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4A -Thursday, January 24, 2008

The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

cM d4tpan' ,atil
Edited and managed by students at
the University of Michigan since 1890.
A r420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
.,. ,tothedaily@umich.edu

2008 will really be the year of the
spaceship."
- Sir Richard Branson, British entrepreneur and founder of Virgin Galactic, at a press conference
in the American Museum of Natural History, as reported yesterday by The New York Times.

a

KARL STAMPFL
EDITOR IN CHIEF

IMRAN SYED
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

JEFFREY BLOOMER
MANAGING EDITOR

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles
and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
The Daily'spublic editor, Paul H. Johnson, acts as the readers' representative and takes a critical look at
coverage and content in every section of the paper. Readers are encouragedto contact the public editor
with questions andcomments. He canbe reached at publiceditor@umich.edu.
Going public
Free course website a boost for accessibility, accountability
W ant to get an education from the University of Michigan
without the exorbitant tuition rates, the pesky atten-
dance requirements and the unaccommodating class
schedules? With the launch of the University's Digital Scribe, a pro-
gram that could offer course syllabi, lectures, homework and tests
free online, in a few years this might be possible for students around
the world. But don't drop out just yet. The website, also known as
dScribe, won't offer the intangibles that a University education does,
but it will wisely open University classrooms to the world with large
recruiting and accountability benefits for the University.

CHRIS KOSLOWSKI


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You know, I thick faving
Hillary as president would be
pretty great
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I mean, she's no Kucinich, but
think about it Bill would be
First Gentleman. Right back
in the Oval Office where he
belongs! Ole Slick Willy at it
a in! How cool is that

III

You see, it's times like these
that 1 wish I had arms, so I
could strangle you.


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Paper progress

Modeled after the OpenCourseWare pro-
gram atsthe Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology, which was launched in 2002, and
designed by the same company as CTools,
dScribe will hopefully launch within two to
three years. when it does, the website will
offer educational resources like lectures,
homework and syllabi much like Course-
Tools does now. Unlike CTools, though, the
program will allow anyone who has interest
- regardless of whether or not they attend
the University - to access the website.
Like the University's project with Google
to digitalize the library, this is another
example of the increasing realization that
higher education can't be hoarded away in
a stuffy classroom. Education is something
that should be shared, not restricted.
By sharing, this technology will be useful
to independent learners and University stu-
dents alike. For curious people not affiliated
withthe University - whether they are high
school students, older people or people in
other countries - dScribe will offer a wealth
of knowledge. For University students, who
may think the program will make sitting
through lecture obsolete, the program will
offer a better way to get the most of a Uni-
versity education. With lecture video, audio,
homework and tests, dScribe promises to be
a beefed-up version of CTools that students
can turn to if they want to shop around for

courses, catch up on missed classes or just
discover interesting topics.
The dScribe system will offer more ben-
efits than exposure for the inner workings
of a University classroom. If all University
professors are encouraged to upload their
course content onto the website, the pro-
gram could act as a motivator for professors
to improve their teaching and their fairness.
Instead of 20 or 30 college students, the
audience becomes thousands of worldwide
spectators, who may be able to offer more
critical perspectives. This increased access
to course information will raise expecta-
tions and accountability.
Further, dScribe could be arecruitingtool,
providing a glimpse of a University-caliber
class to potential students whether they live
in Detroit, Seoul or anywhere in between.
At MIT this has already proved true, with
roughly 40 percent of students claiming that
OpenCourseWare "figured significantly"
into the decision to attend MIT.
While the project will likely be expen-
sive, considering that MIT's program cost
roughly $24 million to start, the benefits of
the program outweigh its costs. While one
cannot earn a degree by logging onto a com-
puter and studying French once a day, class-
room experience at the University cannot be
uploaded either. However, knowledge can
and should be.

almost punched a girl last week.
Actually, I'm sensationaliz-
ing: I wasn't really about to hit
someone when
some grand revela-
tion struck - this
isn't one of those
columns. But there
was a girl and there
was an incident. 1
Waiting to cross
State St. at the
intersection of IMRAN
East William, I was
standing behind SYED
a girl who was
absentmindedly
skimming a newspaper (I like to think
it was the Daily). As we crossed the
street, she decided that the paper was
lame (apparently not the Daily after
all) and tossed it into a garbage can.
I was furious. Paper is meant to
be recycled. Who doesn't know that?
She's clearly just a lazy college student
too absorbed in her iPod to think of
the big beautiful rainforests that will
suffer thanks to her insolence. Recy-
cling - it's old news, and if you still
haven't gotten it, you deserve scorn.
Almost instantly that insanity
faded, and I stopped for a second in
the middle of the sidewalk to smile
at the sudden emergence of a rigid
dogma that was shockingly ironic.
Let me explain.
I was born and largely raised in
New Delhi, India - a beautiful city in
many ways, but also part of a gigan-
tic metropolis teeming with about
14 million people (nearly as many
as New York City, Chicago and Los
Angeles combined, if you can imag-
ine such a thing). Fourteen million
people means a whole lot of refuse.
I don't mean to speak ill of my first
hometown, but there was literally
litter everywhere. If you wanted to
build a collection of dirty plastic
bags, candy wrappers or bottle caps,
the streets of New Delhi (or indeed,

