I’ve never seen her beautiful eyes get so big.

“Erin, I see you on the screen!” she’d exclaim with unfeigned excitement, as if she had just witnessed Jesus turn water into wine.

“Can you see me? Can you see me waving at you?”

I’d laugh. “I see you Grammy; you’re looking lovely today!”

Born in 1920, my grandmother witnessed endless technological advancements that continued to astound her in myriad ways.

Even at my age, I find myself recalling past technologies I grew up with, assuming her similar state of awe in regard to where our world is today.

I already live with the fact that I will be explaining VHS tapes and Walkmans to my children, which will surely elicit an expression of bewilderment in conjunction with the “Woah, you’re old” look I used to give my grandmother when I was a child.

“You mean, you didn’t play Oregon Trail, Grammy?”

I never had the heart to tell her that her character usually came down with cholera on the grueling westward journeys anyway.

Oregon Trail, meet smartphones that can see through walls. Meet automobiles whose customized safety electronic systems respond according to your mood.

The time for hunting buffalo — only to settle for the squirrels sporadically jolting across the screen — has long since passed.

As reported by RedOrbit, scientists and engineers from the University of Texas at Dallas have developed new smart phone technology, allowing users to literally see through walls — an advancement they expect to be available for the consumer over the next three to four years.

How exactly does this Clark Kent technology work, one may ask?

Well, envision the electromagnetic spectrum — from radio waves, with the lowest frequency, all the way to gamma rays, with the highest frequency. Nestled in between microwaves and infrared rays is a part of the spectrum called the terahertz band, and researchers have developed a way to transform the electromagnetic waves emitted from this band into actual images. No LSD needed.

The result? Smartphones with an X-ray-like vision. Brick, concrete, clothing, wood, paper and, yes, even those fluffy-white formations of water droplets floating above one’s head are among some of the materials the technology would see through.

Dr. Kenneth O, one of the researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas, told RedOrbit: “By far, the medical imaging for cancerous cells will be the most important application.”

One of its many benefits is that terahertz radiation results in significantly less damage to cell DNA and tissues in comparison to X-ray radiation, which is used universally for medical imaging.

Of course, with any new technology, there is a risk of its abuse.

Seeing through clothes? Cancer cells won’t be the only thing getting a thorough examination — not to mention the numerous other privacy concerns that may arise. Although, Dr. O and his colleagues have said their aim is to allow the technology only to work at a distance no greater than 4 inches.

Regardless, my personal space bubble just inflated itself.

Also launching technology into a new age, Toyota Motor Corporation is in the process of developing cutting-edge safety advancements for their cars in the form of a camera that interprets readings from 238 points on a driver’s face to determine their mood.

Research done by the Japanese automaker found that angry or sad drivers are more likely to be distracted while driving, resulting in slower response times to external factors such as crossing pedestrians or a sudden change of lanes by a neighboring car.

Toyota’s system would issue an alert to the driver more rapidly if their expression was identified as angry or sad than it would if their expression was identified as neutral.

This technology may be available to the consumer in as little as six years.

I’m OK with that, as I need sufficient time to digest the fact that my Prius may one day have more insight into my emotions than I do.

It proves horrifying and diametrically extraordinary to contemplate what the technological state of the world will be when I have grandchildren.

Although rapidly advancing technology is not devoid of shortcomings and does indeed necessitate an examination of its ethical implications, the modern Luddites who habitually decry the nature of such advancements neglect the remarkable improvements these technologies offer the fields of health and human safety.

Unequivocally, it proves a tragedy that humans will never cease to find unique and innovative ways to abuse and destroy — and, yes, technology can certainly be the vector. But too often our ability and drive to improve aspects of human life are minimized or overlooked, and that, too, is a tragedy symmetrically unfortunate.

 Erin McCann is a fourth-year biology student. Her columns appeared every Monday.

Fox News and its pundits have recently cried “class warfare” in response to calls addressing the historically low tax rate for the uber rich as a means to fix the country’s growing debt and deficit, despite the fact that the tax system is skewing income distribution upward.

One of the richest men in the country, Warren Buffett, has very publicly created the “Buffett rule” to help out the little guys and gals.

