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UOSA candidates go unchallenged • Seats have been garnering increasingly less attention over the past few years CADIE THOMPSON The Oklahoma Daily This year’s UOSA elections will leave four districts unrepresented and no contest for 13 districts and several key positions, including UOSA President and Vice President. Out of 14 districts, only one is con-

tested for Student Congress, allowing for 17 students to be automatically appointed as their district’s representatives. The business district is the only district with more candidates than seats. There are seven seats available and nine students running. The districts with no students running include the arts, architecture, continuing education, and earth and energy districts. Matt Burris, public relations chair for Student Congress, said despite Student Congress’ efforts to engage the student body, participation remains sparse. “This is probably the lowest point I’ve seen in getting students involved,” said Burris, public relations senior. “Students just don’t seem to care about campus issues.”

CAMPUS NEWS Smoking and illegal drug bills passed by graduate senate

He pointed out that student apathy could be behind the lack of participation and student involvement. Matt Gress, political science junior and social science representative, said during the last two and a half years he has been involved in UOSA, he has seen a continual decline in students running for Student Congress seats. He said he has run against as many as 12 people in past elections, but that’s not the case this year. Even districts that have historically been heavily contested, like the social science and the University College district, are going uncontested. “Usually, the social sciences district is packed full of students wanting to get involved in the elections,” Gress said. “But participation from social sciences is not going up for

this election.” There are five open seats for the social science district and only four people are running. Raymond Rushing, UOSA election chair, said he’s also seen a drop in student body involvement. “University College used to be a force to reckon with,” he said. “You used to have to go to them to get anything done.” Districts have been reorganized and now a smaller number of seats are allocated to University College, so the district doesn’t have the same political pull it once had. Two people are running for the four available seats in the University College district, even with the reorganization.

Sooners finish strong

WHAT’S INSIDE

Students have a new way to unwind. Page 3A.

LIFE & ARTS Know what you’re going to watch this week? Check out page 5B for our guide of what’s on TV. “Slumdog Millionaire” captured the hearts of everyone who saw it. Except for one. The Daily’s Tyler Branson shares his ‘Slumdog’ experience. Page 3B. “Watchmen” debuted this weekend, raking in $55 million at the box office. Check out The Daily’s review on page 5B.

Photos by Amy Frost/ The Daily

ABOVE: Blake Griffin, sophomore forward, dunks during against Oklahoma State Saturday. The Sooners beat the Cowboys 82-78 for their fifth straight Bedlam win. LEFT: Senior center Courtney Paris avoids Nicky Wieben during a game against Iowa State Wednesday. Griffin and Paris, both contenders for national awards, played what are expected to be their last regular-season games this weekend. Paris is graduating and Griffin is expected to enter the NBA draft.

SPORTS The softball team played in Oklahoma City this weekend with a chance to show its prowess against two top teams. The Sooners failed to do so, however, finishing 1-3 on the weekend. Page 2B. The baseball team hosted UCLA this weekend and was able to get a three-game sweep against the Bruins. Page 2B. The women’s basketball team finished off the regular season with a 74-62 win over the Longhorns and holds the No. 1 seed heading into the Big 12 tournament. Page 1B.

TODAY’S INDEX

TODAY

LOW 56° HIGH 72°

30%

TUESDAY LOW 65° HIGH 76° 30% Source: Oklahoma Weather Lab

CANDIDATES

Business

Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Engineering

Education

Social Sciences

Communications

University College

Humanities

International and Area Studies

Arts

Architecture

Earth and Energy

Continuing Education

TOTAL UNCONTESTED SEATS:

Source: Raymond Rushing, UOSA election chairman

Mexico’s border violence could spoil travel plans

JAMIE HUGHES The Oklahoma Daily

OU is famous! Read about OU’s YouTube channel on page 3A.

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• Tourist destinations do not see spike in street violence

-CADIE THOMPSON/THE DAILY

News 3A, 5A, 6A Opinion 4A Police Reports 6B Sports 1B, 2B Sudoku 4B

DEPARTMENT

UOSA Continues on page 2A

The Graduate Student Senate approved a bill Sunday evening that will place a referendum on the UOSA election ballot regarding tightening smoking restrictions on the Norman campus. The referendum asks the student body if it prefers a complete ban on smoking, a partial ban or no further restriction. A bill that will place a referendum on the ballot that will ask the student body’s opinion about reforming the student code in relation to illegal drugs was also approved by the Graduate Senate. Student Congress will vote on the bill Tuesday night.

L&A 3B, 5B Campus Notes 6B Classifieds 4B 4B Crossword Horoscope 5B

2009 UOSA ELECTION NUMBERS

Students traveling to Mexico for spring break might be in for a rude, or even possibly violent, awakening. The U.S. Department of State issued a warning for citizens traveling to Mexico, stating violence in the country has increased recently and travelers should take extra precautions. Charles Kenney, political science professor, said many factors caused the increased violence, but that rivalries between drug cartels have received the most attention. Kenney, who lived in Peru and studies Latin American politics, said drug traffickers have been fighting for control of the U.S.-Mexican border for more than two decades. He said the Mexican government’s war on drugs inadvertently fuels the violence. “What we’re seeing is a result of anti-drug action,” Kenney said. If there was less government intervention, the violence would ease, but drug trafficking would go unchecked, he said.

Dangers to Americans While most of the violence is between drug cartels and the authorities, Americans have sometimes been caught in the crossfire, according to the State Department’s Web site.

SPRING BREAK SAFETY TIPS: • Register with the U.S. Embassy or Consulate. In case of an emergency, the U.S. government may be able to assist.

• Only use licensed and regulated “sitio” taxis. Criminals sometimes pose as unregulated taxi drivers while looking for victims to rob, kidnap or rape.

• Do not carry any weapons, even a pocket knife, into Mexico. This can lead to additional charges if arrested for another offense.

• Be cautious when renting vehicles, including jet skis and mopeds. Many items are not serviced and are in poor condition.

• Take warning flags on beaches seriously. Do not enter the water if red or black flags are posted. Strong undertow and rough surf are common on Mexican beaches. Source: U.S. Department of State

MEXICO Continues on page 2A

Dawkins presents ‘The Purpose of Purpose’ to packed house • House resolution did not hinder evolutionary biologist’s lecture JAMIE BIRDWELL The Oklahoma Daily Richard Dawkins was greeted with laughter, applause and one outburst that led to a security escort outside at his Friday night lecture at McCasland

Field House. Dawkins’ lecture, titled “The Purpose of Purpose,” drew thousands who waited in line for hours to see the author of the controversial bestselling books “The God Delusion” and “The Selfish Gene.” The event went smoothly except for an outburst from an angry audience member during the question and answer session. “You sir, are a fraud!” he yelled as security guards dressed in yellow escorted him outside. Dawkins opened by scoffing at a bill proposed in the state legislature that opposed Dawkins’ campus visit.

“I don’t mean to blow my own trumpet, but it isn’t everybody who is the subject of legislation in Oklahoma,” he said. House Resolution 1015 states Dawkins should not be allowed to speak on campus because his beliefs conflict with those of most Oklahomans. His speech focused on the difference between archeo purpose — derived from centuries of evolution — such as a bird’s tail which adapted to stabilize flight, and neo purpose — something designed to do something specific — such as a plane or a computer. Something has archeo purpose when it is the end result of generations

of gradual adaptation through natural selection while something with neo purpose was made usually by a creator at a specific time with a specific purpose. Dawkins said humans subvert archeo purpose and natural selection by adapting to needs that are not required for survival. Things like contraception, adoption and strict adherence to religion dilute the power of “survival of the fittest” among humans, he said. This separation from archeo purpose separates humanity from the ani-

DAWKINS Continues on page 2A

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News

Monday, March 9, 2009

Dawkins Continued from page 1A

mal world. After the lecture, Dawkins, an outspoken atheist, took questions from the audience, and the discussion quickly moved to more controversial topics like religion and morality. Around the world, moral standards are becoming more uniform and are actually more moral than in centuries past because advances in technology and communication have increased global accountability, Dawkins said. Students responded enthusiasti-

cally to the lecture. “He reaffirmed what I knew he was going to say and also what I believe,” said Ben Pawlowski, aerospace engineering junior. Other students left disappointed with Dawkins lecture. “It was a nice talk, but it wasn’t at the center of what he argues in his books,” said Megan Vance, mathematics junior. Dawkins will have a new book out in September called “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.”

Mexico Continued from page 1A

James Cornwell/ The Daily

Evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, speaks to an audience of more than 3,000 about the relationship between purpose and evolution on Friday evening in McCasland Field House.

Americans have gotten stuck in cities like Tijuana, Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juárez during skirmishes between cartels, police officers and army units. The alerts also state many U.S. citizens in Mexico have been kidnapped in recent years. While the alerts do not tell people to avoid the country completely, some students aren’t taking any chances. Rachel Dean, accounting senior, said she and her fiancé were planning to visit Cancun or Cozumel for their honeymoon in late May, but decided to stay in the U.S. after hearing about the violence. “I love being on the beach,” she said. “So I was a little disappointed, but it’ll be fun wherever we go.” She said a few of her friends still plan on going to Mexico for their honeymoons because they have already made reservations. Other students aren’t as worried. Adam Theissen, history sophomore, said he is going with a group of friends to Cancun for spring break and doesn’t think they’ll run into any problems. “[I’m not worried] one bit, but a bunch of people are,” he said. “If I’m in Cancun on a resort, I feel

safer.” He said some of his friends’ parents were worried about the recent violence and put their children’s plans on hold, leaving Theissen with a smaller group.

Spring break safety Kenney said the border violence shouldn’t affect students going to Mexico for spring break. “Most tourists, especially tourist destinations, are not affected very much,” he said. “90 percent of the violence is on the border.” He said some people don’t understand this because they don’t have enough context to understand the violence. “To assume the entire country [is increasingly violent] isn’t true,” Kenney said. “I wouldn’t advise someone to drive across the border tomorrow ... but it’s a different reality in tourist towns. If you go to Cancun, [the violence] is nothing to do with you.” He said there is always a possibility of crime in the classic spring break destinations, but the crime and violence there are not changing, leaving the destinations as safe, or unsafe, as they always are.

Students collect pennies to fund impoverished schools • Muslim Student Association participates in Pennies for Peace JARED RADER The Oklahoma Daily Pennies may seem useless to some, but one student group is collecting the copper coin to help peace efforts in the Middle East. During OU’s Islam Awareness Week, March 30-April 3, the Muslim Student Association will be collecting pennies and other donations to help fund schools for impoverished and oppressed girls of Pakistan and Afghanistan. A penny can buy a pencil in those countries, according to the Pennies for Peace Web site, and MSA will hand out containers for members of the OU community to donate their spare change. Pennies for Peace is a program run through the Central Asia Institute, which was co-founded by American humanitarian Greg Mortensen. Mortensen began Pennies for Peace because he believes the way to end war and poverty in the Middle East is through education, especially for girls, according to the institute’s Web site. Pennies for Peace has faced some controversy because some extremist groups in the region don’t support educating women. “Extremist groups tend to thrive in remote regions of the Middle East where education is lacking,” said Shakir Feroz, University College freshman and MSA male freshman representa-

tive. “In those areas, women are not given the same rights as men.” Islam doesn’t teach oppression, even if some extremist sects do, said Anum Syed, MSA president and zoology and psychology junior. “The Qur’an talks about equality for men and women,” Syed said. She said the views that have been put in place by regimes like the Taliban don’t represent all Muslims’ views. “We’re following what we believe our religion says about equality, education and peace,” Syed said. Feroz said Islam teaches the same rights, if not more, for women. “Islam teaches equality, and in the time of Mohammed, women were actually given the right to vote,” Feroz said. “We’re supposed to treat women equal, if not better.” The oppression of women is more of a result of the region and not Islam, some said. “The oppression of women in Islam is influenced more by cultural factors than purely religious ones,” said Khadeeja Elyazgi, journalism sophomore and MSA member. “Too many people let the culture of the Middle East match their religious views of Islam.” The MSA will begin collecting containers April 2. Syed said she encourages all students to make donations, which are needed now more than ever. “According to news we’ve heard, about 100 schools are going to be shut down,” she said. “College students at OU value education and Photo Illustration by Amy Frost/The Daily peace. It’s important that children in the Middle Pennies for Peace is a program set up by the Central Asia Institute in order to raise money to help fund schools for girls in Pakistan and East be educated so when they’re in power, they Afghanistan. can instill important values in children.”

