Opinion

Various media critics saw hopeful 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s May 11 Twitter announcement and pounced on him for trying to appear “cool.”

Leave Me Alone Part Deux – College hasn’t taught me much, but a few years of walking down Ring Road has definitely taught me how to ignore people.

Picture this: you’re flipping through the pages of the local paper and you see an ad for a concert of your favorite band. They’re performing at the Hollywood Bowl in a few weeks and you have to go. You go to Ticketmaster to get tickets. First, you search for tickets for you and a friend; lucky you, you found two great seats! The tickets were advertised at $30, and you’re excited to have found such a sweet deal.

Remember when a groundbreaking new technology didn’t come out every three years? Of course you don’t because you were born in 1990. But supposedly that time did exist, and people had crappy electronics for a long time and were miserable. You’ve probably just been telling yourself that you’re a hipster for having a tube television, which is a good move.

Many of us can’t begin to imagine how we ever lived without uttering the words “Kogi truck.” Even the name Kogi has sparked a new “kulture” of social network followings, Twitter feeds and constant lookouts for the Kogi logo we have all come to know and love.

As anyone who has seen students selling their souls in exchange for candy to the Atheists, Agnostics and Rationalists Club on Ring Road knows, secularism is on the rise. UC Irvine’s religious studies department, as well as the religious studies departments of other colleges, offers courses on atheism, agnosticism and secular beliefs. Recently, Pitzer College in Southern California has developed an entire major devoted to Secularism, which will debut this fall.

You guys remember that monster battle between the Pilsbury Doughboy and H.R. Pufnstuf over in China a few years back that left all of Hong Kong blanketed in uncooked cinnamon roll dough?

On May 4, 2011, after President Obama announced his decision not to release graphic post-mortem images taken of Osama bin Laden, Sarah Palin posted a Tweet provoking Obama to change his mind. She wrote: “Show photo as warning to others seeking America’s destruction.”

Imagine yourself back in high school. You and your best friend are pretty and popular. You two are inseparable, going to parties, to the gym, to dinner — doing everything — together. It has been like this for years but then one day things start to change. You realize that you’re attracted to her.

If you’re reading this, you probably hate the Big Oil Companies. And, let’s be honest, there’s a whole lot of reasons for you to hate them. The only good thing that they do is provide jobs, but many alternative fuel programs would likely provide more.

Traditionally, professions that involve handling another person’s life have been highly regarded and valued by our society. So much so that professionals in those fields command high salaries for their work as a token of appreciation for the tremendous amount of responsibility they have to deal with daily.

We’ve all done it. We take our laptops to class with every intention of listening to our professors and taking notes, but the temptation of going on the Internet for Facebook, ESPN or online shopping ultimately gets the best of us.