i 0 W. S -W -W w THE EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK with WALTER NOWINSKI table_ ____ n tnt A look at the big news events this week and how important they really are. Conveniently rated from one to10. Wednesday, 200 ANSWERS WITHOUT QUES Te pla nato 4B RUNNING FROM THE PAST What cell phone cameras mean for your political future. 6B LET'S MULTIPLY The science behind what makes Valen- tine's Day so good. 8B LEARNING TO BE GAY Taking lesssons from one of the Universi- ty's most controversial professors. Magazine Editor:Anne VanderMey Editor in Chief: Karl StampfI ManagingEdit.,,JeffryBlomer CAt: PetrSchoternlsd Zachary Meisner Photo Editor: Peter Schottenfels Designers:BridgetO'Donnell He"1( + CO(2x) py - 2 _________+ I2[(2a+x) +A4xj ] at 3cosx - atan2 a2+b2+ c3(2x +3) CONT'd: Science of love TAXING STUDENTS What better way to finance higher education than totaxthe studentsit'ssupposedto help? Gov.Granholmannouncedplanstoraiseliquor 0 10 and cigarette taxes andlevy a2-percent tax on services. Not only will LSAT courses be more expensive, butsowill the champagne afterward. At least student loans are still available. CLIPPING PELOSI'S WINGS New Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi had her airborne ambitions curtailed this week when the Pentagon refused to provide her with a private jet. In response to this snub, Demo- 3 cratic Rep. John Murtha kindly reminded the Pentagon bureaucrats that it is the speaker herself who determines their budget. 2 10 that he is officiallyrunning for " Discounts on short-term President. health, renters and auto insuranceT from the Alumni 10.A .11 f t ALUMNIASSOCIATION Association. UNIVERSITY OfMICHIGANzl Liaa I t TALK ABOUT LIABILITY Investigators still don't know what killedfor- mer Playboy pin-up girl Anna NicoleSmith. Early speculation centeredon herdiet andthe 10 numerous medicationsshe was taking.The first autopsy was inconclusive, but it might 'not be a bad idea tosell those silicone stocks, just in case. HARVARD'S SURPISE Harvard is on the rebound. After coming underfirefor allegedly sexist questions raised by its former President Larry Summers, the University appointed Drew Faust as its first 10 female president. The decision didn't shock many. After Summers' remarks, it's a wonder they even let men apply. RAPE ISN'T THAT FUNNY Thestudent newspaper at Central Connecticut State University published an editorial titled "Rape 10 Only Hurts If You Fight It." Though meant as a joke, the column sparked intense campus backlash. rule 16: Teeter-tot- ters aren't an effective Way to raise money. rule 17: Only fresh- men can get away with walking in groups of more than four peo- ple on Saturday nights. rule 18: You can't both be an asshole to pedestrians as a driver and a hazard to cars as a pedestrian. Pick one. - Email rule submissions to TheStatement@umich.edu if you could argue with anyone on campus, who would it be? henis aroomfull of dead bodies not a morgue? When it's a laboratory. Dr. Ameed Raoof, the director of the University's plastination lab, spends a lot of his time in just such a place. The lab, the biggest of its kind in the country, holds about 400 plasti- nated human body parts. Plastina- tion, the preservation of body parts in plastic, was plagued with contro- versy and outrage from its invention in 1977. People inside and outside the scientific community raised moral questions when the inventor of the method put hundreds of real human bodies on public display in the wildly popular museum exhibit "Body Worlds." But scientists have since adapted the technique to suit less voyeuristic applications. At the University, medical and dental students study the bodies to better learn anatomy. Raoof - who keeps a cross sec- tion of a brain by his desk that was plastinated by Gunther von Hagens, the inventor of the process - has been asked to speak at the Detroit Science Center, where the exhibit "Our Body: The Universe With- in" opened recently. He politely declined, dedicating his time to using plastinated bodies purely for education instead. Here are his takes on the contro- versy, the University's lab and the future of his own body: The first time I saw a plastinated people actually cont cadaver was in 1987. Our lab got their bodies exhibit these two specimens that I really liked. I thought of it as a very useful (Donating my owi tool for teaching anatomy. is not only my dE it's related to my fat Originally, I'm from Iraq. My sib- well. But the idea is; lings are all over the place: Libya, idea. Why not? Abu Dhabi, Warsaw. That's the way, I think, that most Iraqi families are I had a ticket now. to ("Our Body; the Universe Plastination starts with the idea Within"), but that if you want to preserve a piece I gave itto our of tissue, even during the times of secretary. I Egyptians, you take all the water see a lot of out. There have been different plastinated methods, they use chemicals now cadavers. - Acetone. After using that, we put the specimen in a pressurized sili- The cadav- cone chamber. The acetone bubbles ers are the out and then your tissue is ready to students' dry. firstpatients. As such, they You dissect as you need to. You are treated with clean the tissue, of course; you immense respect. bleach it to remove any stains or Over the decades, clots. You can dissect afterwards, we've been able but initially when the tissue's still to build a trusting soft, it's much better. relationship with donors. The controversy is there. It started a long time ago actually. - As told to Von Haggens himself started using Anne VanderMey sented to having ed. m body) lecision, mrily as a good P these cadavers for exhibition. The question initially was where the cadavers came from and whether jects' interactions with strangers. Oxytocin is also released during orgasm in both sexes, induces labor, and precipitatesbreastfeeding. "It facilitates social memory," said Stephanie Brown, a social psychologist in the Evolution and Human Adaptation Program. Close relationships form the cornerstone of Brown's Selective Investment Theory. "The theory suggests thatour feelings of being close to people we love are actually designed to suppress our self interest," Brown said. It eschews the tra- ditional view of social relation- ships as helping us to get more of our needs met than we could alone. The social bonds facilitated by oxytocin may have "evolved to counteract more primitive feelings of self-preservation," Brown said. Many of the behaviors of love can be described as costly to the self and beneficial to another, all in the name of attachment. But it's a short leap from there to dysfunctional behavior. "These kinds of attachments have something to do with behav- iors that we consider insane such as homicide or sexual jealousy, or even something like terrorist attacks," Brown said. "We found the same motivational architec- ture that gets you to care for a newborn is at play in people ready to kill themselves." So we pick and choose; we invest our energy in a select few people and even then in moderation. But if it so happens that we lose control - if we throw caution to the wind - the results can be intoxicating, disorienting and even dangerous. It's in these circumstances that we may have the great luck and ensu- ing woe of being in the thralls of that most perfect insanity. But love also redeems. The evi- dence shows that love pulls us out- side of our meager selves. We didn't need a scientist to tell us that. Inspiraton* Explotion* E4talo FcI- J flyI ,LINFLL.?/yai y Visualizing Black Culture, 1850 to the Present UmVnESITY Of M4IC N Lecture by Deborah Wi Thursday, February 15, 4 pm Anderson Room, Michigan Union o 116 Intro Geology: 6 credito Gao-41 Ecosystem ocience: 5 credits ection re e 2-J0,5 22 E y Jene 22-Jdy 23,2007 neoc I:oJ i 3Au o5207 anyletro1emCcouwse AmClt-301 /Eg-317 History and Uternture of the ockies: 3 credits June 22-,Jisy1t, 2007 w+eolsamamick 734-615-9600 Let The Statement make it happen. Send an e-mail to thestatement@ umich.edu 73753.55