It’s over

14 Oct 2011, Posted by Walker Schiff in Backpages, Politics Roundup, 0 Comments

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

I have examined the race for the Republican Nomination for President over the past couple days I have come to the conclusion that the race is over. Sure, the primaries don’t actually start until January but it’s over already and I am officially declaring Mitt Romney the winner. You might be wondering, what about Mitt Romney is going to lead him to victory? What makes Mitt Romney so great? Well, absolutely nothing! You might have thought an article about how Mitt Romney is destined to win the primary race would be about how great Mitt Romney is. But it’s not because he is not that great. Rather I’m going to write about why all the other candidates are not going to win.

Let’s start with Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico. He also climbed Mt. Everest and has competed iron man competitions. Sounds awesome, right? WRONG! However, he likes gay people and supports their right to marry. I’m not saying most Republicans are homophobes, but rather, that most homophobes are Republicans.

Let’s move on to everyone’s favorite candidate-who-never-had-a-chance, Rick Santorum. If you still think Santorum has a chance to win this race, then you haven’t googled his name.

Newt Gingrich is another candidate who is in this race for no apparent reason other than to hear himself talk in debates. Even if all the other candidates were covered in santorum, Gingrich would still lose by double-digits.

Ron Paul is the crazy, old libertarian of the field. Every time he makes a lot of sense in debates but, nobody will ever know because everyone phases him out like they phase out Grandpa when he starts talking about the “good, old days.”

And then, there is Jon Huntsman. The former Ambassador to China under Obama has all the GOP voters asking: Who is this Democrat in our debates?

Now let’s get to some of the real candidates—we’ll start with Michele Bachmann. If her cover photo on Newsweek didn’t convince you she is crazy, I don’t know what will. If this race was decided on who hated abortion and loved kids the most, then she would win. But it’s not. It’s about who hates Obama the most.

Herman Cain has been getting a lot of buzz lately. There are two reasons he won’t win this race: 1) his past work experience is suspect; and 2) he’s black.

“Energized by overcoming the many obstacles of his job at Burger King, Herman took on the biggest challenge of his career,” according to Herman Cain’s website.

THAT IS ACTUALLY ON HIS WEBSITE. Seriously, go look right now! I might have taken it out of context but still, that sentence is actually on his website. Also, he is black. I’m not saying most Republicans are racist, but rather that most racists are Republicans.

Finally there is Ricky Perry, also known as George W. Bush 2.0. Have you watched him in debates? He doesn’t make any sense. At least when Dubya displayed his inability to talk by making up a word or forgetting a figure of speech halfway through saying it, you would somewhat understand what he was trying to say. That is simply not the case with Perry. Also, unless the debates get shortened, his performance is unlikely to get better. I know debates are boring, but Perry could at least pretend to be excited that he in running for President.

And there you have it. Mitt Romney will be challenging Barack Obama in 2012.

Bank of America risks overdraft of consumer goodwill

13 Oct 2011, Posted by Austin Powers in News, 0 Comments

Gary Sheng/The Chronicle

Bank of America continues to face criticism for recently announced plans to start charging its checking account customers a $5 monthly fee to shop with their debit cards.

The new fee, widely reported by news outlets in the weeks following the bank’s Sept. 29 announcement, means bank customers will be charged five dollars for every month in which they use their debit card. If a debit card is used only for ATM access, there will be no fee. Also exempt, according to Time Magazine’s Moneyland blog, are those with certain premium, high-balance checking accounts, as well as customers who have certain “big-ticket” ties to the bank, such as a home mortgage. The fee will take effect next year.

Bank customers were quick to complain about the change—scores expressing their disapproval through social media, often linking their complaints to the growing “Occupy Wall Street” movement. An online petition urging Bank of America to reverse the changes had drawn 222,850 signatures by Thursday afternoon. Fox Business Network’s Gerri Willis even cut up her Bank of America debit card on live television the day the new fee was announced. Senator Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, went so far as to tell Bank of America customers to “vote with your feet” and “get the heck out of that bank.”

Bank of America is the first major bank to announce a debit card use fee. Wells Fargo and Chase, both major Bank of America competitors, have each announced plans to experiment with similar $3 debit card fees in limited markets. Citibank recently announced higher fees for checking accounts instead of implementing debit card fees, according to the Los Angeles Times, but is offering exemptions to those wh0 maintain a certain minimum balance depending on the type of account.

Banks across the country have been drawn to such fees in an effort to replace revenue lost under new financial regulations, principally the Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin amendment, which restricts the fees banks can charge merchants for processing debit card transactions. Under the new rules, transaction fees are capped at 24 cents, down from the previous average of 44 cents. Bank of America alone stands to lose $2 billion in annual revenue, according to MSN Money.