In an August 2011 op-ed in The New York Times, Buffett wrote that he thinks it’s unfair for his secretary to be taxed at a much higher rate than himself because “while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks … my friends have been coddled enough.” Thus, he is demanding the return of the tax rate system that was in place during the 1990s and an end to tax loopholes that allow corporations to avoid paying taxes.

As President Barack Obama has repeatedly said, “It’s not class warfare — it’s math.”

Many conservatives have called for the poorer half of citizens to be squeezed even more, instead of addressing our economic dire, which caused the World Economic Forum to rank the United States as 45th in the world when it comes to income equality.

Yet rightward sources still insist lower-class citizens are the ones who should be paying more in taxes to keep the country afloat. These are the people who they want to pay more while the rich are “coddled.”

According to a conservative estimate made by the 2010 census, 46 million Americans live in poverty. The declining prosperity of the poorest citizens seems even more desolate, given that 45 percent of citizens in the richest country in the world don’t have economic security.

This means nearly half of our citizens live practically, day-to-day, with the whole of their income going to pay for the necessities — food, transportation, housing and medical care — and are unable to save for the future, including for unexpected emergencies, like when a family member gets sick or another loses their job.

The tax system has seemingly been engineered to allow the rich to accumulate more wealth at the expense of the 99 percent. The working man doesn’t have the ability to hire lobbyists or accountants to find ways around paying taxes; his work with sympathetic legislators to decrease their minor tax burden instead.

The tax rate for the rich is the lowest it has been since 1950, which has contributed greatly to our country’s deficit. According to Business Insider, under President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, the top-bracket rate was a staggering 90 percent and we had a period of strong growth.

Growth increased after President Bill Clinton raised taxes in 1993 and declined after the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. When Bush and many Republicans talked about tax relief for American citizens, their policy was to give tax breaks to the top 1 percent.

It’s no wonder the United States is in debt after entering two wars without raising revenue to pay for them.

“You have to acknowledge that part of our deficit problem was the huge Bush tax cuts in the early part of the decade,” Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida said on CBS’ Face the Nation.

“What was handed off to the new administration of over a trillion dollars of annual deficit, that accounted for almost half of it,” he said. “If you’re going to be real about the numbers, you’re going to have to address these kinds of things.”

In a recent debate, the Bangor Daily News reported that Maine state Sen. Jonathan Courtney, R-Springvale, said Democrats are playing “class warfare” with the Republicans’ recent bill to give further tax breaks to the top rates, while imposing a TABOR-like vice that has been voted down twice in a popular vote.

Decide for yourself if talking math is class warfare.

Noel Madore is a third-year public management student. He is a member of the College Democrats. His columns appeared on Mondays.

I’m speaking of Tax Day, the day when the federal government sees fit to return some of its citizens’ money to them. This is a perverse celebration of government overreach, an utter reversal of the roles of government and the people. Some brave patriots will refuse to pay their taxes and go to jail for it.

I come to you today with a modest proposal to fight this trend — a proposal in defense of liberty. Liberty means doing something because you choose to, not because you are threatened with force.

Therefore, I suggest that we use our rights as citizens to repeal all taxes, fees and duties imposed by the many governments of the United States.

People will cry out: “What of the poor, who require government aid to survive? What of the children, who are only educated but by the grace of public schooling? What of women and minorities who require affirmative action to get good jobs and education? Most of all, what about communities that need police protection from the ills of drugs and thieves?”

Enough, I say. In a world of perfect liberty, none of these should concern us. What should worry us more is government that deprives us of our right to defensive weaponry, our right to use recreational drugs and seek the services of prostitutes, and exchanges our right to self-determination for prison sentences.

Defenders of government cry out that it provides “essential services” needed for society to function. But if these services are necessary, a market would surely rise up to provide them in the absence of government.

You want to help the poor? I promise you, there is no better feeling than helping others by your own will. You want education? Private schools are seen as bastions of the elite, but this is only because the money parents should be investing in their children’s education goes wasted in taxes. You want jobs for minorities? Give them the chance to create their own firms, rather than forcing them into jobs with employers who don’t want them.

