Pipe Dream Spring 2013 Issue 9

PIPE DREAM Tuesday, February 26, 2013 | Binghamton University | www.bupipedream.com | Vol. LXXXIII, Issue 9

Sex, tech & rock 'n' roll Full coverage inside, See pages 2, 4, 5, 6 & 7

Jonathan Heisler/Photo Editor

SA drafts new constitution A months-long effort to revise the Student Association constitution culminated with the release of a draft at Monday night’s Student Assembly meeting.

According to David Blair, chair of the Constitutional Review Committee, the proposed shorter constitution is designed to be more readable and easier to understand than the previous one.

“The document is a lot less dense and a lot less wordy,” said Blair, a senior majoring in mathematics.

In addition to the stylistic changes, the revised constitution contains a number of policy changes.

Some of the changes include changing the name of the Student Assembly to the Student Legislature; integrating the Financial Council into the legislature; creating a new committee within the legislature that will focus on student life and academic needs; changing the vice president of multicultural affairs to the vice president for diversity and inclusiveness, to better represent that the office also oversees organizations that aren’t traditionally considered cultural such as LGBT groups; allowing the executive board to veto legislation with a 5/6 vote; and requiring the Judicial Board to review all legislation for constitutionality.

It will also reapportion the seats held by each residential

community in the legislative branch. Though roughly 39 percent of undergraduate students live off campus, OCC representatives will only make up 25 percent of the new legislature.

The proposed constitution would give each on-campus community five representatives, except Susquehanna Community, which would receive two, and Hillside Community, which would receive three. Off Campus College would receive 10 representatives for a total of 40 representatives in the legislative branch.

The current constitution allows six representatives per on-campus community, with Susquehanna having two representatives, Hillside having four representatives and OCC being allotted one representative for every 200 undergraduate students who live off campus, giving them 25 representatives.

Andrew Topal, vice chair of the Constitutional Review Committee, said that the reduction in the size of the body is in response to the historical vacancies in the body.

“Look at the number of vacancies this year, look at them last year, look at them the year before that,” said Topal, a junior majoring in political science.

“It doesn’t make the Student Assembly and the Student Association look very good. It kind of makes it seem like students don’t care.”

OCC has 16 open seats, Newing College has four and Hillside has three. Susquehanna has no

Some Proposed Changes - The Student Assembly will become the Student Legislature - The Financial Council will be incorporated into the legislature - A new Student Life and Academics committee will created in the legislature - The executive board will be able to veto legislation with a 5/6 vote - The judicial board will be required to review all legislation - The legislature will shrink and seats will be reapportioned - The vice president of multicultural affairs will become the vice president for diversity

representative seated.

Jonathan Ganzarski, a senior majoring in geography, said that the rationale for the proposed representative reductions is “ridiculous.”

“Just because the group isn’t representing themselves, doesn’t mean that you should prevent them from representing themselves,” said Ganzarski, who

In an open panel discussion on Wednesday, Brian Rose, vice president for student affairs, hinted that Greek Life at Binghamton University is about to undergo sweeping changes when he said that some Greek organizations will not survive the year.

“We’re going to lose a couple of organizations this year, and I expect that there will continue to be some shake-out in terms of other organizations who aren’t going to be prepared to meet our standards,” Rose said.

He added that the University is going to develop new standards, in part using the recommendations

of a private consulting coalition that assessed BU Greek Life last semester.

The coalition’s 26-page report, which was submitted to the University on Thursday, calls in part for campus to allow firstsemester freshmen pledging and the consolidation of the Asian Greek Council, Latino Greek Council and Multicultural Greek and Fraternal Council into a single council.

The Greek Life Review Team, headed by Lloyd Howe, associate vice president for student affairs, will assess the coalition’s report over the course of the semester, but said the team has not discussed the coalition’s recommendations yet.

University President Harvey

Stenger, who has previously spoken out against first-semester freshmen pledging, said he still supports the University’s ban.

“The report does not change my opinion on that issue,” he wrote in an email to Pipe Dream.

“I will however, review the issue with our dean of students staff and listen to their opinions before taking a final position.”

The report said lifting the ban would keep students engaged as first-year students and help students adjust to campus life sooner.

Alex Liu, president of the Interfraternity Council, said allowing first-semester freshmen to pledge would help

Times hits web for BU campus

As a part of the New York Times Readership Program, 300 digital subscriptions to The New York Times are now available to Binghamton University students.

“The deal that we have right now is that we have one digital copy for every physical copy that we buy,” said Aaron Ricks, Student Association vice president for academic affairs.

“The best way to access it is to go to www.nytimes.com/passes, and from their you can log in with your Binghamton email address.”

At any one time, 300 students can be logged in, and students will have 24 hours of access after they log in, according to Ricks.

Ricks said that the total cost of the New York Times program is about $20,000 per year, and he is looking into means to keep the program on campus moving

forward.

“Right now we are looking to the future,” Ricks said. “We are looking at different avenues for keeping funding for next semester, but that’s dependent on working on it with the administration and maybe attaching it to some type of fee so it’s independently funded and I don’t have to request funding from various bodies.”

Leonard Simmons, executive director and founder of TEDxBinghamtonUniversity, considered the event a success as well as an improvement upon previous years.

The Osterhout Concert Theater was “I was personally really happy with it,” packed to capacity Sunday afternoon for the said Simmons, and a senior double-majoring third annual TEDxBinghamtonUniversity in philosophy, politics and law and political conference. science. “We knew a lot of the mistakes we The event, titled “Sex, Tech & Rock ‘N’ made last year and we were able to correct Roll,” drew an audience of roughly 1,200 them and get a lot of great speakers.” and was part of a series of independently Simmons, who is graduating this organized talks designed to bring together semester, said that his departure will people from technology, entertainment and not affect future TEDx programming at design.

Binghamton University.

Topics covered by the conference’s “As far as managing goes, Stephen eight speakers ranged from the finding of Prosperi, he’s going to be taking over as the Higgs-Boson particle to the changing executive director,” Simmons said. “He’s outlook society has on zombies. Each talk a really charismatic guy and he’s been lasted about 20 minutes. working with us for a while. He’s ready to

take over.”

Beyond management, Simmons said that the combination of ticket sales and donations from the University will ensure continued TEDx programming.

“We were lucky enough to have sold as many tickets as we did, so we will be able to continue with an equally great event for next year,” Simmons said. “We were also lucky for the generous help given by the administration.”

BU President Harvey Stenger, who attended Sunday’s talks, spoke highly of the idea of TED talks.

“It focuses on important topics, presented by experts, and is popular,” Stenger said. “A great way for anyone to spend a Sunday afternoon.”

Jonathan Heisler/Photo Editor

A diet of junk-food content Alexander Macris, founder and publisher of The Escapist magazine, came to “Sex, Tech & Rock ‘N’ Roll” with a question: is America getting fat on intellectual junk food?

Macris, 37, graduated from Binghamton University summa cum laude in 1997 with a degree in history. He went on to Harvard Law School and graduated magna cum laude in 2000.

During his time as a student at Harvard, Macris started his first Internet company, WarCry, a gaming news website focused on massively multiplayer online games. In 2005, Macrus founded “The Escapist,” another gaming website with a much wider scope, featuring news, reviews, opinion columns, forums and videos.

His interest in gaming goes beyond publication, having designed six social games, including the award-winning “Heroes Mini.”

Despite his interest in new media and video games, Macris focused on the intellectual value of various media, as well as its decline over time, during his talk Sunday at TEDx. Macris opened by discussing the value of food, splitting it into taste and nutrition. According to Macris, the same theory applies to media.

“Never before has the content menu offered so many varied, excellent tastes … But content also has nutritional values,” Macris said. “Just as food feeds our bodies, content feeds our minds.”

According to Macris, the quality and nutritional value of media has dipped over time, with the sentence length, paragraph length and reading grades of books dropping over the last century. He also cited the rise of television and Internet, respectively, as key points in history where content has been noticeably “dumbed down.”

“Unhealthy content damages our concentration, it shortens our attention span, it weakens our problem-solving skills, and increases impulsivity,” Macris said. “And like simple sugars, it leaves you with an addiction, wanting more.”

Macris said that current media has not only been simplified, but people are consuming even less

of it, with Americans aged 15 to 24 watching about 120 minutes of television per day, but only reading recreationally for about seven minutes.

“It’s accepted that the declining popularity of written media and the popular rise of screen media was a dietary shift,” Macris said. “It means that not only are Americans reading simpler books, flipping through simpler magazines and learning from simpler textbooks — it means we are doing less of all of that.”

While screen media was shown to negatively affect a person’s cognitive abilities, it also had advantages, with video games particularly enhancing hand-eye coordination and the Internet helping to increase transactive memory.

Macris made it clear that people can still enjoy less intellectual media, but, like with food, it’s important to have a balance.

“Instead of a balanced diet with great-tasting content and a nutritious fare, we instead feed our minds the equivalent of deep-fried doughnuts,” Macris said, pulling a doughnut out from under the podium. “Mm, doughnuts.” * How did your experiences as a history major and your experiences in law school help in creating The Escapist?

The liberal arts education helped me learn to think critically, and also it gave me a lot of understanding of culture and it put me in a place to understand that what was happening with video games was a huge change in our culture. And when I created The Escapist, at the time there were already lots of websites that covered video games from a consumer/buyers’ perspective. The idea behind The Escapist is that we wanted to cover it from the perspective of a lifestyle that was developing — a gamer’s lifestyle. And I think studying history enables us to see that video games were going to be as important to culture as music, as publishing through the printing press. At the time we started The Escapist, people weren’t really looking at it right, there was still a lot of derision — the idea that video games could be art. In terms of law, law is just a great degree to have for doing business because 50 percent of what you do in business comes

Jonathan Heisler/Photo Editor

Alexander Macris, publisher of “The Escapist” online magazine, graduated from Binghamton University in 1997 and Harvard Law School in 2000. His TEDx lecture focused mainly on positives and negatives of the dumbed-down content prevalent in various media.

down to contracts. And being able to know my way around the law, it was a benefit as an entrepreneur.

Gaming is in a strange place right now where more people outside the original demographic are taking part in it, but at the same time it’s receiving a lot of criticism from the media as a cause of violence, with the most recent example being the Sandy Hooks shooting. How long will it take before video games lose the stigma they are currently associated with?

I think it will take roughly another generation, because at that point the people who grew up before video games will have aged out of positions of power, and from top to bottom every generation from that point will have grown up with video games, and to the extent that they’re aware that they were not turned into bad people by video games. They will be able to address the notion that video games should be the scapegoat for whatever’s wrong with society at that moment.

Right now, we have an anomaly where everyone roughly beneath the age of 40 knows video games, grew up with them, has played them, loves them, and everyone over the age of 40 thinks that they are not for them. We’re seeing that

change a little bit with the rise of these social games that are played by older folks, but in their mind, those aren’t games like the games they criticize, so they’re not able to draw the connection between the spectrum or the genre.

How would you sell video games as a medium to people who don’t consider them legitimate?

I think that people have a very limited view of what the medium consists of. For example, firstperson shooters will get a lot of coverage and people will focus in on the violence, but you rarely see people show a video game like “Europa Universalis” or “Civilization IV” or “Spore.” You rarely see someone show the level of complexity involved in running a “World of Warcraft” raiding guild and the sheer logistical effort and leadership skills that are developed in that. So I think the answer is that more exposure to more types of games, rather than the continued media narrative we have showing first-person shooters, talking about violence, and ending the conversation there.

TV's Impact Americans aged 15 to 24 watch about 120 minutes of television per day, but only reading for about seven minutes per day Sentence length has decreased over the last century from about 40 words per sentence to 14 words per sentence in popular literature.

