanpot tournament in Boston to see Harvard University and Boston University’s hockey teams play. He noticed that the two goalies Harvard had were freshmen.

Tripp remembers thinking, “I’m a freshman. When I’m a senior, they’re going to need two goalies to come right in and play.”

So he went to Harvard.

“I had a really good freshman year of college,” Tripp says. “My ego was the size of Texas. ” He won the Beanpot in 1993 and was drafted in the seventh round of the NHL Entry Draft that year by the Philadelphia Flyers. Then maybe that ego kicked in.

“Starting that summer, I got away from what worked,” he laments. “I lost some of the fundamentals that I never got back. I never had anywhere close to the same success.”

By his senior year, he felt his NHL shot slipping from his grasp. Philadelphia let him go, so he was a free agent, without a team. He called Peter Karmanos, his old friend Jason’s father who had become the owner of the Hartford Whalers, and was summarily invited to the Whalers’ training camp.

Tripp came to the team’s training camp in 1996 as a free agent, which meant he got to go through the drills with the signed players but did not have a contract. He went head to head with Jean-Sebastien Giguere, the Whalers’ prized 1995 first-round draft pick. After camp, he was sent down to the Springfield Falcons of the American Hockey League, the Whalers’ triple-A minor league affiliate.

In Springfield, he was in the same system as future Hurricane Manny Legace, who proved to be a burden.

“He was one guy who was a real crossroads in my career,” Tracy says. “When I saw him in Springfield, I saw just how quick he was. That was eye-opening for me. He had a definite edge on me.”

Tracy returned to the AHL the next year, this time to the Beast of New Haven. He played some good games for New Haven and got called up to the NHL.

“I knew the writing was on the wall,” Tripp says of his career post-call-up. “That I was, best case scenario, going to evolve into a call-up guy if injuries occurred.”

He retired following the season.

“I thought being the East Coast (Hockey) League my second year, ‘No way.’ When you look at how long it takes goalies to mature, there are very few jobs available.”

However, Tripp soon found a different job.

Dan Berkery, the father-in-law of Ted Drury, Tripp’s captain at Harvard, created an opportunity for the ex-goaltender at CNN Sports Illustrated on the SportsCenter-type show Sports Tonight as a production assistant.

“I had just settled into my place,” Tripp says. “Jason (Karmanos, who had become the Hurricanes’ assistant GM in 1998) called me and said Bill Gardner (the prior color commentator) had left to go to Chicago. I called and asked if they would ever consider me as an applicant as a guy with no television experience.”

John Forslund, a trained broadcaster who has been Tripp’s broadcast partner since 1998, had not met the young former player until he had become Forslund’s working mate.

“He was young, he didn’t have a lot of experience,” Forslund remembers. “I had some apprehension because he didn’t have any experience; it’s not the easiest thing to do.”

Tripp seemed to fit right in, though.

When he first got the job, there were a lot of former teammates of his that were either on the Hurricanes or on other teams. His connection to the players remains to this day.

“I still have some very close friends on this team,” he says, “and I enjoy my time with them very very much. Timmy Gleason, Eric Staal, Cory Stillman being back here, Cam Ward, these are guys that I’ve gotten to know really well through the years.”

Tripp has a unique perspective that not many color commentators have. Yes, like most sports, there are many hockey analysts who are former players.

Tripp suited up for just one game. Yet his commentary is fresh. He often notices things that the casual fan would not, looking instead at the pass or the keep-in or the poke check that led to a great play instead of the great play itself. Along with that, his relationship with the players allows the fans to see a different side of their favorite athletes, who are often closed and short with their answers.

“He does a good job of trying to look for something other than the bland question,” Hurricanes captain Eric Staal says. “It makes for a better answer. He gives people a different perspective of the game.”

“He loves coming to the rink, loves getting involved,” Carolina forward Cory Stillman says. “We try to sell the game as much as we can, and he does a great job of it.”

“I look up to him,” Hurricanes defenseman Tim Gleason says. “He’s a great friend of mine. He’s very competitive at the same time, which makes him good at what he does.”

Tripp has seen many things in his career as a broadcaster for the Hurricanes. The team has made five playoff appearances, three trips to the Eastern Conference Finals and two Stanley Cup Finals, winning in 2006.

During that 2006 Final’s Game 7, Tripp received the thrill of a lifetime when he was interviewed on CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada in the second intermission by Ron MacLean, Kelly Hrudey and the extremely popular Canadian sports personality Don Cherry.

“I tried to play it cool like it was no big deal,” he says, “but it was great. For a guy that grew up watching Hockey Night in Canada, and have them ask me in the morning of Game 7 if you want to go on after 40 minutes.”

