It is a com­monly held notion that dur­ing the Middle Ages, the church cler­ics insti­tuted the prac­tice of not eat­ing meat on Fridays in Lent to help the Italian fish indus­try. From Catholic priests to Eastern Orthodox priests, inter­net resources to printed texts, this the­ory seems to hold no water.

During the sea­son of Lent, the Catholic tra­di­tion, along with other var­i­ous Christian denom­i­na­tions, observe the prac­tice of not eat­ing meat on Fridays, and often opt for fish instead. (more…)

The satir­i­cal news­pa­per The Onion sells a t-shirt on its web site that says, “The sports team from my area is supe­rior to the sports team from your area.”

This irra­tional sup­port that many peo­ple have for pro­fes­sional sports teams is some­thing that I have always been baf­fled by, and this slo­gan makes a great com­men­tary on it. Die-hard fans who have no fam­ily or per­sonal ties to a team other than geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion will get their body tat­tooed with the team’s mas­cot or riot after a big game, but why? (more…)

John Matlock and Ronald Snead were at the cen­ter of two civil rights demon­stra­tions in the spring of 1969 that changed Ferris, and them, for years to come.

There were two major demon­stra­tions at Ferris; one occurred when the Starr build­ing was taken over by a sit-in group and the other was a riot in the park­ing lot near Brophy and McNerney res­i­dence halls.  Both ended in mul­ti­ple arrests.

Matlock arrived at Ferris as a 22-year-old fresh­man who had pre­vi­ously worked in a fac­tory in his home­town of Detroit. Snead came in as a 24-year-old with a wife and two kids. Neither had expe­ri­enced or par­tic­i­pated in the kind of activism that would soon sur­round them and shape the rest of their lives. (more…)

China has been in the news a lot lately.

The mas­sively pop­u­lated coun­try was the cen­ter of the recent con­tro­versy over Gmail accounts being hacked, as well as a sta­ple of many recent columns by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times. (more…)

In the midst of the com­men­tary sur­round­ing President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, his style of gov­ern­ing has been ana­lyzed almost as much as his pol­icy decisions.

Jacob Weisberg, a colum­nist for Slate​.com, recently wrote an arti­cle argu­ing that Obama’s calm and ana­lyt­i­cal per­sona is a pri­mary rea­son for the decline in pub­lic sup­port for him and his party. I find this point both inter­est­ing and depressing.

“The way Obama con­nects to peo­ple is the oppo­site of a Clinton, a Bush, or a Ronald Reagan. Those pres­i­dents were all relaters. They bonded with peo­ple based on com­mon feel­ings, expe­ri­ences, and interests…His [Obama’s] rela­tion­ship with the world is pri­mar­ily ratio­nal and ana­lyt­i­cal rather than intu­itive or emo­tional,” said Weisberg. (more…)

There has been a rumor cir­cu­lat­ing for years around the Ferris cam­pus that in the bliz­zard of 1978, classes were can­celled and all of the local liquor stores sold out.

Bob Grunst, owner of Grunst Brothers Sport Center and Party Store, con­firmed that this is only a rumor. (more…)

After arriv­ing in Big Rapids Thursday after­noon, the mem­bers of Theory of a Deadman decided to get out on the ice at the Ewigleben Sports Complex and shoot some pucks around.

The Canadian rock band, known as TOAD for short, came to Ferris to head­line the annual January Jams con­cert. Dean Back, the band’s bassist, is no stranger to hav­ing some fun with bands like Motley Crue and Daughtry. (more…)

After I wrote an arti­cle in this space for the Jan. 13 issue of the Torch say­ing that 2010 was the last year of the cur­rent decade, not the first year of the next, I received an influx of com­ments from friends and oth­ers telling me that I was wrong.

I was caught off-guard because I had done my research, which had told me that the Gregorian cal­en­dar was the inter­na­tion­ally accepted cal­en­dar, and that Astronomical Year Numbering (AYN) and the Julian cal­en­dar were out­dated. (more…)

Three Ferris stu­dents recently had a one of a kind oppor­tu­nity to build a Rube Goldberg machine in Tokyo, Japan.

From Jan. 3 to 16, team mem­bers Kyle Hebner, Michael Dunakin and Bryan Williams, along with pro­fes­sor Thomas Hollen, expe­ri­enced the cul­ture and daily life of Japan. The team was invited to attempt to break the world record for steps in a Rube Goldberg machine, of which the Ferris team from 2007 held the pre­vi­ous record with 229 offi­cial steps.

The task with this machine was to take a pho­to­graph. There was some dis­pute, how­ever, on whether or not the record was bro­ken. (more…)

After arriv­ing in Big Rapids Thursday after­noon, the mem­bers of Theory of a Deadman decided to get out on the ice at the Ewigleben Sports Complex and shoot some pucks around.

The Canadian rock band, known as TOAD for short, came to Ferris to head­line the annual January Jams show. Dean Back, the band’s bassist, is no stranger to hav­ing some fun before a show after tours with bands like Motley Crue and Daughtry.

“The whole sum­mer with Motley Crue was a blast,” said Back. “Most of those guys have set­tled down, but Tommy [Lee] is still crazy.”

Back shared a story about Lee shoot­ing off fire­works from his tour bus after get­ting bored.

(more…)