Posted by Site Administrator on March 13, 2009 - 10 Comments

By Jill Gordon

If you’ve ever forked over thousands of dollars (or your parents have) to attend what some find to be a four-year sentence to party i.e. college, then most likely you’ve heard these stories. You know, the one about your roommate’s cousin’s friend. Or maybe it happened to your friend’s uncle’s bartender’s sister. However far removed the story may actually be to you, if you went to college, you’ve probably came in contact with at least one of these legends. Here’s the top 10 in order from most to least believable.

10. Anonymous Test Taker

The teacher tells the students to stop writing at the end of an exam and one continues to write for five more minutes. The student then proudly walks to the front where the teacher refuses to accept the test. The student says, “Do you even know who I am?” and when the teacher replies that he doesn’t know and doesn’t care, the student takes his test and the rest in the pile and throws them in the air, thus mixing up all the tests. It would definitely take some balls to do this one and I’d recommend only trying at the final and probably not in your class of 25 people.

9. Flat Tire Test Question

Two students decide to ditch class in this story so they can go skiing and end up missing an exam when they stay longer on the slopes then planned. The students go to the professor and make up a story about a flat tire to get him to reschedule their tests, which he does. The two students show up at the new time and are placed in different rooms for the test. The first portion of the test seems pretty easy and the students are feeling like they got one over on the professor when they turn to page 2 and see that it is worth 90% of the grade. The only question on the page says, “Which tire?” Oh snap. That prof showed them. Moral of the story, always say, “back left” and make sure all fellow skiers do too.

8. Library Books Cause Building To Sink

You think they would have thought of this but it appears that the story is going around that on some college campuses, the library is sinking because the architects of the building didn’t plan for all of the books being inside. Unless you find yourself at sea in a small boat with a bunch of books, the library most likely isn’t pulling a Venice and sinking into the earth.

7. Roommate Death Provides Perfect Grades

Wait wait! Before you go postal on the top-bunk dweller, remember this is only a legend! But the story that circulates on many a college campus is that if your roommate does in fact kick the bucket, you the survivor of said room would be hooked up with a 4.0. Just a heads up, if they find you with a bloody machete, black streaks under your eyes and Rambo on in the background, however, you probably won’t be rewarded with straight A’s.

6. “Brothel” Laws Prevents Sorority Houses

Apparently, a group of girls living together is outlawed some places because of a so-called “brothel” law, which is an attempt to prevent prostitution. While sorority houses are scarce on some campuses, this legendary law isn’t preventing it. It is pretty obvious though that after figuring out toilet cleaning duties and choosing bedrooms, a group of five or more chicks is next likely to ponder turning their place into a money-making venture.

5. A Bus Can Equal Free Tuition

Screw those student loans and scholarships. Legend has it that the four-wheeled pollution makers circulating campus are the ticket to a free ride. Literally. Supposedly, if a student gets hit then they can say goodbye FASFA and hello to FREE. Now if I were to lie down and stick out my pinky finger under a wheel, does that work or are they wanting full contact, throw me 30 feet in the air and scrape me off the roof type of a commitment because if that’s the case, a measly loan payment doesn’t sound too bad.

4. Halloween Massacre

This legend ranges from campus to campus but the main idea is that a psychic appears on a television show and predicts that a serial killer will hit a certain school on Halloween and kill several students. Some versions even say which show and what the killer is wearing. The story is also more detailed in some places saying that it will take place at a Big Ten school beginning with an “M” or “W” that is near a pond/lake/river, railroad track or cemetery. For this reason, schools like the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin seem to spread this story like wildfire. A possible costume of a bulletproof vest and saying that you are 50 Cent might be a good precaution at these schools.

3. "Aren’t You Glad You Didn’t Turn On The Light?"

Apparently, a female college student has been studying late at the library but returns to the room for some books. She doesn’t turn on the light in the room because she doesn’t want to wake her roommate, and when she returns she finds her roommate dead with a note in blood on the mirror reading, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?” I can just picture the girl turning on the light the first time around and catching said killer in the act. Maybe her roommate died because it took so much damn blood to write that message. Try a marker next time buddy.

