Does St. Patrick’s Day have his­tor­i­cal “drink­ing roots” or is the prac­tice of imbib­ing some mod­ern skew of the orig­i­nal celebration?

Irish and non-Irish alike are out in their finest, green­est attire today in cel­e­bra­tion of St. Patrick’s Day. Besides wear­ing green and eat­ing corned beef and cab­bage, the other activ­ity many peo­ple asso­ciate with the hol­i­day is drink­ing. (more…)

The speed at which the day goes by can be daunt­ing. Weeks evap­o­rate and months turns into semes­ters and years.

In all of this mov­ing for­ward, we inevitably neglect the present. (more…)

Governor Jennifer Granholm has recently pro­posed to cut the Tuition Incentive Program (TIP) rate, which is not good news for stu­dents like me.

TIP is a pro­gram that helps aid stu­dents with spe­cial cir­cum­stances and stu­dents from low-income house­holds with pay­ing for col­lege tuition. In Granholm’s 2010-11 bud­get plan, she wants to cut TIP’s cur­rent rate of $316 per credit hour to $84 per credit hour. (more…)

Graduate school is some­thing I decided I want to attend over the past few years.

Given my degree in jour­nal­ism, with minors in polit­i­cal sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy, I have many options of where, and what, I want to study. (more…)

The FOX ani­mated sit­com “Family Guy” knows how to push the but­tons of pub­lic figures.

During the Feb. 14 episode, the char­ac­ter Chris had a crush on a girl named Ellen with Down syn­drome and went out on a date with her. When he asked her about her par­ents’ jobs, she said, “My dad’s an accoun­tant and my mom’s the for­mer gov­er­nor of Alaska.”

That state­ment was meant to be a jab at 2008 vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date and, yes, for­mer gov­er­nor of Alaska Sarah Palin. Palin did not take the “joke” very well. Palin’s one-year-old son Trig has Down syn­drome. (more…)

A few weeks ago, I wrote a let­ter from the edi­tor describ­ing my excite­ment at the pos­si­bil­ity of emerg­ing technologies.

I described my new found appre­ci­a­tion for Twitter, though cer­tainly not an obses­sion, and text mes­sag­ing replac­ing nor­mal con­ver­sa­tion. (more…)

After the Canadian women’s hockey team won Olympic gold on Feb. 25 they did what came nat­u­rally, they celebrated.

Smokin’ sto­gies, sip­pin’ bub­bly and hors­ing around on the Zamboni machine in vic­tory cel­e­bra­tion had major con­se­quences though. (more…)

The pub­lic address announcer boomed: Ladies and gen­tle­men — There’s a car in the park­ing lot with its lights on — a pink Cadillac with leop­ard skin seats!!

Suddenly, two young men dressed in doc­tors’ scrubs leap from their seats at cen­ter ice, bump into each other, and run around in cir­cles like a crazy Marx-brothers skit.

Flash back to circa-1982 … it’s a Bulldog hockey game at Ferris State’s Ewigleben Ice Arena and the late Bill Buckingham, the beloved “voice of the Bulldogs,” has deliv­ered his ear-splitting queue to Frank Marzano and Gary “Bear” Blied, who go into their famil­iar fan-pleasing rou­tine. (more…)