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“We don’t want to stay the same. In order to change, we have to move-shake ourselves as individuals and institutions to do better.”
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‘Shake the World’ Martin Luther King Jr. Week
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NEW YEAR, NEW TEAM Dodgeball team seeks to to overcome youth to deliver fifth-straight national title
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Grand Valley Lanthorn W W W. L A N T H O R N . C O M
Family of ‘Wright’-ers
M onday, Januar y 17, 2011
STUDENT-RUN NEWSPAPER AT GRAND VALLEY
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GV student, father publish children’s chapter book Emanuel Johnson GVL Editor in Chief Most college writing students work hard in school to publish books after college as part of their career goals and aspirations, but Dan Wright, a Human Resources major, did it just for fun. The Grand Valley State University senior recently published “The Wild Adventures of Eli Johnson & Curly Bill,” a 107-page children’s book set in the mid-1800s that follows the duo’s search for gold during the Gold Rush. Along the way they encounter wild animals and hazardous situations while trying to avoid a particular group of bandits. The book is the first installment in a planned series. Wright, who is set to graduate from the GVSU in May, said the bulk of the book’s plot was directly inspired by stories from his father, Bill Wright. “We’re originally from Alaska, so we’re used to doing all kinds of outdoors stuff,” said Wright, who had his father as a teacher in the sixth grade. “So he’s got a lot of stories, and a lot of these stories that are in the book are things that have actually happened to him.” One of the stories his father told his classes involved Bill Wright hunting for rams in the mountains of Alaska.
WRIGHT “You have a guy on the bottom that tells you where to go hunt them since those mountains are so steep,” Dan Wright said. “So this guy is down there waving at him and telling him, ‘Something’s behind you,’ but he can’t see him … (Bill) turns around when he hears a gunshot, BAM, and right about 10 feet behind him is a wolverine, and they’re extremely vicious.” Bill Wright, who coauthored the book, said he had always envisioned putting his stories into print but could not find a way to paint the picture he wanted. “I had always wanted to write a book about the stories, but I just couldn’t do it,” he said. I could always tell the stories, but I just couldn’t get it down on print. But (Dan) was just a gifted writer, so he asked me to tape record them, and he wrote book one.” Dan Wright did not put the book together without
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GVL Photo Illustration / Andrew Mills
Senate passes act to combat infringement By Anya Zentmeyer GVL News Editor A bill giving U.S. agencies and officials the power to pursue websites that sell counterfeit goods and pirated music, movies and books was passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee in a 19-0 vote. The “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” (COICA) was passed through the Senate with little time left in 2010 to reach the Congress and be signed into law. However, with the backing of major companies, including Disney, Nike, Merck and Time Warner, the pressure to sign the bill into law is on. COICA allows the Justice Department to seek a court order against the domain name of websites alleged to be assisting activities that violate copyright laws, based on the judgment
GVL Assistant News Editor
Courtesy photo / danwrightbooks.com
for lost royalties. “Think of how quickly something can go viral – once some site makes a file available, there’s not much chance for the artist to get control of it back,” Moiles said. “And in the end, Napster agreed to pay millions of dollars to settle it.” Although the bill enables the attorney general to take legal action to shut certain sites down, action in itself would only be a temporary measure since the site could fight it in court, Moiles said. “The idea of this is not unprecedented,” Moiles said. “For example, if it’s determined that a model of automobile has a safety defect that endangers the consumer, the federal government can order a recall of the vehicles, rather than waiting for people to be injured or killed and then file their own lawsuits for damages.”
MAREC installs first electric vehicle charging station By Molly Waite
The Wright stuff: Dan Wright signs books for students at one of his school visits. Wright plans to turn the book into a series.
of the U.S. attorney general. The bill was met with criticism from politicians like Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who said “deploying this statute to combat online copyright infringement seems almost like using a bunker-busting cluster bomb, when what you need is a precision-guided missile.” Although the critics of the COICA are calling the bill “internet censorship,” supporters of the bill, such as co-sponsor Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), said that bills such as this are important to the future of the American economy, job creation and protecting intellectual property. Roger Moiles, affiliate professor in the political science department at Grand Valley State University and expert on public policy, said he would liken the bill to the Napster issue in 2000 when record companies persuaded a judge to issue an order to stop the site from facilitating file sharing. A lawsuit proceeded
In 1911, Henry Ford was in a garage somewhere in Detroit, where he tinkered and put together his first Model-T. He took some distilled crude oil, poured it into the tank and started driving around the Detroit area. But Ford faced an issue of finding more gas once he ran out. Now, 100 years later, gas stations can be found at almost every corner, but for the drivers of newly released electric cars, the power situation looks similar to what Ford faced.
To begin a network of charging stations throughout West Michigan, Grand Valley State University’s Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center (MAREC) installed its first electric vehicle charging station during the last week of December. According to a GVSU press release, the installation is part of a regional effort led by the West Michigan Strategic Alliance and West Michigan Energy. “It really is more than a demonstration unit,” said Arn Boezaart, director of MAREC. “It is the begin-
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Swim & Dive DUAL MATCH: Laker men and women win commanding victories against University of Findlay
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Courtesy photo / Arn Boezaart
First charge: The university’s first vehicle charging station (above) was installed in December outside the MAREC building.
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