2. Killing During Holiday Break

If that last story wasn’t gory enough for you, here’s some more. Two female students stay in their dorm during a holiday break and one goes on a date while the other stays in. Later in the night, the sleeping girl awakes to the sound of scratching and gurgling noises in the hallway and locks herself in the closet. Upon opening the door the next morning, she finds her roommate with her throat slit and scratches on the door where she had been trying to get in. Wow, what a mess. And the number 1 College Urban Legend is…..

1. Wild Night of Partying Leads To Organs Harvested

This one is about some guy that went out partying hard one night, blacked out and woke up to find himself in a tub of ice with a note to call 911. He stands up to see to nine-inch incisions from where they removed his kidneys to sell on the black market. My first question would be holy crap, what kind of party did you go to? I don’t think fear of organ harvesting should top the list of reasons not to party but hey if a dude in scrubs with a scalpel keeps buying you drinks, maybe you should be skeptical. So basically, if you find yourself in college in the near future and you want to be on the safe side, opt to live alone, stay in on Halloween, take only large classes, remember “back left,” encourage girls to live together, don’t throw books out the window in the library to save it from sinking and spend all of your time chasing around the campus bus in hopes of living your incredibly lame college years on someone else’s dime.

Posted by Site Administrator on March 10, 2009 - 5 Comments

By Britney Wilkins

In our modern, scientific world it is sometimes easy to forget that human progress often comes attached to some spectacular intellectual clashes between different ways of looking at things and differing interpretations of what is seen. There have been some notable intellectual mind-fights over the millennia, the following are ten such academic fights, the outcome of which changed the world into what we know of it today.

10. Intellectual Property Rights vs. Nature: Can Anyone "Own" Life?

A controversy is ongoing today between biological researchers and broader society on the issue of patenting the genes and genomes of living organisms. In 1980 the first patent on a genetically engineered bacteria was granted by the U.S. Supreme Court and the rush was on to patent the "products of nature." Soon patents were being issued on discovered ‘new’ species of plants and animals even when they weren’t genetically engineered. Isolated and cloned DNA sequences encoding useful proteins are also patentable at present, despite the fact that they are ubiquitous in nature. This legal and commercial situation has led to giant pharmaceutical companies obtaining patents on genes, gene products and even things like vitamins. Some indigenous people have discovered that the stranger who took that blood test now owns their entire genome! The National Institutes of Health tried in the early 1990s to patent more than 2,000 gene segments sequenced by Craig Venter during the Human Genome Project, even though neither NIH nor Venter knew what their function was. This controversy will not be going away soon, and the biotech industry risks losing public support due to its dismissal of important ethical concerns.

9. Steady State vs. Big Bang: Hoyle’s Derogatory Terms

In 1912, just three years before Albert Einstein published his theory of General Relativity [GR], Vesto Slipher measured the Doppler shift of a spiral galaxy and determined that almost all of these celestial ‘nebulae’ were receding from the earth at great speed. A decade later Alexander Friedmann derived equations from GR that showed the universe might be expanding. Two years after that Georges Lemaitre put these findings together and predicted that the recession of distant nebulae was due to the expansion of the universe. It was Fred Hoyle who coined the term "Big Bang" in 1949 to describe the idea that the universe had a beginning, a derogatory term that stuck better than his own cosmological model, which he called "Steady State." Hoyle postulated that new matter was being created as the universe expanded, so that it always remained roughly the same at any point in time. With confirmation of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation in 1964 the Big Bang became the ’standard cosmological model’ after half a century of scientific argumentation and theoretical turf-wars.

8. Einstein vs. QT: The Gambling God

"God does not play dice with the universe," said the man who became an icon of physics with his theories of special and general relativity, Albert Einstein. In 1927 Einstein began a series of debates with quantum explorer Niels Bohr about quantum indeterminism, its epistemological basis and interpretation. The arguments revolved around what is known as the measurement problem and whether or not particles in the quantum state were really both wave and particle at the same time until measurements were made. Einstein wanted to insist that the apparent indeterminacy at the quantum level was just a (temporary) inability to measure certain properties, while Bohr maintained the impossibility of determining precise values of certain properties because at the quantum level the values were by nature uncertain. Bohr eventually won on the striking results of the Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen [EPR] experiment which arose from these debates and established the phenomenon of quantum non-locality.