Tripp says that was the moment he realized he was in the right business.

“I feel like I’ve improved a lot,” Tripp says. “The beauty of this job is that you know every day there’s things you have to get better at.”

“I go by a word that means three things,” Forslund says of broadcasting, “ICE. Inform, concise and entertain and do it all at the same time. I think he’s (Tripp) doing that. He’s informative, concise, and he can still turn it up a little bit.”

“I can’t tell you how much energy I get, positively I get, from these kids who are such great kids,” Tripp says of this current Hurricanes team. “I’m 37 years old but I love going back (on the plane) and sitting with those guys. I can’t tell you I much I’ve enjoyed getting to know (Brandon) Sutter, (Jeff) Skinner. I see this young generation and it’s a different perspective. And I enjoy the heck out of that perspective.”

Tripp has been working in the Hurricanes broadcast booth for 12 years now. He has become recognizable in the community as a supporter of charities such as St. Baldrick’s, an organization that raises money to fight children’s cancer by shaving heads.

“He’s doing things away from the area of broadcasting that’s going to make him more relatable with various people,” Forslund says. He also says that people who have grown up through high school and college listening to them come up to them and talk about it. Forslund takes this as confirmation that what he and Tracy do really makes an impact.

“I was a guy who got called up for not even a cup of coffee in the NHL, not even an espresso,” he says. “If I ever try to talk to young kids, (I tell them to) enjoy the moment. Somewhere in my stretch, when the pressure was on, I was afraid of making a big play on the big stage. That’s the fine line that somehow I lost.”

But now, instead of sitting on the bench looking uncertain, he throws himself into the line of fire with confidence.

The Backup Goalie: Dan Ellis, Say What You Need to Say

(Note: This originally appeared on The Pendulum‘s Sports blog on September 12, 2010.)

http://pendulumsports.wordpress.com/2010/09/12/the-backup-goalie1/

By Zachary Horner

Chalk up a victory for the unabashed, nitpicking critics who populate Twitter.

On September 6, Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender Dan Ellis made a few tweets in response to New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush’s response to a fan about the sticking point in the NFL’s CBA negotiations. Bush had said it was the players would have had to take an 18% pay cut. Ellis re-Tweeted that and then commented that the NHL players had to take a 24% cut (by the way, if you haven’t realized by now, Twitter is complicated). He followed that with these five successive tweets:

“If you lost 18% of your income would you be happy? I can honestly say that I am more stressed about money now then when I was in college.

“I can’t explain it and I never thought it would be the case but it is true. $ (money) in no way makes u more happy or makes life much easier.

“If you don’t make a lot of money I don’t expect u to understand in the same way I could never understand what it is like to risk my life

“Daily as a fire fighter or police officer…especially not a soldier. There r pros and cons to every profession. U r kidding yourself..

“If u think money makes things any easier.”

Instantly there was backlash. The one response Ellis re-Tweeted, from @ArsonistSavior, said this: “you get PAID to PLAY HOCKEY…suck it up. feel free to go work construction if the “pressure” gets too rough for you #rollseyes.” Another tweeter, @wyshynski, linked to a story he wrote on Yahoo! Sports. In the story, Wyshyniski writes, “Monday night’s ‘Dan Ellis Problems’ flare-up wasn’t a call for him to be more benign and less opinionated – it was a well-deserved kick in the teeth for a professional athlete seemingly incapable of understanding what an elitist jacka** he comes across as being on social media. It’s enough to make a paying customer not want to pay.”

So obviously, some people were taking this as a humorous story. #DanEllisProblems become a popular topic on Twitter with several tweets marked with the hashtag.

I’ve followed Dan Ellis for a while on Twitter and have enjoyed his tweets quite a bit. His opinion makes complete sense to me.

People should not be criticizing how a guy feels unless it is something horribly and morally wrong. People are just being unabashed, self-righteous people who can not wait to criticize someone semi-famous to feel good about themselves.

I am more on the side of Elliotte Friedman with Hockey Night in Canada. He tweeted this on the 9th:

“Dan Ellis twitter story proves one of my long-time theories: We only want to hear the truth from people so we can rip them.”

Accurate statement, Elliotte. Accurate statement.

By the way, I have met Dan Ellis. He was a genuinely nice guy, like most hockey players are. He was a pretty popular player on Twitter because of his down-to-earth personality and sometimes humorous tweets. It’s a real shame he had to go.

Elon hockey club becomes official, defeats UNC-Charlotte

(Note: This originally appeared in the January 19, 2011, edition of The Pendulum.)