Assuming that an average customer makes 25 debit card transactions a month, Bank of America stands to lose $5 per customer per month under the new regulations—exactly the amount of the new fee, which ConsumerAffairs.com says is intentional.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan defended the new fees in an interview with CNBC last Wednesday, saying that the bank has “a right to make a profit”. Two days earlier, President Obama stated in an interview with ABC that banks “don’t have some inherent right just to—you know, get a certain amount of profit.”

Duke students using the Bank of America ATM in the Bryan Center on Wednesday afternoon were all aware of the changes, but none planned to close their accounts and move to another bank as a result of the new fees.

Sophomore David Wang said he would stay with Bank of America because of the difficulty involved in switching banks.

“There aren’t many other choices at Duke,” he said, referencing the other two ATMs nearby—one for SunTrust and also one for Wells Fargo that displayed a blinking “Inoperable” message.

“I think if the fee was higher, it might tip me over [to another bank],” said freshman Steven Davidson. “But the banks are already profiting. They shouldn’t take advantage of their customers like this.”

At least one bank is capitalizing on the outcry by offering customers the opposite of  new fees: a monthly payment. According to the Bradenton Herald, Manatee, FL-based Community Bank is offering new checking customers at any of its 17 branches $5 a month for the first year in a promotion good through the end of this year.

Community Bank president Katie Pembles told the Herald, “We thought paying people $5 per month rather than charging them $5 per month was a good way to set us apart.”

5 bad habits to save your life

13 Oct 2011, Posted by Michael Lee in News, 0 Comments

Gary Sheng/The Chronicle

There could be some unexpected health benefits to five bad habits, according to a recent article published by humor website Cracked.

The habitual consumption of caffeine, for example, coincides with a decrease in ADD behavioral symptoms, according to the article. It cites a 1985 study performed by Calgary General Hospital, which states that caffeine—be it in coffee or Red Bull form—affects ADD behaviors in a way “resembling more widely prescribed stimulant medications.” Essentially, developing a caffeine habit (or addiction) might be responsible for eliminating scatterbrained behaviors from childhood.

“Caffeine definitely improves my concentration,” said freshman Le Qi. “It might make me a little jittery, but I feel like I need it in the morning. It helps me stay focused in class. But there come a point when if you don’t have caffeine you might get tired or unfocused. It’s all about the human mentality.”

Other unexpected habits demonstrated positive health effects, though they are unlikely to benefit the typical Duke student for the time being.

Smoking, vaporizing or eating one controversial plant—marijuana—might have some unexpected health benefits. Other than its well-known medical use for cancer patients, cannabis may also benefit the brain—but only if you’re over thirty. Citing a two year-old study performed at Trinity College in Dublin, the article proposes that THC, the organic particle responsible for the reality-bending properties of the plant, might stimulate the growth of neurons in elderly brains and have preventive effects for Alzheimer’s disease. On the other hand, the article noted that indulging in cannabis before the brain is fully matured still has unknown and potentially harmful effects on neural chemistry.

“I don’t think I’d make a decision to use it off of one study,” said freshman Will Broughton. “But if there were more studies done to corroborate this particular article, then I would probably consider using it in the future [to prevent Alzheimer’s].”

Others were less open to the possibility of using cannabis for its potential benefits.

“I probably wouldn’t use it,” said freshman Joseph Wu. “I don’t think the correlation in the study would be high enough [to prompt me to use it], and Alzheimer’s isn’t common enough in the population to justify its use. And I probably wouldn’t like feeling high and lazy and stupid.”

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder might be treated with a form of video games—though not the Halo 3 variety. According to a study conducted by the Department of Defense, “virtual reality exposure therapy” was effective in psychologically-treating affected veterans. VRET involves the use of a head-mounted display that simulates sounds and sights from the battlefield, used to gradually expose veterans to distressing memories. But while VRET might have some practical benefits, playing FIFA while eating Jimmy Johns probably doesn’t.

The article also states that other psychotropic drugs, like LSD and hallucinogenic mushrooms, may benefit the elderly. When administered to elderly patients with terminal diseases, the drugs were reported to reduce anxiety of death and improve behavior in a clinical study on LSD performed at the Santa Cruz Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

“I wouldn’t want to be in a different state of mind when I was dying,” Broughton said. “I would want to have my mind when I was dying so I could think clearly.”

Wu was also unwilling to use LSD or hallucinogenic mushrooms at the end of his life.