The average reading age for popular books in the 1700 was around 14 and decreased by 2010 to 4.5

the university system is illequipped to prepare students for work. Rather, according John Boyer, a senior to Boyer, college should be instructor of geography and about expanding the student’s several wine classes at Virgina mind and learning to be a Tech, asked attendees to take “jack of all trades,” like Homo a lesson from humanity’s habilus. ancestor Homo habilus, to “We are at the brink of take a step back and think radical and rapid change in during Sunday’s TEDx talk. our society,” Boyer said. “We Boyer, notably wearing aren’t trying to crank out a plaid sport coat and workers, we’re trying to crank bright red Lacoste glasses, out thinkers. Hopefully we’re is perhaps best known for cranking out people who have his graphic novel/textbook learned how to learn, learned hybrid that features a mild- how to be adaptable!” mannered college professor who leads a double life under Do you see this model that the pseudonym “The Plaid you’re currently using to be Avenger,” and somehow the future of education? Is manages to educate students this where the industry as a about world issues while still whole is going? dressing ostentatiously in Yeah, and I hate to sound the face of global ignorance. so egotistical, but yeah I Boyer’s idiosyncratic think I’m on the right track. approach to teaching, which I wouldn’t be doing it, and includes the use of social I wouldn’t be so passionate media in the classroom, is about it if I believed otherwise. part of his broader attitude I do believe that we are going about the state of higher to a more flipped classroom education. approach in America, where Boyer’s lecture, titled you have pre-production of “Homo Habilus U: Reinventing your lesson materials or your the University Experience for lecture, and then the student a Changing World,” focused reads that like homework, or on the inadequacies of they go and watch a threecurrent attitudes about the hour lecture on Russia. Then purpose of higher education. when we have class time, be it Boyer compared the live or online, when we have modern college student face time, we can discuss the to his or her prehistoric stuff you already read about. ancestor, Homo habilus, That’s kind of the flipped who outsmarted his classroom approach, but also contemporaries by being it’s now incorporating the a “jack of all trades” and online digital approach. We not specializing in any one can interact more because we particular area, thus making can do it any time we want. them more adaptable. Boyer I can interact with you while bemoaned the current I’m in my office and you’re in system, noting that most your dorm room, or on the people attend college for the bus, or when you went home sole purpose of specializing in for Thanksgiving break. We a certain field. can still talk or chat because “Before you even get to that’s what these lines of college, you take specialized communication that are classes in high school to being opened up all over the prepare you for college, and place are about. That’s what’s then you are told to take so powerful about it, bringing more specialized classes and more people together more declare a ‘field of study,’ and of the time, and we need then you should declare your to be using it more for major,” Boyer complained. educational purposes, not Boyer argued that most just entertainment purposes. students feel like they need college to get a job, and that

Pipe Line

Non-stop performance

Health Education Offices moved The Health Education Office has moved from its temporary location in Fine Arts Building room 187G to the newly renovated space in Decker Student Health Services.

The entrance to the new office is the outside staircase to the far right of the Decker Student Health Services building.

Students with disabilities can access the office by going through the main entrance and speaking to someone at the front desk.

Twenty-seven arrested in copper theft State police said they’ve arrested more than two dozen people after a five-month investigation of the thefts of copper from a Binghamton psychiatric center and a former IBM building. Authorities said the investigation started in October after state police received numerous complaints from officials at the Greater Binghamton Health Center campus and a tip from a citizen regarding a group that was stealing copper pipes and electrical wire from commercial buildings in Broome County. Police said the burglaries occurred on the health center campus and at a former IBM building in the town of Union. In all, 27 people have been arrested, most of them charged with either burglary or trespassing. Troopers said 20 of those arrested were caught after investigators observed them entering buildings at the health center campus.

Bloomberg advocates statewide soda regulation New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has spearheaded a first-of-its-kind crackdown on supersized, sugary drinks — and now he’d like the whole state to do likewise. Starting next month, the city plans to bar restaurants and many other eateries from selling some sugar-laden beverages larger than 16 ounces. Grocery stores are exempt because they’re regulated by the state, not the city. But spokesman Marc LaVorgna said later that Bloomberg wasn’t suggesting the state should impose the size limit in stores, and that he just meant the rest of the state should adopt the city’s policy.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office had no immediate comment.

The city says the limit will curb obesity, while critics say it hurts business.

NYC to consider below-ground power lines New York City is set to scrutinize the pros, cons and costs of burying power lines after Superstorm Sandy.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed off Monday on having his office research whether it makes sense to put more wires underground. The City Council voted to commission the study earlier this month. Sandy knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of customers around the city. Many outages endured longer in areas with overhead lines. The research will include analyzing weather-related outages for above-ground and below-ground lines. The study also will estimate the expense of burying wires and recommend where that might make most sense. Utility Consolidated Edison has said it looks forward to participating in a discussion that should examine both benefits and costs of burying lines.

Harpur's Ferry The 2013 National Collegiate EMS Foundation Conference was held in Washington D.C. this past weekend.

Harpur's Ferry placed first in the Advanced Life Support (ALS) skills competition, and also received the Striving for Excellence Award.

Visit harpursferry.org for more information!

607-777-3333

Daniel O'Connor/Staff Photographer

Members of the Hinman Production Company perform during their “24-Hour Theater” event on Saturday night in the Hinman Commons. The performance showcased an original production which was written, directed, produced and performed by the participants in 24 hours.

Police Watch Avoiding the morning commute THURSDAY, FEB. 21, 7:28 a.m. — Officers on patrol were called to the ground area of Glenn G. Bartle Library North after a student was found sleeping on the floor outside a classroom, said Investigator Patrick Reilly of Binghamton’s New York State University Police. The officers found the student and asked him what he was doing. The suspect said he was worried about not waking up for his early class, and figured that if he slept outside the room he would be sure not to miss it. The officers guided the student to a couch in the vending area and told him to sleep there, but they were called back when he was again found sleeping outside the room. The officers again told the student to sleep on a couch, and told library workers to call if they saw him again.

phone number. The officers explained to the suspect what was going on and told him to talk to Verizon. No charges were filed due to the extenuating circumstances.

Nightmare after Christmas THURSDAY, FEB. 21, 12:22 p.m. — A 25-year-old female student called University police saying that she was receiving threatening phone calls from an unidentified man, Reilly said. The victim said that starting at around 11:40 a.m. she had been getting phone calls from a male with a blocked number saying that his phone had been stolen, and that he would kill the person that stole it. Officers were able to obtain the number for the blocked phone and were able to get in touch with the suspect. The suspect was adamant that his phone had been stolen, but the officers informed the suspect that the phone he had been calling had been a Christmas present for the victim, and she had been using the same number for four years. Officers then reached out to Verizon, where workers found that the suspect’s stolen phone was forwarding all calls to the victim’s

Keep it in your pants SATURDAY, FEB. 23, 2:50 a.m. — Officers doing a Community Response Patrol in Newing College found a wallet on the floor of Endicott Hall, Reilly said. The officers took an inventory of the wallet, learning that it belonged to an 18-yearold male University student. The officers also found a forged New York state driver’s license in the wallet.

The officers were able to contact the student, who came to the police station to get the wallet back the following night. The student confirmed that the wallet was his and that everything was still in the wallet from the previous night. However, he had no explanation for the forged license. The student was issued a ticket for possession of a forged instrument to the Vestal Town Court.

Third time's a charm FRIDAY, FEB. 22, 12:40 p.m. — Officers on patrol in the Collegein-the-Woods Dining Hall observed a male student leave the building with unpaid food in hand, Reilly said. The officers stopped the suspect and questioned him about the food three times. The first two times the student claimed to have paid for it, but the third time he admitted that he had stolen the food, and agreed to go back and pay for it. The officers spoke to the hall’s Sodexo manager, who said that he would tell the Student Conduct Committee after the suspect paid for the food.

This Day in History February 26th 1932

February 26th 1983

Johnny Cash, an American country singer, was born. He died in 2003.

Pepe, a BrazilianPortuguese footballer, was born.

Corrections An article in the Feb. 22, 2013, edition of Release about Oscars predictions incorrectly stated the year in which the Iranian hostage crisis occurred. It began in 1979, not 1982.

An article in the Dec. 11, 2012, edition of Pipe Dream about a party thrown by Greek Life misstated Alex Liu’s year. He is a sophomore, not a junior.

Daniel Drezner, a zombie wonk from Tufts University, has a bone to pick with the pop-culture lore of the living dead: Why is there so much apocalypse, but so little politics?

Drezner, a professor at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, is the author of “Theories of International Politics and Zombies,� a book that uses a zombie outbreak to expound theories of international policy.

In “The Night of the Living Wonks,� an 2010 article Drezner wrote for Foreign Policy, he said the “Uniteto-Fight-Zombie Liberals� would band together to create an international anti-zombie regime and neoconservatives would take an offensive stance, with preemptive strikes against the zombies.

And governments adhering to realpolitik, Drezner says, would fight for their own self interest. As Drezner writes, “the realpolitik of zombies is that the strong will do what they can and the weak must suffer devouring by reanimated, ravenous corpses.�

Regardless of the policy, Drezner says that the apocalypse narratives are “overstated� and that a zombie outbreak would probably not be able to wipe out humanity. “Human beings are awesome,�

Drezner said during his TEDx talk. “We invented duct tape.�

But where, he asks, are the movies where people finally kick some zombie ass?

Zombies meet politics

Jonathan Heisler/Photo Editor

Daniel Drezner, professor at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and zombie enthusiast, speaks to the TEDx audience about theories of international politics through the lens of a zombie apocalypse.

3 properties all zombies have: 1. Zombies cannot be killed unless their brain is destroyed 2. Zombies want to devour human flesh.

They are not interested in eating other zombies 3. Any human being bitten by a zombie will inevitably become a zombie

Why do you use zombies as a means to explain and understand different theories of foreign policy?

Each of these theories has an internal logic and you can try to explain them in a sort of straightforward way, but some of them are a little arcane and some of them use language that’s not automatically easy for your average 18-year-old to grasp, but your average 18-year-old gets zombies. So you mention zombies and that automatically captures their attention and furthermore when you

actually develop the theories, you can reference various pop culture narratives and they know what I’m talking about.

So if I say “Shaun of the Dead,� very often, a lot of people in the audience will have seen the movie.

And in some ways, I didn’t choose zombies, zombies chose me — they’ve really taken off in terms of popularity.

And so I wrote a blog post about this and foreign policy initially, and it generated a lot of attention, and I didn’t really think anything more about it.

Then I went to a conference, and a colleague told me, “I was trying to explain this theory of international politics ‌ and my students, they weren’t getting it directly, but then I pointed them to your blog post and then they got it.â€? And so, that was when I realized it might be pedagogically useful.

Were you a fan of zombies before that? : Not really, actually. As a kid I was easily scared. I remember “Poltergeist� as a kid on the television, and it scared the crap out of me. So I didn’t really watch a lot of horror movies as a kid, or as a teenager, or even as a young adult.

I watched a couple before I wrote that

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blog post, and it was only once I decided to write the book that I kind of immersed myself deeply in zombie lore. I live in fear of Comic Book Guy saying, “I think you had it wrong in ‘28 Days Later’� — although that’s never actually happened.

In your Foreign Policy piece, “Nights of the Living Wonk,� you consider the strengths and weaknesses of realpolitik, liberals and neoconservatism in the event of a zombie outbreak — which one do you think would be the most effective?

The point of the book is not to say, “Here are all these theoretical approaches, clearly this one is superior.�

In some way, the point of these theories is not to make — they do make some prescriptive policy recommendations — but they’re what social scientists refer to as “positivist,� meaning they would predict what would happen, not necessarily what should happen.

And I think the thing that I was struck by is that by and large what most of the theories end up predicting is that the world doesn’t end — which is interesting because because most of the zombie movies make that assumption. And so in fact one of the messages I have is that the

zombie canon is far too pessimistic about humanity.

Are there any more zombies in your future research and writing?