And as for police “protection” — there is a reason the term “police state” is universally seen as derisive. Why should government have a monopoly on force when we are all capable of defending ourselves? In a world of perfect liberty, no one would go to jail for driving too fast, taking drugs or acting in self-defense.

Surely, there will always be deviants who seek to harm others; private security forces and independent arbitrators can sort them out. A well-armed community is a safe community, and we can trust private justices not to exert influence when their kin are involved. After all, when administrators of justice can be fired at any time, there is pressure to act appropriately.

Most of all, what concerns me is government’s desire to rewrite the rules of economic intercourse. Theorists from Friedrich Hayek to Ludwig von Mises have recognized the importance of individual choice in a well-functioning economy.

People today want to tax the rich twice over. They want to raise income taxes on the highest earners so they will bring home an “acceptable” amount of money, and then they want to raise minimum wages to give workers even more of business owners’ money.

This is unjust. The famous inscription on the Statue of Liberty calls out, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” America has always welcomed the poor and hungry from other nations because — unlike today’s bloated, entitled middle class — they value hard work and recognize the sense of accomplishment that comes from earning your living.

A system of voluntary exchange would allow laborers to receive a truly fair wage, whatever business owners could afford to pay them. More people could be hired for less if we didn’t embrace the idea of “distributive justice,” meaning fewer would rely on private charity. Most importantly, workers would truly have to work to earn their wages, and so they would be satisfied in their labor once more.

So, my fellow patriots, I urge you to do what’s right. We must come together to rid ourselves of unjust taxes and unjust government, so we can live in liberty once again.

Mike Emery is a fourth-year sociology student. His political columns have appeared every Thursday.

The site proclaimed to be “pro-ana,” so I did a little research and discovered this meant the website advocated for anorexia or an extremely thin physique.

Popular pro-ana website “PrettyThin” has a page of “Thinspo,” or “Thinspiration,” boasting a picture of a thin woman that reads, “Do it for the bikini,” “Do it for the stares” and other such mantras encouraging anorexia.

Not only does this small corner of the Internet exist, it also began taking over popular social media re-blogging site Pinterest until the site banned Thinspiration’s idea boards.

What is it about these websites that is so disturbing?

Anorexia is not a new trend and, as summer nears, the pressure to be thin is ever-present. The most disturbing aspect of these sites, other than the promotion of an eating disorder, is that women make these sites.

Though anorexia is not just a female phenomenon, the extreme societal pressures on women are mounting as summer nears. Bikini and sundress season, the rise of hem lines: these are reasons why women tend to try and diet and workout more during the months leading up to summer.

However, the difference between a healthy and attainable weight and anorexia becomes blurred as fashion magazines promote stick-thin models, Lady Gaga tweets “Pop Stars Don’t Eat,” designer Karl Lagerfeld is quoted as saying Adele is “a bit too fat” and international fashion runways promote models whose waists are smaller than the circumference of their skull.

Though the media have a large say in what is “trendy” and what is not, magazines with thin models wouldn’t sell if women truly disapproved of the message. What is terrifying about the trend is that women are buying these magazines, creating pro-ana websites and encouraging each other to push themselves to the bodily limits of their frame.

Ninety-one percent of women in college have attempted to control their weight through dieting, cites Walden Behavior Care’s website; 40 percent of women in college actually have an eating disorder, an alarmingly high statistic

Why is this? Eating disorders can rise from the need to have control, societal and social pressures, stress and many other psychological causes. The alarming aid to these pressures is the use of Thinspiration boards on social media sites, pro-ana websites and other literature that promotes anorexia.

Conversely, some companies have started campaigns for “real beauty.” The most notable is Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, which touts the mantra: “Imagine a world where beauty is a source of confidence, not anxiety.” Such campaigns embrace all figures of women rather than an idealized body type, and also boast non-airbrushed photos.

The website for Dove’s campaign states that only 2 percent of women around the world find themselves beautiful and aims to change that statistic. Getting corporations behind a change is extremely important, as media expose young women to material that could harm their self-confidence. One website, however, may not be enough to end the dangerous trend that eating disorders have become.

What can we do?

As a college community, support is always beneficial. Support individualism and individual body types.

Accept that different really is beautiful, and that developing an eating disorder in order to be thin is not something to be praised.