7. Tesla vs. Edison: AC-DC’s Greatest Hits

In 1856 a boy was born in Croatia who became both a genius and an enigma during a time of great scientific, technological and social change. His name was Nikola Tesla and his passion was electricity and electromagnetism. The rivalry between Tesla and native born genius Thomas Edison at the turn of the 20th century became the stuff of scientific legend. Tesla worked as an assistant to Edison when he first came to America. He designed a DC (direct current) system for Edison, who then refused to pay him the bonuses he’d promised. So Tesla struck out on his own to develop AC (alternating current) transmission. By 1915 the New York Times reported that the Nobel Prize in Physics was to be jointly shared by Tesla and Edison, though so strong was their personal animosity toward each other that both refused to accept it if the other was named. The prize went instead to two other researchers for work on X-ray crystallography. Six months after Tesla died penniless in 1943 the US Supreme Court invalidated 1909 Nobel winner Marconi’s most important patent for radio transmission and recognized Tesla as the inventor.

6. The Great Devonian Controversy: Plowing Darwin’s Road

The nineteenth century heralded many important advancements in scientific theory, including the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species in 1859. The idea of evolution had been floating around in the scientific community for some time, with camps arguing for traditional creationism and the inheritance of acquired traits versus an ancient earth timeline and the transmutation of life forms over deep time. Darwin’s theory of natural selection enjoyed the increasing support of science as the debate over geological data developed during the 1830s to establish various ages of rock strata according to the type of fossils that could be found embedded in those layers. Darwin had worked with geologist Adam Sedgwick before his journey to the Galapagos Islands, and found his theory dependent on stratigraphy as it steadily developed a scientific consensus in the intervening years. The controversy and Darwin’s theory initiated search for what became known as "transitional fossils," a search that continues to this day.

5. Newton vs. Leibniz: Fluxions and Fluents

Sir Isaac Newton was an intellectual scrapper of considerable repute who was never shy of throwing power around or taking ideas and data from others without attribution. The long fight between Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who discovered calculus is the most famous. Leibniz was unarguably the first to publish on the subjects of differential and integral calculus, 20 years before Newton. Yet letters from Newton expounding his theories of "fluxional" calculus exactly coincide with Leibniz’s work. A major scientific bruhaha ensued, with defenders in both camps. Leibniz appealed to the Royal Society, allowing Newton as its president to appoint the investigating committee from among his friends, and even to write the committee’s report accusing Leibniz of plagiarism. Historians of science now credit both Leibniz and Newton with the discovery of calculus, probably because neither Newton nor Leibniz are around to argue about it any more.

4. Galileo vs. The Church: Our Sunny Neighborhood

Galileo Galilei published in 1610 his observations through his telescope to argue in favor of the Copernican sun-centered cosmological model against the then-predominant Ptolemaic view. He demonstrated his telescope to the Jesuit College and encountered little resistance. Then, in 1632 he published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems and quickly found himself summoned to appear before the Inquisition on charges of heresy. Galileo was forced to recant his support for the Copernican model and spent the rest of his life under house arrest, though with rather lenient travel and visitation allowances. His works were finally dropped from the Index of prohibited books in 1835. In 1992 Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the "Galileo Affair" was handled, officially conceding on the part of the church that the earth is not stationary and that the planets orbit the sun.

3. Martin Luther vs. The Church: Reformation

In the year 1517 the Catholic monk Martin Luther nailed a copy of his 95 Theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany to argue against the doctrine and practice of selling indulgences. These arguments were quickly translated from Latin into German and widely disseminated with the help of the newly-invented printing press, and led to Luther’s excommunication in 1520. The great Reformation quickly ensued. Pope Leo X issued a lengthy rebuttal to Luther’s charges in an encyclical reiterating Church doctrine, which didn’t sway public sentiment in Germany and other parts of Northern Europe. Protestantism became firmly rooted as a sort of declaration of independence from the control of Rome. This in turn led to tremendous social changes along with the decline of feudalism and the rise of commercialism as well as conflicts between Catholic and Protestant claims to territories in the New World.

2. Paul vs. James: Universalizing The Faith

Surely the Council of Jerusalem [circa 50 c.e.] has to be counted among the most important of intellectual arguments, for the philosophical sub-discipline of theology. It was a clash between James the Just and the great evangelist Paul within two decades of the crucifixion of Jesus. It was about whether or not Christians would be held to the strictures of Judaic Law. James was titular head of the Church in Jerusalem, while Paul was busy establishing congregations across the Mediterranean portion of the Roman empire among gentiles. The primary issue appears to have been a requirement for circumcision, but others related to dietary provisions, etc. were also present. While some of these issues are still debated today, the consensus is that Paul ‘won’ the debate so that Christians are not held to Judaic Law which was "fulfilled" by the figure of Christ. The rest, as they say, is history.

