Spotify, a music stream­ing ser­vice, reached an impor­tant mile­stone of 3 mil­lion pay­ing users which is 20% of its user base. Spotify allows users to lis­ten to music on var­i­ous devices such as com­put­ers, mobile phones, or televisions.

The spike in pre­mium users may have occurred since it lim­ited free users who used the ser­vice for six months to only lis­ten to ten hours a month. (more…)

#10 Ferris State hockey faced off against #16 Michigan State and sweep the Spartans at home. On Friday, the Bulldogs won 2–1 and on Saturday, the score was 4–3. Both games were filled to capac­ity with a sold out crowd. The wins pro­pelled the Bulldogs to #1 in the CCHA con­fer­ence. Next week­end, they travel to Northern Michigan to play a week­end series against the Wildcats.

It’s 6:45 a.m. and I am awake head­ing to the Rec Center just to find out that it is already packed.

Seriously? It is never packed this early in the morn­ing, why now? Oh, that’s right, peo­ple are back to school after the win­ter break and they felt the need to make a New Year’s res­o­lu­tion. And what is a bet­ter res­o­lu­tion than get­ting in my way at the gym, where I go reg­u­larly (or used to)? (more…)

Double stan­dards are with us wher­ever we go, but do you really notice them in your every­day life?

I never noticed them before I left for col­lege, now it is almost impos­si­able for me ignore them thanks to education.

Look at the enter­tain­ment indus­try, for exam­ple. Girl punches guy: com­edy. Guy punches girl: abuse. Lesbians are hot, but gay cou­ples are gross. If a guy sleeps around, he’s a sex god. If a girl does it, she’s a whore. (more…)

A com­mon phrase spo­ken by Ferris State University stu­dents is “I never have enough time.” For most col­lege stu­dents, after the assign­ment dead­lines and text­book read­ing, any spare time is spent rest­ing up for the next day’s rou­tine of rushing.

Though it appears either our days are get­ting shorter or our respon­si­bil­i­ties are over­whelm­ing, we can­not ignore the amount of time we spend con­sumed in the lives of oth­ers. (more…)

A Yahoo colum­nist recently posted the top five use­less col­lege degrees, includ­ing agri­cul­ture, fash­ion design, the­atre, hor­ti­cul­ture and ani­mal science.

Intrigued with this arti­cle I decided to Google “use­less col­lege degrees.” I was sur­prised to see jour­nal­ism as num­ber one, which doesn’t bode well for the author of this arti­cle. Well, isn’t the arti­cle being posted about use­less col­lege degrees con­sid­ered “jour­nal­ism?” (more…)

One of my favorite things about liv­ing in America is our free­dom to openly express our­selves through many dif­fer­ent mediums.

I love that Americans can protest poli­cies, write to our sen­a­tors, wor­ship our own gods, dis­agree, debate and dis­cuss. This incred­i­ble free­dom we have was really brought to my atten­tion recently through all the dis­cus­sion of the SOPA and PIPA bills. Through tools such as the news­pa­per, Internet and tele­vi­sion, it has never been eas­ier to broad­cast one’s ideas to a wide audi­ence. (more…)

Even with the slow start, the Ferris State University men’s bas­ket­ball team came back from a 12 point half time deficit to blow out the Wildcats of Northern Michigan University.

After Thursday’s tough loss against Michigan Tech, the Bulldogs faced adver­sity after the first 20 min­utes of action against NMU. After Trailing 37–25 going into half time, it was time to make adjust­ments. (more…)

Tim Tebow.

With this name I feel many are divided. You have the devoted fans–those who think the Broncos quar­ter­back is really pulling some­thing off–and you have the haters who think he’s garbage. I can respect those who don’t like Tebow as a quar­ter­back. As sports fans, we are enti­tled to our opin­ions about each player’s per­for­mance and con­sis­tency. The player is fair game. But for those who don’t like Tim Tebow as a per­son, I have to ask what their idea of a like­able or good per­son is. (more…)

Festival of the Arts

Festival of the Arts is set to begin its fifth year next week with numer­ous activ­i­ties tak­ing place in down­town Big Rapids.

On Monday, Jan. 30 at 6 p.m., Artworks will host the festival’s kick­off event, which is free and open to the pub­lic, cater­ing is pro­vided by the Blue Cow Café and Great Lakes Office Products. The month-long event holds work­shops and per­for­mances that fea­ture local cre­ative tal­ent in addi­tion to vis­its by regional and national artists and inno­va­tors. (more…)