UOSA Continued from page 1A

There are 15 vacant seats total because not enough students filed to run for Student Congress. Rushing, a graduate student, has been active in UOSA since 2002 and said he has witnessed a decline in students running for legislative and executive positions. Only one pair of students signed

up to run for UOSA president and vice president this year. Katie Fox is the president–elect and Dewey Bartlett is the vice president-elect. There have been two UOSA presidential tickets in the past two elections. Clarke Stroud, vice president of Student Affairs, said he is not

aware of a case when the presidential ticket has gone uncontested. But this year’s election cannot be viewed as a downward trend, and apathy among the student body is not a problem, he said. The student body is more active than ever, but that just may not include student congress involvement, Stroud said. “It boils down to where students are able to put their time,” he said. Burris said students may not be willing to put their time and effort

into student government because campus issues are not a priority for them. It takes a controversial issue to spur the student body, he said. The last time Burris saw a surge in student engagement in student government was in 2005, when the alcohol policy was in reform, he said. “Until there’s an issue that speaks to people and gets them motivated, you’re going to have trouble getting students involved,” Burris said.

HOUSE FOR RENT

OUR COMMITMENT TO ACCURACY The Daily has a long-standing commitment to serve readers by providing accurate coverage and analysis. Errors are corrected as they are identified. Readers should bring

errors to the attention of the editorial board for further investigation.

ERROR SUBMISSIONS e-mail: dailynews@ou.edu phone: 325-3666

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Campus News

Monday, March 9, 2009

French-speaking student group hosts inaugural event • Group aims to be voice of students from Frenchspeaking countries ASHLEIGH WOODALL The Oklahoma Daily

Cassie Rhea Little/The Daily

Members of the French & Francophone Student Association showcase French attire and dance at the inaugural French Culture Night held Saturday evening in Meacham Auditorium.

Launched Feb. 13, OU’s new blog is helping students “unwind” through columns about fashion, culture and everything in between. The blog, “Unwind,” started as part of the new media initiatives of OU Web Communications to broaden OU’s Internet presence, said Mario Rosas, Web Communications spokesman. “It is important to stay connected to the ever-evolving Web,” he said. “Blogging is a natural fit.” Rosas said Unwind is the first part of a new strategy focusing on user-generated content. Web Communications teamed up with the professional writing program in the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the end of November to create the blog, professional writing professor Mel Odom said. He picked the writers from a pool of professional writing students, and they began to write at the beginning of January. The bloggers are three undergraduate professional writing students, one graduate student and four alumni, Rosas said. He said the bloggers are not paid, but writers benefit with a chance to showcase their work. The three main bloggers, Katie Parker, Matt Madeiro and Kelsey Marcussen, each have broad topics to focus on, Odom said. Parker writes about fashion, relationships and things to do on campus, Madeiro about technology, and Marcussen writes about culture. The bloggers write one entry a week to keep the content fresh, Odom said. “I love writing for the blog,” Parker said. “I have the freedom to write about what I think is relevant to OU students and myself.” Parker said blogging gives her a chance to sell herself to future employers. Editors and publishers look at blogs as an example of a potential employee’s work, Odom said. “You need to have an Internet presence,” Odom said. “Employers want students who are familiar with it.” The OU community has responded well to the blog and it will grow as the site becomes more popular, Rosas said. While many blogs are rants about problems in the writers’ lives and full of political biases, Unwind is unlike those, Odom said. “[The blog] should be an upbeat thing,” Odom said. “It’s not a place to come and gripe about the world.” Log on to Unwind to read student blogs about fashion, culture and everything in between at http://unwind.host-it.ou.edu/ — JAMIE BIRDWELL AND RICHIE MILLS/THE OKLAHOMA DAILY

OU YouTube channel shows off Sooner view • Short videos showcase unique areas of campus LAUREN STALFORD The Oklahoma Daily Popularity is rising for the virtual Sooner experience following OU’s launch of a social media site in October. OU’s YouTube channel gives students the chance to show OU through their eyes. Since its creation, the channel has grown to include 71 videos and 191 subscribers. The numbers go up daily, said Kam Stocks, OU web content manager. The YouTube channel began as a way to spotlight OU for prospective students, said Cassie Ketrick, OU web media coordinator. It shows a less formal side of OU that prospective students might not see on a campus tour or a recruitment page, said Virginia Duke, film and video studies sophomore. The channel was a result of the OU web communications office wanting to move onto social media sites that are popular among students like YouTube and Facebook, Stocks said. Ketrick said OU wanted to reveal its lesser-known aspects. “We are always looking for

new things happening on campus — things that are going on that don’t have a lot of publicity,” Ketrick said. To keep content student-driven, a large portion of the videos comes from REEL students, a group of students selected to shoot footage for the channel, Stocks said. Jessica Walker, current REEL student and English senior, said students are given the freedom to choose which parts of campus to film. Stocks said OU’s channel gives REEL students an outlet to display their film work. The students are allowed to keep the Flip cameras after they contribute five videos. As a film and video studies student, Duke said being a REEL student has given her an outlet to express her creativity. Walker said the channel has given her an excuse to talk to people outside of her circle of friends. OU hopes to recruit more student contributors and provide them with the opportunity to express themselves. Students are selected by Stocks and Ketrick based on recommendations. “We are open to new ideas for our videos and making the YouTube channel bigger and better,” Ketrick said. Log on to http://www.youtube. com/universityofoklahoma to access the channel.

CAMPUS BRIEFS McNair Scholars Program accepts applications The OU McNair Scholars Program, aimed at increasing the number of Ph.D.s earned by ﬁrst-generation students with emphasis on those from African, Latino or Native American backgrounds, is accepting applications for the 2009-2010 academic year. Students who will have completed 60 hours of undergraduate work by this spring are eligible to apply, Carlos Rodriguez, associate director of the program, said in an e-mail. The scholarship program provides McNair Scholars with a $2,800 research stipend for attending seminars

and conducting a project supervised by a current OU faculty member. Applications may be found at www.ou.edu/special/mcnair/McNair/ Home.html and may be submitted online until April 2.

Transportation center gives fuel alternatives Tuesday’s dedication of the OU Transportation Operations Center will celebrate another initiative to make OU a leader in energy eﬃciency. The ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place at 1:30 p.m. at 510 East Chesapeake St. The center boasts

facilities that oﬀer not only compressed natural gas, but also E-85 and bio-diesel, cleaner burning fuels than gasoline and diesel. “The dedication of this new facility underlines OU’s commitment to become a national leader in environmental stewardship,” OU President David Boren said. The center’s eight CNG lines will allow overnight refueling, which will result in less compression and fewer emissions. The new facility will accommodate Cleveland Area Rapid Transit vehicles and OU Fleet Services. — RENEÉ SELANDERS/THE DAILY

“We are always looking for new things happening on campus — things that are going on that don’t have a lot of publicity.” Cassie Ketrick, OU web media coordinator

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OU blog stirs up interest

Students and members of the OU community gathered Saturday night to celebrate the French Francophone Student Association’s inaugural culture night. The event aimed to celebrate the traditions and cultures of different Francophone countries and included dances, songs, video presentations and a fashion show in the Oklahoma Memorial Union’s Meacham Auditorium. Guests were invited to a French dinner at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art after the performances. FFSA was created one year ago and is composed of exchange students, said Mylène Marchat, exchange student and president of FFSA. “We are like a big family. It’s amazing to see what a big group can do when we all get together,” Marchat said.

FFSA members translated parts of the performances into English, while other parts had a universal theme understood by all, Marchat said. The event also covered traditions and cultures from Francophone areas, like the 31 French-speaking nations of Africa and Quebec in Canada. Guest speaker Ghislain D’Humières, director of the Fred Jones Art Museum, spoke about the importance of recognizing the different countries. It’s important to keep an open mind to the world, not only to celebrate each individual country, but to interact between cultures, D’Humières said. By keeping an open mind, D’Humières said he thinks soft democracy will be created, which would improve international relations through countries’ citizens and would work toward an ultimate goal of world peace. The first steps toward world peace can take place at OU, D’Humières said, and organizations like FFSA help the process. FFSA’s purpose is to be the voice of the French and French-speaking community at OU and organize and facilitate various intercultural, social and intramural events among OU’s international community, as stated on its Web site.

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Opinion

Monday, March 9, 2009

OUR VIEW

STAFF CARTOON

Ray Martin, opinion editor dailyopinion@ou.edu phone: 325-7630, fax: 325-6051 For more, go to oudaily.com. Mai-Thao Nguyen — biochemistry and studio art senior

Fox could reform UOSA influence – real influence – that the student body It’s obvious UOSA is in serious need of reform. And even though no one will vote for Katie Fox, will notice. And they should let us know about it. change the student body can believe in will have to She needs to expand the power of student government, and ensure it isn’t an administration puppet. start with Fox and her up-and-coming staff. To ensure that change happens, Fox and the rest UOSA’s presumptive president-elect won by default last week, when she was the only one to of the student government should be held accountfile for candidacy. Only one department able. on campus – the College of Business – We suggest Fox create a blog, on OUR VIEW which she must post weekly updates will have real elections for its seats in is an editorial Student Congress (even that election will informing the student body of her progselected and debated only leave two students without desired ress while encouraging comments and by the editorial board positions). feedback from those who are interested. and written after a majority opinion is The lack of interest in student governWe would even link to the blog and proformed and approved ment might be due to a lack of recruitmote it on oudaily.com. by the editor. Our View ment and interest-stirring by the current The Daily would be happy to link to is The Daily’s oﬃcial opinion. administration. More than likely, though, such a blog from oudaily.com in order it’s a result of the reality that the student to encourage student interaction with officials don’t have much impact on camofficials in student government. pus policy or the decisions of higher officials. The blog would ensure the student body and stuFox needs to prove the office of student body dent media hold Fox to her promises. If students president is good for more than a few lines on a see real change that matters, surely some of them resume. Fox and her staff should fight for more will take an interest.

Want more opinions? Check out the opinion blog at : http://oudaily.com/weblogs/opinion-desk-blog/

STAFF COLUMN

Limbaugh not the Republican leader Rush Limbaugh is not, nor will he ever be, the face of the Republican Party. Someone alert President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel – or all Democrats, for that matter. Limbaugh is an entertainer. Kind of like the president, only huskier. November defeat caused many in the GOP to ask, “What now, and who is in charge?” Confused and concerned members of the Republican base turned to its favorite radio personality for answers and a bit of comic relief. Limbaugh was critical of those outside the party, inside the party and those somewhere in between. He makes a living being critical – and is handsomely rewarded. But, when party officials shot back at Limbaugh, the base was offended. They quickly backed down and MATT issued apologies. FELTY Here is where they went wrong: Republican leaders in Washington, D.C. anointed Mr. Limbaugh the de facto Voice of the Party by not standing behind their criticisms. His ascension to the Throne of Untouchability is an accident. It is not a position he wants, nor is it a position the GOP wants him to have. Suspicions were only reinforced at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference. The conference is a weekend for young Republicans to party and refuel the ideological tank. Yes, Limbaugh exceeded his allotted time by an hour. Yes, they hooted and hollered. Why? Because the man is entertaining. He is not standing behind the podium talking policy. He is up there rousing everyone up with jokes and brash

statements about the ideological enemy. To my liberal friends, who would you rather listen to for an hour: Bill Maher, or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid? Democrats, though, have seized the moment. They seek to define the entire party based on an entertainer’s comments. According to Emanuel last week, Limbaugh is “the voice and intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.” Sure he is, Mr. Emanuel. And there are not any earmarks in that stimulus package, either. I am actually quite surprised Limbaugh has drawn such a response. The man does radio. His listeners are concentrated solely at the base. But, even they do not endorse him as the sole Voice of the Party. However, Mr. Limbaugh has been the only one to assert himself since the Election of 2008. It seems Republicans have retreated to their alleged country clubs and NASCAR races until the wounds heal. And now the country is being stimulated to the point of overdose. But, legitimate leaders, not entertainers, are out there in the GOP. Recent straw polling has Mitt Romney as the Party’s top choice in 2012. Romney looks the part, has conservative values and a strong economic resume. Given our current climate, he would be the party’s best challenger. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made a splash, then about drowned during her time as Sen. John McCain’s running mate. We understand the media is unfair. We understand the McCain camp sabotaged your message. We understand you’re smarter than the Tina Fey portrayal. But, Governor, you’ve got too much baggage. The human-interest side of her story is very com-

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It was an entertaining read. Why is everyone so critical? I don’t read The Daily to get New York Times quality. I read The Daily because it’s local and sometimes entertaining. Some of you people seem to do nothing but read every article and comment on how useless it is.

T H E

- POSTED BY THEJR AT OUDAILY.COM

In response to Joshua Wadlin’s Friday cartoon portraying Richard Dawkins as an atheist God I know many atheists who do not fully agree with Dawkins, and none who worship him. They do, however, respect his scientiﬁc, scholarly and academic achievements, just as any they would with anyone else. - POSTED BY MYTHMAN AT OUDAILY.

