Whenever I watch any of the Indiana Jones movies, I can’t help but think how cool it would be to live as this Harrison Ford character (excluding the last movie). I’d get to go on quests, have adventures, make discoveries. Apparently Jim L-G had the same idea and decided to set of on a journey of epic proportions. He made up his mind to find the oldest printed ampersand. At Penn State.


Read on to find out more about this intellectual quest…

On Monday, the Centre Daily Times posted an article in their Op-Ed column written by the self-proclaimed Apostle of the Keystone Church, Perry Babb. Apostle Babb was writing to propose 10 solutions to the “irresponsible, dangerous drinking downtown and in the Centre Region”. Admittedly, Babb has been involved in many failed efforts to solve this problem, but evidently thinks that these 10 solutions are the real deal. Why?


Read on to see what I think about each of Apostle Babb’s solutions…

It keeps happening. Just when you think the government’s $700 billion stimulus package can’t have any more delicious benefits left to give us, it surprises us with more chocolatey goodness! It’s the gift that keeps on giving! It was announced a few days ago that KINBER (the Keystone Initiative for Network-Based Education and Research. Wow) has been awarded $99 million from the American Recovery and Revitalization Act to create a statewide, super-fantastic broadband network.


Read on to learn how the Stimulus package is being used…

Today Penn State celebrates its 155th birthday (making it almost as old as its football coach. Just kidding)! 155 years ago to the day (February 22, 1855 for anyone not too good at math), Governor James Pollock signed the charter for a state-sponsored school whose goal was to further scientific agricultural research.


While we still have an excellent agricultural program, Penn State has become one of the largest and most diverse public schools over the last 155 years, with majors ranging from Forest Science to Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management. Did Governor Pollock envision a school boasting dozens of campuses, tens of thousands of students, and the largest student-run philanthropic organization in the country? Did he envision football championships, legendary coaches, a three-peat volleyball team, or raising over $7.8 million for cancer research?


Probably not. But since 1855, because of students like me and you, Penn State has become more than its founders could ever have imagined and something that we can all take pride in.


(Check out a cool gallery of photos from Penn State’s history here).

We all know what everybody REALLY comes to the football games for. It’s not the team, PJ, DC, or the NL. It’s the BB’s performances (PJ Maierhofer, Daryll Clark, Nittany Lion, and the Blue Band for those of you slow at acronyms). With 4 dancers, the Blue Band shows its spirit just as much at THON, and I was able to sit down with Moira Davies, the Blue Band THON captain.


Read on for my interview with Moira…

The Penn State Alumni Association has a section on their website called the Online HUB. Despite what you may assume, this site has nothing to do with the Hetzel Union Building and not a whole lot to do with Alumni. What the website does offer are “fun downloads”. This includes desktop themes, digital copies of various Penn State songs, ringtones, and the lyrics to many Penn State songs.


Thanks to this website, it appears that washed-up alumni can now relive their college glory days – on their computer! I decided to try out one of the desktop themes, so I downloaded it, unzipped the contents, and saw this text file:

This is the new Penn State University theme for Microsoft Windows 95 under the use of PLUS!

Apparently, PLUS! is a program that Microsoft discontinued with the introduction of Windows XP. So unless you’re running Windows 95 (anyone?), these desktop themes aren’t very much use to you. Oh well, at least their site doesn’t look like a 90’s Geocities page.

For many people, Valentine’s Day brings up a lot of questions. What is love? Is there such a thing as destiny? What’s the best way to dance on a pole? This year, this reporter decided to tackle the toughest of these questions. To get the answers I needed, I knew that I would have to go to a definitive expert. A Gentleman of State College.


Who are the Gentlemen of State College, you may ask? They provide a service many people may be needing around this time of year:

We are Central Pennsylvania’s newest and hottest male escort service for men and women who want the best escort service in Central Pennsylvania. [...] The Gentlemen of State College proudly presents the best, most outrageous, charming, sexy and sophisticated gentlemen in Central Pennsylvania.

I knew that this is where I would find answers, so I sat down for a straight-shooting interview with Russell Wilson, one of the Gentlemen’s finest. Read on for that interview.

Yesterday, the Collegian wrote an article discussing the widespread use of Facebook at Penn State. The article discussed how popular Facebook is on campus, and how the Penn State fan page is used to deliver alerts to students (today it’s being primarily for students to complain about classes not being canceled).


Come on, Collegian, this is breaking news? It’s not 2006, EVERYONE has a Facebook, and in all aspects of life it’s become common practice to use Facebook as a means of communication. It must have been a slow news day when they had to resort to running this deprecated social commentary. If only a local Congressman had died, or there’d been a massive snow storm, or a White House aide had mocked Sarah Palin. Oh wait.


Read on to find out what other “breaking” news stories the Collegian could have run…

The University of Alabama is having a…umm…long…err…stiff…ehmm…hard problem. Craig Wedderspoon, head of the sculpture program at UA, recently installed a 10-foot-tall sculpture entitled “Argyle”. Wedderspoon saw it as an abstract artistic expression, which was all fine and dandy until people started trying to go past the abstract.