“I probably wouldn’t use this substance on my deathbed,” he said. “At that point, I’ll probably have accepted death and I’ll be okay with it.”

The article also states that Botox could potentially have surprising benefits on one’s psychology.

Theoretically, by discouraging frowning or furrowing brows, facial Botox injections would indirectly liven up one’s mood. A small clinical trial performed in 2006 on ten depressed patients showed that two months after Botox injections, nine out of ten were no longer depressed. Apparently, by being physically incapable of demonstrating negative emotion, it ceases psychologically as well. Due to the small sample size of the trial, more experimentation should probably be conducted to confirm this phenomenon. But in any case, it’s unlikely that the average Duke student will be injecting his or her face with Botox any time soon.

Devilishly good looking

12 Oct 2011, Posted by Chinmayi Sharma in News, 0 Comments

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

Duke University is one of the most beautiful campuses country, according to Travel and Leisure Magazine’s top 30 list.

Designed by Julian Abele, one of the country’s first prominent African American architects, Duke’s chapel and its surrounding gothic wonderland have garnered widespread recognition, according to Travel and Leisure. Among its newer additions, there is the glass-walled Karl and Mary Ellen Von der Heyden Pavilion as well as the Rafael Viñoly-designed Nasher Museum of Art, according to the magazine.

The criteria for selecting the finalists out of the approximately 2,600 four-year academic institutions was based on landscaping, architecture and surroundings. These three factors were present in each listed school in various combinations, however, the one’s with the most visibly successful results earned the title of being one of the country’s best looking schools.

“If you ask freshmen why they chose their colleges, they usually say one of two things,” Baltimore architect Adam Gross, who’s worked on projects at the University of Virginia and Swarthmore, told Travel and Leisure. “Either they got a good financial aid package or they thought the campus was beautiful.”

The winning schools varied from modern-style architecture to idyllic landscaping and colonial buildings.

Other U.S. News and World Report top 20 universities included on the list include Stanford University, University of Notre Dame, Rice University, Cornell University, Princeton University, Yale University and Vanderbilt University.

Sex, mumps, cavemen and Goldman Sachs

12 Oct 2011, Posted by Melissa Dalis in News, Welcome to Academia, 0 Comments

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

This is the second post of our new series called Welcome to Academia, which will give a weekly update about the interesting, weird and newsworthy happenings at Duke’s peer institutions.

A naked masturbator nicknamed “jerking Tom” has been walking around Brown University‘s campus recently, according to the Brown Daily Herald. One female senior living off campus said that she saw the man standing outside her kitchen window at least five times last month. One Brown student described the man to the Daily Herald as “as having a mop of black hair and wearing gym shorts with a shirt on top of his head.” The Providence Police Department said they think they know who it is—the suspect has been arrested 22 times.

A recent mumps outbreak at the University of California at Berkeley has grown to 44 suspected and confirmed cases since a Berkeley student contracted the virus while in Great Britain, according to the Daily Cal. Berkeley’s Health Services believe that the outbreak began in high-population housing with shared dining and bathroom facilities. Medical Director Brad Buchman said that the reported cases have mostly been “mild”—parotid gland swelling and testicle inflammation.

Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer cancelled a speech he planned to give at Barnard College Oct. 12 because of travel issues, but missing the event also allows him to avoid protests that had been planned for during his speech, according to the Columbia Spectator. Columbia University students had organized “School of the Squid” week to honor the writer Matt Taibbi who called Goldman Sachs “a great vampire squid,” and thus the week would focus on the issues of corporate greed and abuse of power.

Sex columnist Dan Savage visited Cornell University last week as part of his college tour that will form the base of his MTV pilot show “Savage University” that will air in January, according to the Cornell Daily Sun. During a question-and-answer session, Savage said that most men lose their virginity at 17, and a few males in the audience reportedly raised their hands in agreement. “I think that must be a Cornell thing,” Save said to the Daily Sun. “We spoke at a more conservative university where [people remained virgins] on purpose, as compared to here where it’s more, ‘I wish I weren’t.’”

Anthropology chair of Northwestern University, William Leonard was featured on an Oct. 2 Discovery channel show called “I, Caveman,” which explores the idea of modern humans adapting to a Paleolithic diet and lifestyle, according to the Daily Northwestern. The show followed 10 people for 10 days as they lived as cavemen and cavewomen in the high-altitude environment of Colorado. Only eight of the 10 participants lasted on the show for the full 10 days, and many members of the group reportedly lacked the proper background of natural resources. Females on average lost 10.3 pounds and males 15.8. All the participants did, however, experience an improvement in blood pressure, cholesterol, blood glucose and hemoglobin, as well as enduring strength.