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I N D E P E N D E N T

Conservatives should align with Rush Limbaugh’s real claims It is clear to me that the OU Daily editorial board must not listen to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show based on their continual misquoting of Limbaugh’s statement, “I hope he fails.” I want to clear this up, as it has been sorely taken out of context. Rush has stated time and time again that he hopes that the policies of President Barack Obama fail if he carries out the policies he has proposed. Obama’s policies include a trillion-dollar stimulus package, massive government expansion, universal healthcare and other far-left policies that conservatives feel will be detrimental to the country. Limbaugh said, in an eﬀort to explain the meaning of his statements, “I hope socialism fails.” Why would any conservative hope these policies succeed if they honestly believe it is harmful to the future of this country? If Obama moves to cut taxes, balance the budget and decrease government control, then Limbaugh said he hopes Obama succeeds in those areas. Limbaugh’s focus is on the success of this country, and anything Obama proposes

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that conservatives believe would compromise this, Limbaugh and all true conservatives hope he fails in implementing these policies. - JOSH WILSON, ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE JUNIOR

Editorial right about School of Social Work I read with surprise and delight the March 3 editorial supporting the University of Oklahoma School of Social Work. I agree with the editors’ position that the university should provide support to the school so that we are able to “place students in jobs directly after graduation” to better serve the family and child population of the state. The editors point out that the Oklahoma Department of Human Services is currently facing possible legal action related to the provision of foster care to children within the state. To this end I would like to draw your attention to the Child Welfare Professional Enhancement Program operated though a contract with the OKDHS. Though this program, the school educates beginning social workers to perform professional services

T H E The Fine Print

- POSTED BY KDBP1213 AT OUDAILY.

It gives students an opportunity to practice and reﬁne their writing - ever heard of constructive criticism?

Could i have the last two minutes of my life returned to me, please? Why do i read this bleeding-heart-liberalcommunist-pinko-Kennedy-Democrat ﬁsh-wrap? (or the electronic version?) This paper has not changed since I was an OU student in the late ‘80s and early 90s. The jokelahoman is better ﬁsh-wrap....

pelling. She is a true-blue (or red) success story. But her personality and qualifications may be better suited for the Last Frontier State. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was tapped by party insiders to be the best challenger. They let him issue the party rebuttal to President Obama’s Not-A-State of the Union Address. And he, for the most part, flopped. That is fine. Better to flop early than late in politics. Jindal is a policy whiz and young political sharpshooter. He, an Indian-American, managed to win the governorship in a state that almost elected a former Ku Klux Klan member only years earlier. Either he is that good, or Louisiana has dramatically increased its sense of progressivism. If Jindal can elevate his personality to his policy capability, he may be a legitimate challenger in the 2012 elections. He can attract both the fiscal and

Matt Felty is a public administration senior.

YOUR VIEWS

COMMENTS OF THE DAY In response to Friday’s Our View about Oklahoma being a manly state

AP Photo/Ron Edmonds

Rush Limbaugh.

faith-driven sects of the party. Finally, Mike Huckabee could continue his run as affable underdog. He scored an upset victory in the Iowa primaries last year. However, he lacked a strategy past the Hawkeye State, and it showed. If Huckabee entered the next round with deep pockets and an organized campaign, he could be a true competitor. Also, the media likes the former Arkansas governor. He rips off one-liners like Jon Stewart, and even plays the bass guitar on late-night television. Neither make him qualified for president. But, in a party suffering at the hands of public opinion, Huckabee can only help. East and West Coast elites will write him off because of his Southern Baptist roots. However, this only increases his credibility in the fly-over states. His beliefs are real, not mere conversion, as proved through polling. Plus, Huckabee can make a play for both Wall Street and Main Street. By party affiliation, he embraces fiscal responsibility. By personal beliefs, he embraces elements of populism. This would play well in the Rust Belt, where Republicans have recently faltered. Whoever secures the nomination in 2012 has a legitimate chance of victory. President Obama managed only 52 percent of the vote despite a failing economy, an outgoing president with the lowest approval ratings in recent history and an unpopular war. But, Democrats and Republicans, rest assured: Limbaugh will not be the nominee. Let’s stop treating him like he will be.

U N I V E R S I T Y

The Oklahoma Daily is a public forum and OU’s independent student voice. Letters should concentrate on issues, not personalities, and should be fewer than 250 words, typed, double spaced and signed by the author(s). Letters will be cut to fit. Students must list their major and classification. OU staff and faculty must list their title. All letters must include a daytime phone number. Authors submitting letters in person must present photo identification. Submit letters

within the OKDHS foster care program. Undergraduate students and graduate students are provided with a generous monthly stipend that covers tuition, books and some living expenses – clearly one of the more beneﬁcial forms of student aid provided at the university. Field practicum placements with OKDHS county foster care programs prepare students to take on professional roles and responsibilities once they have graduated. Of course, with these beneﬁts comes a responsibility to provide professional social work services to the ODHS foster care program after graduation – one year of service for every year of support they receive. Students interested in this opportunity are encouraged to contact the Director of CWPEP, Linda Smith at linda.smith@ou.edu or call 325-2907 for additional information. - DONALD R. BAKER, PH.D., DIRECTOR, SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK

O F

O K L A H O M A

Sunday through Thursday, in 160 Copeland Hall. Letters can also be submitted via e-mail to dailyopinion@ou.edu. Guest columns are accepted at editor’s discretion. ’Our View’ is the voice of The Oklahoma Daily. Editorial Board members are The Daily’s editorial staff. The board meets Sunday through Thursday in 160 Copeland Hall. Columnists’ and cartoonists’ opinions are not necessarily the opinions of The Daily Editorial Board.

News

Monday, March 9, 2009

Women’s rights pact may cause discord NEW YORK — A global women’s rights treaty completed 30 years ago has a betterthan-ever chance for U.S. Senate ratification this year, yet the hunt for the needed 67 favorable votes is likely to incur the wrath of activists on both the left and right. Known as CEDAW (SEE-daw), the treaty’s formal name is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Since its adoption by the U.N. General Assembly in 1979, all but eight of the 192 U.N. members have become a party to it — the United States is one of the holdouts, along with Sudan, Somalia, Qatar, Iran, Nauru, Palau and Tonga. This year, with CEDAW-supporting Democrats holding power in Washington, Sen. Barbara Boxer plans a concerted effort to seek ratification as part of her agenda for a new Foreign Relations subcommittee chairmanship overseeing global women’s issues. “We’ve waited long enough,” said Boxer, D-Calif. “All these years later, there’s no excuse for not ratifying this critical convention to shine a light on women’s rights around the world. “It’s a shame that the U.S. stands with countries such as Iran, Sudan and Somalia in failing to ratify the treaty.” As the world observes International Women’s Day on Sunday, scores of domestic and global human rights and women’s groups are hoping that Boxer succeeds. However, the quest for ratification faces not only long-standing opposition from many conservatives, but also a relatively new challenge from a vocal faction of liberal activists who fear the treaty will be burdened with damaging, politically expedient exceptions. From the right, U.S. opponents of CEDAW contend that ratification could lead to legalized prostitution, increased government interference in family matters, and abolition of remaining restrictions on abortion. They also question the value of joining a treaty that has been ratified by countries such as Saudi Arabia, where women cannot vote or drive. “The treaty is worse than useless,” said Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America. “It gives legitimacy to regimes that are committing some of the worst abuses against women.” Wright promised a vigorous fight against CEDAW, which she depicted as “the Equal Rights Amendment on steroids.” On the left, there is growing apprehension that Democratic leaders in the Senate, who need Republican votes to get the treaty ratified, will be willing to add

various reservations, understandings and declarations — known as RUDs — that some activists feel would be harmful. “It would be an important signal to the world that we adopt this critical convention without limitations that exempt the U.S. from coverage and responsibility for the treatment of women,” said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women. “It sends a kind of ‘ugly American’ signal that we expect to hold other countries to a standard that we’re not willing to accept for ourselves.” Boxer said her subcommittee will start hearings this year with a “clean” version of the treaty, but aides said it’s almost certain some RUDs will be added as a step toward winning enough votes. The subcommittee is awaiting input on that subject from the Obama administration, which supports the treaty. In 1994 and 2002, when the treaty came before the Senate but failed to win ratification, a total of 11 RUDs were added. Among them were stipulations that CEDAW could not compel U.S. women to serve in military combat units, could not be used to interfere with private conduct, and could not force the United States to provide paid maternity leave. One of the most contentious RUDs — likely to be revived this year — stipulates that nothing in CEDAW should be interpreted as creating a right to abortion. Janet Benshoof, president of the New York-based Global Justice Center, called this provision “the most deceptive.” “This language is touted as neutral or benign but is not,” she wrote in a recent essay. “This language can and has been used as an anti-abortion weapon.” Because of pressure to shy away from abortion, Benshoof said, U.N. and other agencies have even been unwilling to raise the idea of offering abortions to girls impregnated by rapists in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region. Benshoof contended that a treaty encumbered by such RUDs “poses even more danger than continued U.S. isolation.” Another New York-based women’s rights group, MADRE, has similar concerns and is launching a campaign to get a “clean” version of the treaty ratified. “Most senators don’t understand that the treaty could actually do harm” if accompanied by certain reservations, said Yifat Susskind, MADRE’s communications director. “The argument you’ll hear is that it’s better for the U.S. to at least be in the game, even with a weaker CEDAW,” she said. “I don’t buy that argument ... What you’re

Pastor gunned down in church

Home buyers drawn to Detroit DETROIT — Welcome to Landlord Nation, where foreclosure notices are plentiful and for-sale signs oﬀer at least 1,800 homes for under $10,000 that once were worth at least 10 times more. In extreme cases, homes are on sale for $1 or less, which has enticed investors to Detroit from as far away as the United Kingdom and Australia.

Tussle over GOP’s leadership NEW YORK — Rush Limbaugh has been Topic A in the political world, with Republicans debating his inﬂuence on their party and Democrats trying to elevate the conservative radio host to the GOP’s de facto spokesman. The skirmish has cast a bright light on the GOP and its search for leadership in the Obama era. But the personality-driven diversion has deﬂected attention from the deeper problems the party faces.

Madoff faces victims in court

Charlie Neibergall, File/ AP Photo

In this Aug. 26, 2008 file photo, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., addresses the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Boxer plans a concerted effort to seek ratification of a United Nations global women’s rights treaty completed 30 years ago as part of her agenda for a new Foreign Relations subcommittee chairmanship overseeing global women’s issues. compromising on is so integral that you really would be selling the principles of what you’re trying to.” Opinions are sharply divided over the tangible impact that CEDAW has had internationally, in part because the committee that monitors treaty compliance cannot enforce its recommendations. Nonetheless, CEDAW supporters say the treaty has been valuable in numerous countries in expanding property rights and political rights, developing domestic violence policies, and improving education

Pat Sullivan, File/ AP Photo

In this May 27, 2008 file photo, a microphone hangs over the gurney in the Texas death house in Huntsville, Texas. In hard economic times, more states say it costs more to execute killers than to imprison them for life. and produced no result, lawmakers said. After spending an estimated $4.2 million for each death sentence, the state had executed no one since 1963. Also, eliminating capital punishment eliminated the risk of executing an innocent person. Out of 36 remaining states with the death penalty, at least eight have considered legislation this year to end it — Maryland, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, New Hampshire, Washington and Kansas — an uncommon marriage between eastern liberals and western conservatives, built on economic hardship. “This is the first time in which cost has been the prevalent issue in discussing the death penalty,” said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a data clearinghouse that favors abolition of capital punishment. The most recent arguments against it centered on the everincreasing number of convicts cleared by DNA evidence. Some of the worst cases occurred in Illinois. In 2000, thenGov. George H. Ryan placed a moratorium on executions after 13 people had been exonerated from death row for reasons including genetic testing and recanted testimony. Ryan declared the system “so fraught with error that it has come close to the ultimate nightmare, the state’s taking of innocent

U.S. NEWS MARYVILLE, Ill. — Illinois State Police say the pastor gunned down at a church in a St. Louis suburb used a Bible to deflect the first of four rounds fired during his Sunday sermon. State Police Director Larry Trent says the Bible exploded, producing what appeared to be confetti.