1. Socrates vs. The Gods: Triumph of Reason

Greek philosophy helped to shape the metaphysics of the civilized world in the last half of the first millennium b.c.e. There were many divergent schools of philosophy competing with one another by the time the Sophists came along maintaining that truth was entirely a matter of persuasion by argument rather than something absolute. Socrates rose from among Sophist ranks and became famous for walking the talk so well that he made some enemies in high places. Socrates taught that ethics were not a matter of divine decree, but are best the result of human reason and individual conscience. Socrates was charged with impiety (disbelief in the state’s gods, corrupting the morals of the youth), convicted by a margin of 6 out of 50 votes, and committed suicide by drinking poison. Through his student Plato and Plato’s student Aristotle, the intellectual tools of reason and logic lived on to become part of the guiding philosophy of the Enlightenment and science.

Posted by Site Administrator on March 5, 2009 - 3 Comments

Large libraries, be they university or city, aren’t just good for research and circulation. They also often have amazing special collections centered around singular, often esoteric, topics. These collections are often donated via will by individuals who collected the items over a lifetime of obsession. Many library patrons may not realize it, but often these special collections are surprisingly accessible. The items usually don’t circulate, but libraries often put on exhibits or provide special reading rooms for people who want to take in the collection. There are many, many special collections around the world worthy of discussion, but here are 15 that we found particularly interesting.

15. The George Kelley Paperback and Pulp Fiction Collection (University of Buffalo)

The George Kelley Paperback and Pulp Fiction Collection houses over 25,000 pulp fiction books and magazines. The bulk of the collection comes from Dr. George Kelley, and was further added to by Dr. Thomas Shaw and Margarete Shaw. The collection is open for in house perusing with appointment, and the website for the collection features an in depth look at 185 books in the collection, as you can see here with Isaac Asimov’s A Whiff Of Death. More: The George Kelley Paperback and Pulp Fiction Collection

14. Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection (University of Texas)

The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection is a massive collection of over 250,000 maps housed at the University of Texas. That’s an impressive statistic, but what really makes this collection stand out is the accessibility. The collection is considered "open stack" which means any University of Texas students, faculty, staff and the general public can check out the maps in the collection. You can also view over 11,000 of the maps online here.

13. The Treasure Island Collection (University of Minnesota)

The University of Minnesota has over 450 illustrated editions of Treasure Island, from the original appearance in magazine form to the interpretations by artists such as N.C. Wyeth. A man named Lionel Johnson accumulated the collection over many years of travel to cities like New York, London, and Paris, giving each subsequent purchase a number for his catalog of books. The University of Minnesota includes other unique collections, such as this accumulation of Oz works and this collection of Paul Bunyan paraphernalia.

12. Nurse Romance Novels (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)

Talk about esoteric, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has a large collection of dime store novels with nurses as central characters. They were donated to UWM by former UWM Art Professor Leslie Bellavance who collected them as part of her research on pop culture depictions of nurses. For awhile UWM was putting a nurse cover on the collection’s website every week, but it looks to have stopped last year. Still worth spending a few minutes browsing the archives however. More: UWM page on the Nurse Romance Novel collection

11. The Frank W. Tober Collection on Literary Forgery (University of Delaware)

The Tober collection on literary forgery deals, naturally enough, with authors who published (or attempted to publish) works that were not their own. Perhaps the most famous of these was Clifford Irving, who attempted to publish a forged autobiography of Howard Hughes. There are many other interesting pieces in this collection however, including Shakespeare forgers, as well as a great deal of reference material on the subject of literary forgery. More: Forging a Collection: The Frank W. Tober Collection on Literary Forgery

10. John G. White Chess and Checkers Collection (Cleveland Public Library)

The John G. White chess and checkers collection claims to the largest chess library in the world. It includes instruction books, chess problems, Asian and European chess manuscripts, treatises on the game of chess, tournament records, and chess periodicals. It also includes dozens of chess sets that document the historical and artistic development of chess pieces throughout history. The collection altogether has over 30,000 manuscripts, documents, images, etc., many of which are extremely rare. More: John G. White Chess and Checkers Collection