By Zachary Horner

Down 5-0 after two periods, the Elon Hockey Club scored five goals in the third period and the decisive goal in overtime to defeat UNC Charlotte on Dec. 5, solidifying the program’s first win as an official club.

Elon scored three goals in a three-minute span to begin the third period. After notching another goal with nine minutes left to make the score 5-4, a breakaway goal with a minute on the clock tied the score at five. Elon then captured the victory in a shootout.

The 2010-2011 academic year is the first official year of the Elon Hockey Club. Team founder Terence O’Malley and his fellow skaters captured a championship last year and are looking forward to another strong year. The club started as a roller hockey club that had been in place since 1999.

The team made the switch to ice hockey when O’Malley realized that his teammates all played ice hockey growing up.

“I knew everyone would love getting the chance to play ice hockey during their years at Elon, but it was just about doing whatever it took to create that opportunity,” O’Malley said.

The ice hockey team began playing in the Adult Men’s Ice Hockey League at the Greensboro Ice House in early 2010.

Realizing that money would be an issue, O’Malley set up a raffle in his hometown of Canton, Mass. After marketing and promoting the club, he raised almost $1,000. The money went into paying the entrance fee for the league. O’Malley’s father donated the jerseys, which read “Nole Hockey.”

“Because we were not an official club at Elon, we could not use the Elon name,” O’Malley said. “We decided as a group to use Elon backwards.”

The initial season went from January to April. Playing once a week on Sunday or Tuesday nights, Nole Hockey played 13 regular season games and three playoff games. Nole Hockey was awarded the “Manley Cup,” the league’s version of the NHL’s championship trophy after winning the league championship.

“Winning the championship meant so much to all of the guys on the team and really was something special for our program,” O’Malley said.

This school year, the club became official. Bethany Massman, assistant director of Campus Recreation, was integral in the process of making the club official and is the club’s adviser.

“This past spring, the club membership elected to change the name of the club to the Hockey Club,” Massman said. “In addition, the membership voted to amend their bylaws to state that the club would vote to determine whether they would play ice hockey or roller hockey on an annual basis.”

Last year’s team continues to play in the same men’s league and is working on scheduling exhibition games with other university clubs in the area. With a new roster of around 35 members, O’Malley and his teammates had to divide the group in half and put two teams in the league. In the fall session, the team finished second overall.

Next year, the team will join two collegiate leagues, the ACHA (American Collegiate Hockey Association) and the BRHC (Blue Ridge Hockey Conference).

Samford’s hot start quells women’s basketball

(Note: This appeared in the February 23, 2011, edition of The Pendulum.)

By Zachary Horner

The Phoenix battled from behind from the opening tip and almost came up with a comeback, but ultimately fell to the Samford University Bulldogs 83-80 Saturday Feb. 19.

After Samford’s junior guard Ruth Ketchum made one of two free throws to put the Bulldogs up 83-80, Elon senior guard Julie Taylor attempted a 3-pointer to tie the game, but it fell short.

“These losses hurt, but they make you better,” head coach Karen Barefoot said. “They made big shots. They’re a great offensive team.”

Samford (21-7, 14-6 Southern Conference) had a 5-0 lead 2 minutes and 18 seconds into the game and went on a 12-0 run midway through the first half, giving them a 21-10 lead that was never lost.

SoCon preseason Player of the Year and Bulldogs senior guard Emily London scored 33 points, including six of seven attempted 3-pointers. She had five rebounds and three steals to lead Samford.

“She’s a preseason pick for player of the year for a reason,” Barefoot said. “She’s a big-time player in our conference. She was hot.”

Ketcham went three for five from behind the arc and notched 17 points, and forward senior Savannah Hill had 12 points and five rebounds.

Elon sophomore guard Ali Ford led four Phoenix players in double-digits with 21 points and 12-13 from the free-throw line as Elon went 22-26 from the charity stripe.

Sophomore forward Kelsey Evans notched a double-double with 13 points and 11 rebounds, and junior guard Aiesha Harper hit key shots down the stretch, scoring 20 points for the Phoenix.

It turned into a competitive game that seemed unlikely after the first half. The Bulldogs were hot, shooting 50 percent from the field in the first half while holding Elon (17-10, 11-7 SoCon) to 36 percent from the floor in the second half.

“All year long we’ve been a defensive team,” Barefoot said. “We were able to put a lot of pressure on them, and just really had to make it hard for them to get good looks.”

The Phoenix outscored the Bulldogs 57-48 in the second half and came within three points of a tie four times. Elon also improved from the field, hitting 51 percent of its field goals and 40 percent of its 3-pointers.

“If we play like we did down the stretch, we’ll be tournament champions,” Barefoot said. “We are a fighting team with a lot of passion.”