any large city) would be a great place
to begin.
The problem in New Delhi wasn't
just people haphazardly littering any-
where and everywhere (though that
was a large part of it): It was also that
instead of landfills there were open
garbage dumps, from which even
the little trash that was properly dis-
posed of could easily escape. While
shifting toward sophisticated, func-
tional landfills would cost too much,
the Indian government did start a
large-scale campaign to encourage
people to "put litter in its place."
That campaign certainly had an
effect on me. I remember my 8-year-
old self reading that slogan on the
back of potato chip bags and actu-
ally being compelled to pick up other
bags I found lying on the street (to my
mother's horror). Sure, those were
the tiniest of baby steps that only
addressed one small part of the prob-
lem, but it's something, isn't it?
Unfortunately, in the judgmental
eyes of the world, it's not. In an ever-
progressing society where standards
are raised the moment they are met,
it seems mind-boggling to the aver-
age American that any nation in the
world (a democracy no less) could
still have open garbage dumps har-
boring rodents carrying the bubonic
plague. It's an appalling reality that
must be addressed, but progress must
be seen in its context. If the Indian
government can just convince its
people to throw all their garbage in
the proper receptacles, it would be a
huge win. Closed landfills and recy-
cling can wait.
Similarly, American progress on
environmental issues mustbe put into
context. The University may like to
brag about how much paper and plas-
tic it recycles every year, but judging
by the numerous plastic bottles and
papers you find lying in garbage cans
- not the mention the reams of paper
needlessly printed and abandoned at

the printers in the Fishbowl - we're
not doing nearly enough. And even
the recycling we do do may not be
so helpful after all. Paper recycling
outsourced to China produces tox-
ins that would have been avoided
had that paper just been thrown out.
That's something we really should
have thought about when fashioning
this whole concept of recycling.
And so now we have local recy-
cling, something that presumably
doesn't produce a net environmental
loss. Should all recyclingprograms be
local, even if that costs more? Is that
goingto be feasible? Are we better off
just throwing paper away, consider-
ing that paper biodegrades pretty
easily, and most paper today is made
from renewable tree farms anyway?
Saving the planet
has become pretty
complicated.
These are tough questions that
make the issue of doing the right
thing a complicated one. There is
what can be done and what will ulti-
mately be done. As the world's prob-
lems become more complicated, we
have to remember that there is noth-
ing wrong with taking baby steps to
get to the final goal.
In the grand scheme of things,
throwing your newspaper in the gar-
bage may be just as environmentally
friendly as putting it in a recycling
bin. Then again, maybe not - no one
has bothered to actually look into it,
certainly not those as quick to judge
as I was that day.
Imran Syed is the Daily's
editorial page editor. He can be
reached at galad@umich.edu.

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS:
Emad Ansari, Anindya Bhadra, Kevin Bunkley, Ben Caleca, Milly Dick, Mike Eber,
Gary Graca, Emmarie Huetteman, Theresa Kennelly, Emily Michels, Arikia Millikan,
Kate Peabody, Kate Truesdell, Robert Soave, Neil Tambe, Matt Trecha,
Radhika Upadhyaya, Rachel Van Gilder, Rachel Wagner, Patrick Zabawa.

SEND LETTERS TO: TOTHEDAILY@UMICH.EDU

40 Days ofACt ion more
effective than prayer

and posit that our small donations will
prove far more effective in helping the
welfare of the world.
The Secular Student Alliance holds
weekly meetings Mondays at 7 p.m. in

