As I sat in the dark, crowded theater watching the new film Zero Dark Thirty play before me this past Friday, I felt uneasy and unsure about something. The controversial film depicts the “true” story of how the infamous Osama Bin Laden was found and killed by American forces back in May of 2011. As my fellow moviegoers cheered when the screen showed U.S. forces raiding the compound at which Osama Bin Laden was hiding, I could not help but think to myself, is this actually benefiting our country?

The scenes of the CIA water-boarding prisoners were hard enough to watch, but what was harder to watch was the way the movie was filmed and told. It was filmed documentary style, showing the director’s point of view of what life is like in Pakistan and Afghanistan when U.S. forces and the CIA were present. Most people sat there complacent, accepting this view face value. Many people, including myself, do not know what life is really like there. Some would rather just accept this view even though it may not be accurate. Original phone calls from the Sept. 11 attacks were played, and a wave of sadness and unrest hit me and the rest of the room suddenly. This is when I realized that Zero Dark Thirty might become a catalyst for hatred and further violence involving racism on both the American side and the Middle East.

My thoughts raced as I remembered how the Middle East reacted to the anti-Islam film in September. Zero Dark Thirty could upset the Middle East with its graphic scenes of their men and women being killed by U.S. soldiers. We are often so quick to buy into the hype of movies that are “based on a true story” that we don’t often question the consequences of their wide spread popularity unless it directly affects us. To Americans, seeing people being murdered or killed is quite the norm in Hollywood movies, but to more conservative countries this may not be the case.

Many Americans who will watch this movie will possibly feel hatred towards those who attacked us as they listen to the frantic 911 calls from those trapped in the towers on 9/11. I did; it was impossible not to. Is it actually healthy for our country to essentially rehash what happened in a graphic, documentary style movie? We should always remember what happened and honor the victims and families of 9/11 and those who fought in the Iraq war, but Hollywood should be careful not to cross a fine line. Where I just felt angry and sad during the movie, another normal citizen may act upon their perpetuated hatred and take it out on innocent people, as events have shown quite recently in the United States.

Hollywood is not the reason violence occurs, but we cannot deny it may be a catalyst. When something as delicate as the relationship, or lack of, between Americans and people of the Middle East is depicted in Hollywood, there is of course going to be discussion on either side or possibly violence.

I have consistently heard those around me call people who may look or act like they are from the Middle East derogatory names or worse, say they are probably “terrorists”. Zero Dark Thirty may possibly reinforce this racism, because it is in fact racism. Some will leave the movie feeling hopeful for the future and others will be leaving with more hatred for the Middle East and Al Qaeda than ever before.

To fix the perception of average Americans from a Middle East standpoint, and to fix the perception of the Middle East from an American standpoint since 9/11 may be impossible. However, movies, literature and television can educate both sides and stop reinforcing biases. Not every person from the Middle East is in Al Qaeda and agrees with terrorism, which many Americans do not understand. Imagine someone with this ideology being essentially armed with a Hollywood movie like Zero Dark Thirty; it is a recipe for further discrimination and hatred.

There is also a clear difference between a documentary, and a movie filmed like it is a documentary. Though the filmmakers were in contact with the CIA, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is completely accurate. Mike Morell, acting director of the CIA, released a statement on the agency’s website stating that the “CIA interacted with the filmmakers through our Office of Public Affairs but, as is true with any entertainment project with which we interact, we do not control the final product,” according to a TIME Magazine article.

Movies like Zero Dark Thirty will not stop being produced, but what Americans can do is research and educate themselves on such topics beforehand to decrease discrimination and realize what is true and what isn’t. As citizens, it is our responsibility what we do with the media that is presented to us. By asking questions and doing formative research this may help eliminate biases, discrimination, and essentially inform consumers of what they should expect from the media and what they shouldn’t.

Sickle red blood cells, more commonly associated with disease, may also play a role in treating cancer tumors.

Researchers discovered that sickle cells, unlike normal red blood cells, can obstruct up to 88 percent of tumor blood vessels. When combined with chemotherapeutic agents, the sickle cells may be an effective method of attacking cancer tumors that are resistant to existing treatments. The study was published in the Jan. 9 edition of PLOS ONE and was a joint study among researchers at Duke Medicine and Jenomic Research Institute, a biotech company based in Carmel, California.