Help fight the cycle of pressure that is forcing women to become thinner this season and support the healthy lifestyle that truly is beautiful.

Katelyn Melanson is a third-year psychology student. Her columns have appeared every other Thursday.

I won’t lie — at times it has been a bit of a struggle to find things to write about. I hoped that by doing this I would learn more about the nuts and bolts of sustainable management and what neat things people are doing on campus to fulfill our goal of becoming carbon-neutral by 2040.

For the most part, though, what I learned was a little bit about a lot of different things because that is what sustainability is: changing the framework of everything all at once. I started with the easy things like transportation, food and waste and I never got around to tackling the more difficult topics of energy use and production, or facilities management — their website is really quite secretive.

My intention was to understand what was motivating campus administrators and what was stopping them from more actively supporting sustainability as an everyday reality on campus. I wanted to help people imagine what a more sustainable campus would actually look like.

Yesterday, I attended the Distinguished Presidential Lecture and Luncheon that was part of President Paul Ferguson’s inauguration week, and the speaker, Gregory G. Johnson, a retired Navy admiral and University of Maine System trustee, gave a very eloquent and entertaining speech about leadership and creating a vision for the University of Maine.

One of my favorite anecdotes was about how to plow a straight line. Rather than looking behind, you need to pick a tall pine on the horizon to aim for. Another tale from his time in the military was about the persistence of culture in determining your results.

As a group of squadrons, he said they consistently performed on a bell curve  — a few groups at the top and bottom and then a whole bunch in the middle — and those that were on the edges stayed there despite attempts to bring in the best people and improve performance. A culture of excellence is hard to create but, fortunately, easy to keep once established.

Admiral Johnson rightly congratulated the University of Maine on instituting first-class programs such as the Sustainable Solutions Initiative and the Climate Change Institute, but I don’t know if the same thing could be said about our efforts to actually be a sustainable community.

It’s not a part of culture; it’s not a real part of our everyday conversation. No one is being asked to even consider changing their choices beyond the lines of “Oh please, please recycle.”

I know administrators are aware of sustainability and have made attempts to integrate it into their work, but it’s hard to see as it’s not connected with the student community in any practical way.

We have a “tall pine” down on paper in our master plan and other statements, but looking around, the idea that we are a community committed to the economic, social and environmental well-being of all its members hasn’t been realized as a way of life.

Ask any student and I doubt sustainability or green living will be in their description of their experience of UMaine. We study it, we go out and enjoy it, but we don’t live it.

If anything, after this year I’m more convinced that sustainability will never be fully achieved because there is always something more you can do — there is more thought, research or work that could be done to bring the community and nature together in a healthy and productive way.

We will never “get there” but we must always be working toward it. I feel like we are intellectually and globally focused on sustainability, but we have stopped working toward it on a personal and local level.

We need to create a culture of living the “Good Life” as the Nearings, early pioneers of the back-to-the-land movement, described it. We can do more to affordably support sustainable options and we are doing a disservice to our students and the reputation of UMaine if we don’t keep heading toward what truly is the tallest pine.

Mackenzie Rawcliffe is a graduate student studying international affairs and public administration. She is the production manager for The Maine Campus.

A space between two things? Getting warmer.

Gap between neuronal firings? Gap between critical thought and unquestioning subservience of the mind? Almost there.

Gap between respecting the rights of women and presenting grossly inappropriate, sexist and skewed images of “genocide”?

Cher monsieur, I think we have a winner.

Enter the Genocide Awareness Project, or GAP, the anti-choice group headquartered in Lake Forest, Calif., that graced the University of Maine with its presence this past week, a presence sponsored by UMaine’s very own student group Life Support.

GAP is now remembered on campus as the few males — you know, the sex devoid of any semblance of female genitalia — who forced up billboard-sized graphic images of bloody fetuses draped over dimes for all to see.

So as not to forget a valuable member of their group, I must mention their token “I’ve-had-an-abortion” anti-choice woman, who declared to a captive student audience that she has actually had four abortions.

I think she and I can both agree that there’s certainly an issue, but one that doesn’t exactly work in her favor.

Now, for those who were fortunate enough to miss the exposé, allow me to recreate the setting.