I could write a longer paper version of what I’m presenting here (at TEDx), and if I want to I could do a revised — or dare I say revived — edition of “Theories of International Politics and Zombies.�

And in theory I’ve got a great idea for a zombie novel, I’m just not sure I’m ever going to write it.

Can you explain the premise?

(Laughs) No, that gives away the surprise! It would be a zombie apocalypsemeets-“War of the Worlds�-type scenario — not the Tom Cruise movie, but the Orson Wells radio broadcast.

If there was a zombie apocalypse, do you think you would be the first person the White House calls?

You know, I would hope — who knows, maybe they already have. No, that’s not the case. Sure, I guess. If not, I’m going to New Zealand: It’s geographically remote; the food is good; there are a lot of mountains and zombies can’t climb terribly well; and the wines are excellent.

Dr. Justin Garcia is an optimist when it comes to love and relationships. An evolutionary biologist and post-doctoral fellow at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, Binghamton University alumnus Garcia studies the evolutionary implications of changing patterns of human romantic pair bonding and courtship.

To avoid the sticky situation of bringing in couples to do the dirty in a lab setting, Garcia has done research on sexual behavior by everything from mailing out surveys to taking DNA samples of patrons of a Las Vegas sex club. At TEDx on Sunday, Garcia shared his findings on contemporary hookup culture and “the fall and rise of dating in America,” telling the audience to prepare for a “romantic revolution.”

For Garcia, who has two books out this year — “Evolution and Human Sexual Behavior” and “Evolution’s Empress: Darwian Perspectives on the Nature of Women” — courtship is something that is essential to human life, and though many, including The New York Times, are claiming that we have arrived at the “death of dating,” Garcia believes this to be untrue.

Garcia said that intimacy and love are vital elements of human existence, trumping even economic and political concerns in America, and that isn’t going away anytime soon.

“I think the desire for love is so essential to what it means to be human that we can’t see the end of

it,” he said. “When we see the end of the pursuit of love, we will see the end of our species.”

Though one-third of the American adult population is single, an unprecedented statistic, Garcia said this doesn’t mean that they are no longer looking to be in committed romantic relationships.

According to a three-year study he conducted with Helen Fischer for online dating site Match.com, most singles participate in onenight stands and friends with benefits situations — the average college student admits to having two hook-ups for every first date — but they haven’t given up on love.

Garcia referred to this new trend as “copulation courtship,” and said that though the order of events has changed and sex prior to a relationship is more common, the

31%

of singles had a one night stand in 2012 33% Of those one night stands turned into a long term commitment.

The Sex Timetable Sex on the first date: 45% of men & 12% of women Sex on the third date: 28% overall Sex on the sixth date: 46% overall

end result is surprisingly similar.

“We’re a social species,” he said.

“We eat together, we fight together, we live together, we have to have sex with another person in order to reproduce; this characterizes our living, this characterizes who we are as a species, and these courtship patterns, although they might be changing, they can’t totally go away.”

Garcia conceded that technology and social media are changing romantic relationships, but shied away from deeming this shift good or bad. He did acknowledge that using new technology for dating was counter to some of the ways humans have evolved, because for thousands of years humans have relied on body language, social cues and sensory information to assess potential

Friends with benefits 47% of singles have had a friends with benefits relationship 45% of friends with benefits relationships turned into long lasting commitments in 2012

Exclusive Commitment Increasing numbers of women want exclusivity before sex

25% 2010

partners. But he also said that online dating and technology allowed for some groups, like sexual minorities, to more easily meet potential romantic partners.

The most important thing for Garcia is that courtship and dating continue, even while incorporating innovative new means of meeting people and communicating. He ended his talk with a word of advice to the audience: “If the American people are serious about reinvigorating dating culture today in a way that perhaps is more overt … then the next time you meet someone and you feel that push and pull of romance, whether it be in a coffee shop, or on an online dating site, or in your local farmer’s market … go up to them and ask them on a date. The worst they can say is no.”

Virginity 42% of singles would NOT date a virgin 55% 33% Men

Women

16

the age when most men and women fall in love for the first time.

31%

37%

Falling in love Men fall in love an average of 4.2 times

2011

2012

Women fall in love an average of 2.8 times

Jonathan Heisler/Photo Editor

Kevin Garcia spoke about romance at TEDx on Sunday.

What research are you working on currently?

Justin Garcia: So for the last three years we’ve been doing a study called “Singles in America.”

It’s the largest study ever done of U.S. singles across demographics, ranging from the ages of 21 to 65plus. At the moment about onethird of the U.S. adult population is single, so it’s a historically unprecedented proportion of the population. And how might this group be impacting all aspects of American life and American culture? So we’re interested in that and it’s sort of become a new big area, it’s a study that’s funded by Match.com in collaboration with Helen Fischer. And that’s one of our big projects that we’ve been working on more related to dating and relationships.

Can you talk a little bit about social media and how that’s impacted dating?

JG: Social media and technology has very much changed the very way that we engage with each other. We’re so highly evolved over millions of years as a social species, so how does technology change that? It changes the very

way we communicate and we engage with each other. We use cues from each other, like sound and sight and smell and taste, and in some ways we’ve taken those out of our social engagements. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it changes, it’s putting us into uncharted waters, waters where we haven’t evolved necessarily specialized skills. So it’s changing many things and if it’s changing our general social relationships, it must fundamentally be changing our romantic and sexual relationships.

What do you think is in the future for dating in America?

JG: I’m hopeful and I don’t want to say it’s bad, I think it’s changed a lot but I’m hopeful. I think we’re at a point where America wants to reclaim dates, and in one study the average college student had two hook-ups for every first date, and I think we’re at a turning point now of new technology that the date is going to reemerge. And I don’t think dating ever died, despite kind of recent social commentary.

I think it’s transformed, but we’re about to see the date reemerge like a phoenix from the ashes.

Michelle Thaller, assistant director for science communication at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, set out to convince people at her TEDx talk on Sunday that most of what we know about the composition of the universe, is nothing — at least as far as our senses can perceive it.

According to Thaller, who specializes in the life cycles of stars, all of the matter that we are familiar with only makes up about 4 percent the universe, 3.6 percent of which is just cold gas.

“The other 96 percent is something we call ‘dark matter,’ and we don’t really know anything about it, hence the ‘dark,’” she said.

Thaller’s lecture, titled “Dark Matter: We’re Not Made of the Same Stuff the Universe Is,” featured a brief history of the study of the universe, accompanied by numerous photos of deep space gathered from her work at NASA, and inspired “ooh’s” and “ahh’s” from a mesmerized audience.

“I hope you all agree with me, but we live in an extravagant and beautiful universe,” Thaller said.

“The scale of it is something that not only humbles us, but inspires us.”

According to Thaller, dark matter is so ubiquitous that it creates a web underlying everything in the universe, which accounts for some of the intricate patterns and clusters of cosmic bodies such as stars and

Unknown space leaves science in the "dark"

galaxies, and may contribute to our understanding of how the universe formed.

“This is the invisible scaffolding of our universe, it makes up all the matter in the universe,” Thaller said.

“Over time, all of the regular matter was attracted by the gravity of this dark matter, to this web underneath it. Things were brought together to create galaxies, and stars and planets. None of that would have started without that scaffolding of dark matter underneath.” *

So we don’t know what 96 percent of the universe is?

We don’t know what 96 percent of the universe is, and that’s a problem.

Any time you want to talk about how the universe began, how it’s evolving over time, or how galaxies and stars form, what are you going to say if we don’t know what 96 percent of it is up to? So, the talk is going to Jonathan Heisler/Photo Editorr be a little bit of a history of how we Michelle Thaller, assistant director of science communication at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., lectures on the beauty of the universe and dark could be that stupid. How could we matter in “Dark Matter: We’re Not Made of the Same Stuff the Universe Is.” She captivated the audiences with several pictures of deep space. say that 96 percent of the universe is in a form that we don’t even know universe as a whole, it doesn’t have and gather information about theory. The problem is, we see space sort of a cycle. A cycle of birth and what it is? Where do we go from here, a lot to do directly with us. But in a something so abstract that you warping, and bending, and lensing, death, it seems sort of wonderfully and how do we find this? really basic sense, we actually think can’t see? and that’s the dark matter. philosophical. Dark matter just kind How will learning the that this 96 percent of the dark It’s not even just that you can’t What kind of previously held of blew that away. Dark matter and composition of the universe, or of universe was probably responsible see it. There’s dark matter in the theories about space and the dark energy suggest that not only stars, help us better understand the for getting the first galaxies and room with us right now, it does universe have been challenged will the universe expand forever, tangible world that we see around the first stars to form. So point not even interact, it goes right because of this new information but it will rip apart, and some day us? How will this research impact blank, we would not be here today through us like a ghost through a we’re getting about dark matter? this expansion may even rip apart our daily lives? if it were not for this dark universe. wall. We only can see this because A lot of us were wondering about matter. The very atoms that make You know, it’s a good question. When we think about what our we can measure its pull of gravity. the end of the universe. The universe us up may be ripped apart by this Obviously right now, as usually is the origins are, how life forms, there’s Gravity is a force that pervades the is expanding now, that’s easy to see, expansion. So we’re back to square case when you study cosmology, the this mysterious contribution that’s universe and obviously holds us to but is it going to expand forever? one. Why is there a universe at all been there since the beginning, and the earth and all of that. This dark That’s a little depressing, because if it just comes into being out of we’re just beginning to see it. So it matter has no physical substance, then everything just becomes nothingness and then just rips apart? doesn’t really affect exactly how your but it has gravity. We can measure thinner and thinner, and colder and Most people now suspect that there day is going to go today, you can live things orbiting around it, and we colder and pretty soon all the stars are many universes, perhaps an happily and ignore dark matter, but can actually measure the way that go out and you’re left with nothing. infinite number, so this idea of the at it’s most basic, we think that this it distorts space and time. It actually A lot of people wondered, and I sort multiverse, more than one universe, is responsible for all of the structure creates warps and lenses in space and of hoped that this was true, that kind of helped solve that. So my ideas in the universe: all of the galaxies, all time, and we’re directly observing it maybe the universe would eventually of a nice, clean universe that had a of the stars, all of the planets. with the Hubble Space Telescope and stop expanding and start coming cycle to it, doesn’t seem to be the How do you study something other large telescopes. So this is not a together again and there would be case.

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He added that the program still has room to grow.

“We are looking at trying to make a more stable funding sources so that we are able to expand the program to include other publications in the future,” Ricks said. “If we wanted we could buy more digital subscriptions by themselves.”

Aaron Feinberg, an undeclared freshman, said he was excited to hear that digital subscriptions will now be available.

“I think it will be especially useful in the winter when the weather is bad and I don’t want to go all the way to the dining hall to get a hard copy,” Feinberg said. “I only started reading The New York Times when I got to Binghamton because it was easily available, and this just makes it even more easily available.”

Ricks is also in the process of bringing a guest speaker to

campus, which is included in the program cost.

“We are working on getting a big time New York Times journalist to come to campus,” Ricks said. “I can’t tell you who it is right now, but we have a speaker slated for mid-April and I am working with The New York Times right now to pin point the exact date. We are just back and forth right now making sure that the writer we are trying to get is free and available at the right times.”

Josh Krinsky, an undeclared freshman, said he was impressed that Binghamton might bring a New York Times journalist to campus.

“I’m from New York City where reading the Times is sort of a requirement, so it’s pretty cool that they would bring a Times journalist to give a lecture,” Krinsky said. “I started reading the Times in ninth grade when my history teacher required it and now I read it everyday, but listening to someone who writes for it will be nice and fresh.”

formerly represented OCC in the Assembly. “The number of representatives should always be proportional to the number of people they are representing.”

But Blair, who is also the president of Off Campus College Council, stated that OCC would have four seats on the newly formed Finance Committee compared to the one

campus-recognized chapters compete with off-campus Greek organizations — one of the overarching difficulties acknowledged in the report.