Sickle cells are more commonly known for its role in sickle cell anemia, a genetic disease that causes normal red blood cells to take on an abnormal crescent shape. In the study, researchers injected sickle red blood cells into mice with cancerous tumors. The sickle cells were found to clump in the blood vessel vessels of the tumor and its surrounding cells. In contrast, normal red blood cells moved freely through tumor vessels without sticking to one another.

“The tumor blood vessels and the sickle cells are uniquely joined at the hip,” said David Terman, head of Molecular Genetics at Jenomic. “It’s like two pieces of Velcro that are reciprocally sticky.”

The use of sickle cells is especially effective in treating hypoxic tumors, which are tumor cells that have been deprived of oxygen. These tumor cells are particularly resistant to conventional radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and this study may be the beginning of a new treatment method, said Mark Dewhirst, professor of radiation oncology at the Duke Cancer Institute.

Dewhirst added that another reason for hypoxic tumors’ resistance is because hypoxic cells do not divide. Conventional cancer treatment methods work best on cells that are dividing. Additionally, hypoxic cells are located far from major blood vessels, so drugs do not reach the tumor sites as readily.

Terman, who developed the research concept for the study in 1998, said that he brought his ideas to Duke in 2006 seeking collaboration. He currently holds the patents on the findings of the study.

“We managed to bring this project along, albeit slowly,” Terman said. “We were able to punch through the major impediments and proceed through to the endpoints.”

In order to continue research on the project, Terman noted that the next part of the research was to optimize the sickle cells so they can be more effective in attacking tumors, such as by loading the sickle cells with chemotherapeutic or tumor-killing toxins. He hopes that the study will move forward into human clinical studies within the next five to 10 years.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Soon, Facebook users may find themselves having to pay to get a message out to someone not on their friends list. In what appears to be yet another ridiculous attempt to generate revenue for Facebook, the social network is testing a new add-on to their messaging system that charges users.

Facebook has the ability to, and should make money for itself, but not at the expense of the average user.

On Dec. 20, 2012 Newsroom.fb.com was updated with a post letting users know that it is testing out yet another way to turn a profit from its product. Some users soon will have to pay a fee of $1 to message other users that aren’t on their friends list.

Facebook claims this new messaging system is to cut down on the amount of fraudulent messages, known as spam, from reaching the everyday user, but this is just another attempt in a long line of schemes to rescue its IPO, which has had a lackluster performance since it went public last May. While this update to the Facebook messaging system may curb spam, it also puts a price on open communication between average Facebook users.

In the past, Facebook has attempted to make revenue off of its users by adding paid features, such as “promote,” which allows users to pay a fee to have their post placed higher up on their friends newsfeed.

I was shocked to find out that not only has Facebook put a price on communication between users, but it’s also put a price tag on messaging Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, this is where it gets really absurd. It’ll cost you $100 to message Mr.Zuckerberg… that’s right, $100, and this doesn’t even guarantee he’ll read your message. All it will do is make sure your little message doesn’t get placed in his other(junk) folder.

So even after you foolishly throw away a hundred bucks, you still won’t get Zuckerberg to “like” you.

The proposed messaging fee affects several aspects of the site used daily and certainly will be a burden on Sooner sports fans.

If you ever check the “football tickets” section of OU’s student Facebook you may know that quite often when you want to buy a ticket to a game you may have to message the seller in order to get a price. I would hazard a guess that most people don’t in fact know the seller, so it’s entirely possible that users would have to pay a Facebook “ticket tax” in order to buy a football ticket, or stop using the OU ticket section all together.

To be fair, I think this is a pretty interesting way to combat the spam messages that wind up in my message box far too often, and according to Facebook, “Several commentators and researchers have noted that imposing a financial cost on the sender may be the most effective way to discourage unwanted messages and facilitate delivery of messages that are relevant and useful,” though they don’t cite where any of this information comes from in their article.

Facebook understandably has to find a way to generate money, but the last several attempts at doing so have left users feeling sore and used. Facebook should be profiting off its mobile platform and impose usage fees on large companies, but the everyday user shouldn’t fall victim to ridiculous user fees, or Facebook may find many of its users flocking back to Myspace or Friendster.

Exceptionally absent from the debate that surrounded the so-called “fiscal cliff” in the past few months, was the issue of the national debt, which stands at an unfathomable $16.3 trillion. That issue is inherent in the whole discussion of taxes, revenue, deficits, spending and the economy — and it is the public incarnation of those private problems — but the national debt, per se, consistently has been shoved aside in the rhetoric of Speaker of the House John Boehner and President Barack Obama.