Darius Hardwick, the frontman of this appalling exhibit, stood atop a pedestal in front of the crowd, assuming only a slight demeanor of elitism. Ah, mon cher, at such height the fall was inevitable.

As a female passerby, I felt only moderately judged as I looked up into the eyes of the one without a uterus. And the laughter in the background was of the very faintest nature.
Furthermore, Hardwick’s eyes sparkled with a loving condemnation, so I considered the colossal images of dismembered fetuses looming over me to be only slightly offensive to my sex and pro-choice stance.

Isn’t it interesting how the male can do whatever he pleases, but the female must live with the consequence? Only the female is left with the decision between “right and wrong.” How convenient, and how fortunate that all of these Mary Magdalenes have men to guide them along their moral path. May we wash your feet, Darius?

Furthermore, I find it incredibly confounding that groups such as GAP expend an inordinate amount of time and energy fighting against women’s rights for a fetus the size of a dime.

GAP, if you’re unequivocally pro-life, why don’t you shift your focus to that of post-birth abortions, instead? — When the fetus is significantly larger than a coin hosting FDR’s shrunken head, and the effects are considerably more alarming?

You forget the soldier abroad with a family, with a fiancé, with a future. Instead, you liken pro-choicers to Hutu extremists, massacring Tutsi civilians. You liken your crusade to that of Martin Luther King Jr.’s. Can I get a holler for hyperbole?

GAP, you are delusional. You not only mislead the public, but you also show blatant disregard for the millions who have actually witnessed genocide. Real genocide.

When a 16-year-old girl has unprotected sex and opts for an abortion because she knows she can’t be a mother — as she’s barely surviving being a child, and she doesn’t want a child to end up in the system — this doesn’t equate to Hitler’s extermination of over 6 million Jews or Stalin’s Soviet Famine, when one-sixth of the entire population of Ukraine starved to death.

This doesn’t compare to racial oppression, war, rebel armies shooting mothers execution-style and then snatching their orphaned boys and teaching them the ways of the machine gun.

Nice try.

So, GAP, in your hyperbolic attempts to liken a woman’s right to choose to a massacre of humankind, after holding a magnifying glass to our eyes until you locate some semblance of a supposed speck, it’s time to get down from your pedestal of distorted cubist morality and locate your own plank. As the laughter continues to haunt you all the way down.

Erin McCann is a fourth-year biology student. Her columns will appear every Monday.

Santorum didn’t say why he’s leaving the race. Some have suggested his daughter Bella’s illness — she has Edwards syndrome, a genetic disorder whose sufferers only live to the age of 10 at a 1-in-100 rate, and was also recently hospitalized with pneumonia — led Santorum to throw in the towel.

Pragmatists believe Santorum realized he couldn’t win and didn’t want to be embarrassed by a loss in his home state of Pennsylvania, which holds its primaries on April 24. By building on the base he created in this campaign, Santorum could come back stronger in four years. Of course, people said similar things about former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2008, and Huckabee declined to run this year even though he would have been a front-runner.

There are also suggestions that Santorum quit the race because he was offered something else. This is not out of the question; in 2008, when Obama had already won enough delegates to be assured the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton used the fact that she had won a large number of delegates to get face time at the party convention and an appointment as secretary of state.

If Santorum suspended his campaign because he was offered a cabinet post, we’ll likely find out in the coming weeks. But what position might he have been offered? A column from the Washington Post late last month raises an interesting — and disconcerting — possibility.

The column’s author, Carter Eskew, cites reports from his own paper that “conservatives are suggesting that, to unite the party, Romney should appoint Santorum as attorney general, John Bolton as secretary of state and Newt Gingrich as ambassador to the United Nations.”

John Bolton is best remembered as the man who couldn’t win Senate confirmation as U.N. ambassador because he doesn’t believe the U.N. should exist. Former President George W. Bush pushed him through in a no-contest recess appointment.

In a 2009 op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, Bolton compared President Obama to Ethelred the Unready, “history’s paradigmatic weak leader,” because of Obama’s diplomatic efforts in the Middle East. As secretary of state, Bolton would be the country’s chief diplomat.