Executions may be too costly After decades of moral arguments reaching biblical proportions, after long, twisted journeys to the nation’s highest court and back, the death penalty may be abandoned by several states for a reason having nothing to do with right or wrong: Money. Turns out, it is cheaper to imprison killers for life than to execute them, according to a series of recent surveys. Tens of millions of dollars cheaper, politicians are learning, during a tumbling recession when nearly every state faces job cuts and massive deficits. So an increasing number of them are considering abolishing capital punishment in favor of life imprisonment, not on principle but out of financial necessity. “It’s 10 times more expensive to kill them than to keep them alive,” though most Americans believe the opposite, said Donald McCartin, a former California jurist known as “The Hanging Judge of Orange County” for sending nine men to death row. Deep into retirement, he lost his faith in an eye for an eye and now speaks against it. What changed a mind so set on the ultimate punishment? California’s legendarily slow appeals system, which produces an average wait of nearly 20 years from conviction to fatal injection — the longest in the nation. Of the nine convicted killers McCartin sent to death row, only one has died. Not by execution, but from a heart attack in custody. “Every one of my cases is bogged up in the appellate system,” said McCartin, who retired in 1993 after 15 years on the bench. “It’s a waste of time and money,” said the 82-year-old, self-described right-wing Republican whose sonorous voice still commands attention. “The only thing it does is prolong the agony of the victims’ families.” In 2007, time and money were the reasons New Jersey became the first state to ban executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine commuted the executions of 10 men to life imprisonment without parole. Legal costs were too great

life.” He commuted the sentences of all 167 death row convicts, most to life imprisonment without parole. His moratorium is still in effect. Across the country, the number of prisoners exonerated and released from death row is more than 130, with thousands of appeals clogging the courts. Death penalty trials are more expensive for several reasons: They often require extra lawyers; there are strict experience requirements for attorneys, leading to lengthy appellate waits while capable counsel is sought for the accused; security costs are higher, as well as costs for processing evidence — DNA testing, for example, is far more expensive than simple blood analyses. After sentencing, prices continue to rise. It costs more to house death row inmates, who are held in segregated sections, in individual cells, with guards delivering everything from daily meals to toilet paper. In California, home to the nation’s biggest death row population at 667, it costs an extra $90,000 per inmate to imprison someone sentenced to death — an additional expense that totals more than $60 million annually, according to a 2008 study by the state’s Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice.

—AP

for girls. The treaty does not require legalization of prostitution, although the monitoring committee has recommended decriminalization in some countries so that women who are victims of sexual slavery and trafficking won’t be deterred from seeking help from authorities. If Boxer’s subcommittee votes for ratifying the treaty, it would then advance to the full Foreign Relations Committee chaired by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

—AP

NEW YORK — Bernard Madoff has yet to face the many investors he is accused of ripping off in a jaw-dropping Ponzi scheme that amounted to one of the biggest financial frauds in history. The disgraced financier has been insulated from them in his expensive Manhattan apartment, where he has been under house arrest since December.

Former First Lady out of ICU HOUSTON — Former ﬁrst lady Barbara Bush has been moved out of intensive care and into a private room at the Texas hospital where she underwent heart surgery. The 83-year-old wife of former President George H.W. Bush had surgery Thursday to replace her aortic valve at Methodist Hospital in Houston.

—AP

News

Monday, March 9, 2009

A man’s odyssey from campus to combat MEDWAY, Mass. — On the overcast New England morning Michael Bhatia came home, nearly 400 of his colleagues, family and friends turned out to meet him. Seven months had passed since Bhatia, a 31-year-old scholar in international relations from Brown University, hefted his pack across the tarmac at Fort Benning, ready to begin his sixth journey to Afghanistan. Every trip had come with risks, but this one was the toughest to explain. No one questioned Bhatia’s commitment to Afghanistan, but many disagreed sharply with the way he’d chosen to pursue it. “I am already preparing for both the real and ethical minefields,” he e-mailed friends, hours before boarding. Bhatia was joining the Human Terrain System, a Pentagon experiment to reengineer the battle against Afghan and Iraqi insurgents by teaming soldiers and scholars. Human Terrain set off a war of its own in the academic world: Critics, particularly anthropologists, argued that Human Terrain researchers could not serve two masters — that they risked betraying the people they studied by feeding information to the military. Bhatia disagreed. But the only way to know, he told friends, was to see for himself. Even skeptical colleagues looked forward to the conclusion of his journey: If anybody could thread the ethical minefield, it was Mike. Now, after months of waiting, Bhatia had brought colleagues from campus and the combat zone together in the same room. They filed slowly from the oak pews of St. Joseph Church, out into the midday chill. On the front steps, they stood shoulder to shoulder as a lone bugler sounded Taps. The bespectacled “Professor” was home, but the gray silence offered none of the answers he’d promised. Instead, there was only the ache of the unanswerable: Why? This is the story of one’s man choice — and its consequences — set against a war that defies easy solution. But it begins before most Americans had ever heard of the Taliban, or could place Afghanistan on a map. In the fall of 1995, during his first week at Brown, Mike Bhatia hung a United Nations flag across his dorm room wall. That winter, he and friend Chad Stockham took a road trip to Dartmouth College, where Bhatia — who was studying Russian — spent a weekend pretending to be a Kazakh exchange student. “He created the Borat character 10 years before Sacha Baron Cohen did,” Stockham said. There weren’t many students quite like Bhatia. Friends admired his smarts, the way he’d run his hand back through dark,

WORLD BRIEFS U.S. Troops to leave Iraq BAGHDAD — The U.S. military has announced that 12,000 American and 4,000 British troops will leave Iraq by September. Maj. Gen. David Perkins says that the U.S. will reduce U.S. combat power from 14 brigades to 12 brigades. He also said Sunday that the U.S. is turning over more facilities to the Iraqi military as part of the drawdown.

Pope to visit Holy Land ROME — Pope Benedict XVI says he will visit the Holy Land May 8-15 in the ﬁrst papal trip to the area since 2000. Benedict announced the dates of the long-planned pilgrimage following his traditional noontime blessing on Sunday. The pope said he would visit the sites of Jesus’ life and would pray for “the precious gift of unity and peace for the Middle East and all of humanity.”

wavy hair while discoursing on the Middle East or the military. They were amused by his eccentricities, the way he’d walk around with sandals in the wintertime. Walk past a used bookstore with Mike and there was no escaping a trip inside that could last for hours. This was a man who once wrote a 180-page report when the assignment called for 20. “On the one hand, he was very much an intellectual, very much an academic,” friend Seth Resler said. “On the other hand, he’d come over and we’d drink beer and play Halo until 2 o’clock in the morning.” On a campus with clashing factions of students backing Israel and Palestine, he was one of the only people who had good friends in both. At Brown’s Watson Institute for International Studies, director Jarat Chopra was taken with the young man whose interest in international conflict went beyond wanting to do research. “There are many intelligent students, but he was someone who already clearly was going to be able to connect an intellectual environment with a practical environment,” Chopra said. “He was an idealist and a realist.” When Bhatia graduated in 1999, he traveled to newly independent East Timor with Chopra as UN observers and to Kosovo, to supervise elections. Inside his first book, published in 2003, Bhatia thanked his family “for their tolerance of long absences and distracted residences.” The defining absences were spent in Afghanistan, where Bhatia first traveled a month before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He kept going back, logging one to four months at a stretch. Sometimes he walked alone, observing life in streets and marketplaces. Other times, he hired a translator for interviews with 350 combatants, the centerpiece of his research on the roots of the nation’s long history of conflict. From inside their Humvees, American soldiers too often saw Afghans as threats. But in his wanderings, Bhatia discovered Afghanistan’s “daily life next to and within conflict.” “There are, in fact, many different Afghanistans,” he wrote. Years later, Chopra would recall Bhatia’s passion. Once, his protege gave him a photo of Lawrence of Arabia; an all-too-telling quotation was printed inside the frame. “The dreamers of the day are dangerous men,” it read, “for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.” “Indeed,” Chopra wrote, “Bhatia had the makings of a most dangerous man.” In December 2005, the Pentagon sent Col. Steve Fondacaro a new and unlikely tool — a heavy-duty laptop on which experts had attempted to map Iraq’s human landscape.

China clamps areas down

Fondacaro was the commander in Iraq for the military’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization — a bid to fight deadly insurgent bombings with new types of intelligence and tactics. And this new computer was the work of a former Rand Corp. anthropologist named Montgomery McFate who argued that war against hidden insurgents demanded an understanding of local cultures. The Pentagon dispatched the laptop to Diyala Province, where a brigade combat team from Fort Carson, Colo.’s Fourth Infantry Division, confronted a rising Sunni insurgency. But Fondacaro quickly rejected it, concluding that the computer alone was essentially worthless. Sending in the laptop was “like handing the brigade commander a whole library full of books. He needs answers. He doesn’t need books,” said Fondacaro. “It was just a tool. ... Only humans can solve this human problem.” The Pentagon was arriving at much the same conclusion. In 2006, the military ordered a new test, assembling five teams pairing military specialists with civilian social scientists and deploying them to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Human Terrain teams would work like anthropologists, interviewing tribal leaders and villagers in war zones to decipher the tensions, fears and needs that might build support for enemy fighters. The program — which has so far deployed 27 teams — mirrored a shift in military thinking, reinforced by two prolonged wars. Fondacaro, who retired from the Army in 2006, was recruited to lead the program, trying to win the skeptical hearts and minds of academics and military leaders. Fondacaro says McFate warned him in advance to prepare for a different kind of battle. “Get ready,” he recalls her telling him. “You’re trying to bring together the Hatfields and the McCoys.” The Defense Department’s interest in social science renewed long-held suspicions among academics. Those misgivings date back to at least World War I and revelations that the Office of Naval Intelligence recruited four U.S. archaeologists as spies to aid in its search for covert German submarine bases. The divisions deepened with the U.S. involvement in Vietnam and elsewhere in southeast Asia, as it became clear the U.S. military had combed through the writings of anthropologists, without their knowledge, for insights it might use to counter insurgents. When the Central Intelligence Agency began advertising job openings in the American Anthropology Association’s newsletter in 2005, it dialed up the skepti-

speculation.

DAOFU, China — Military convoys rumble along winding mountain roads, the Internet has been cut in potential trouble spots and motorists must run a gantlet of inspection checkpoints as Beijing mounts a show of force in Tibetan areas to prevent a repeat of uprisings against Chinese rule. A volatile period begins Tuesday, the 50th anniversary of a failed revolt that sent the Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, into exile.

DHAKA, Bangladesh — A team from the FBI will assist Bangladeshi police investigating last month’s bloody mutiny by border guards that killed more than 70 people — mostly army oﬃcers, a government minister said Sunday. Police said Sunday they have arrested 36 suspects out of more than 1,000 border guards charged in the mayhem.

Zimbabwe left with void

Sudan warns foreigners

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s prime minister, injured in a car crash that killed his wife, has left for medical treatment in Botswana, leaving no word when he will return to his troubled homeland to try to make a power-sharing deal with his longtime rival work. The eﬀect Prime Minister’s Morgan Tsvangirai’s absence will have on Zimbabwe’s political system when much of the population is suﬀering from hunger and disease is a matter of

EL FASHER, Sudan — Sudan’s president threatened to kick out more aid groups and expel diplomats and peacekeepers on Sunday during his ﬁrst trip to Darfur after an international court issued an arrest warrant against him for war crimes there. Sudan has already expelled 13 of the largest aid groups operating in Darfur as part of its deﬁant response to the International Criminal Court’s decision last week to indict him.

FBI to help Bangladesh

—AP

Bhatia Family Photo/ AP Photo

In this undated image provided by the Bhatia family, Michael Bhatia, center, poses in front of a helicopter with two unidentified people. Bhatia, an academic, was killed in the area of Khost, Afghanistan in May of 2008 while working for the Human Terrain System program. This image was in a camera that was returned to the Bhatia family, of Medway, Mass., by the U.S. Military along with other personal effects following his death. cism. “Now is arguably the most dangerous and critical moment in history,” AAA President Alan Goodman, told members at the group’s annual convention the following fall. “If anthropology is to collectively figure out its role in building a more just world, it needs to act fast.” Mike Bhatia walked straight into that debate. In July 2006, he returned to Brown’s red brick campus above downtown Providence, assigned as a visiting scholar to an office on the third floor of the Watson Institute. That fall, Bhatia’s research partners asked him to attend an Air Force University conference examining the military’s newfound interest in the social sciences. Talk at the conference, in a hotel near Alabama’s Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base, made clear the military’s interest in culture was “coming to a tipping point,” said

Tracy St. Benoit, an anthropologist who had already signed on with what would become the Human Terrain project. The universe of people working in military social science is small. St. Benoit had heard about Bhatia’s work in Afghanistan and sought him out. They talked for nearly four hours over dinner, adjourning to the hotel bar to discuss the idea of defusing insurgency by putting social science to work in the war zone. “Why don’t you come and do the same thing I’m doing?” — he could pursue professional and personal goals, and make a difference, St. Benoit recalled telling Bhatia. Back in Providence, Bhatia talked enthusiastically about the conference. But at Brown, as at other campuses, professors like Catherine Lutz thought the military’s attempt to harness academic brainpower threatened to cross a line.

—AP

Sports

Steven Jones, sports editor dailysports@ou.edu phone: 325-7630, fax: 325-6051 For more, go to oudaily.com.