“With the existence of offcampus frats and sororities who can basically recruit whenever they want, it puts pressure on the on-campus [organizations],” said Liu, a sophomore majoring in philosophy, politics and law.

The coalition also recommended consolidating AGC and LGC into MGFC as part of a larger plan to simplify the governing councils and increase their efficiency, a plan which would also include having professional fraternities receive advising and support from specific University departments.

However, Cindy Vong, president of the Asian Greek Council, wants AGC to remain independent.

“I think that if you’re going

representative from each of the on-campus communities.

Topal emphasized that this kind of criticism is essential.

“This is not a final draft,” Topal said. “We are looking for feedback and we are looking for people to tear this apart.”

Students who wish to provide feedback on the proposed changes can send an email to conrev@binghamtonsa.org.

to say that we should represent different cultures then you should therefore keep the councils separate,” said Vong, a junior double-majoring in environmental studies and political science. “There’s a Latino Greek Council and then there’s an Asian Greek Council because we have different interests.”

Jessica Iankowitz, president of the Professional Fraternity Council, said that several of the professional Greek organizations on campus already work closely with campus advisers, but she was open to the idea of working officially with an adviser.

“I don’t really know what role each professor would have so I wouldn’t know what to expect … but they would definitely be welcome,” she said.

— Christina Pullano and Rachel Bluth contributed to this report.

When Watson, the artificial intelligence supercomputer, competed against former “Jeopardy” winners Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in Feb. 2011, there was a 74 percent chance of Watson winning and a 26 percent chance of David Ferrucci losing his job.

David Ferrucci was the principal investigator for the IBM research team that brought the world Watson, which would eventually win “Jeopardy” with $77,147, which was $53,147 more than the runner-up. Ferrucci, who received both his master’s and doctorate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was posed in 2006 with the challenge of creating a computer capable of open-domain question answering, or responding correctly to questions posed in natural language.

“This has been a dream of AI and it’s been a longstanding expectation over the course of science fiction,” Ferrucci said.

Open-domain question answering, Ferrucci said, is a challenge because it requires a good deal of background information and context to process both the question being asked and the possible answers.

“The real difficulty comes from understanding the expression of the question and the expression of the content, and literally mapping the meaning,” Ferrucci said. “We have no idea what the question is going to be ahead of time, never mind the answer.”

In his presentation at TEDx

Sunday, Ferrucci used the sentence, “The bat came flying toward the window” to show how homophones, or words with multiple meanings, can confuse the meaning of a sentence. Taken out of context, this sentence could have multiple meanings, given the fact that “bat” could refer to either the flying mammal or a piece of baseball equipment.

“You need more context to map those symbols to that experience,” Ferrucci said.

Deciphering the meaning of a sentence, Ferrucci said, requires a lot of interpretation and depends on being able to relate to shared experiences.

“The more context you have, the more you can sort of map those symbols’ actual meaning, and that meaning is founded in that common experience,” Ferrucci said. “The richer the context, the more we can narrow the possibilities and zoom in on what was really intended by the symbol.”

Ferrucci said that deciphering meaning is crucial as the volume and complexity of information is outpacing humans’ ability to digest and understand natural language.

“The amount of information is growing incredibly rapidly and we have more and more complexity in life,” Ferrucci said. “We have to get at that knowledge and we have to get at it in a more precise and more concise way so we can make better decisions.”

Watson was introduced to the world through the “Jeopardy” challenge, but the computer’s capabilities also have potential to be useful in the medical field.

Ferrucci is turning his attention toward another area of studying human behavior — economics.

Ferrucci is working with a company called Bridgewater to study macroeconomics from a behavioral, rather than formulaic, perspective.

“Probably the two most important things in civilization are health care and … economics, because the stability of our governments, the stability of our societies, depend so much on managing the economic system,” Ferrucci said. “Thinking about the economic system as a system that’s driven by human behavior is fascinating to me.” * How did the Watson project start?

I worked [at IBM] for a couple years on an AI project and then went back to get my PhD at RPI. My thesis was in automatic configuration, getting the computer to automatically configure cars or computers or different kinds of objects based on the different requirements that a person might have. So all these projects really focused on AI, and then when I got to IBM the second time, which was in 1995, I started to build a team focused on lots of different projects but all of them geared toward a combination of AI and software engineering and software architecture. So by the time it came around in 2006, I had a really strong team of Artificial Intelligence experts who were good at machine learning and knowledge representation and reasoning, I had software

Jonathan Heisler/Photo Editor

David Ferrucci, research staff member and leader of the semantic analysis and integration department at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, is responsible for IBM’s DeepQA project, or Watson. He lectured on the possible applications of powerful computing systems with natural-language technology in medicine and economics.

architects and software engineers, so we were in a perfect position to take on the Jeopardy project.

What was it like working on the project?

It was a dream come true for me, because it was a project that was going to test everything I had been learning and researching for years and I was going to be able to learn, “Can these technologies all come together to do something to compete with humans at this very knowledge-intensive, languageintensive task?” And whether I failed or succeeded I knew I was going to learn a lot about AI, so it was an incredibly exciting project in that regard. And ultimately we succeeded, and the next really exciting thing I was going to be able to do was convince IBM to take this technology and pursue medicine. So it sort of rounded out a 30-year journey for me,

where using Watson to help doctors do diagnostic reasoning and treatment evaluation was something I dreamed about doing going all the way back to high school and college.

What’s next for Watson?

IBM is taking Watson into the health care industry in a really big way and they have a number of really interesting projects, one with Memorial-Sloan Kettering, another one they have with Cleveland Clinic, so it’s really exciting what they’re doing with it. But if you think about trying to understand what’s going on, and take lung cancer for example, there’s just so much information about so many different patients … there’s an incredible variability in the experiences they go through, the symptoms that they have, the treatments that work and don’t work, and how

well they work. And you want to kind of relate that to information about the patients themselves so that you can make more informed decisions, you can do a better job at evaluating treatments, and quickly figuring out what treatment is more likely or less likely to work.

What project(s) are you currently working on?

One of the other things that really interest me is macroeconomics at a very, very fundamental level. Probably the two most important things in civilization are health care and … economics, because the stability of our governments, the stability of our societies, depend so much on managing the economic system. And thinking about the economic system as a system that’s driven by human behavior is fascinating to me.

Researcher breaks down the impact of the Higgs Boson particle

Decades after the Standard Model of physics was developed, a missing key may have been found.

Kyle Cranmer, an experimental particle physicist and New York University professor, talked about the importance of the Higgs Boson particle in physics during his TEDx talk Sunday.

In the mid-20th century, physicists developed what we call the Standard Model, an all-encompassing theory that sought to explain the laws of nature. The Standard Model is incomplete, though, and one of the keys to completing it is the inclusion of the Higgs Boson particle.

“We have thousands of collaborators all over the world looking for this particle,” Cranmer said.

On July 4, 2012, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) discovered a particle that might be the Higgs. The next day, The New York Times’ front page read, “Physicists Find Elusive Particle Seen as Key to Universe.” Cranmer said he bought around 40 copies.

Cranmer’s role at CERN was twofold: he looked for a specific way that the particle decayed and he analyzed the combined work of other scientists looking at other types of decay at the same time.

Jonathan Heisler/Photo Editor

Kyle Cranmer, associate professor of physics at NYU, described his part in discovering what could be the Higgs Boson, a theoretical physics particle in the CERN laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland.

“The Higgs decays almost instantaneously and there haven’t been any around since the Big Bang,” Cranmer said.

A proposed idea of physics Cranmer is keen on is supersymmetry. In nature, smaller things, such as snowflakes, tend to be more symmetrical than larger things.

The idea was first proposed by German mathematician Emmy Noether. Cranmer wonders if the principle still applies to particles, our smallest objects in nature.

“Symmetry can enhanced as you get to smaller and smaller scales,” Cranmer said. “By the time you get to the atom, symmetry is the rule rather than the exception.”

If that kind of symmetry — what physicists call the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model — is proved correct, then physicists may

have a new model beyond the Standard Model we have been working with for decades. The only problem, though, is that supersymmetric particles, or “sparticles,” have not yet been observed.

Cranmer is looking forward to continuing this kind of research at ATLAS, a lab at CERN where he works. He showed the audience a 3D graphic of CERN’s location and where ATLAS was in relation to the LHC. As Cranmer sees it, the groundbreaking science — this “triumph of human curiosity” — that he’s involved in highlights how research can be a good investment. After all, as Cranmer points out, the World Wide Web was also developed at CERN and given to the world for free. He laments the decline of U.S. involvement in scientific research, citing the Superconducting Supercollider

that was nearly built 20 years ago in Texas before Congress pulled funding.

— Kyle Cranmer NYU professor

“If we would have built it then we would have found the Higgs Boson 10 years ago,” Cranmer said.

What was your precise role in the discovery of the Higgs Boson?

Kyle Cranmer: The Higgs can decay in a bunch of different ways. And each way it decays looks different in our detector. And so there are a bunch of different groups of people looking out for a specific way it might decay, and so they become experts in this particular way. I worked on one of those particular ways that it decays, but the main role that I had was then taking all of these individual searches and taking them together into one big, combined analysis of what’s going on. And that’s what we do at the very end when we were claiming discovery. So a lot of my work was somehow trying to take the different pieces of all these individual groups and trying to take it together into one cohesive analysis.

In terms of the search for the Higgs itself, how does the search for all of these different ways of decaying balance out against the other features that the Higgs — as conceived at that time — supposedly had?

In the theory, we don’t know beforehand what the mass itself is. So as you change the mass, the relative fraction of the time that it decays in one way or a different way changes.

That makes it a little bit tough because you don’t necessarily know exactly what to look for, but you have a sort of template with one dial, which is the Higgs mass. So we had to kind of scan along this Higgs mass and at each point, we sort of knew what to look for, and then

we would work together to try to cover all those bases.

I read [in an essay by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Steve Weinberg, who conducted early research leading to the search for the Higgs Boson particle] that the Higgs mass is very small compared to other key figures in physics, such as the Planck mass. Could you please talk about that a bit?

Right, so in most ways it’s actually heavier. A unit of mass is GeV. A proton, for example, weighs one GeV, an electron is much more smaller than that.

Most of the particles are kind of in that neighborhood. And then we have particles that are roughly 100, and there’s this thing called the top quark which is like 175. So we found the Higgs at 125. So it’s actually a fairly heavy particle, but it’s actually the second-heaviest that we know of.

But what’s weird about it is that, in the theory, it naturally wants to be really heavy. And that’s what the idea of the Planck mass and the Planck scale comes in. And that’s an energy scale where gravity and quantum mechanics come together on equal footing, and that’s where often is the business of things like string theory and stuff like that. So we don’t understand the physics at that scale, but the Higgs Boson would want to naturally be more heavy, like billions of billions of times heavier than we actually see it. So the mystery in some sense is actually why it is so light.

Jonathan Heisler/Photo Editor

Head-to-headphones Showdown a thing. Lucky for you, we’ve compiled a list of the best and most affordable headphones right here, at your So, maybe your dog ate the ear buds that came with disposal. No puking necessary. your iPhone. Or maybe the Skullcandys you still have 5. Outdoor Technology’s DJ Slims from high school just aren’t cutting it anymore. The With attractive features such as wireless capabilities, point is, you need a new pair of headphones. While a control pad for power and volume, and a design optimal functionality is pretty important, they have to look cool for but not limited to outdoor use, these headphones are too. You don’t want to look like a poser when jamming both multi-functional and affordable. The lithium ion out to that new Strokes single. But maybe you find the battery within the headphones is rechargeable and is Best Buy selection so intimidating that it makes you powerful enough to provide eight hours of continuous almost puke on the Bose display, or maybe you just playback. DJ Slims also have a blue light indicator on haven’t shopped for headphones since Circuit City was the right ear that lets you know when the headphones Mallory Stein | Release

are properly paired with Bluetooth, even though this is pretty silly since you can’t see the light while wearing the headphones. Though the square, on-ear design is unique and even a little flashy (in a good way) this construction is not ideal for everyone, especially because audio can bleed out due to the lack of a seal around the ear. However, if you’re looking to set yourself apart from the crowd for only $69, DJ Slims are the way to go.