TO THE DAILY: 2271 Angell Hall an
As the University of Michigan Secu- juliusp@umich.edu
lar Student Alliance, we are writing sitemaker.umich.ed
in response to the article describing
the kick-off of 40 Days of Prayer (Stu- Matthew Taylor
dent groups kick off 40 days of prayer, LSA sophomore
01/14/2008), an event organized by ten The letter writer is an
on-campus Christian organizations. We StudentAlliance.
challenge the premise that prayer is an
effective way to solve problems and fur-
ther believe that the focus should not be Flag's racis
on our own campus but rather on some of
the more destitute regions of the world. outweighs s
The Secular Student Alliance is donating
one dollar per day for the next 40 days TO THE DAILY:
to Oxfam International, a secular char- In response to t
ity organization dedicated to alleviating defending states'i
poverty, combating disease and provid- Confederate flag (1
ing relief from war, natural disasters and Cross, 01/23/2008)
other humanitarian crises. We're calling shortsighted of th
this period 40 Days of Action. Huetteman, to cons
A 2006 study in the American Heart states' rights argu
Journal found that praying for hospi- to override the ov
tal patients undergoing bypass surgery tion of that symbol
did not help their chances of successful "right" to own peol
recovery. Instead, the study found that slaves. Mentioning
patients certain they were being prayed tion that a black ma
for were as much as 8 percent more likely crate flag socks, as
to suffer complications than those who not justify the argu
were not. Many other studies claim- frustrating that H
ing to observe medical or other benefits man as a way of di
as a result of intercessory prayer have ent racist past of ev
clearly identifiable methodological flaws stands for.
and are rejected by the mainstream sci- Germany doesn
entific community. While we acknowl- for history or heri
edge that meditation can be beneficial to we waste time tryir
one's mental health, there is no reason to idea of displaying a
believe that prayer makes any difference
in other the lives of other people. Gregory Whiting
The Secular Student Alliance is a LSA senior
Michigan Student Assembly-registered
student organization, affiliated with Tradition d
the LSA Philosophy Department. We
are dedicated to the anti-defamation of Big House 9
atheists and the promotion of a society in g
which the ideals of critical and scientific
inquiry, secularism, reason and human- TO THE DAILY:
istic ethics flourish. We reject the notion I recently read a1
that prayer does anything for the "moral a University stude
backbone" of this campus as asserted by that was published.
one of the 40 Days of Prayer organizers, newspaper at Eas

d can be contacted at
u or visited online at
lu/secularstudents.
a member of the Secular
1past
tates' rights
he column yesterday
right to display the
Bearing the Southern
), it was extremely
he author, Emmarie
sider the heritage and
ments strong enough
erwhelming associa-
with the fight for the
iple - my people - as
a personal observa-
n wore some Confed-
Huetteman did, does
ment. It is extremely
uetteman used this
screditing the inher-
erything that symbol
't display Swastikas
tage's sake. Why do
g to give credit to the
Confederate flag?

versity, The Eastern Echo. Jordan stated
that, "It's just the simple fact that your
stadium is not on Michigan's campus;
the fact that, after 118 years, tradition
will be broken."
I hate to break the news, but my hus-
band graduated from the University in
1975 and I graduated in 1976, and our
ceremonies were in Crisler Arena. The
decision to use Crisler had nothing to do
with weather or construction. That was
just the way it was.
Pamela Setla
Alum
Michigan primary will
prove irrelevant to race

about celebrity political endorsements
made some good points (Media-tested.
Celebrity-approved., 01/22/2008). It
is true that public image is supremely
important in any national political race,
and Oprah Winfrey's support of Demo-
cratic presidential candidate Barack
Obama undoubtedly focused media
attention on him. However, it is impor-
tant to remember that even as the media
picks up on flashy stories, Obama has
been running a grassroots-driven, sub-
stantive campaign that has discussed
the relevant issues with great candor
and eloquence.
I take issue with Peabody's character-
ization of the presidential election as a
return to campaigning for high-school
prom. Obama has explicitly stated poli-
cies on many issues, including universal
health care, reforming our public school

America's veterans. Just as importantly,
he has shown a consistent and clear abil-
ity to unite Americans of multiple politi-
cal affiliations around the common cause
of changing our nation for the better.
Oprah's few campaign stops for
Obama might have served the purpose of
introducing more people to Obama's ris-
ing campaign. But ultimately voters will
decide this election based on who they
believe is best equipped to lead America,
not on the endorsement of any celebrity.
Obama demonstrated this capacity far
before Oprah's public support, and no
celebrity endorsement will overshadow
the accomplishments of his historic can-
didacy.
Auren Kaplan
LSA junior
The letter writer is a member ofthe University's
chapter ofstudentsfor Obama.

0

TO THE DAILY: sy"
In response to the column "Where
our interests lie" (01/17/2008), which
argued that students pay more attention A)
to trivial issues and not to important
responsibilities like voting, I raise one
question: What effect did Michigan's
primary have on the final presidential
nomination, particularly in regards to
the Democratic Party?
Michigan voters have been disenfran-
chised since the Democratic National
Committee stripped the state of all of
its delegates to the Democratic National
Convention and the Republican National
Committee stripped half of Michigan's
delegates to the Republican National
Convention. Every major Democratic
candidate stayed off the ballot, except
Hillary Clinton, and write-ins weren't
even counted.
Ihave my priorities, and I won't vote in
sham, irrelevant primaries. I'll be voting
in November, when it actually counts.

stem and impro
RIELA STEIF

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LSA senior
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letter to the editor by
nt, Amanda Jordan,
Jan. 23 in the student
tern Michigan Uni-

Celebrity endorsement
not a sign of triviality
TO THE DAILY:
Kate Peabody's viewpoint Tuesday

-> L
Sam
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