Men’s Basketball

Monday, March 9, 2009

OU clinches No. 2 seed in Big 12 with 82-78 win STAFF COLUMN

ERIC DAMA The Oklahoma Daily Saturday’s Bedlam game featured two teams in two very different positions. OU has been a lock to make the NCAA tournament for a long time now. OSU, on the other hand, has been sitting on the tournament bubble for nearly as long. But none of that mattered when it came time for tip-off, as the teams competed to end the season with a victory and improve their seeding for the Big 12 tournament. In the end, the Sooners came out on top, ending the season at 13-3 in the Big 12 with their 82-78 victory over the Cowboys. OU entered the game having lost three of its last four games. Many saw Saturday as a must-win for the Sooners, but the players approached it like any other game. “I think we got our swagger back a little bit,” said sophomore forward Blake Griffin, who recorded a team-high 33 points and 14 rebounds. “We’ll take it game by game. It’s not like we beat OSU and now all our problems are solved. We still have to keep working and get better each game.” The Cowboys, winners of six straight prior to arriving at Lloyd Noble Center, were looking for a signature victory to possibly push them off the bubble and into the tournament. OSU sophomore guard James Anderson did everything he could to help his team, scoring a career-high 37 points — his fourth 30-point game this year — but OSU came up just short. “I think it kind of set us back a little bit,” Anderson said. “It gives us a different mind set in the Big 12 tournament, because now we have to fight a little bit to be able to make the NCAA tournament.” OU now will be a No. 2 seed in this week’s Big 12 tournament by virtue of its victory and Missouri’s loss to Texas A&M. Head coach Jeff Capel said he wasn’t paying attention to the other game’s scores and was focused on his game. “[The No. 2 seed] doesn’t really mean a lot to me,” Capel said. “We just wanted to get this win. One of my assistants knew before the game if we won and what would happen and all the scenarios. I don’t get into it like that. I was concentrated on this game. That may sound like coach-speak, but that’s what I do.” Just a few weeks ago, the Sooners were in the driver’s seat in the Big 12, and as long as they kept winning, it wouldn’t have mattered what other teams did. However, the Sooners dropped consecutive games to Texas and Kansas, and allowed the Jayhawks to grab the top spot in the Big 12. Senior forward Taylor Griffin, who recorded 15 points and seven rebounds in his final game at Lloyd Noble Center, said being a No.

More difficult games lie ahead for Sooners

Amy Frost/ The Daily

Sophomore forward Blake Griffin (23) jumps to block a shot from Byron Eaton (00) Saturday at Lloyd Noble Center. The Sooners beat the Cowboys 82-78, their 5th straight Bedlam win. 1 seed would have been nice, but now it no longer matters. “We put ourselves in this position,” Taylor Griffin said. “We didn’t take care of business a while back, and it came down to us waiting

SPORTS BRIEFS Men’s All-Big 12 teams announced Sunday

Several Sooners set NCAA-qualifying marks

The men’s All-Big 12 basketball team was announced Sunday, along with the conference’s individual awards. All teams and awards were based on votes by coaches in the Big 12. Led by pre-season All-American sophomore forward Blake Griﬃn, several Sooners showed up both in the individual awards, and on the all-conference teams. Here’s a look at the results:

The Sooners have more athletes who will compete next weekend at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships in College Station, Texas. Friday at the Alex Wilson Invitational in South Bend, Ind., OU hung tough with a break-neck pace, and hit the NCAA qualifying mark in the men’s distance medley. The Sooners ﬁnished ninth, but recorded an automatic qualifying time for next weekend’s event. Sophomore Scott Cooper, junior Jarell Warren, sophomore Chris Sweeney, and sophomore Jacob Boone ran the event in 9:31.38, which set a program record. Saturday in Ames, Iowa, two more Sooners hit provisional qualifying marks, which will send them to College Station in a week. Cooper and junior Tony Clement recorded good enough times in the mile and 800-meter to meet provisional standards for the NCAA meet.

ALL BIG-12 FIRST TEAM C - Cole Aldrich, Kansas F - Craig Brakins, Iowa State F - Blake Griﬃn, OU F - DeMarre Carroll, Missouri G - Sherron Collins, Kansas ALL BIG-12 SECOND TEAM G/F - James Anderson - Oklahoma State G/F - Damion James, Texas G - Willie Warren, OU G - A.J. Abrams, Texas G - Denis Clemente, Kansas State ALL-BIG 12 HONORABLE MENTION LaceDarius Dunn (Baylor), Kevin Rogers (Baylor), Jacob Pullen (Kansas State), J.T. Tiller (Missouri), Austin Johnson (OU), Terrel Harris (OSU), John Roberson (Texas Tech), Alan Voskuil (Texas Tech).

— DAILY STAFF

— JAMES ROTH/THE DAILY

COACH OF THE YEAR Bill Self, Kansas

JOEY HELMER IS A JOURNALISM SENIOR.

Women’s Basketball

Sooners win final regular season game, 74-62 ANNELISE RUSSELL The Oklahoma Daily In the Sooners’ final regular season game, the women’s basketball team took care of the Texas Longhorns Sunday in Austin, 74-62. Texas is currently in sixth place in the Big 12, yet the Longhorns are the No. 15 team in the NCAA, so this game was not supposed to be a cakewalk for OU. Unfortunately for the Longhorns, it was. Neither team found quick separation on the scoreboard, and there was a back and forth for each team running the floor for the first five minutes. Then OU kicked it into another gear. The Sooners established an efficient transition game and were able to string together a few baskets after the first media timeout. The Sooners’ momentum continued to grow. They were able to pull away from the Longhorns, but mostly because of OU’s strong play and Texas’s inability to hold onto the ball. In the first half, OU shot 62 percent compared to 38 percent for Texas. The Sooners were also able to dominate the

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Longhorns down low, outscoring the Longhorns in points in the paint, 24-8. The Sooners took a commanding lead 40-21 going into the half. In the second half, OU pushed the lead past 20 and held serve until midway through the second half. Texas began forcing turnovers and the problems Texas was having early in the game began to plague OU. The Sooners committed frustration fouls on defense and the Longhorns hit free throws to cut the lead to 13 with five minutes left, but Texas never got much closer. Sophomore guard Danielle Robinson was one of the Sooners’ biggest stars on Sunday, finishing with 17 points. All-American senior center Courtney Paris finished the game with 16 points and junior forward Amanda Thompson tacked on another 13. The Sooners closed out the regular season with a 27-3 record with the victory. OU will head to the Big 12 tournament in Oklahoma City, where it will begin play Friday morning after a first-round bye.

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Texas forward Ashley Lindsey, left, attempts to guard senior center Courtney Paris, right, Sunday in Austin, Texas. OU won, 74-62.

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OU’s freshman guard Willie Warren was also named to the conference’s All-Rookie team.

FRESHMAN OF THE YEAR Willie Warren, OU

to have to see the outcome of another game. Coach talked about putting ourselves in a position to where we control our own destiny, and we lost that. But that’s over and now we have bigger fish to fry.”

for with their up-tempo, helter skelter style of play. They are a Louisvilletype team that tries to force other teams into making mistakes with their full-court pressure, and if the Sooners JOEY are able to HELMER handle the Tigers better than they did in Columbia, they likely would be rewarded with a rematch with Kansas. The Jayhawks are high off their victory over Texas and their fifth-straight Big 12 Championship, owed much in part to beating the Blakeless Sooners two weeks ago in Norman. But with another chance at Kansas in the championship game, should OU and Jayhawks both make it that far, the Sooners would be able to do two major things: A.) Show everyone they are still the class of the conference, and B.) Possibly clinch a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. OU has to win at least a few games in the conference tournament to gain some momentum and prove they stopped the recent slide of losing three of four games. Anything less than that would leave question marks going into the NCAA Tournament, and perhaps hinder the Sooners from going as far in the tournament as their talent should allow.

— JARROD YOST/THE DAILY

Both teams tried to increase their current win steak this weekend, and both succeeded. The men’s team defeated San Diego Saturday by a score of 6-1. The Sooners are now ranked No. 48. “It was a hard fought match,” head coach Paul Lockwood said. “The match was closer than the score indicated.” The women played two matches Sunday and won both. They defeated Oral Roberts and Oklahoma Baptist 7-0, and are again above .500. The women’s team will be on the road next against Colorado on Friday. As for the men, they will be competing in the Blue-Gray Tennis Classic Tournament on March. 19. Location and time are still to be determined.

PLAYER OF THE YEAR Blake Griﬃn, OU

he Sooners pulled off a big victory over the weekend, completing the Bedlam Series season sweep with their 82-78 win over Oklahoma State in the regular season finale. But now the stakes are upped. OU is set to roll into the Big 12 Tournament, and the Sooners await the winner of the 6 p.m. game Wednesday, which features No. 7 seed OSU and No. 10 seed Iowa State. Most likely, OU will get matched up with the Cowboys for the third time this season, and it will be even more difficult than the last two. Beating a team three times in the same season is difficult, so that could be the Sooners’ first tough test on the their way to surging toward the NCAA Tournament. But it won’t end there. Assuming OU beats the Cowboys or the Cyclones, whomever it may be, when they meet Thursday night, the Sooners would presumably move on to face a formidable opponent that beat them less than a week ago. The Missouri Tigers are an interesting team. The tigers got drilled by the Kansas Jayhawks 90-65 in Allen Fieldhouse after falling behind 45-19 at halftime. Then they bounced back and beat the No. 4 Sooners 73-64 Wednesday night to move into a tie for second place in the Big 12. But then they traveled to Texas A&M and dropped their season finale by 10, ultimately letting the Sooners into the No. 2 spot. Nevertheless, the Tigers are a difficult team to game plan

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Sports

Monday, March 9, 2009

Baseball

Softball

OU sweeps weekend series â&#x20AC;˘ Sooners take three games from UCLA JONO GRECO The Oklahoma Daily Those who were at L. Dale Mitchell Park this weekend got to see all baseball could offer as the No. 16 Sooners swept the visiting UCLA Bruins in a three-game set. OU (12-3) cruised to a 6-4 victory in the series finale while games one and two provided fans with clutch hits and late-inning heroics to extend the Soonersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; home record to 9-0. OU was led by junior pitcher Garret Richards, who had a strong outing before handing the ball over to the bullpen. The hard-throwing right-hander went seven innings while allowing three runs on seven hits and striking out seven â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which ties his career high. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I just kind of reared back on my velocity and tried to hit my spots,â&#x20AC;? Richards said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Defense and offense is what won this game; pitching is just a bonus.â&#x20AC;? Richards was given some breathing room in the early innings Sunday as OUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s offense put a pair of runs on the boards in each of the first three innings and never looked back. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I thought [getting an early lead] was important because we have had kind of a slow start in the last two games,â&#x20AC;? head coach Sunny Golloway said. By the eighth inning, UCLA (2-10) made it a two-run game, but the Sooners brought in sophomore relief pitcher Ryan Duke, who shut down the Bruins offense in the ninth. Duke recorded three saves in as many days and lowered his ERA from 4.76 to 3.00 by allowing just one hit while facing 11 batters. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t dictate when save opportunities come, and when you think about it [Duke] had three in a row,â&#x20AC;? Golloway said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;He was very sharp today and even after the double down the line he didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t waver.â&#x20AC;? The last Sooner pitcher to close out three games in three consecutive days was Will Savage against Texas Tech in 2005. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was good to go out there and get three under my belt,â&#x20AC;? Duke said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It got my blood flowing a little bit faster with the big crowd and the heat. So, I felt pretty good and just went out there and tried to hit my spots.â&#x20AC;? The seriesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; second game showed the Soonersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; neversay-die attitude by scoring four runs in the bottom of the eighth inning after trailing by three to start the at-bat. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got a Head coach crew of fighters thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll never give up,â&#x20AC;? freshman third baseman Garrett Buechele said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The coaches have implanted in us that we need to go ahead and keep fighting until the end of the game.â&#x20AC;?

Eli Hull/The Daily

Junior shortstop Amber Flores (4) dives towards first base while Northwesternâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Adrienne Monka waits for a throw during the fourth inning of Sundayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s game against the Wildcats. The Sooners fell to the Northwestern, 1-0 and finished the weekend 1-3, dropping two games to Tennessee.