The headphones come in black, white and blue and are available at www.outdoortechnology.com.

4. SOL Republic Tracks SOL, which stands for Soundtrack of Life, put an

extra punch in these small but powerful headphones, which are great if you’re looking for a ton of bass with minimal distortion. Built-in controls for your iPod, iPhone or iPad make it easy to adjust volume or answer calls on the go, and the supra-aural design allows Tracks to gently rest on your ear instead of creating a seal around it. The headband is made with FlexTech technology to prevent breakage and withstand accidental twisting or crushing. Despite this, Tracks are not very well-designed for extended listening. Your ears can get really hot after a period of time, and the headphones are just not that comfy. Priced at $99, Tracks are available in black, white and red and can be purchased at www.solrepublic.com.

3. Denon AH-D1100 Promises of smooth sound delivery with a lightweight design make these headphones appealing to any music lover. Tunes are balanced by means of Denon’s Acoustic Optimizer technology, giving equal acoustic pressure to each ear while internally angled 50 mm drivers work to aurally match up with the listener’s ear canal and provide the best sound possible. Pretty cool. The one downfall of the Denons is that every pair comes with a hardwired cable, meaning you can’t remove it from the headphones. This can be a real pain if the cable needs to be replaced or repaired. The AH-D1100 comes in a black and silver combo and retails for $199 on www.amazon. com.

2. Audio Technica’s ATH-M50 These over-the-ear headphones were designed with professional monitoring and mixing in mind but are ideal for any listening setting. A collapsible headband means the ATH-M50 is easy to both store and transport, yet padded enough for a good amount of comfort while listening. The seal that the headphones make around the ear is tight enough to prevent sound leakage as well as provide isolation. This model comes in black, white and a sharp limited edition silver color. The two-year manufacturer’s warranty is also something to consider, free with your purchase, which will run you about $169 at www.guitarcenter.com.

1. Sennheiser’s HD 518 These over-the-ear headphones use E.A.R. (ergonomic acoustic refinement) technology to properly channel audio signals into your ear, while patented Duofol diaphragms minimize distortion. A vented openback earcup design and padding for comfort are great for long periods of listening. What’s even more impressive is that the earcups were specifically constructed to direct audio waves in parallel to the human ear, aiding in the correct layering of instrumental and vocal components.

A detachable cable is another cool feature of these headphones, which come in black and white and include a two-year manufacturer’s warranty with your purchase.

Available at www.bestbuy.com for $129.

Supergroup Atoms For Peace unites for "AMOK" Kenneth Herman | Release “AMOK” is the new album from Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s solo outfit Atoms for Peace, a “super group” including Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Flea, Beck drummer Joey Waronker, percussionist Mauro Refosco and Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. Yorke’s second nonRadiohead LP since 2006’s brilliant “The Eraser,” “AMOK” is one of the warmest records Thom Yorke has put out yet, full of strong compositions, percussion and hooks. However, much of “AMOK,” like recent Radiohead releases, feels unrealized.

For better or worse, when Thom Yorke puts out music, people listen. That is the problem with a lot of his recent offerings. Yorke seems well aware of his own credibility, and this often translates to music that sounds effortless. The problem with Radiohead’s last record, “The King of Limbs,” was how unfleshed the songs were. It seemed that every track included the same polyrhythmic drums, whispered vocals and drop-tuned guitars. Drum loops muddied production by lasting the entirety of the song. Dynamic changes were hard to find, and only on a couple of tracks did the band try to do anything different.

“AMOK” is less monochromatic.

Whereas “The King of Limbs” dragged in its uniformity, “AMOK” is colorful, energetic and at times unpredictable.

Yorke, influenced by electronic pioneers Flying Lotus and Burial, has become obsessed with post-dubstep production.

Taking cues from Afrobeat artists like Fela Kuti, “AMOK” is filled with arrhythmic percussion incorporating live and

electronic elements. The record was pieced together from a three-day live session following a brief tour in 2009.

On the opener “Before Your Very Eyes,” a jangly guitar line is backed with skittering percussion, before Flea’s bass and multitracked synthesizers are introduced.

“Before Your Very Eyes” is a reminder that Atoms for Peace is very much a group effort. The clanging drums of Waronker and Refosco echo the more rhythmic moments of “The King of Limbs.” Flea slips in basslines both funky and melodic, working to either guide a track or slip into the background.

Following “Before Your Very Eyes” is where the record slows down. The second track is disappointing lead single “Default.”

There is a percussive element that sounds like a nail scratching a chalkboard, and the main melody sounds like a cellphone alarm clock.

Is “AMOK” a dance album? Almost.

Apart from “Default,” some of the songs have strong grooves to them. Yorke has embraced the dancer side of electronic music, and it works very well at times.

A song like “Ingenue,” with its Four Tetesque drum loop, feels the most dance-y the once gloomy singer has put out yet.

A lot of the album incorporates repetition heavily. If the clashing percussion and ray gun noises are too overbearing, like on “Dropped,” it can get unlistenable after awhile. Some songs feel overloaded with beats and percussive sounds. Every track begins to feel a little predictable; bouncing percussion is followed by a bassline and a number of synthesizers before Yorke’s falsetto brings the track to a building

climax.

Thom Yorke arguably has one of the most distinctive voices in alternative music today. He’s been fairly coy about his range on recent Radiohead material, and continues to do so here. On most songs, the vocals act as more of an instrument, a slithering melodic line to bring the track home. “I couldn’t care less,” whispers Yorke on “Unless.” The most upbeat cut on “AMOK,” “Unless” features bouncy synthesizer arpeggios and a punishing rhythm section. The chord progression, similar to Aphex Twin’s “IZUS,” is reminiscent of Radiohead’s earlier electronic material. Otherwise, a lot of the vocal parts seem almost improvised.

The strong melodies that characterize many Radiohead albums, and even Yorke’s solo debut, are absent. Apart from the occasional hooky line, like “Don’t worry baby, it goes right through me” from the brilliant “Judge, Jury, Executioner,” a lot of these lyrics do not feel thought out.

Preceding the acoustic-tinged, 7/8 shuffle of “Judge Jury, Executioner” is “Stuck Together Pieces.” Other than Flea’s fantastic bassline, “Stuck Together Pieces” is another example of a groove which never reaches home. The song seems to go on and on, even after incorporating a guitar line lifted almost directly from Radiohead’s 2007 “In Rainbows.” “Reverse Running” includes delicate piano and cut up drums similar to frequent Yorke collaborator and glitch-hop innovator Flying Lotus.

The song works until the bee swarm of synthesizers towards the end.

The title track, however, saves the record from feeling like a too-lengthy Yorke

experiment. On the closer track “Amok,” all of the elements seem to finally come together. Pockets of analog synth hover over live kit drumming layered with drum machine claps. That nail-scratching sound is back too, unfortunately. Flea guides the song through its quiet opening to a grand build-up of piano, layered vocals and synthesizer. Similar to “The Eraser” closer “Cymbal Rush,” the track is an adrenaline rush of sounds. It is emotive. There is

an underlying loneliness in the way he repeats “To run amok, run amok.” For a line so chaotic, so playful, Yorke chants it so quietly and meekly that it’s maddening.

The politeness of Yorke provides a blanket to the chaos of the record, humanizing its electronic elements and grounding the cacophony.

3 out of 5 Beyonces Favorite tracks: “Unless,” “Amok”

XL Recordings

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PIPE DREAM

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Even the Fraternity and Sorority Coalition recognized that the University needs to do more to incentivize campus recognition. And therein lies a mutual problem. The fraternities and sororities don’t want to have to follow every University regulation; the University must go easy in order to avoid seeming overbearing.

Right now, the University makes threats of de-chartering to keep the organizations in line. While we should point out that without a charter many of the aspects of Greek Life that its members tout as advantages of the organizations — philanthropy, community service, brotherhood and alumni connections — no longer exist, according to the coalition’s report at least, many organizations think that getting de-chartered is a good thing. After all, they would finally be able to do whatever they

wanted with little fear of repercussions.

But what if Binghamton took a page out of the playbooks of many other universities and built a “frat row?”

They could do it Downtown — a pipe dream, we know — which would establish a larger University presence and help revitalize the area. Binghamton’s New York State University Police would have jurisdiction over that block, providing the University with greater oversight. It would be safer for students seeking out parties, too, since they would all be in close proximity and out of the way of the sketchier parts of Binghamton.

Members of Greek Life would finally feel that they have a place at this University, and the school would have the credible threat of taking away an organization’s house because of policy violations, which, for at least some

organizations, would be a more effective punishment than simply taking away recognition.

This project would cost money, though. We expect that some of the national organizations would be more than happy to step in to improve their visibility, recognition and prestige on this campus. The University could also charge rent, and like the dormitories, the project should be required to be revenue neutral.

We should also point out that some organizations may not be willing to move into this safer and more legitimate housing and there is no way for the University to build enough housing for the 50+ recognized Greek organizations. This could create controversies in terms of allotment. But hey, while they’re at it, we wouldn’t mind a Pipe Dream house.

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One of the celebrations specific to Binghamton is Parade Day. This annual precursor to St. Patrick’s Day comes shortly after the Lunar New Year.

Commonly called “Chinese New Year” despite being celebrated by people all across Asia and the Asian diasporas, the Lunar New Year is a 15-day opportunity to spend time with family and friends, eat, set off fireworks and party.

Aside from the economic ramifications of having workers leave factories for a week in order to celebrate, it’s impossible not to have a good time. Even if you’re about as Asian as a pint of Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day, you can still enjoy Lunar New Year celebrations.

It’s no secret that Western culture has been bleeding into Asia. With the amount of traffic between the two, it’d be surprising not to find KFC and McDonald’s sharing street space with more traditional restaurants, or to hear the latest synthesized Western pop star blaring from radios in shops and

taxis. Going to be in Taiwan when a highly anticipated Hollywood movie comes out?

No problem — you won’t have to look far before finding a theater playing it in English with subtitles.

Holidays like Christmas and Valentine’s Day have made their way into the consciousness of a younger generation. In South Korea, 31.6 percent of the population identifies as Christian, an arguably Westernized religion. Enormous billboards in Hong Kong advertise expensive Swiss watches to their nouveau riche Chinese audience. The logos of famous French and Italian fashion designers like Louis Vuitton and Gucci decorate the exteriors of highend department stores.

At the same time, the cultural sharing is also moving the other way. This movement isn’t confined to eateries of Panda III’s caliber, coffee shop screenwriters who claim to adhere to the principles of Buddhism, Daoism or a niche Asian religion you probably haven’t heard of, or that guy who has watched every episode of “Bleach,” throws “kawaii” into every other sentence and dreams of shy schoolgirls.

The recent popularity of “Gangnam Style” and Korean TV dramas (make a date with Hulu and try not to get sucked into the sobbing, screaming and delicious intrigue) can be taken as proof of the marketability of Asian cultural goods in the

American marketplace. Why should this be surprising? In 2009, 2,600,150 people reported that they spoke a form of Chinese at home, making it the third largest language in the United States after English and Spanish or Spanish Creole. With 4.43 percent of the population identifying as “Asian,” it is one of the U.S.’s most prominent minorities.

any instance of an ancestor even setting foot in Ireland — is Irish.

To expect everyone to pretend to be Asian for one day is unreasonable and probably unintentionally insulting on some level. Still, that doesn’t mean we can’t take the opportunity to wish our friends and family well, engage in some adventurous eating, watch a lion dance or marvel at the Lantern Festival that marks the end of the celebratory period. You don’t even have to go to Asia to get a taste of the fun. Part of the beauty of America is that you can at least get an idea of what something’s like if you look in the right places.