At least Gingrich agrees with some of the U.N.’s stated goals. However, in his book, “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine,” Gingrich says “[r]edistributing wealth is not some side project at the United Nations; it is the organization’s main purpose today.” In a 2006 interview with the Washington Post, Gingrich called former President Bush’s stance toward Iran and North Korea “appeasement.” Diplomacy doesn’t seem to be his main concern.

The most concerning idea is that Santorum could become attorney general of the United States. Eskew compares Santorum to A. Mitchell Palmer, another Pennsylvania native who, as Woodrow Wilson’s attorney general, conducted raids against radical leftists and anarchists and generally used his power to harm political enemies.

So who would Attorney General Santorum go after? In short, everyone.

Santorum made an anti-pornography crusade a key issue for his presidential campaign, stating that “America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography.” He has vowed to strictly enforce federal obscenity laws, which would not endear him to the 43 percent or so of Americans who view porn online, according to The Week.

Santorum also has alienated the gay community and its allies. In a 2003 interview with the Associated Press, he compared homosexuality to polygamy, adultery and incest, and implicitly, pedophilia and bestiality. This led to an online campaign that coined a new, not-fit-for-print meaning for the word “Santorum.”

In the interview, Santorum reiterated his belief that “[t]he right to privacy is a right that was created in a law that set forth a [ban on] rights to limit individual passions. And I don’t agree with that.” Santorum believes states should have the right to have anti-abortion and anti-sodomy laws, because individuals hold no natural right to privacy.

Civil libertarians, too, have good reason to oppose Santorum as attorney general. Earlier this year, Santorum said he hoped the U.S. government had been involved in the alleged assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and asserted our right to do so: “And if people say, ‘Well, you can’t go out and assassinate people,’ well, tell that to Awlaki. … We’ve done it for an American citizen.” Anwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen whose assassination last September in Yemen remains controversial.

Hopefully this discussion is academic. In order for “Attorney General Rick Santorum” to be a possibility, Romney has to win.

But if he does, we need to hold Romney accountable for his cabinet appointments. That’s because Rick Santorum as attorney general is an even worse idea than Rick Santorum as president.

Mike Emery is a fourth-year sociology student. His political columns will appear every Thursday.

Indeed, right now it’s hard to think of much beyond May 4, but that day will come sooner than you think. It’s good to be emotionally prepared, especially for the soon-to-be graduated, as the days after commencement could be a lot more stressful than what is commonly assumed.

The relief of being free from papers and professors will carry you into August at least, but once those back-to-school sales start up, you’ll begin to question your purpose in life in a far deeper and more unsettling way for the very same reason you will be so relieved in May — no more grades.

There will be no more rubrics to judge your success or advancement as a person. Think about it: every year up to now you’ve advanced — leveled up, so to speak — and have had a GPA to prove your contribution to society.

Even if your grades weren’t stellar, you had at least built-in social or athletic milestones to rate your life performance. But no more grades equals no more easy sense of self-worth. From now on you have to earn your confidence through serious self-reflection and conscious action.

Even if your lone goal is money (and the more you make and acquire is your “worth” measuring stick) it’s likely you will still get to a point in life when you are fired, faced with deteriorating health, or just suddenly have a change of heart and are right back in the same disorienting position of not knowing.

There is hope, however. Meet Mike Brown — he is from Hampden (I went to high school with him) and is now living in downtown Boston making a decent salary as an engineer. Back in August, he realized the way he was living was slowly moving farther away from the way he thought he wanted.

“I was becoming a yuppie — above-average income, living downtown, going to work, having dinner, hanging out and going to bed and then going out on the town for fun,” Mike recalls.

He was slowly changing to fit that lifestyle but it wasn’t what he was truly interested in, which is reading and being outdoors. He felt like he was becoming a one-dimensional person. So he had read about lifestyle design and started a blog — theyoungurbanprofessional.com — to document his efforts to complete an open-ended series of 30-day lifestyle experiments.

“Yeah, sure I was raised in a carnivorous family but is that really how I want to be living?” he said. “Jury’s still out but I am figuring out what I want… Do I want to be a vegetarian? How would I know — I’ve never tried it.”