That passion was seen in the last 26.9 seconds. Ketchum hit two free throws to give Samford an 82-75 lead. Elon brought the ball down the court and Ford missed a three pointer.

Sophomore forward Lei Lei Hairston grabbed the rebound and the ball came around to Taylor, who put in a layup, was fouled and made the ensuing free throw to bring the Phoenix within four.

Samford’s inbound pass was stolen by Harper, who nailed a short jumper to make it 82-80.

The next inbound was caught by Ketchum, who was then fouled and made the first of two free throws. Hairston got the rebound, drove down court and found Taylor for the contested and missed three-pointer.

The women’s team has one game remaining before the SoCon tournament. Monday night, the Phoenix celebrated senior night, but fell to the University of Tennessee Chatanooga 73-63.

Elon has a game at College of Charleston next Saturday.
The Phoenix has clinched at least the fifth seed in the tournament, but as of post-game Saturday, it is tied for third in the conference with UNC Greensboro.

If the Phoenix wants to stay in the top four and earn a bye, it will need to win at least one of those two games.

Top songs lack originality but the public still keeps buying

(Note: This piece originally appeared in the April 13, 2011, edition of The Pendulum in the Opinions section.)

By Zachary Horner

I don’t understand the hype behind the Billboard Top 100, particularly the top few songs on the list.

According to its official website, the Hot 100 is “the week’s most popular songs across all genres, ranked by radio airplay audience impressions as measured by Nielsen BDS, sales data as compiled by Nielsen SoundScan and streaming activity data provided by online sources.”
I’m fine with that, but what’s really confusing me is the lack of creativity among what are supposedly the top 100 songs in the nation.

Let’s look at the current No. 1 for the week of April 16: “E.T.” by Katy Perry featuring Kanye West. The lyrics include, “You’re from a whole other world, a different dimension. You open my eyes, and I’m ready to go, lead me into the light.”

How is this considered original, creative or even good? Is it the beat? The instrumentals? And why do artists like Perry, who do nothing for the instrumentals, get all of the credit?

Rihanna’s “S&M,” No. 2 on the chart, is an admittedly catchy song, with lines such as “Feels so good being bad. There’s no way I’m turning back. Now the pain is my pleasure cause nothing could measure.”

Call me old-fashioned, but I feel like we’ve heard lines like these before. Not in this context of sexual roughness, but in a rebellious kind of way.
The sad thing is, Rihanna claims, “I don’t think of it in a sexual way, I’m thinking metaphorically.” I don’t understand the metaphor here. Again, call me old-fashioned.

Then there’s “Just Can’t Get Enough” by The Black Eyed Peas, No. 3 on this week’s chart. “My mind’s dirty and it don’t need cleanin’. I love you long time so you know the meanin’. Oh baby I can’t come down so please come help me out. You got me feelin’ high and I can’t step off the cloud.”
What a revolutionary picture of love. We actually take our time to listen to this stuff.

Songs like these make me wonder why we even listen to music with words at all. Jennifer Lopez’s recent hit “On the Floor” with Pitbull, Ke$ha’s “Blow” and Britney Spears’ “Till the World Ends” are all examples of songs with catchy beats, but lyrics that are dull.

This isn’t necessarily the artist’s fault, unless he or she actually writes the songs.

Bruno Mars’ “Grenade” and “Just the Way You Are” are tracks with fairly original lyrics that actually mean something. Christina Perri’s metaphorical “Jar of Hearts” delves into a girl who is dealing with the return of a Casanova-type love interest in her life. Why can’t all songs be like those?

The answer is money. The old saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and the non-creative lyrics with snappy beats rake in the most green.

What happened to the ’80s? Take 1985, for instance. Where did songs like REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” and Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings” go? They’ve been relegated to artists who work hard for their music, actually play the instruments and write the lyrics.
Artists such as The Script, Train and Zac Brown Band have songs creeping close to those top 20 slots, but are staying behind because of the crappy lyrics and hot beats of less-deserving songs.

Granted, I love a good beat as much as anyone else. But I find it sad that we stoop to requesting and buying songs with lyrics such as “Call me a goon or a goblin, I’m a monster, ‘Cause I hit all the baddest women in the world, gangsta” (Pitbull’s “Hey Baby” featuring T-Pain), while artists who write lyrics like “Now I’m falling in love as she’s walking away and my heart won’t tell my mind to tell my mouth what it should say” (Zac Brown Band’s “As She’s Walking Away” featuring Alan Jackson) are shoved in the background. They still sell tracks on iTunes, but the popular ones control the spotlight that should belong to these songwriters.

What a shame.