by despotmj | Jun 8, 2011 | Opinion
Disney recently released Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the fourth installment of their nearly decade running pirate’s franchise. In this film, Captain Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp, is once again on a treasure hunt, this time for the fountain of youth. As usual, Depp is down on his luck, on the run from the law and without a crew or ship. Fortunately for viewers, Depp is rescued by a former love interest of his named Angelica Malon, played by Penelope Cruz. Cruz is a needed addition to the film, which has seen the departure of franchise favorites Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley. From the opening scene, On Stranger Tides shows Depp engaged in an intense clash with the British government, where a member of his former crew is on trial for various charges. While in London, Depp pursues a person who has been impersonating him, culminating with his entrapment on a ship controlled by a voodoo practicing captain. The film keys on Depp and his misadventures as he pursues the most noted treasure of his own heart, which has eluded him yet again. Despite the addition of Cruz, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has grown stale, seemingly stringing together action scenes tied around a loose plot. Without Bloom and Knightley, the franchise has lost two of its most central characters, whose romance provided a well-developed side plot to the films. After three successful movies, On Stranger Tides seems to leave the franchise shipwrecked. Instead of asking Depp’s famous line, “Where has all the rum gone?” Disney should instead ask itself, where has all the magic...
by Tim Ghianni | May 18, 2011 | News Slider, Opinion
Sitting in Intermediate French Grammar class trying to translate English into French, I browse through the French vocabulary stored in my head searching for the right noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition to correctly get my point across. What to say? How to say it? Time is running out. If I do not put something together to say, humiliation will appear across my face. So, French blurts out of my mouth. Of course, immediately my professor corrects me because I used the wrong form of the verb. The past tense of the verb was used instead of the necessary subjective form. Wait. What is a subjective verb? I would guess the majority of people could not classify all the parts of speech and how we use them. Why? Because speaking English is second nature to us. We learned the names of all the different types of speech starting in elementary school. We were like sponges absorbing everything taught to us without hesitation. Now, we use what we learned without thinking about it. However, if we try to break down a sentence now, it is nearly impossible to get everything right. If it is so easy for children to learn and absorb learning the English language at a young age, why is it that schools are not taking advantage of the vital state of mind of these children by teaching them a second language? Most schools in the United States start teaching foreign languages to students once they reach the high school level. Whereas, children in other countries are almost fluent in two other languages plus their own as...
by Hunter Patterson | Apr 22, 2011 | Opinion
Worrying about finals? While they’re fast approaching, a religious group from California doesn’t think you should lose sleep over the end-of-semester tests, because the world is ending in less than a month. What’s that? You thought the world was supposed to end in 2012 like the History Channel and Nostradamus claimed? Well, there is a new group of people telling us that we are all wrong. The group WeCanKnow based out of California claims that “He will close the door on salvation on May 21, 2011, when He returns to take his elect children to heaven.” Harold Camping, founder of Family Radio Inc., made the prediction, and fans of the radio station paid for billboards that can be seen around Nashville and other cities. Their goal is simple– with the message “He is coming again!” nonbelievers are to change their ways and follow. According to Camping’s prediction, the second coming will occur exactly 7000 years between Noah’s flood and the rapture. Camping claims Noah’s flood happened in 4990 B.C., on May 21 in the modern calendar. God supposedly gave Noah one week of warning before the flood. And, stretching the made-up calculations even further, Camping says that one day equals a thousand years for God. So this obviously means that 7,000 years needed to pass between the flood and the rapture. And so, through the magic of improvable dates, algorithms and calculations, Jesus will come again on May 21, 2011, according to Camping. “We hope that anyone would get a Bible out and try and prove that this is wrong,” Camping said. Before I do that, I’ll tell you this. Camping predicted...
by Hunter Patterson | Apr 8, 2011 | News Slider
OMG, did you guys hear about this? Some new words were added to the Oxford English Dictionary, my writing BFF, last week. Some of you may think this is NBD, but some people are saying otherwise. For instance, my BFF Jill may not agree. Without these “words” being added to the dictionary how will the next generation ever know about text-speak and other words added this year like doughnut hole and wassup? Try typing wassup into a Word document and you will still get a red line underneath it telling you that you are wrong. Now try OMG, NBD and BFF – you’re totally cool. BFF was actually added to last year’s edition of the Oxford Dictionary. Most of these new words are things that we type with thumbs, not things that we say with our tongues. A person usually does not run up to someone screaming, “OMG, I totally just saw Brad’s GF with another boy!” That is why these new words that stand for other words are causing a stir with the literary community. This isn’t the beginning either. To ‘google’ something is now a universally understood verb for several countries that are introducing Internet slang to their language. These new ‘words’ such as OMG and NBD are examples of text-speak, though. Linguists are worried, but only a little. Given the rise of iPhones and Android phones, only about 10% of words in text messages are abbreviated or shortened. That’s a lot less than you thought, isn’t it? Oxford has taken a stand to admitting these words. They’ve actually come out and said they are not words,...
by Michael Swinea | Apr 6, 2011 | Opinion
Tuesday, March 29, 2010 is a date I will always remember. I won’t remember it for the weather, my classes, or for the Singarama practice I missed—I’ll remember it for being the day that I attended my first international soccer match. The United States Men’s National Team (USMNT) played Paraguay on Tuesday at LP Field, and I was lucky enough to get a ticket and go with seven of my good friends who love both soccer and America. We ordered our tickets on the pre-sale, so our seats were pretty good—12 rows up around midfield—and we had been looking forward to the match for months. On game day, Trey Weatherly, Taylor Ezell, Casey Boyer, Drew Lewis, Alexander McMeen, Bryce Davidson, Garrett Crothers and I all met up outside of High Rise (wearing almost every scrap of USA apparel we owned) to head to McDougal’s for a little pre-game chicken. After filling up, we headed out to LP Field and joined the masses of red, white, and blue just before kickoff. Before I even entered the stadium I knew that this sporting event would have a different atmosphere from the Braves and Titans games I was used to attending. Never have I seen so many crazy costumes for a professional sporting event. Normally, you would just see people wearing a team jersey, shirt or jacket. Here, there were shirts, jerseys, shorts, pants, flags, bandanas and scarves galore proudly displaying the red, white and blue. Like I said before, our seats were fantastic. You could hear the players shouting and the ball hitting against them. It was incredible. The fans around...