Since he began, Mike has tackled a wide variety of challenges, from living without the landfill  — he built a successful, non-smelly worm compost and was able to cut his garbage down to virtually nothing — to doing one act of kindness a day or having a conversation on the T every day.

I was most impressed with the 100-item challenge where he actually cut down his possessions with a few caveats. Hygiene and shared items like his microwave didn’t count because he felt his girlfriend and roommates shouldn’t have to suffer. But he now can tell you exactly how many pairs of pants and shirts he has and doesn’t buy anything unless it’s to replace something else.

Some things were difficult, like a sentimental ukulele, but he realized it was really part of his “image of what I want myself to be good at,” not something he was actually using. That challenge really forced him to take an “analytical look at my life.”

He expounded: “I had been living in Boston for two years and had an overwhelming sense of settling down, acquiring stuff and all this nonsense that I didn’t need. It is really the anti-living in the city mentality. Just because I make money doesn’t mean I have to buy stuff with it.”

What does Mike Brown have to do with sustainability or your future?

A lot. Because changing our habits or taking an active interest in how we live our lives hasn’t been a priority lately. Our priority was the next test, the next game, graduation.

Once you graduate, you’ll have fewer excuses or external ways to measure yourself other than your paycheck, but as Mr. Brown found, that gets old pretty quickly. Doing a 30-day life experiment is cheap, easy and can permanently affect how you choose to live your life. Not all of Mike’s experiments have to do with sustainability, but taking a careful look at the effects of your lifestyle and actively trying to change your habits is the key to changing the path our whole society is on.

I encourage you to check out his entertaining blog. Ask yourself if you have the chutzpah to do your own lifestyle experiments.

Mackenzie Rawcliffe is a graduate student studying international affairs and public administration. She is the production manager for The Maine Campus.

These demonstrations had varying levels of success — in Egypt and Tunisia the rebels overthrew their governments without the need for international support, while in Algeria the protests were quickly subdued with few concessions from the government.

For the most part, the violence of the Arab Spring has subsided. Governments have generally made concessions to end protests in their countries. The unfortunate exception is Syria, the only remaining country whose government refuses to step aside despite international pressure.

There have been recent developments suggesting the conflict could be drawing to an end. The United States and European powers have been pushing for international action, but have been blocked in the U.N.’s Security Council by Russia and China. Late last month, an agreement was reached to support a peace plan developed by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Annan has been working as a special U.N. envoy to Syria since late February and developed a six-point plan that calls for daily breaks in fighting between rebels and Syrian security forces so that humanitarian aid can be distributed. More importantly, the plan sets a cease-fire deadline on April 12.

Many international observers don’t believe Annan’s plan will work. The statement of the Security Council in support of the plan doesn’t specify any punishment for the Syrian government if they fail to abide by the plan; it merely states that Annan will continue to report to the Security Council, which will “consider further steps as appropriate.”

At the same time Annan’s peace plan faces its crucial test, another international group is coming together to openly support the Syrian rebels, potentially extending the conflict. The Friends of Syria Group, supported by governments around the world — including the United States — met on Sunday in Istanbul. At this meeting, the United States announced it would give $12 million in aid to the rebels; Arab governments announced aid totaling over $100 million.

The Syrian situation demonstrates the flaw in the United Nations’ power structure, as well as the need for an international body with the authority to engage in human rights and peacekeeping missions.

Libertarians argue that international “governments” such as the U.N. take away from national sovereignty, and that the United States should respect other nations’ sovereignty and not strive to be a world police power. Conservatives tend to agree with the former statement, and anti-war liberals with the latter.

In an era when open conflict among nations could lead to nuclear war and the destruction of a large portion of the world’s population, the national sovereignty argument loses some of its luster. Just as we give up some of our liberty to maintain order within national boundaries, so should nations restrict their freedom to wage war and use weapons of mass destruction.

The presence of an international organization such as the U.N. helps prevent individual nations from acting as world police. Powerful nations can act out of order, as the United States did by ignoring international calls for diplomacy when we invaded Iraq in 2003.

We could only do this because there were no repercussions. Foreign governments may have been upset with our actions, but our allies generally joined us, and nations strongly opposed to the invasion had little recourse but cooling economic relations.