Sooners go 1-3 against Tennessee, Northwestern AARON COLEN The Oklahoma Daily

James Cornwell/The Daily

Junior outfielder Jamie Johnson prepares to swing at a pitch Friday afternoon in a game against UCLA at L. Dale Mitchell Park. The Sooners won the game, 6-5, and swept the weekend series. Buechele proved to be Saturdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clutch performer as he brought in the game-tying and winning runs with a two-run single to cap off a four-run eighth inning. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We went with Buechele right there and stayed with him just because heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really a tough kid,â&#x20AC;? Golloway said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;He matched up really well with [UCLAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s] young hard-thrower and was able to get a pitch he could turn on. Needless to say it was really big.â&#x20AC;? Buechele went 2-3 for the game with a double and two RBIs, and hit .400 with four RBIs against UCLA. The Bruins got out to an early 2-0 in Fridayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Sunny Golloway lead series opener before the Sooners rallied for six runs in the sixth inning to take the lead for good and winning 6-5. Juniors first baseman Aaron Baker and shortstop Bryant Hernandez led the come-

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I think those are going to be three big wins for us down the road when youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re looking into postseason.â&#x20AC;?

back by hitting solo and three-run homers respectively. Baker has two long balls on the season, while Hernandez has three. The Sooners plated the other two runs via small ball, including a perfectly laid RBIbunt single by senior second baseman Matt Harughty. OUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bullpen made the game interesting as it gave up three runs in two innings before Duke came in for the save. Junior pitcher Andrew Doyle became the first Sooner to hit seven opposing hitters and still get the victory. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I probably wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hit as many the rest of the season,â&#x20AC;? Doyle said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going to get back working in the bullpen and try to improve.â&#x20AC;? Golloway said that the series was big and will help propel the team into the rest of the season. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I think those are going to be three big wins for us down the road when youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re looking into postseason,â&#x20AC;? Golloway said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We were just fortunate to make the plays and score the runs when we needed to.â&#x20AC;? OU continues its homestand at 1 p.m. Monday.

The OU softball team closed out The Preview presented by Worth with a 1-0 loss against the No. 17 Northwestern Wildcats at Hall of Fame Stadium on Sunday in Oklahoma City. The loss drops the No. 5 Soonersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; record to 17-6 on the year. Neither team could find a rhythm offensively, however, the difference was a sixth-inning solo home run by Northwesternâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Erin Dyer, which was the only run of the game. OU managed just three hits in the contest. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We made our adjustments a little late in the game,â&#x20AC;? head coach Patty Gasso said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;[Junior pitcher Lauren Delaney] had a very outstanding change-up that we were really struggling with.â&#x20AC;? Freshman pitcher Kirsten Allen started and pitched a complete game for the Sooners, falling to 5-3 on the season after allowing six hits and one run in the game. OU had numerous opportunities to score, including the fifth inning when it loaded the bases after sophomore infielder Dani Dobbs was hit by a pitch with two outs. Sophomore outfielder Chanaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;e Jones followed that with a single, and then freshman infielder Evan Sallis walked. All three were left on base when junior infielder Amber Flores popped out to end the inning.

The Sooners struggled this weekend, finishing the double round-robin event with a 1-3 record. The team lost to No. 7 Tennessee in Norman on Friday, then split its two games on Saturday, beating Northwestern 4-3 before losing again to Tennessee 6-5 in a game where the Sooners were unable to hold a five-run lead. Gasso said the team is hitting a midseason lull. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been a long, road-weary season,â&#x20AC;? Gasso said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve played a lot of games. This is the time of the year where you start to go â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Wow, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re worn out.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;? OU was without senior pitcher D.J. Mathis again this weekend, which has put more pressure on freshmen pitchers Kirsten and Allee Allen, as well as freshman pitcher Samantha Bachman. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We have to go back to the bullpen and continue to work on executing locations,â&#x20AC;? Gasso said. Gasso acknowledged the stiff competition OU encountered from its two ranked opponents over the weekend. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was tough competition,â&#x20AC;? Gasso said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Every game was intense, and if you were a team that was not playing well, then you were going to have a tough time of it. You canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get by on elite teams when youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not on all cylinders.â&#x20AC;? Big 12 play is scheduled to begin for the Sooners on Wednesday, as the team travels to Lubbock, Texas, to face Texas Tech in a double-header.

SPORTS BRIEFS Two wrestlers win Big 12 titles, Sooners finish fifth at conference tournament The wrestling team ďŹ nished in last place with 38.5 points at the Big 12 Championships in Lincoln, Neb. on Saturday. Nebraska and Iowa State tied for ďŹ rst place with 70 points. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Overall, it was a disappointing eďŹ&#x20AC;ort on our part,â&#x20AC;? head coach Jack Spates said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was a day of inches, and we had plenty of opportunities but we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take advantage of them.â&#x20AC;? However, the Sooners claimed two conference titles as 125-pound sophomore Joey Fio, and 149-pound junior Kyle Terry, won their respective weight titles.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be prouder of those two,â&#x20AC;? Spates said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;For both of them to come out and dominate their matches is something special. Fio was dominated last year by [Tyler] Clark in their ďŹ rst meeting, but to come out here tonight and get a victory was great. As for Kyle Terry, he showed again why he is one of the best wrestlers in the country.â&#x20AC;? This was the eighth time in the 13-year span of the Big 12 that OU has ďŹ nished with multiple champions. Fio beat ISUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Clark in the ďŹ nal, winning by a score of 5-3. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was tough facing him again,â&#x20AC;? Fio said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;He is a great wrestler and I tried to combat what I knew he would try to do, along with being aggressive oďŹ&#x20AC;ensively. It feels great to be a Big 12 champion.â&#x20AC;?

ISUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mitch Mueller stood in the way for Terry, but Terry blanked Mueller with a score of 3-0 for his 26th straight win. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I had conďŹ dence going into the match because I beat him earlier this season,â&#x20AC;? Terry said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I was still a little nervous because of it being the conference ďŹ nals, but I went out there and just wrestled. It feels great to win and I am looking forward to the NCAAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s.â&#x20AC;? Sophomore Pat Flynn (184 pounds), redshirt freshman Ryan Smith (165 pounds), junior Eric Lapotsky (197 pounds) and sophomore Nathan Fernandez (HWT) also qualiďŹ ed for the NCAA Championships, to be held March 19 in St. Louis, Mo.

Menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gymnastics teams win The No. 7 womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gymnastics team improved its record to 9-3 on the season with a tri-meet win over Illinois State and Texas Womanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s University Friday night in Norman. Senior Ashley Jackson won the all-around in her ďŹ nal meet at home. The title was her third of the year. On Saturday, the No. 2 menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gymnastics team beat No. 1 Stanford and No. 7 Minnesota in Minnesota. The win keeps the Sooners undefeated on the season. Sophomore co-captain Steven Legendre won vault and senior co-captain Chris Brooks won the high bar and the all-around.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; MJ CASIANO/THE DAILY

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Life & Arts

Monday, March 9, 2009

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Fox Searchlight’s “Slumdog Millionaire” won the Oscar for Best Picture. In this shot, Dev Patel as “Jamal” dances with Freida Pinto as “Latika” in the closing dance scene.

‘Slumdog’ didn’t blow my mind photo provided

Country singer Randy Travis performed Friday at Riverwind Casino.

Randy Travis will be pleasing crowds ‘forever and ever, amen’ Randy Travis is a people pleaser. His desire to make people happy during his Friday night show at Riverwind Casino was palpable from the moment he took the stage. He came armed with a set list chock-full of former No. 1s, but Travis felt the need to tell goofy Western-themed jokes and flash the biggest and most brilliantly white smile in country MEREDITH music. In spite of the occaSIMONS sional eye-roller of a joke (What do the stars tell us? Someone stole our tent!), when Travis strode off the stage it was obvious that he had succeeded in keeping his fans very, very happy. People were still crowded around the stage, waving CDs and Sharpies at the departing singer, despite the fact that before last year’s “Around the Bend,” Travis hadn’t released a country album in eight years. Such is the appeal of the man whose career has spanned 24 years, spawned 16 No. 1 country hits and one appearance in a Nicolas Cage movie. Travis’ show at Riverwind attracted a dizzying array of people, from booted and belted cowboy types to men who nodded to the music while tapping on their iPhones. The group’s age range was a little less diverse. The over-50 set made up the vast majority of the audience; even the iPhone addict next to me was pushing 70. But there were enough twenty-somethings there to convince me that I’m not the only person who thinks Travis’ gritty voice and simple music has cross-generational appeal. Several weeks ago, during a conversation about music with another student, during which I was probably supposed to be talking about The Decemberists or Pinback or some other band that my boyfriend assures me plays good music, I was asked who my favorite country artist was. When I immediately said Randy Travis, the guy did a double take and snapped, “What, are you like 30?” I’m aware that my age and my hometown — the sanitized suburbs of Fort Worth, Texas — make me more demographically suited to Rascal Flatts than Randy Travis. But growing up, I spent just enough time bouncing along dirt roads in my grandfather’s pickup truck that I prefer Travis’ growling baritone to Joe Don Rooney’s croon.

Friday’s show convinced me that my loyalty to Travis is well-placed. Without an ounce of pomp or circumstance, he took the sold-out crowd on a guided tour of his music. It was clear that he was trying to work in everyone’s favorites, a tough task for a musician whose repertoire contains 24 years’ worth of music. Travis started with a set of early hits, paused for a joke disguised as a story, moved on to the mid-career No. 1s, took another joke break and then progressed to the more recent radio hits. While the liquor flowed and the slot machines clattered just outside the doors of the theater, Travis slid in a short set of gospel music, which has made up the bulk of his original work over the past 10 years. He started with “Three Wooden Crosses,” which was ubiquitous on country radio in 2003, and moved on to hymns including “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” which was ubiquitous in churches in 1907. Throughout the show, Travis was humble and gracious, eager to heap praise on his band (the newest addition to the show has been with him for “only” six years) and other country chart-toppers. Before he sang “I Told You So,” which he released in 1998 and allowed a certain American Idol to put on her 2007 “Carnival Ride,” Travis admitted that during a recent conversation with a show manager and the man’s teenage daughter, Travis mentioned he would be singing “I Told You So.” The girl exclaimed, “I love that Carrie Underwood song!” But when Travis started his version, his masterful voice and the soul-searing combination of fiddle and steel guitar erased any thoughts of the blonde who’s currently taking the song up the charts. Although his self-deprecating introductions to different segments of his set had Travis’ audience laughing, it was the songs that needed no introduction that got people on their feet. When the first few unmistakable notes of “Deeper than the Holler” vibrated across the stage at the end of the night, the cheering began. After the song, Travis waited just long enough for the applause to die down before, without preamble, he launched into the beloved “Forever and Ever, Amen.” People stood, people clapped, people cried. And when he finished his most famous song, the artist who has sung 16 No. 1 songs just went right on pleasing people, kneeling at the edge of the stage to sign autographs and flash that megawatt smile. MEREDITH SIMONS IS AN INTERNATIONAL AND AREA STUDIES SENIOR.

After eight Oscars, four Golden Globes and $217 million dollars worldwide, it seems everybody is convinced that “Slumdog Millionaire” is the greatest movie made by anyone ever. It’s sophisticated, intelligent, poignant and beautifully acted. It employed actual children from the slums of India, giving it a high number on the “holy crap” scale, rendering it almost impossible to criticize. But one lonely film critic, who says “movie” instead of “film,” disagrees. I reluctantly offer my humble critique of “really?” to the pro-Slumdog hysteria. TYLER I’ll start off by saying, yeah, I get it. BRANSON I’m not stupid. I understood the plot. I got just about every serious and heartfelt moment. I understood the social and cultural implications as well. That’s not the problem I have with the movie. I went into the theater this weekend having read all the rave reviews in which critics all but signed their bylines with their tears, fully prepared to have my mind completely blown. But I left thinking, “Well, that was a good movie, I guess.” My reaction was about as anticlimactic as the movie itself. For those who haven’t seen it, “Slumdog Millionaire” is about an uneducated young man named Jamal who rises up from a huge slum city in Mumbai to be a contestant on the Indian version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” only to answer every question correctly (to the dismay of just about everyone, including the police, who torture him for a confession). Jamal wins the grand prize and the subsequent love of India, as well as Latika, the long-lost love of his life. After winning millions of rupees and the woman of his dreams, the two end the movie in a fantastical dance routine, which undoubtedly secured the Oscars for Best Original Score, Best Original Song, and had it existed, Best Out-of-Nowhere Dance Number in a Serious Drama. It was cute, indeed. But the conflicts and questions were summed up, answered, wrapped up with a neat little bow on top, and served to the world on a giant obvious-encrusted platter. All the bad guys died, all the

RUPA SHENOY Associated Press Writer CHICAGO — The son of radio legend Paul Harvey used his father's words for the eulogy Saturday at a public funeral service in Chicago, the city from which he launched his national news and commentary show. "A great tree has fallen," said Paul Harvey Jr., quoting his father's send-off for President Franklin Roosevelt. "An empty place has opened up against the sky." The broadcaster died Feb. 28 in Phoenix, where he had a winter home, less than a year after the death of his wife of nearly 68 years, Lynne Harvey. He was 90. Their son recalled the couple's long romance and his father's start on radio for the 200 mourners at the Fourth Presbyterian Church on the city's Magnificent Mile. When his father first applied for a job on radio, he was given a broom and told to sweep up, Harvey Jr. said. The elder Harvey would have wanted to help mold reaction to the country's current difficulties, his son said. Harvey's newsroom colleagues, ABC Radio Networks executives and Doug Limerick, one of two broadcasters chosen to fill Harvey's time slots, attended the service.