You can enjoy the different Asian cultures without turning the experience into “Eat, Pray, Love” either. At the bottom of it all, we’re all people trying to get through each day and looking forward to whatever little happiness dangles before us.

The Year of the Horse begins on January 31, 2014. If you have the opportunity, if you think of it, call your parents and wish them Compare that with how many people a happy Chinese New Year. They might be in the United States are actually Irish and a little confused, but hey, only as much as not “Irish/English/German/Italian, but my you would be if you actually thought about family’s been here for eight generations.” how many people will be wearing “Kiss Me, Even with the typical American I’m Irish” shirts next week. multinational identity, we make time for the revelries of St. Patrick’s Day. For one — Chantal Berendsen is a senior day, everyone — even the people who can double-majoring in German and political trace their lineage back to 1700 without science.

The continued conundrum of consciousness If one were to take a walk around the philosophy department, it would not be long until one would hear a conversation on consciousness resonating through the bleak, narrow, linoleum halls.

In my ideal America, we’d all be tree-hugging, granolacrunchin’ environmentalists living in log cabins powered by solar panels. Every child would have a deep reverence for nature. We would not view nature as a separate entity, but seek out our own place in it, aware of the impact our species has on the greater ecosystem.

We wouldn’t make our choices based on fleeting impulses toward greed. We would care for the environment because of a deep connection to it.

Unfortunately for me and my tree-huggin’ compatriots, most people have their heads up their arses. I recall a conversation with a fellow SUNY student.

She told me that she didn’t like nature. It was something to be feared. In her words, “It’s waiting to **** us over.” For this reason, she likes to remain indoors most of the time.

Young people are dissociated from the natural world.

Most appeals centered on the intrinsic value of the environment fail miserably.

The ecological disasters on the horizon demand a more pragmatic approach. How do we convince a nation dependent on overconsumption of resources to start caring?

Fear. We fear-monger until aggressive action is taken. This fear cannot be centered on destruction of the environment, but instead on economic collapse. We need to frame this in an apocalyptic light. Peak oil is perhaps the best bet in chilling Americans out of their cocoons.

Peak oil is the point at which maximum petroleum is extracted and the world sets into decline.

Our infrastructure is based on these finite resources. Most of our goods are manufactured with petroleum (like plastic).

If we reach this point without

a strong contingency plan based on renewable energy, we won’t have the resources to implement large-scale changes.

Society as we know it will collapse.

At this point we introduce the element of fear in regards to our biggest rival and financier, China. Nothing boils the blood of ignorant Americans like threats to our dominance. For all its faults, China is preparing for peak oil. While continuing to accrue new sources of natural gas and oil to fuel its existing infrastructure, China has developed effective solar and wind technology. Their solar panels are so effective, the United States set tariffs on their import!

By 2015, 9.5 percent of China’s energy portfolio will be renewable resources. While China can easily make these changes because it operates much like a giant corporation, our democracy is overrun with Big Oil lobbyists. Maximum extraction is beneficial to these interests. Large portions of the general public must express their discontent with detrimental policies like these or the United States will continue to dig its own grave.

throne and an overall sense that we are separate from nature. Our intellect seems to have surpassed our physiology, and we have become fascinated by ourselves in a bizarre meta-cognitive way. Can you think of another animal that sits in perplexity while pondering why it does what it does?

Humans have evolved into confused paradoxes.

Consciousness, especially to the degree seen among humans, is understood by many evolutionary scientists as the result of group interactions over millions of years. It’s a feedback mechanism that Most people tend not to dwell on this allows for effective maneuvering in a concept, as it seems rather intuitive. We hostile and resource-tight environment, exist, we experience and it’s all pretty as well as communication with other straightforward, right? Well, maybe not. group members.

It’s easy to get caught up trying to explain the things that we experience, but now let’s shift focus to the very mechanism that is experience.

There is something perplexing about experience — a seemingly immaterial and intangible thing — being derived from matter, the same matter that the rest of the world is made up of. We share the subatomic makeup of the rest of the universe, but somehow we have an added component of awareness.

We can manipulate it quite clearly, with drugs and illusions and brain trauma.

There is a direct correlation between the physical integrity of the brain and the phenomenon that is consciousness.

As mentioned by neuroscientist David Consciousness is the most formidable Eagleman, consciousness not only plays a mystery the human race has ever known. very small role in one’s decision-making The very act of questioning it involves process (as there are much more powerful a bizarre recursiveness, where the very natural drives and instinctual wheelworks thing in question is the exact same present), but develops more among mechanism by which we are questioning. animals with an evolutionary history of It’s strange, and this strangeness has led residing in large groups. to rather bad conclusions.

Humans, as a species, are very unstable Through the mystery that is — look at the terrible things we have consciousness, along with generally been doing to ourselves and each other higher brainpower, humanity has felt for our entire existence. We are erratic exalted, profound, unique and complex in and neurotic creatures. Even on a micro the universe. This has led to the creation level, mental health is one of the most of gods that endow us with a universal prevalent plagues to mankind.

According to the National Institution of Mental Health, almost 50 percent of American adults will experience symptoms that warrant a mental health disorder diagnosis. That’s huge. Our heightened awareness does not always help us; it can frequently do the opposite.

It provides debilitating anguish and strife and the potential for painfully complex suffering on a scale unknown to most other life forms.

Consider some of the great creative minds of the past century: Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf and many more, not exclusive to writers and artists — all very conscious individuals, cognizant of their surrounding world. And they all committed suicide.

Consciousness is an enigma.

Just because it is so mysterious, however, should not imply an explanation beyond the physical universe.

Consciousness debates tend to push and try to break the limits of materialism, the idea that everything that exists is matter or energy or some interaction of the two.

Sure, we still don’t understand everything about consciousness, but how will we know when we do? Do we even know the right questions to ask?

As eloquently stated by astronomer Carl Sagan, “We are the universe experiencing itself.”

There will likely never be a complete explanation for consciousness or an exact mechanism understood for how it works, just like there will likely never be an uncontested explanation of the origin of the universe and the reason for existence altogether.

But consciousness does exist, and despite our inability to fully comprehend it, the process continues to operate seamlessly and uninterrupted.

— Mike Marinaccio is majoring in management.

a

senior

My final words of wisdom: you may be content to sit in a windowless room and play video games for the rest of your life, but if you don’t join the cadre of voices calling for sustainability, the lights might go off. Then you’ll be sitting in a dark room with no Internet connection and no friends.

That’ll be awkward.

— Molly McGrath is a sophomore majoring in political science.

After five semesters, there are still a couple of things about Binghamton that give me a hard time. I’ve learned to deal with the issues and take advantage of the challenges and opportunities they present.

The weather, for instance, is not one of our city’s strong points. I saw a tour group the other day shivering and struggling to stay dry under the Engineering Building overhang.

I empathize with that tour guide.

Pitching Binghamton in the rain, sleet and snow is a hard sell.

Still, there are unique opportunities our climate presents unavailable

in other locales. This semester I’m taking Skiing for credit. Every week I go to Greek Peak, just 45 minutes north, and get a few hours of a good skiing in on a modest-sized mountain.

It isn’t the Alps or Utah, but it’s a good time. And I’ll always have Skiing on my transcript as a part of my college experience. That’s pretty remarkable.

We may not develop tans or beach bods, the way our contemporaries at U-Miami might. But we’re tough.

If you can handle the Binghamton winter, you can do almost anything.

It’s been documented.

There are specific issues on campus, too. The general conduct and accommodations in the Glenn G. Bartle Library are in need of severe reform. When it’s 10 minutes before class and you desperately need to print your paper, there’s not a computer to be had. Why must students occupy precious Pods with inane things like playing Tetris and watching anime and

ESPN highlights?

If you are someone who does this, listen: your Pods habits are anxietyprovoking and endlessly infuriating for your peers. Can’t you watch “Dragon Ball Z” at home? The most likely reason people are going to the library is because they have work to do. Sure, you could technically use the computers there to play blackjack or shop for rain boots, but don’t you care about your peers at all?

I used to think that more computers would rectify this issue. But having a greater numbers of Pods stations, I now fear, would only lead to more of the same behavior. What’s needed is a general shift in perspective. The library, no matter how social a person you may be, isn’t a student union.

Hopefully the reopening of the Food Court in the New University Union next year will divert those students just looking to kill time.

Next: when you send something to print at the Pods, but it doesn’t get there soon enough, where does it go?

Realistically, I understand that in order not to get bogged down, the system needs to clear itself after 20 or 30 minutes. But, I also like to think that there’s a mysterious figure who lives in the shadows of the bookshelves and gets dibs on everyone’s printed items after a certain amount of time. It is this ghostly, library printing goblin who gets all our PDFs, term papers

and review sheets when we don’t print them soon enough.

Also, who rings the bell from the top of the Library Tower? Again, I understand that this is most likely computerized, but what if this mysterious Quasimodo is the same enigmatic figure who gets dibs on all our delayed printings? It could very well be the ghost of Glenn G. Bartle!

If there is a lesson here, I suppose it is to take advantage of the challenges life presents to you. Every challenge is either an opportunity for growth or creativity, depending on how you look at it. This shift in perspective opens great, otherwise unimaginable, doors.

Walk through them with me. Walk through them.

— Michael Snow is a junior majoring in philosophy.

RELEASE DATE– Saturday, April 4, 2009

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Spider-Man’s girl 9 “Candle in the Wind” dedicatee 15 French town at the foot of Mont Blanc 16 “That was exhausting!”

17 Red-handed 18 Ltr. opener 19 “Flowers for __”: Daniel Keyes sci-fi classic 21 Minute 22 Drifts on waves 25 Feline sign 26 Extended operatic solo 28 Like 29 Wear and tear, e.g.

32 Gold medals, in Guadalajara 33 Spaghetti western director Leone 35 Completeness 37 “Hawaii Five-O” order 39 Hedonist’s pursuit 41 Bursts 44 U. of Maryland athlete 45 One of numerous childhood spots?

47 Goddess of the dawn 48 Military operations centers 50 CBS forensic drama 51 Prelude to a deal 52 Not in favor: Abbr.

53 Peevish 57 Kind of number or clock 59 Communicate well with 63 Ability 64 Competitor’s payment 65 Music provider 66 Hangs around to see DOWN 1 Early 12th century year 2 Philip of “Kung Fu” 3 Stoolie

4 Jewish Community Center gps.

5 One of the Coen brothers 6 “I hate to be __, but ...”: complaint opening 7 With grace 8 “Outside the box” solutions 9 Prom coach 10 Words of agreement 11 Sound units, briefly 12 Post-Katrina retail sign, perhaps 13 Are afraid to 14 “Piece of cake!”

20 Incessantly 22 __-relief 23 Arena cheer 24 Familiar redwhite-and-blue symbol 27 Latin horn 29 Mexico’s San Juan and Conchos, e.g.

30 Nonsense 31 French-Swiss author Madame de __ 34 Lose it

36 Concerning 38 Put up 39 Mosquito Fleet craft 40 Was enthusiastic about 42 Moppet 43 Vane dir.

46 Like some partners 49 Gumption 51 Some partners: Abbr.

54 __-1: “Ghostbusters” vehicle 55 Resort near Snowbird 56 Not 58 Debussy subject 60 Reason for a repeat?

61 Auto racer Fabi 62 Anthem preposition

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

xwordeditor@aol.com

By Robert A. Doll (c)2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

04/04/09

04/04/09

RESEARCH DAYS | APRIL 17-19

Call for student posters & displays

Research Days offer a chance for undergraduate and graduate students from all academic disciplines to showcase their research and scholarly and creative work.

All formats are welcome including posters, displays, slide presentations and video.

Student work will be displayed at one of two separate sessions in the Mandela Room on Friday, April 19: one at 11 a.m. and one at 2 p.m.

National Public Radio science correspondent Shankar Vedantam will be the keynote speaker.