The trouble is in the structure of the U.N. Security Council, the most powerful body within the United Nations’ hierarchy. The Security Council is made up of 15 members, including five permanent members who can veto any resolution or statement — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. This veto power makes the Security Council a consensus government, which greatly reduces the Council’s authority.

China and Russia have refused to allow any resolution on Syria that calls for “regime change,” since both countries have warm relations with the Syrian government and could lose economic ties — and Russia could lose a naval port — if the rebels take over. Similarly, the United States generally vetoes any resolution that calls for condemnation or sanctions against its ally Israel.

When one nation can single-handedly prevent the U.N. from implementing sanctions or authorizing a peacekeeping mission, even in the face of broad international agreement, it encourages countries to go through alternate channels — such as the Friends of Syria Group — to accomplish the same goals. This necessarily creates division in the international community and opens up the possibility of escalation.

Syria has one of very few governments run by Shi’ite Muslims, and most of the opposition’s supporters are Sunnis. The major Shi’ite power is Iran; if Iran gets involved, Syria’s revolt could envelop the entire Middle East. If the United Nations had more authority, this wouldn’t be an issue.

 Mike Emery is a fourth-year sociology student. His political columns will appear every Thursday.

It’s a rare day that something on campus excites me like this — which is hard to believe for those who know me, because I bounce with enthusiasm at the drop of a hat. But combined with my excitable nature is a heavily ingrained sense of practicality and pessimism.

On most days, what I see on campus are well-executed but poorly-attended events and students more concerned with leaving campus as quickly as possible. Sometimes, on a beautiful day or when well-organized Greeks have put an event together, I get the sense that I’m in a real community, but otherwise I have my small group of friends and a few buildings on campus where I go to class.

My University of Maine experience feels a lot more disjointed and isolated than I thought it would. Growing up with stories of my parents’ football games, streaking, frat parties and the following of the mysterious blue bear footprints around campus, I had an entirely different perception of what being a student here would feel like.

It’s hard to pin down what I think is lacking, but I felt more like a Black Bear when my experience was through my parents’ memories than I do now.

I do not mean to say there is no community here. If I had come to UMaine as an undergraduate or was more heavily involved with the arts or sports, I might feel differently about my connection to campus.

And I think I must not be alone in feeling disengaged because the majority of events on campus are not well attended by students. Whether it’s a performance, game, carnival or lecture, it usually seems like no one showed up to your birthday party.

I hate going to an event when no one is there — it breaks my heart to know someone has worked hard to create something cool and gets slapped in the face by low attendance. I hate it so much that I won’t go if I think no one else is going. That is exactly the problem, because I feel like other people are making that distinction too.

It feels good to be around people having fun, regardless of your interest in the event. Just going into The Store Ampersand when it’s full puts a spring in my step. I want to enjoy being on campus, to be surprised and intrigued every day.

So what causes students to go to a basketball game, dance performance, protest or winter carnival? What makes someone care enough to do cool things?

I’ve bandied about a couple theories: Perhaps if it were cheaper to live on campus, more people would live here than at home. But since there are nearly 12,000 students and around 3,500 rooms available, that theory can’t be right. Maybe if the events were better planned or advertised?

Personally I think that CASE and company does a great job trying to think of events that students will like, and with their new TV ads in the Union and on the Collins Center for the Arts, it is a lot harder to say you didn’t know something was going on. So now my theory is that cool attracts cool. If you build it, they will come.

People should be doing more fun, random stuff. Spontaneity should be king. Where is the Super Fan? I want to meet him; I like that idea. Let’s just leave a bucket of chalk out for fun art. We have strong new media, intermedia and arts programs — let’s use our resources to make campus more fun.

Parades! Dogs doing tricks! Busking! Public Art projects — anything to put more personality into campus.

Let’s celebrate Holi, play cricket in fancy clothes on the mall, put DJ Les in the back of a truck and create a roving rave. There’s a month left of school, so release some stress and contribute to a real feeling of community on campus by doing something crazy. Dress up like Batman, ride your bike naked on Earth Day, offer free hugs or participate in random dancing.

Spring is a time to wake up and make this campus awesome and ours.

Mackenzie Rawcliffe is a graduate student studying international affairs and public administration. She is the production manager for The Maine Campus.