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"You can hear his father in his words," Chicago Tribune media columnist Phil Rosenthal said of Harvey's son. "I think people are starting to realize what we've lost." "It was a dignified eulogy delivered in a 'rest of the story'-type style," said Bruce DuMont, founder and president of the Museum of Broadcast Communications. "It exemplified the dignity of Paul Harvey." Standing outside the church in overcast weather, Chicago resident and businessman Gregory Fischer said he felt compelled to attend the service because he could remember listening to Harvey as a child. Fischer said that as an adult, he's realized that he was listening to a broadcasting trailblazer. "He was a part of Americana," he said. "It was like he was talking directly to you." Harvey had been heard nationally since 1951, when he began his "News and Comment" for ABC Radio Networks. He was credited with inventing or popularizing terms such as "skyjacker," ''Reaganomics" and "guesstimate." Staccato delivery, long pauses and phrases like "Stand by for news!" were Harvey's hallmarks. In 2005, Harvey received the presidential Medal of Freedom. He also was an inductee in the Radio Hall of Fame, as was his wife.

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good guys survived, fell in love, and skipped away into the sunset. In “Slumdog’s” defense, it was meant to be that way. It is a rags-to-riches story told in Charles Dickens fashion, only set in the slums of Mumbai, merging concepts of the West with India, creating one of the world’s first truly global movies. Fine. But I don’t like Charles Dickens or anything reminiscent of Horatio Alger’s “American Dream,” the “ragsto-riches” flavored stories of success. I understand people like fantasies, and make no mistake, “Slumdog” is a fantasy, if not a fairy tale, but these tactics are old, delusional and worn out. There are more effective and engaging ways to tell a story. Even if “Slumdog” used this model on purpose, it doesn’t make it any less boring. Also, call me a cynic, or even a sadist, but I wish more people would have died. For the story’s sake, it would have driven home the theme of poverty more directly. It would have completely inverted the fairy tale narrative style, but I think a darker, more depressing, open-ended “Slumdog” would have rendered my mind a little more blown, instead of the overdone ending complete with guns, a chase and a kiss. The last line of the movie is actually, “Kiss me.” Sigh. But darker, depressing styles don’t win Oscars, which brings me to my next point. The movie not only seems to use commonplace story-telling techniques, but it also seems too perfect, as if it was specifically tailored to win Best Picture. From the incredibly melodramatic lines I think I heard in “Titanic,” to the over-the-top camera shots and the bizarre Bollywood dance number at the end, it seems this epic movie was made with the Academy in mind. If the tailor-made vibe of the movie doesn’t bother you, and Oliver Twist is your favorite novel of all time, and your idea of India is an adventurous, mystical place where people can make something of themselves if only they pull themselves up by their bootstraps, then “Slumdog Millionaire” may very well be the best movie made by anyone ever. As for me, I’d say it’s a pretty good movie, I guess. Anticlimactic ending, huh?

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$400, bills paid, efficiency LOFT apartments, downtown over Mister Robert Furniture, 109 E Main, fire sprinkler, no pets, smoke-free. Inquire store office.

Employment HELP WANTED

$5,000-$45,000 PAID. EGG DONORS for up to 9 donations, + Exps, non-smokers, Ages 19-29, SAT>1100/ACT>24/GPA>3.00 Contact: info@eggdonorcenter.com STUDENTPAYOUTS.COM Paid survey takers needed in Norman 100% FREE to join. Click on Surveys. Make up to $75 per online survey, student opinions needed www.cashtospend.com. THE MONT Now accepting applications for the following positions: SERVERS-must be available for day shifts beginning at 10:30 am, experience preferred HOSTESS must be available nights and weekends. Apply in person M-F, 2pm to 4pm, 1300 Classen

$99 1st MONTH/$99 DEPOSIT* Immediate Move-Ins Only Prices Reduced / 1&2 beds Available! Pets Welcome! Large Floor Plans! Models open 8a-8p Everyday! Elite Properties 360-6624 or www.elite2900.com P/L Now for Summer & Fall! $99 Deposit! No Application Fee! Models open 8a-8p Everyday! 7 Locations to Choose from! Elite Properties 360-6624 or www.elite2900.com www.3MonthsFreeRent.info Brand New Apartments. Limited Availability. 1 BLK FROM OU, very nice 4 room apt, 800 sf, wood floors, 1016 S College, Apt 1, $295/mo. Call 360-2873 or 306-1970.

CONDOS UNFURNISHED 1 bedroom Nottingham Condo for rent, newly updated. 417-861-9439 or 408-6864.

Now hiring lifeguard, swim instructors, and AM pool managers. Apply at the Cleveland County Family YMCA, 1350 Lexington Ave. EOE.

Summer Rent Slashed in 1/2! Leasing 1-4 bdrms, amenities galore, The Edge Call Iris, 303-550-5554

Here is your chance! Blu Fine Wine and Food is now accepting applications for waitstaff and experienced cooks. Must be 21. Apply in person between 2-4 pm M-F, at 201 S Crawford. 360-4258.

DUPLEXES UNFURNISHED

Bartending! Up to $250/day. No exp nec. Training provided. 1-800-965-6520, x133.

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NEAR OU, nice 2 bd, 1 bth Duplex, new paint/ carpet, CH/A, w/d hkup, $425/mo, $300/dep, no pets. Ref req. 329-5568 or 496-3993, lv msg.

HOUSES UNFURNISHED Clean 3bd/1bth near campus, big yard, fireplace, basement, $800/mo. 447-8313.

FOR RENT

to celebrate.

1 day ............. $4.25/line 2 days ........... $2.50/line 3-4 days........ $2.00/line 5-9 days........ $1.50/line 10-14 days.... $1.15/line 15-19 days.... $1.00/line 20-29 days.... $ .90/line 30+ days ..... $ .85/line

2 col (3.792 in) x 2 inches Sudoku ...........$760/month Boggle............$760/month Jumble ...........$760/month Horoscope .....$760/month 1 col (1.833 in) x 2.25 inches Crossword .....$515/month (located just below the puzzle)

TOWNHOUSES UNFURNISHED Taylor Ridge Townhomes 2 Bdrm, 2.5 Bath, Fully Renovated Townhomes near OU! Pets Welcome! • Call for current rates and Move-in Specials!!! Taylor Ridge Townhomes (405) 310-6599

Kelso Dunes, Mojave National Preserve Wilderness Photo by Peter Druschke

Celebrate 40 years of protecting america’s wilderness.

ROOMS FURNISHED

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NEAR OU, privacy, $260, bills paid includes cable, neat, clean, parking. Prefer male student. Call 329-0143.

Housing Sales

CONDOS Edge Condo, 4 bd/ 4 bath, $129,000 - 1st time homebuyers: $8000 tax rebate Call Carol Lindley 401-0246 - Dillard Group

9 5 2 5 8

my friend’s got mental illness

To a friend with mental illness, your caring and understanding greatly increases their chance of recovery. Visit whatadifference.samhsa.gov for more information. Mental Illness – What a difference a friend makes.

3 7

3 1 3 6 2 1 8 9 7 9 3 2 5 6 9 7 1 6 9 6 7 2 6 1 4 3 4 7

Previous Solution 6 1 5 3 2 4 7 8 9

4 3 7 8 5 9 1 6 2

9 8 2 6 1 7 5 3 4

3 9 8 1 6 2 4 7 5

7 2 1 4 8 5 6 9 3

5 4 6 7 9 3 8 2 1

2 5 4 9 7 6 3 1 8

1 7 9 5 3 8 2 4 6

8 6 3 2 4 1 9 5 7

Monday- Very Easy Tuesday-Easy Wednesday- Easy Thursday- Medium Friday - Hard

Instructions: Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9. That means that no number is repeated in any row, column or box.

Universal Crossword Edited by Timothy E. Parker March 09, 2009

ACROSS 1 “Como ___ usted?” 5 Act saucy 9 William Tell’s target 14 Cousin of the pintail 15 Eight, in Argentina 16 Town employee of yore 17 Soothing beverage 19 Ship of fuels 20 Paranormal power, for short 21 Statue’s bottom 22 Stereo components 23 Part of a rodeo 26 Yoked animals 27 Incomparable ending 28 Cake partner 31 Org. involved with the Scopes trial 34 Accepted as true 36 Lost on the battlefield 40 Commendation 41 Mandlikova of the courts 42 Bro’s relative 43 Newsy channel 44 Solo for the fat lady? 47 Utter mayhem

This year, more than

172,000 people will be diagnosed with lung cancer, and more than 163,000 will die—

making it America’s

NUMBER ONE cancer killer. But new treatments offer hope. Join Lung Cancer Alliance in the fight against this disease.

POLICY The Oklahoma Daily is responsible for one day’s incorrect advertising. If your ad appears incorrectly, or if you wish to cancel your ad, call 405.325.2521 before the deadline for cancellation in the next issue. Refunds will not be issued for early cancellation. Errors not the fault of the advertiser will be adjusted. The Oklahoma Daily will not knowingly accept advertisements that discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, religious preference, national origin or sexual orientation. Violations of this policy should be reported to The Oklahoma Daily Business Office. Help Wanted ads in The Oklahoma Daily are not classified as to gender. Advertisers understand that they may not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, color, religion or gender unless such qualifying factors are essential to a given position. All ads are subject to acceptance by The Oklahoma Daily. Ad acceptance may be re-evaluated at any time.

From skyscraping mountains towering from above, to prehistoric land bridges stretching far and wide no human structure can ever match the natural magnificence of America’s wilderness. That’s why it’s so vitally important we protect it. Join us in honoring America's commitment to protecting our country's special wild places by helping us celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act. Together we are preserving the legacy of the wild for generations to come. —Maya Lin, Artist

322 S Lahoma, 2/3 bdrms, 1 bth, CH/A, w/d, dw, no pets, $700/mo + security dep. 573-2944.

Classified Card Ads

Classified Display Ads located directly above the following games/puzzles. Limited spaces available – only one space per game.

is built for all of us.

817 Birch - Short walk to campus! 3bd/2ba 2 car garage. Remodeled kitchen & master bath. W/D & lawn service included. $1200 mo. Call Steve Gray 214-455-4508.

Rates are $16.00 per column inch, per day with a minimum of 2 column inches.

Game Sponsorships

america’s wilderness

AVAILABLE IN MAY A short walk to OU, 1-5 blks west of OU, nice brick homes, wood floors, CH/A, w/d, disposal, good parking. 3 Bdrm $750-$1500 2 Bdrm $600-$800 1 Bdrm $420-$460 MISTER ROBERT FURNITURE 9-4 pm, Mon-Sat, 321-1818

Classified Display Ads

Classified Card Ads are $170 per column inch with a minimum of 2 column inchs and run 20 consecutive issues. Ad copy may change every five issues.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what kind of life you’ve built,

915 W Lindsey, NEAR OU, 1/2 bd, 1 ba, NO PETS, $500 per mo. 1104 Grover Ln, NEAR OU, 2 bd, car garage, CHA, W/D, stove, refrigerator, microwave, compactor, NO PETS, $800 per mo. Contact: 329-1933 or 550-7069

Being

NUMBER ONE is nothing

R.T. Conwell, advertising manager classiﬁeds@ou.edu phone: 325-2521, fax: 325-7517 For more, go to oudaily.com.

lungcanceralliance.org

52 Fix 55 Theater award 56 “No” to Rob Roy 57 Up in arms 58 Certain milk container 60 Revealing skirts 61 Field of study 62 First name in fashion 63 Redolence 64 Sibilant summons 65 Some loaves DOWN 1 Lucy’s accomplice 2 Words with “ghost” or “way out” 3 Diamond covers 4 Clerical gown 5 Comfort in sorrow 6 Follows, as advice 7 Early TV bishop 8 “___ guy walks into a bar …” 9 Guitar with no plug 10 Finger feature 11 Stack 12 Offensive expression 13 Goofs 18 “Life is like ___ of chocolates” 22 Electrical

24 25 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 37

38 39

pioneer Nikola March king Suffix with four or six, but not five Nike competitor Author Uris Mystery writer Buchanan Gremlins and Pacers 103, in old Rome WWII transports Storage container Wharton’s Frome Most in need of calamine lotion Forty-___ (gold rush participant) Vanished

44 Strolls leisurely 45 Criticize harshly 46 Prefix with “gram” or “graph” 47 Pillow material 48 Laughs loudly 49 “Have a great time!” 50 Cranberry condiment 51 Lily plants 52 Parts of eyeglasses 53 Guitarist Clapton 54 Sheet of stamps 58 It may be between your teeth 59 Point-ofpurchase equip. giant

PREVIOUS PUZZLE ANSWER

“ONE FOR THE LADIES” by Oscar Lyndley

True Sooners Don’t Haze. Report Hazing.