April 17, 7:30 p.m.

University Union Mandela Room

To submit a poster or presentation — and to learn more about Research Days — visit go.binghamton.edu/researchdays.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE:

MARCH 22

Questions? Contact Rachel Coker at rcoker@binghamton.edu.

Sponsored by Academic Affairs, Division of Research, McNair Scholars Program, Undergraduate Research Center

“Last year’s Research Days poster session was very impressive and gave me a great chance to learn more about the research going on in other departments at Binghamton.” — Connor Kinslow, junior, biochemistry major

The Binghamton women’s lacrosse team opened its 2013 campaign under interim head coach Stephanie Allen Sunday afternoon with a 10-5 loss to St. Francis (Pa.).

The Bearcats surrendered nine goals in the first half while scoring only three of their own, two of which came from senior midfielder Katherine Hunsberger and one from fellow senior midfielder Casey Bulman. Senior attack Kimberly McGeever and sophomore midfielder Renee Kiviat also chipped in during the first frame with an assist each.

Snowy weather conditions that had pushed the originally slated Saturday start to Sunday played a factor early on in the contest. ”In the first half, we really let the elements and conditions affect us and throw us off our game on defense,” Allen said.

The Bearcats had trouble containing St. Francis freshman attack Olivia Pittman, who tallied four first-half goals and helped her team to a 9-3 lead at the break.

“In the first half we let [Pittman] get too much space and use her ability to score,” Allen said. “The second half was definitely more of a team effort to adjust to successfully stop her.”

The Bearcats not only

stopped Pittman in the second half, but also managed to slow down the entire St. Francis offense, giving up one early goal before shutting out their opponents for the remaining 28 minutes of play. ”In the second half, the defense came together in a total team effort and played much better to hold them,” Allen said.

The Bearcats received their two second-half goals from junior transfer attack Angela Vespa and senior midfielder Kristen Stone. Vespa and Stone combined with Bulman and Hunsburger to produce the five Binghamton goals of the game. ”I was pleased with the four goal-scorers we had, but I definitely would have liked seeing more players step up on the offense,” Allen said.

The Bearcats offense produced 10 shots on goal and 18 total shots to St. Francis’ 21 total shots with 15 on goal. In the second half, however, BU held St. Francis to just three total shots.

The Bearcats faltered in clearing the ball throughout the game, though, as they had only one successful clear, compared to St. Francis’ 11.

BU sophomore goaltender Kara Pafumi started the game in net and recorded four saves.

“Kara made some good saves in the first half, but the defense wasn’t doing well enough after the saves to stop them from scoring,” Allen said.

Freshman goalie Erin McNulty, the program’s

File Photo

Senior Kimberly McGeever recorded an assist in the first half, but Binghamton couldn’t keep pace with St. Francis’ nine first-period goals.

highest-ranked recruit of all time, made her Binghamton debut in the second half, recording one save of her own.

Allen said both goalies will spend a decent amount of time in the net going forward. Who will receive the start going forward, she said, “is going to be [decided] game by game depending on our opponent.”

The Bearcats are scheduled to host their home opener on

Wednesday against Lehigh, when they will look to avenge last season’s 17-10 loss to the Mountainhawks.

“We’re looking forward to our home opener … and getting back to our style of play,” Allen said.

Face-off is set for 4 p.m. at the Bearcats Sports Complex.

W. Lacrosse @ St. Francis

5

10

Binghamton splits at JMU Binghamton baseball started off its regular season and non-conference schedule with a split four-game series at James Madison. A rainout on Friday forced the teams to play doubleheaders on back-to-back days, and while the Bearcat offense was in full force for the first games of each day, it was nowhere to be found in the nightcaps.

Binghamton’s 8-4 victory on Saturday was headed by a 4-for-4 performance from junior second baseman Daniel Nevares.

His stat line comprised three doubles, two runs scored and two runs batted in.

A two-run home run by senior first baseman Jordon Smucker gave BU (2-2) an early four-run first-inning lead, which they would not relinquish.

James Madison (2-5) fought back with a pair of two-run efforts in the second and third innings but was held scoreless for the remainder of the game.

The Bearcats added two runs in the fourth inning on a ground out by junior infielder Brian Ruby and a Nevares double. Senior starter Jake Lambert allowed four runs over five innings, capturing his first victory of the year.

In the 9-1 loss in the second game of Saturday’s twin bill, the Bearcats scored their only run on a first-inning RBI double by Nevares, one of his two hits in the contest.

Binghamton senior pitcher Jay Lynch lasted just 3.1 innings, giving up six runs, four of which were earned.

Sunday’s doubleheader posted a nearly identical result to Saturday’s: a Binghamton victory in the first game and a loss in the second.

Junior Jack Rogalla threw five shutout innings in BU’s

Men's tennis falls at No. 46 Columbia

By Alisha Ogbewele | Contributing Writer With just one individual win, the Binghamton men’s tennis team fell to No. 46 Columbia 6-1 Saturday afternoon at the Dick Savitt Tennis Center.

Binghamton freshman Sid Hazarika improved his record to 7-1 after a 5-7, 6-3, 1-0 (10) singles match victory against the Lions sophomore Ashok Narayana, giving the Bearcats their only point.

Narayana, according to BU head coach Adam Cohen, is among the top 10 in the region.

Binghamton freshman Alexander Maisin also had a back-and-forth duel in his singles match, but fell short to the Lions freshman Dragos Ignat in three sets, 2-6, 6-3, 6-4. “[Maisin is] gaining some confidence that he can play with most of the guys that we’re competing against,” Cohen said. “He’s pretty high in the lineup, which isn’t easy for a freshman, but he’s been asked to do it thus far, and he’s done a

decent job for us.”

BU senior Bastian Bornkessel and sophomore Ismael Dinia almost pulled off an upset over the No. 20-ranked doubles duo in the nation. Up 7-3 against Narayana and sophomore Max Schnur, Bornkessel and Dinia were one match-point away from securing a win. But the Lions strung together five straight points to win 8-7.

“I thought we had good energy,” Cohen said.

“Guys are learning to play with each other. It’s a bit unfortunate not to get the result that we wanted.”

Overall, Cohen said he liked the way his team competed, but was not happy with the shot selections. He added that his team needs to get better at doubles matches and become more efficient around the net.

Binghamton is scheduled to face Cornell at 1 p.m. on March 3 at the Reis Tennis Center.

Tashiro notches two wins, garners Binghamton's lone point in loss to Buffalo

By Megan Brockett | Sports Editor Jonathan Heisler/Photo Editor

The Bearcats scored 13 runs in two wins against James Madison this weekend, but the offense produced just two runs in two defeats.

5-1 Sunday opener. Senior designated hitter Bijan Mangouri went 3-for-3 and Smucker blasted a three-run home run, his second roundtripper in two days.

BU sophomore Greg Ostner pitched the final two frames in relief to capture his first save of the season.

Later that day, the Bearcats fell 14-1 in the series finale as a four-run first inning and a nine-run third inning by the Dukes proved to be too much to overcome.

In the game-changing third inning, the Dukes strung together eight hits and were aided by an error and a passed ball. JMU senior outfielder

BU @ James Madison Game 1: Game 2: Game 3: Game 4:

BEARCAT BRIEFS

W L W L

8-4 9-1 5-1 14-1

Cole McInturff and sophomore infielder Chad Carroll delivered a pair of three-run home runs, the latter coming with two outs.

The only BU run came on a Mangouri double, which was one of three total hits for the team.

Junior pitchers Mike Meleski and Mark Palumbo struggled, surrendering a combined 13 runs, 11 of which were earned, over four innings.

Freshman Jake Cryts, senior Joe Swindells and sophomore Mike Urbanski provided four relief innings of one-run ball, but the Binghamton offense couldn’t cut into the deficit.

Meleski picked up the loss.

Over the course of the fourgame series, Nevares batted .500, going 8-for-16, and Smucker delivered six RBI and two home runs. Sophomore outfielder/catcher Jake Thomas had four hits.

The Bearcats are set to play the Virginia Military Institute in a four-game series from March 1-3. Game 1 is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Friday at Gray-Minor Stadium.

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The Binghamton women’s tennis team dropped to 3-6 on the season with a 6-1 road loss to Buffalo on Sunday.

The Bulls (6-0) took seven of nine matches from Binghamton to preserve their perfect dual record.

In doubles play, the freshmen tandem of Shea Brodsky and Alexis Tashiro edged out an 8-7 win for the Bearcats, but Buffalo took the remaining two matches to earn the point.

Things continued to lean in the Bulls’ favor in singles play, as Binghamton freshman Sara Kohtz and sophomore Katherine Medianik dropped

quickly in straight sets.

Tashiro then picked up her second victory of the day, a 6-1, 6-3 win to hand Binghamton its lone point of the day.

In the remaining three matches, Brodsky, freshman Agatha Ambrozy and sophomore Missy Edelblum went down in straight sets.

The Bearcats are set to return to action against No. 74 Harvard at 1 p.m. Saturday at Beren Tennis Center. Binghamton is scheduled to continue the road trip with a 12:30 p.m. match on Sunday against UMass Amherst at Mullins Tennis Courts.

BU squanders halftime lead as UNH catches fire from deep

Freshman guard Jordan Reed earned America East Rookie of the Week Honors for the sixth time this season after posting 24 points, 16 rebounds and five assists against New Hampshire.

The Binghamton men’s basketball team had its foot on the gas until midway through the second half, when five consecutive 3-pointers

by New Hampshire secured the Wildcats’ 68-56 win over the Bearcats at Lundholm Gymnasium Saturday evening.

While Binghamton (3-24, 1-13 America East) outscored New Hampshire 34-26 in the first, the Wildcats (8-18, 4-10 AE) overwhelmed BU in the second, 42-22.

In their previous matchup on Jan. 26, UNH had no trouble with the Bearcats at the Events Center, winning comfortably 63-45.

“We were dominated by New Hampshire when they came here a month ago,” Binghamton head coach Tommy Dempsey said. “This time around, I thought we went out and fought really hard and played good basketball. Unfortunately, the game got away from us a little bit in the second half, but I thought we played well.”

Binghamton maintained control through the first 10 minutes of the second half until the Wildcats got to within three points with 9:39 to play. From there, New Hampshire junior forward Patrick Konan knocked down three 3-pointers in a span of 1:22 before junior guard Scott Morris followed suit with two consecutive treys of his own in a 47-second span. When the dust cleared, the Bearcats found themselves down 57-46 with 5:38 left.

“They were all tough shots,” Dempsey said. “Four of the five were contested threes. To New

team end its five-game losing streak with a 55-42 win over New Hampshire Saturday at Lundholm Gymnasium.

Good defense and a timely Despite shooting just 33.3 offensive attack helped the percent for the game, the Binghamton women’s basketball Bearcats (5-22, 4-10 America

The Wildcats attempted a comeback by cutting the deficit to five with a 3-pointer from senior guard Cari Reed. But Swain kept New Hampshire at bay, scoring six points in the final minutes to secure the win

Jonathan Heisler/Photo Editor

Jonathan Heisler/Photo Editor

Though Binghamton shot just 33.3 percent from the floor, its defense held New Hampshire to 22.8 percent shooting in Saturday’s 55-42 win.

East) held the Wildcats (1016, 5-9 AE) to a 22.8 percent shooting mark.

BU head coach Nicole Scholl said her team did a good job containing two of the Wildcats’ best offensive players, senior forward Morgan Frame and sophomore Kaylee Kilpatrick.

“I thought from start to finish overall we had a really good defensive focus,” she said.

“We did a nice job on their two starting post players. I [think] they combined for 2-of-18 from the floor. So I thought that was a real big key for us.”

Frame and Kilpatrick scored only four and two points, respectively, for the Wildcats, who saw their three-game home winning steak come to an end.

