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THE EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK with WALTER NOWINSKI
Lam. CIn t A look at the big news events this week and how important they really are. Conveniently ranked from one to10.

Weneda, 007 Dail

4B A NEW KIND OF PATRIOTISM
The group behind Pac-Man in the Fish-
bowl, Superman in lecture and attack
insects in programming class.
6B PENNIES FROM HEAVEN
What the weather has to do with
weather you get rich or go broke.
7B MY SUMMER AS A HOMELESS
ALASKAN FISHERMAN
An unlikely summer vacation leads to
equally unlikely revelations.

SLEEPING AROUND ON THE JOB
Newt Gingrich admitted last week that he
had an affair while leading the Republican
push to impeach former President Clinton
t0 over the Lewinski sex scandal. Maybe 0
Gingrich's impeachment efforts would
have borne more fruit if he hadn't been too
busy chasing tail around capitol Hill.
ABORTING HIS CHANCES
Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani took a
hit this week after a 1989 video of the for-
mer NYC mayor calling for publicly funded
abortions surfaced on the Internet. Now all
10 Giuliani needs to do to secure the Republi- 0
can nomination is come out for same-sex
marriage.
POLITICAL PURGES
Eightformertfederal prosecutors testified in
Washington about their suspicious and abrupt
dismissals. Mostof the Republican appoin-
10 tees said they were sacked after they refused 0
requests from GOP congressmen to speed up
investigations targeting Democrats.

OUTFOXED
Fox News Channel CEO Roger Ailes is lick-
ing his wounds thisweek. Liberal bloggers
persuaded the New Mexico Democratic
10 Party to cancelFox'ssponsorshipof an
5 upcoming presidential primary debate.Ailes
was shocked that his powerful conservative
network had been outfoxed by bloggers.
CLEANING UPTHE SULFUR
A group of Mayan priests conducted ritual
cleansing ceremonies at several Guate-
malan archeological sites-after President
Bush visited them last week. Priests said
10 it was necessary to purify the sites after
Bush's visit so that the ancestors could rest
in peace.
OUTSOURCING CORRUPTION
Oil supplies giant Haliburton announced it
is moving its headquarters from Houston
to Dubai. Apparently the embattled Bush
administration was simply no longer com-
3 1 petitive in the global corruption and no-bid
contract markets.

Kepig1U'healthy
Bob Winfield, the chief health officer at the University, leads the doctors who take
care of you at while you're here. Here's what he thinks you should know about
your health and the health services you'll get at the University.

PERSON OF THE WEEK
Nominate someone for
student of the year. GEORGE W. BUSH
Don't worry, hearing President Bush utter phrases like "social justice" last week
E-mail TheStatement@umich.edu doesn't mean the apocalypse is near. As Bush tours Latin America, he's acquir-
ing a more left-leaning rhetoric in order to keep what few friends he has down
there. In a continent that leans more left by the day, it's no surprise that Bush
has been met with angry protests. The trip signals that Bush might be getting
Is your life around to that pesky 2000 campaign promise to take Latin America seri-
ously - tossing a few Spanish words into speeches doesn't count. But
S cn ~given Bush's track record abroad, perhaps it's better to be ignored.


A4
<a .1
'i

College is by no means too early to get check-ups for cancer. We
see breast cancer every year in 20 year olds and testicular cancer:
strikes fairly young. Check yourself once a month and if you find
something, get treatment fast. It could save your life.
UHS has new electronic voluntary satisfaction surveys. The
results for this fall are in and 80 percent of patients were sat-
isfied or very satisfied.
Know your cholesterol by the time you're 30.
one of the problems that people have is that they come in
with colds and it's exam time and they're desperate, but
the common cold isn't affected by antibiotics. There's nota
whole lot we can do.
We sold M-Care because while providing a fine service, it didn't
fit with the key goals of the U of M health care team. The students
that will be affected are mostly graduate students and they won't
experience alapse in care, just some changes.
The biggest new thing at UHS is the Guardacil Vaccine - a vac-
cination against the Human Papiloma Virus, a common sexually
transmitted disease.

PATRIOTS
From page 6B
When they suited up in pink span-
dex to spread joy around campus
on what would otherwise just be
another Single Awareness Day,
most lingering doubts about the
future of their organization were
thrown out the window like a pink
paper throwing star. As long as
there are students daydreaming of
being saved from lecture by Super-
man, the Patriots will have an audi-
ence. And as long as the rows of
computers inthe Fishbowl look like
the maze on a Pac Man screen, the
Patriot's pranks will be the stuff of
legend.
As to the why? That turned out to
be an easy question. Kevin summed
it up quite profoundly.
"Our main objective, quite sim-
ply, is to have fun," he wrote in an
e-mail explaining the group's mis-
sion. "We're certainly not doing
this for any political reason or any-
thing too serious - our only mes-
sage is this - have fun."
Will the Patriots look as good on
a resume as an embattled tenure
as a Michigan Student Assembly
representative? Maybe not, but it's
possible.
After all, as MSA tries to combat
crime by pinpointing areas with
little campus lighting, the Patriots
actually don crime-fighting super-
hero outfits and run around in
them. It's anyone's guess as to who
has the more tangible campus pres-
ence.

The UM Patriots are certainly
the only student group who almost
everyone on campus approves of
unequivocally, even if they're not
driving down crime. They're one of
the last and best secret societies on
campus. But why are they doing it?
Maybe their antics mean more to
their members than to the campus
community at large.
"Life's too short to be completely
serious all the time," Kevin said.
One of the last
secret societies
on campus plays
pranks.
"Sooner or later, you'll die, and
right before you do, you may think
'Damn. I wish I ran around in the
library during my college years
dressed up as Pacman.'"
As for the rest of the studentbody,
the ones for whom video game char-
acter outfits were never in stlye, they
might lie on their deathbeds and
looking back on their college days at
least be glad that someone was will-
ing to hop into the giant yellow cos-
tume and entertain them. Because
let's faceit,we'llrememberthebattle
between the giantbugand the exter-
minator long afterthe memory of the
Power Point slides fades away.

rule 25: You can't
lay out on the Diag
until all the snow piles
have melted. rule
26: Beer pong is not
an outdoor sport. Try
frisbee, running or
golf. Either that - or
just drink. rule 27:
The letter 'x' should
not appear in the
word "espresso,
- E-mail rule submissions to
TheStatement@umich.edu

SCIENCE
From page 6B
up and zag down, practitioners of
socionomics purport to be able to
identify the patterns of the uncon-
scious herd and predict future zig-
ging and zagging.
In2006the Socionomics Founda-
tion awarded its first neuroscience
grant to Julie Hall, who is currently
completing graduate work at the
University. The possibility of using
abrainscannerto catch one of these
social moods in a brain scanner is
tantalizing, but for now it remains
uncharted territory.
If the 20th century was about
thinking man, the 21st will be
about feeling man. The roles of
perception and intuition will be
emphasized over logic in explain-
ing our actions. Think implicit psy-
chological biases. Think moods. It
all makes one wonder whether the
trading floor of the NYSE doesn't
resemble the sight of lemmings
gleefully following each other off
a cliff.

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