Boehner alluded to the looming debt crisis in the speech he delivered Nov. 7, 2012, — the day after the election — saying the best solution to the cliff is “an agreement that begins to pave the way for the long-term growth that is essential if we want to lift the cloud of debt hanging over our country.” However, Boehner quickly moved on to reiterate a commitment not to an issue that the United States faces, but an issue that individual members of the United States face. Throughout his speech, Boehner touted his vision of a plan that would strengthen the economy. In turn, a strengthened, growing economy would lead to more revenues that would allow us to pay off the debt.

Obama replied in a speech two days later, on Nov. 9, 2012.  The American people elected the victorious politicians, including himself, he said, “to focus on your jobs, not ours” — to focus on the jobs of the voting population. “Our top priority,” he said, “has to be jobs and [economic] growth.” He and Congress should work to avoid the fiscal cliff because “It would be bad for the economy and it would hit families that are already struggling to make ends meet.”

As the Jan. 1 deadline for enacting a solution to the cliff loomed, Obama delivered another speech in which he did not prioritized debt reduction but job security for jobs, government benefits and a few thousand dollars per year per family. He said the best solution was “a balanced plan that would … above all, protect our middle class and everybody who’s striving to get into the middle class.”

But the magnitude of our indebtedness is so looming now that we cannot afford to wait for our economy to grow. Taking out debt might be a prudent investment in the future, but allowing it to accumulate and shrugging it off is nothing less than reckless abandon.

Debt is more than a rain cloud hanging over the heads of those who owe money to others, especially when it is so large that paying it off in the foreseeable future (i.e. within the lifetimes of those Congressmen and women who voted for it) is next to impossible. Yet, the enormity of how difficult it would be to pay down the debt at this point in time, makes such payment all the more necessary.

Reducing the national debt is more important than creating pro-business or pro-consumer tax policy because, to the extent that a person — or a country — owes more money than it can immediately pay to its creditors, he coexists with them in the same relationship as a chattel slave exists to his or her master. In a country with a gross domestic product of $15 trillion that collects $2.57 trillion in revenue, our national debt clearly limits us.

Why is it so acceptable for us to live outside our means? For, clearly, that is what we are doing, in pledging away our national fortune. From Rome’s dealings with barbarian hordes to Great Britain’s relations with the United States in her desperate struggle to beat back Hitler’s Germany, taking on debt and paying tribute have been the ruin of nations.

Republics and democracies — of which the United States is one, I am told — are ruled by the people. Before John Adams became president, he defined a republic as “a government of laws, and not of men.” In our plan of government, no man or woman is above the law.

As the people live, so the government will live. And if indebtedness is a condition individuals should seek to avoid — think of how eager your parents are to pay off the mortgages on their houses, or how proud your grandparents were that they rarely used credit or how excited you are to pay off your car and student loans (and how much noise is given to reducing student debt, from student body presidents to the president of the United States) — why is it not a condition the whole country should seek to avoid?

I suggest that it is because we have failed to maintain a rigid discipline in what is, and is not, the purpose of government and politics.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre became a dark chapter in our history,when a bloodthirsty madman snuffed out the lives of many children and their teachers. It was and is an unbelievable tragedy, whose full impact we may never truly know.

After the smoke cleared, people wanted answers. Some politicians wanted to score political points by pinning the tragedy on whatever issue happened to rub them the wrong way. And chief among the scapegoats some politicians and talking heads proffered is that old timeworn hobbyhorse that they have been riding for years: video games.

It began immediately after the shooting, of course, in a bout of what one can only describe as the worst journalism in recent memory. Fox News and CNN reported the shooter’s identity incorrectly, naming him as Ryan Lanza rather than Adam Lanza. Ryan is Adam’s older brother. The two networks also used Ryan’s Facebook photo as the photo of the shooter. This immediately led to a firestorm of hatred being posted to an innocent man’s Facebook wall, with death threats and the whole nine yards. Of course, he deleted his Facebook almost immediately to escape the rolling tide of misinformed hatred.

But the damage had been done. Because before it went down, some folks saw that Ryan liked Mass Effect on Facebook. Now for those folks who don’t closely follow every ridiculous claim that Fox News makes, this may not ring a bell, but there was a time when Fox had a nice long segment decrying Mass Effect as the most repulsive, tawdry piece of entertainment to ever hit the market. Of course, their charges against the game were defamatory at best and delusional by any measure, but that didn’t stop them for one moment. When your research on a topic consists of clicking around on that thing’s website 15 minutes before your segment, you need rethink your life.