Both teams struggled to find their grooves offensively in the first half, combining to score 22 points midway through the period. Up by one in the closing seconds, Binghamton extended its lead to three by halftime after freshman guard Kim Albrecht connected on a pair of free throws.

BU senior forward Kara Elofson, who was held scoreless in the first half, scored four of her 10 points in the opening minutes of the second to push the Bearcats’ lead to 24-17. BU led by as many as 11 points at the 5:44 mark thanks to a 10-0 run in which senior guard Mallory Lawes and junior guard Jasbriell Swain accounted for five of the team’s 10 points.

Hampshire’s credit, they made them, and they made them all in a two-minute stretch. That was the key stretch of the game. It was more a credit to what they did than anything we didn’t do.”

Though the Wildcats got the better of the Bearcats in the second half, Dempsey was able to draw a lot of positives from his team’s play in the first half.

Binghamton shot 54 percent from the field in the opening 20 minutes while holding its opponent to 35 percent.

“I think we played with really good emotion [in the first half],” Dempsey said. “We shot the ball well and played really good defense. New Hampshire struggled a little against our press and zone in the first half and that allowed us to get out and score some points. They played much better against the zone in the second half, and I thought that was more the key to the game than anything.”

The loss overshadowed another impressive night for Binghamton freshman Jordan Reed. The 6-foot-4 guard posted game-highs of 24 points and 16 rebounds, in addition to five assists, and continues to lead the America East in both points and rebounds per game with 16.8 and 9.5, respectively.

Reed’s performance also helped

him garner America East Rookie of the Week Honors for the sixth time this season.

BU junior forward Brian Freeman posted 14 points to go along with six boards, while senior guard Jimmy Gray added 10 points.

Thursday night at the Events Center will be Senior Night, the last home game for this year’s graduating players.

BU is scheduled to take on Vermont, which boasts a 10-4 conference record and an 18-9 overall record. The Catamounts currently sit in third place in the conference standings, behind Stony Brook and Boston University.

Binghamton snapped its winless drought last season with a home win over Vermont in game No. 27.

“I’m expecting a real spirited effort from our team,” Dempsey said. “Not only from the seniors but from the other players who will be playing to honor their seniors. Senior Day is always an emotional game. I hope we can create a great atmosphere for the seniors and hopefully give a real spirited performance against a very good Vermont team.”

Tipoff is set for 7 p.m.

Men's basketball @ UNH

56

a respectable 73.1 percent (19for-26) at the charity stripe, while New Hampshire shot 65 percent.

Binghamton also outrebounded the Wildcats 4238.

Scholl said she was happy that her team finally came out on top to end the losing stretch but believes the team must remain focused in order to finish the season strong.

“I think it’s a confidence booster for us,” she said. “I felt like we needed that taste of having a win again tonight.”

However, Scholl added that this win cannot distract her team as it prepares for its next opponent.

“We are continuing to focus one game at a time,” she said, ”so enjoy this win right now, but our next focus has to be Vermont.”

Binghamton is scheduled — Nicole Scholl BU head coach to play its last regular season road game Wednesday against for BU. the Catamounts. In the last Swain recorded yet another meeting between the two teams double-double, the twelfth of her career, with 11 points and 12 rebounds. Lawes also scored 11 and shot 3-of-4 from 3-point range. Elofson added 10 points.

Reed paced the Wildcats with a game-high 13 points. Junior guard Kelsey Hogan chipped in with 12 points.

In terms of free throw shooting, which was a trouble spot for BU against Maine and 55 Stony Brook, the Bearcats shot

68

on Jan. 16, Vermont edged past the Bearcats 61-56 at the Events Center.

UVM sophomore forward Niki Taylor and senior forward Annie Wheeler each scored 14 points and grabbed seven rebounds in that game, while BU sophomore forward Sherae Swinson led all scorers with a career-high 25 points.

Opening tip is set for 7 p.m. at Patrick Gymnasium.

BU @ Vermont Date: Feb. 27 Location: Patrick Gymnasium Time: 7 p.m.

Women's basketball @ UNH

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SPORTS

BU snaps losing skid Page 19

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Seniors hope to have left legacy

Javon Ralling is averaging 3.9 points and 3.3 rebounds per game, and has a pair of 10-point outings this season.

Jimmy Gray leads the America East with 36.3 minutes per game. His 10.4 points per game ranks second on the Bearcats.

Boston University’s D.J. Irving called Mike Horn “the best guy that’s guarded me” in the America East.

Taylor Johnston has buried 71 3-pointers as a Bearcat, and he scored a career-high 22 points on Jan. 7.

In sports leagues across the country, coaches often preach the idea that winning isn’t everything.

There’s more to a game, a series or a season than the record.

And while Binghamton’s senior class of Jimmy Gray, Taylor Johnston, Javon Ralling and Mike Horn would have liked to win more games, they know they’ve helped set the cultural foundation for a basketball program hoping to emerge from the sport’s purgatory.

Tommy Dempsey was the man hired last May to revitalize Binghamton basketball. It was a tall task, given the team’s struggles in the wake of the 2009 scandal. But the head coach said the senior class’ “character” has made his job easier, as they adopted his principles with alacrity.

“Anytime you’re trying to build a program, it starts with the character of the kids that are in the program,

and I inherited some really good kids,” Dempsey said. “I’ve enjoyed coaching them in their senior year.”

Just the fact that each of the seniors, save Johnston, walked onto the team as a freshman speaks to the group’s attitude. The players are determined, focused; they have learned to persevere through their days at the end of the bench.

In Ralling’s opinion, the lack of playing time in 2009-10 was expected; even amidst the scandal, the Bearcats returned several players from the 2009 America East Championship team.

Horn, on the other hand, took a hiatus after his freshmen year to decide how badly he wanted to play Division I basketball — he had seen just five minutes of action.

“I definitely needed the year off to see if I really wanted to do this again, get into Division I shape, lift a lot,” Horn said. “And I made a dramatic improvement on my body.”

Horn ultimately elected to return to the Bearcats last year.

Both Horn and Ralling have had

an impact on the floor this season, each averaging 17 minutes per game.

For Gray and Johnston, playing time came sooner — they’ve been key players in the program since their sophomore seasons, with Gray captaining this year’s squad. Only 15 players in the entire nation play a higher percentage of their team’s minutes than Gray, according to www.kenpom.com.

Dempsey said Gray, a Binghamton native, has helped captivate the community’s attention despite the team’s recent struggles.

“I think it’s been really important from a standpoint of our community support and the way the community has stayed behind us to have a guy like Jimmy in the program,” Dempsey said. “He’s a real pillar of this community.”

Gray added that playing in front of his fellow Binghamton natives has been a general highlight of his career, especially because their support helped motivate him through the struggles.

“There’s been a lot of responsibility, but it’s been good because of the support,” Gray said.

“I have a lot of community support.

It’s good that I have a college right in my backyard.”

It’s a backyard that loves basketball, yet seldom breeds standout talent. It did, however, produce King Rice, the 1987 McDonald’s High School AllAmerican who played his college ball for Dean Smith and North Carolina. Back in December, Rice returned to Binghamton as the head coach of Monmouth and said he was proud of Gray for proving the doubters wrong.

“When he decided to come [to Binghamton], people were like, ‘Oh, what’s he doing?’ And sometimes when you’re from a small town, a lot of people doubt you,” the Binghamton High School alum said after his Hawks defeated the Bearcats. “But Jimmy had a dream he was a Division I basketball player. He just knew he was. And he’s a pretty doggone good one.”

Gray’s 10.4 points per game rank second on the team, and his play at the point has been crucial, as the Bearcat offense frequently sputters out of control without him on the

floor.

He has ascended from afterthought to game-changer.

While the other seniors are not necessarily focal points of opponents’ scouting reports, they all have specific, important roles within the team.

Johnston carries a 36.2 percent 3-point percentage into his final home game, and he is, unofficially, one of America East’s deadliest shooters from the corner. He also pours his heart and soul into competing.

“Taylor’s one of those guys that wants to do well so bad that it can

almost cripple him at some times,” Dempsey said. “But it’s only because he cares so much and it’s only because it’s really important to him to help the team.”

Ralling, as Dempsey said, has “quietly had a pretty good year. He plays to his strengths, he competes, he’s been a good leader for us.”

And Horn has the unique role of pressuring the opposing point guard all the way up the floor.

“I play 94 feet the entire way,” Horn said. “Am I tired? Yeah, but, mentally, I have to just realize if I want to play this is

what I have to do, and I love it.”

“You want the best that every kid has to offer,” Dempsey said, “and I know coming in here every day to practice and every night in the games I get everything [Horn’s] got.

That’s why I’ve given him such a strong role on this team.”

As a group, Dempsey said the seniors have given their all, leading the team on and off the court without making any excuses.

“It’s been as enjoyable as a season with this many losses can be — just because of how good I feel about these guys,” he said.

Eventually, victories will outnumber defeats as Dempsey continues to rebuild the program.

This year’s seniors won’t win those games on the floor, but they’ll be credited with the assist as they helped set a winning tone for a team accustomed to losing.

“As each year goes,” Horn said, “I hope in the next couple of years when Binghamton’s on the rise — because I think they’re already going to be on the rise next year — that they can say this year really changed the culture.”

Junior midfielder Mike Antinozzi’s eighth career hat trick was not enough for the Binghamton men’s lacrosse team as it dropped its season opener to Siena 9-8 on Saturday at Siena Turf Field. The Saints (1-2) took control in the second half of the game, scoring four goals in the final 30 minutes of regulation to secure the come-from-behind victory.

The Bearcats (0-1) raced off to an impressive start, led by scores from sophomore attack Tucker Nelson and senior midfielder Shane Warner.

Nelson’s goal, two minutes into the game, came right before Warner’s face-off win and score 15 seconds later to give BU a 2-0 lead.

Antinozzi followed suit with two unassisted goals of his own, giving the Bearcats a commanding 4-0 lead late in the first period.

“We expect him to [be] very

good, like last year, and we expect him to keep improving,” BU head coach Scott Nelson said about Antinozzi. “He played well on Saturday.”

Siena finally responded with a pair of quick goals late in the first quarter to trim the Bearcats’ lead to two. But, with Tucker Nelson assisting, the Bearcats responded with a goal from senior midfielder Tyler Perrelle to end the quarter with Binghamton leading 5-2.

Siena stormed back in the second quarter, netting a total of three goals. But the Bearcats responded well to Siena’s aggressive style, with junior attack Matt Springer and Perrelle each recording a goal. Binghamton capped the first half with a strong defensive showing, led by junior goalie Max Schefler, who saved seven shots in goal to assure BU’s 7-5 halftime lead.

The Saints opened the second half with a pair of goals from junior attack Colin Clive, and the Bearcats

struggled to replicate their dominating first-half performance, as their offense was held scoreless for the entire third period. Clive’s goal with only 45 seconds left in the period, his third score of the game, tied the contest at 7-7 heading into the fourth quarter.

Siena built upon its run early in the fourth quarter, scoring three minutes in to take the lead.

Binghamton’s cold offense finally responded as Springer netted his 60th career goal to knot the score at eight, ending a nearly 20-minute drought for the Bearcats offense.

But the Saints took the deciding 9-8 lead later in the fourth off a goal from redshirt junior midfielder Kyle Curry. Defensively, the Bearcats stayed in the game as Schefler recorded 13 saves in his debut, but the contest slipped Jonathan Heisler/Photo Editor away from them as they failed to Mike Antinozzi tallied three goals, but Siena spoiled Binghamton’s season opener with a 9-8 comeback victory. capitalize on a turnover forced by junior defender Garrett Augustyn aggressive enough in the second and we just took some bad shots in No. 5 Cornell at 4 p.m. today at with nine seconds left on the clock. half,” Nelson said. “I think we had the second half.”

Schoellkopf Field.

“I don’t think we were a lot of great looks in the first half, The Bearcats are set to play

Photos by Jonathan Heisler/Photo Editor