“We had a lot of people come by and comment ‘giant phallus,’ ” said Wedderspoon, head of the sculpture program at UA’s Department of Art. “When confronted with something abstract, we may not know what it is, it’s curious how quickly it is we go to our sexual organs.”

Yes Mr. Wedderspoon, curious indeed. Wedderspoon, who’s previously had similar comments on his work, denies any (intentional) innuendo. It’s a good thing that we don’t have any statues like this on campus that could be potentially misconstrued. Oh wait…


Read on to get a closer look at Penn State’s dirty statue.

Penn State recently announced that it will be using an automated system to handle all financial interest disclosures in its research. Penn State’s research budget last year totaled $765 million, so any change involving any aspect of its allocation is something to take under consideration.


Click Commerce’s eResearch software will be implemented, and through the software researchers can create and maintain their financial information. This information will then be linked into the university’s institutional review board, where they can review potential conflicts of interest. Think Facebook meets Big Brother (1984, not the show). But more confidential. Hopefully. The University claims that:

Given the sensitive nature of the data we’re gathering, our researchers can be confident of confidentiality as we’ll be using Click’s Web services to ensure secure data transfer between our systems and the Click platform

I think it’s a great thing that the University is trying to streamline some cumbersome processes, but I’m not sure how I feel about this. Entrusting this information to a private company’s servers? Penn State has already had enough problems (i.e. hacked social security numbers) keeping its own information secure, without sending it out to a private company. Will this “sensitive” data really be as secure as Penn State claims?

As I’m sure you all remember, the most important thing on students’ minds last spring was not finals, term papers, or tanning in the quad (ed. note: we have quads?). It was whether Asher Roth was the right choice to headline Wallypallooza.


This year, though the UPUA is determined to organize another pre-finals music festival, the name is very much undecided. Since Mike Wallace resigned from his position as UPUA Programming Chairman, naming the festival after him makes even less sense than it did last year. Though Leanna Usnik has taken over the position, Usnikpalooza just does not have quite as good a ring


What should the new festival be called? Read on to find out a few other people we could name it after:

There are some days that you just wake up at 8:45, have a 9:05 class, and just don’t feel like going to class. We all have those days. I have those days every day. The question is, how do you know which classes to skip and which to suck it up and attend? Read on to follow Noah’s simple point system for skipping class and you’ll be a regular Ferris Bueller (and still get good grades) in no time.

A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education discusses the evolution and incorporation of video games into the academic world, and their use as didactic devices.


The article markets the potentials of this relatively new medium with a discussion of how fun, yet educational games, could augment (or even replace!) the classroom.


In 20 years, are you going to remember anything you learned in English 15/30? Probably not. But you will have better teamwork skills because of the practice you received working in groups. Some of the most profound skills we learn here are how to listen to a presentation, how to interact with out peers, how to work in a group. Teaching through video games is certainly a new and revolutionary idea, but I think it’s a slippery slope away from our humanity.


It starts with online classes and learning through video games, but it’s not too far of a stretch to go from that to a Matrix-esque world; all of us plugged in and having information loaded straight into our brains. What do you think?

I’m sure you all know SOMETHING about economics, and there’s nothing more simple than supply and demand. That is, when a service or good is in demand, someone will usually step up and supply that good. Here at Penn State, what do we demand? Big 10 championships. God-like football coaches. Clutch field-goal kickers. Money for the kids.


But an under-appreciated (until now) demand is that of fixing all the things that frats break. Imagine you’re a fraternity brother, you’re having a party, and someone breaks a window. It doesn’t matter how it happened, what matters is that the windows broken and it’s cold outside! What are you going to do? You could fix it yourself, but that would probably require actual effort. So you duct tape a piece of cardboard over it, and that seems to do the job.


Are you tired of that being your only option? It no longer has to be! Fratfix is here to help you out! Fratfix’s stated goal is to “assist fraternities with preventative maintenance and management of the fraternity house physical plant.”


Honestly, this company is a brilliant idea. Sure, there are tons of companies out there that do the exact same things for normal houses, but none of those have the word “Frat” in the name! Come on, who do you want to come lay your pipes? Some middle-aged guy with plumber’s crack, or Fratfix?

Or is the Penn State alumni association really just that expansive? The website Very Small Array recently designed a special map of Park Slope in New York City (“brave, bourgiest corner of Bourgie Brooklyn”, says Gawker), a hipster haven, music mecca, indie asylum. This map has all the streets in the Park Slope area, but the street names have been changed to the names of the colleges found on the rear windows of the cars parked there (maybe). Not surprisingly, Penn State is one of the largest names on this map, along with most of the ivies. What divine knowledge can we glean from this information?

Penn State (and a large part of Onward State’s readers/writers) has a large, under-appreciated hipster population
Penn State graduates are some of the only people who care enough to put a PSU sticker in their rear windshield
Being included with these other prestigious schools CLEARLY shows that Penn State doesn’t get the proper respect that they deserve as an academic juggernaut
This website could be a little biased

Take what you want from this map. Regardless of any revelations you come to, it’s a pretty cool project by someone with clearly too much time on their hands, and it amused me (and hopefully you) for a solid minute. Not bad.