9. UCLA Film And Television Archive

It’s fitting of course that a college in LA would have a special collection centered around film. UCLA’s collection is the largest of any university in the world, and includes over 220,000 titles and an incredible 27 million feet of newsreel footage. UCLA provides onsite access to its holdings after making a viewing appointment, and the university provides over 200 special public screenings a year. More: UCLA Film And Television Archive

8. The George Arents Collection on Tobacco (New York Public Library)

The George Arents tobacco collection encompasses over one hundred years of collecting by George Arents. The collection includes almost any kind of work dealing with tobacco, even works with only incidental mentions. There are many hundreds of interesting prints, as well as literature and historical works. More: The George Arents Collection on Tobacco

7. Fore-edge paintings (Boston Public Library)

These are a true lost art. Fore-edge paintings are paintings on the external pages of a book, that can only be seen when the edges of the pages are displayed. Much easier to grok by simply looking at the pictures, which are amazing: More: Fore-Edge Painting Collection

6. The Grateful Dead Archive (UC Santa Cruz)

The Grateful Dead got their start in California, and UC Santa Cruz has put together an exhaustive catalog of the group’s thirty years of existence. Included in the archive are original documents, media clippings, show files, programs, newsletters, posters, cover art, photographs, tickets, t-shirts, and stickers. The collection also includes stage props and touring materials. Fitting to the group, a special emphasis is placed on fan media, with fan correspondence and fan art also given a place in the archive. More: The Grateful Dead Archive

5. Occult Sciences, Demonology and Witchcraft Collection (University of Sydney)

University libraries already have a bit of a reputation as musty places filled with stacks of dusty, vaguely odd, books, and the University of Sydney takes this imagining to it’s logical conclusion, by housing a large collection of occult material. The collection includes works on demonology, witchcraft, exorcism, the Inquisition, as well as grimoires and spellbooks. They even hold a copy of the Necronomicon, the 1973 edition of which only 348 were printed. This is definitely the place to go if you are looking for 17th century original works dealing with witches and exorcism. More: Occult Sciences, Demonology and Witchcraft Collection

4. The Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature (University of Florida)

The University of Florida’s children’s lit collection is massive, with more than 100,000 volumes published in Great Britain and the United States from 1700 to the present. The library includes over 300 copies of Robinson Crusoe, 100 editions of Pilgrim’s Progress, and virtually every children’s literature work imaginable for the past 200 years. More: The Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature

3. The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation, and Fantasy (Toronto Public Library)

The Merril Collection of science fiction is a non-circulating collection held at the Toronto Public Library that includes more than 68,000 items of science fiction and fantasy, as well as fringe subjects like UFO’s and Atlantean legends. The library also includes a great many early pulp magazines, where science fiction really made it’s way into the collective consciousness. The Merril collection even includes a deep back catalog of role playing games and graphic novels, meaning there’s something here for just about every geek. More: The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy

2. Comic Art Collection (Michigan State)

Michigan State has one of the biggest comic art collections in the world, with more than 150,000 comic books published in the US since 1935 indexed. They don’t stop with comic books however, they also have an exhaustive comic strip collection, including every known book collection of comic strips, as well as over 500,000 hand clipped daily strips filed away in hand made scrapbooks. More: Comic Art Collection

1. Various Collections (Smithsonian Institution Libraries)

Our top spot is taken not just by one collection, but by the most impressive group of special collections in the US, held at the various Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Included are:

• The Dibner Science and Technology library, including rare works from Galileo, Kepler, Euclid, Descartes, and Aristotle, among many, many more.
• The Cullman Natural History Library, including hundreds of rare early volumes in botany, accounts of voyages from early Renaissance travels, and a Zoology collection that deals with the earliest classification of animals, including work from Aristotle.
• The National Design Museum Library, including over 1,000 volumes dealing with the World’s Fair, a pop-up book collection with hundreds of instructional pop-up books for children and adults both, and papers, images, and records from many important and notable American design firms.
• The National Air and Space Museum Library which includes 29,000 books, 11,000 bound serials, and a microform collection dealing with the history of aeronautics and astronautics.
• The National Museum of American History Library including over 285,600 catalogs detailing the history of manufacturing in America. These catalogs include product catalogs, technical manuals, advertising brochures, price lists and company histories.