325-5000 All calls are anonymous. The University of Oklahoma is an Equal Opportunity Institution.

Previous Answers

Life & Arts

Monday, March 9, 2009

AP photo

The band Phish performs Friday at the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Va. The Vermont jamband lit the second stage of its career as a touring juggernaut Friday night with “Fluffhead,” rocketing deep into their past to prove that this is no nostalgic reunion.

photo provided

“Watchmen”, the film adaptation of Alan Moore’s 1987 graphic novel, debuted at the box office this weekend. The film took the number one spot for the week with $55.7 million. The midnight release on Friday raked in nearly $5 million alone.

From comic to film omic book movies have a habit of being hit or miss. Adaptations from graphic novel to cinema can leave some disappointed and others excited. For every gem like “The Dark Knight” comes a lemon like “Spawn” or “Judge Dredd.” In “Watchmen,” comes another strong comic book movie for this era, although fans of the graphic novel may disagree. The original graphic novel series was written by Alan Moore in 1987, depicting an alternate reality of 1985 in which costumed superheroes exist among the population, the United States won the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon is in his fifth term in office, due to changes in term limits. Because of the behavior of the Watchmen, costumed superheroes are outlawed by the government.In addition to these issues, the US and the Soviet Union sit at the brink of World War III, and a conspiracy is under way to try and stop the hostilities at any cost. I’m going to try and avoid giving any spoilers of the film itself, suffice to say, the story is quite entertaining. Anyone who has actually read the graphic novel would likely perceive the film either as an abridged version of a good story, or an inadequate representation of a graphic novel masterpiece. Because the original novel was released over 12 issues in the span of a year, it’s difficult to compress it into two and a half hours. Because of this, the film has encouraged viewers to read the comic and gain a larger understanding of the alternate 1985 universe. The story is very original, filled with

WHAT TO WATCH

“How I Met Your Mother” CBS, 7:30 p.m. Monday Ted’s old college girlfriend comes to visit, reminding Lily and Marshall how much they hated her.

“Castle”

plenty of sex, violence and deadpan, dark humor. It was ranked in Time’s “Top 100 Novels of AllTime.” The film frequently moves back and forth between the actual events of the movie, and flashbacks to the formation of the Watchmen, the superheroes’ victory in Vietnam and superheroes replacing policemen in rebuffing rioting citizens. By filling in the lines in this style, the audience can get a good idea for the world of the comic, and gain a feeling for the characters themselves. The cinematic presentation is done well, with fight scenes well-choreographed and excellent special effects. The film contains frequent use of popular music from the 1960s to the 1980s, which also reinforces the time period. The acting in the film really made it shine. Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), the ink-blotted masked vigilante, steals the show, and the actor’s portrayal could out-psycho Heath Ledger’s Joker from “Dark Knight” with the various nihilistic murders and shock value of his actions. Billy Crudup’s Doctor Manhattan serves as a perfect characterization of a god-like, enigmatic powerhouse, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan performs well in the flashbacks as The Comedian, a sadistic, cruel, but complex heroic figure, making it difficult to hate him, despite the despicable actions he commits. “Watchmen” is definitely the peak of the movies released so far in 2009. In spite of the lack of knowledge of this hidden gem of a series, I was able to grasp the plot well and enjoy the film. AJ LANSDALE IS A PROFESSIONAL WRITING SOPHOMORE.

Phish makes big splash in reunion show HAMPTON, Va. — Phish caught another keeper at the Hampton Coliseum when it mattered most, blasting a five-year breakup into the past with a crisp, focused show that proved the Vermont foursome is refreshed and ready for the road again. To be fair, this wasn't the fearless or flawless Phish of the 1990s pre-breakup heyday. But on a Friday night that buzzed and crackled with anticipation, their missteps were few, the jamming was spirited and the mood on stage mostly playful and loose — a far cry from the emotional and musical shambles of their “farewell” show some five years prior. They opened by nailing the hairpin transitions and turbulent passages of their most challenging material: the old stuff. “Fluffhead,” an ecstatic prog-rocker and major crowd pleaser, kicked things off by staking a claim deep within the vast Phish songbook; they held that hallowed ground in the first set with “Divided Sky” and “David Bowie,” also from their 1989 debut album “Junta.” But a most encouraging sign was that Phish clearly aims to keep innovating: an a capella jam that typically launches from the end of “You Enjoy Myself” (another “Junta” track) was one of the most imaginative such vocal segues the band has concocted in playing the song live more than 400 times. The odd meshing of mouth-sounds, beatboxing and caterwauling has historically been a thing of throwaway whimsy; on Friday, it quickly developed into a nightmarish wall of what came to sound like deep, spooky electronica gone wickedly wrong. They also rejiggered the happy-go-lucky “Water in the Sky,” changing it from astral bluegrass into an earthier, more dance-friendly shuffle, and debuted the heavy caliber rocker “Backwards

TOP NOTCH LIVING ROCK BOTTOM PRICES PAY ZERO MOVE-IN FEES WHEN YOU SIGN A LEASE PLUS, ENTER TO WIN FREE RENT FOR A YEAR

ABC, 9 p.m. Monday Nick Castle (Nathan Fillion), a murder-mystery novelist, has to help the NYPD catch a serial killer.

FULLY FURNISHED UNITS • INDIVIDUAL LEASES • BASKETBALL COURTS PRIVATE BEDROOMS & PRIVATE BATHROOMS AVAILABLE RESORT-STYLE SWIMMING POOL • TANNING BED • FITNESS CENTER amenities subject to change | see office for details

NBC, 9 p.m. Wednesday Elliot and Olivia are surprised to learn that Alex, the assistant D.A. who went into the witness protection program, is back.

COMMONS ON OAK TREE

UNIVERSITY GREENS

“Smallville” CW, 7 p.m. Thursday

CALLIE KAVOURGIAS IS A JOURNALISM SENIOR.

–AP

HOROSCOPE By Bernice Bede Osol

Monday, March 9, 2009 PISCES (Feb. 20-March 20) -- If you insist upon having your own way when it comes to social issues, chances are it will spoil everyone’s fun, including your own. Strive to be cooperative, not headstrong. ARIES (March 21-April 19) -- When at work, do your best and don’t berate yourself for not being smart enough or not having done enough. In either case, you’d be wrong; be satisfied with what you have accomplished. TAURUS (April 20-May 20) -- Although you may want to spend some time with those you find exciting, take care in your selection. Don’t choose anyone who tends to go to extremes and causes incidents instead of fun times. GEMINI (May 21-June 20) -- There is a strong probability that you will experience some material gains. Sadly, however, it may not be enough for you and, instead of being pleased with the proceeds, you’ll be disappointed.

“Law and Order: SVU”

Guest star Tori Spelling attempts to blackmail Clark for information about the “Red-Blue Blur.”

Down the Number Line,” a sure anchor on their upcoming album. Trey Anastasio's guitar work was on point for most of the longer-than-usual first set, and he recovered quickly on the rare occasions when he did slip out of a complex beat, as happened a couple of times on the twisty turns of a warpspeed “Rift.” When he did get to the shrieking high notes, he charged in with all the vigor of a guitarist who has no doubt of his abilities. Anastasio, bassist Mike Gordon, keyboardist Page McConnell and drummer Jon Fishman are playing three shows in Hampton, the UFOlooking arena that's often been considered a home court of sorts for Phish, who consistently turn out sterling performances here. Friday's was their first show since an amicable split that turned out to be more burnout therapy than the end to their 20-year run on the road. They shrugged or laughed off minor flubs and moments of rustiness that, in the past, might have thrown them into a set-long funk of sloppy indifference. Instead, Phish kept on moving like a tremendous machine through its two-decade song catalog, touching on material from at least eight studio albums and throwing in quite a few live favorites that never found a home on one, from the euphoria of “Harry Hood” to the mountain romp “Possum.” Maybe Phish will never eclipse their universally accepted musical zenith — a set of marathon shows in the Florida Everglades on New Year's Eve 1999 that was such a high, even the band has acknowledged it had a deflating effect on all future performances. But if Friday's fiery, fully committed set is any indication, they sure are going to try.

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CANCER (June 21-July 22) -Once you’ve created an outline, follow the plans as drawn up and don’t be thrown off course just because someone questions your methods and procedures. You’ll lose what you gained. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) -- When it comes to your business and financial dealings, figure out what is fair for everyone and stick by your findings. Don’t change your mind just because someone whines about his or her share.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) -- If you need a partner, be sure to select someone who knows what he or she wants and isn’t afraid to go after it. Wishy-washy types will put you off on tangents that lead no place. LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23) -You’re a natural for seeing both sides of an issue, but there’s a chance you could experience paralysis from overanalysis. Don’t be afraid to go with your visceral response. SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 22) -- If you can, associate with friends who talk about all types of interesting subjects and who stimulate your senses; avoid those who are too “I-oriented” and who stymie your thinking. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 23-Dec. 21) -- Unless your independent spirit is allowed to soar, there’s a good chance you could easily submit to another’s ideas of what to do, which could be a waste of time. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) -- Being committed to a schedule will keep you on solid footing. Without a plan of action, you could have a tendency to make an impulsive commitment you might later regret. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) -Although you’ll be quite good at helping others sort out confusing financial issues in ways they can make a profit, you may not be so great figuring out your own affairs.

News

Monday, March 9, 2009

CAMPUS NOTES TODAY UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA OUTREACH OU Outreach and the Medieval fair will hold a screening of “The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc” at 7 p.m. in the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.

TUESDAY CAREER SERVICES Career Services will host a presentation about creating curriculum vitae and a personal statement for students applying to graduate school at 10 a.m. in the Oklahoma Memorial Union.

FIERY SHOW OF SUPPORT An effigy of International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo is burned by a crowd gathered at the opening ceremony of the Merowe High Dam, attended by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, on Tuesday in Merowe, northern Sudan. Ocampo said he has strong evidence that Omar al-Bashir controlled a genocidal campaign aimed at wiping out three ethnic African tribes in the Darfur region, while al-Bashir insulted the court and danced for supporters who torched Ocampo’s effigy. Writing in Arabic on banner reads, “The local committee of Missawi congratulates the sons of Missawi on the opening of the great project.” Abd Raouf/AP Photo

CHRISTIANS ON CAMPUS Christians on Campus will host a Bible study at noon in the union. CAREER SERVICES Career Services will host a workshop about second-level interviewing at 1 p.m. in the union. SCHOOL OF MUSIC The OU Chamber Orchestra and University Choir will perform a Sutton Concert Series program at 8 p.m. in Catlett Music Center. CAMPUS ACTIVITIES COUNCIL Applications for the CAC Spring Events Chair for 2010 are available.

POLICE REPORTS Names are compiled from the Norman Police Department and OUPD. The reports serve as a record of arrests, not convictions. Those listed are innocent until proven guilty.

DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE Stephen Lynn Stockton, 23, 428 W Rock Creek Rd., Thursday, also driving with a suspended license

AGGRAVATED DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE Thomas Michael Lindsey, 43, 2200 Classen Blvd., Thursday

DOMESTIC ABUSE Joshua Neal Anderson, 27, 300 Hal Muldrow Dr., Thursday, also child abuse

DISTURBING THE PEACE Oluhayode Oyeyemi Anibara, 21, 752 Ridgecrest Ct., Wednesday

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MUNICIPAL WARRANT Ivan B. Van Breshears 44, East Alameda Street, Thursday Brett Alan Hughbanks, 47, 701 Iowa St., Friday Gwennette A. Mahan, 58, 201 W Gray St., Friday Nathan Alan Buchanan, 18, 201 W Gray St., Friday

OTHER WARRANT Rusty Lee Martin, 25, SW 19th St., Thursday Reginold Ray Brown, 51, 1920 12th Ave. NE, Thursday

POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA Neil Marvis Forman, 19, West Robinson Street, Thursday James G. Hickok, 41, 2543 W Main St., Thursday Kristina Ann Mayo, 39, 2543 W Main St., Thursday

FURNISHING ALCOHOL TO A MINOR Lamont Andrew McDonald, 22, 1123 E Constitution St., Thursday

PUBLIC INTOXICATION Albert Nole Leonard, 32, 333 N Interstate Dr., Thursday

FIRE CODE VIOLATION Richard David Terrel, 47, 17801 E Tecumseh Rd., Thursday

ASSAULT AND BATTERY Justin Myers, 23, 700 Asp Ave., Friday Toby V. Turley, 36, 2120 Iowa St., Thursday

POSSESSION OF ALCOHOL Thomas Gordon Pynn, 20, 1131 Elm Ave., Thursday, also unlawful use of a driver’s license Roger William Richter, 19, 1123 E Constitution St., Thursday