And now their craziness has come full circle with people seizing the misinformation that Fox itself had sown in the past to demonize an industry in the future. I would accuse Fox News of being a puppet master in control of our nation’s most fervently overzealous reactionaries, but I think I’d be giving the outfit a bit too much credit. Lord knows they’ve chummed the waters enough over the years; it’s about time one of their clunkers bears fruit.

Violent video games have been a contentious issue ever since Columbine. The whole thing has been hashed and rehashed ad nauseum. Naturally, Capitol Hill’s resident mercenary Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has jumped right on the bandwagon to demonize game developers and called for a commission to “examine the effect the entertainment industry has on our culture.”

“Very often, these young men have had an almost hypnotic involvement in some form of violence in our entertainment culture, particularly violent video games, and then they obtain guns and become not just troubled young men but mass murderers,” Lieberman said during his screed against video games.

To boot, various news outlets’ shock that the shooter was a big fan of Call of Duty has saturated the blogosphere. Unfortunately, Call of Duty games routinely sell more than six million copies in their launch months alone, so I suppose that’s a truckload of latent psychos out there getting ready to strike. It’s either that, or someone shooting a person in real life isn’t related to enjoying a popular war game in the slightest, and reporting that someone liked Call of Duty isn’t a bombshell at all. Do you think if Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who landed the airplane safely in the Hudson, was revealed to play Microsoft Flight Simulator, people would be in a rush to credit video games with his amazing accomplishment? Of course not.

At the deepest circle of this sideshow is none other than the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, who began bleating his fervent, convenient cry of outrage to anyone who would listen.

“There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and sows violence against its own people,” LaPierre said during a press conference after the shooting.

He went on to name Mortal Kombat, Grand Theft Auto and Bulletstorm as some of the chief titles in this alleged fount of unchecked, distasteful violence. He also referenced a game called Kindergarten Killers as a reprehensible violent video game responsible for this sort of tragedy. Problematically, trotting out an old Flash game which was taken down four years ago as damning evidence of the video game industry’s perfidy isn’t exactly a bulletproof argument. The game was made by some guy from the U.K. That’s like saying that all art is awful because your neighbor’s 5-year-old made a crappy painting.

But LaPierre wasn’t happy to just blame the tragedy on video games and move on down the road. No, he opened his press conference by attempting to usurp the moral high ground for the NRA’s own purposes.

“While some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectfully silent,” LaPierre told reporters at the press conference. “Now, we must speak for the safety of our children.”

LaPierre seems to imply he wasn’t trying to deflect the growing chorus of outrage directed at the NRA or anything by ham-handedly repurposing the murder of elementary school kids to serve as an indictment of video games, thereby redirecting any calls for gun control into potential regulations of “violent video games.” I’m sure that thought never crossed his mind. It’s all about the children for LaPierre and the NRA.

Amid year four of a tenure that endured the worst in school history, USC men’s basketball coach Kevin O’Neill is gone. O’Neill was fired on Monday during a morning meeting, USC Athletic Director Pat Haden announced in a statement.

O’Neill finishes his USC tenure with a 48-65 record, with last season’s abysmal record and this year’s slow start likely contributing to his dismissal. USC battled a rash of injuries while finishing 6-26 (1-17) in 2011-12, and is currently 7-10 on the year, with a 2-2 record in Pac-12 play.

Associate head coach Bob Cantu will take over as the interim head coach. Cantu has been with the team since 2000 and was promoted to associate head coach in 2010.

O’Neill took over the USC job in the summer of 2009 in the wake of an NCAA investigation of the program under previous coach Tim Floyd. Despite facing adversity stemming from the program’s sanctions, which included a postseason ban, the Trojans finished 16-14. O’Neill had his most successful season in 2010-11, going 19-15 and earning an NCAA tournament berth. The Trojans were defeated in the first round by Virginia Commonwealth.

Things went downhill from there. Last season, USC’s top returning player, senior point guard Jio Fontan, tore his ACL during a summer team trip to Brazil. Fontan missed the entire season, while other heavy contributors in forwards Dewayne Dedmon and Aaron Fuller, among others, missed significant time also because of injury. The Trojans’ 26 losses that season were the most in school history and presumably put O’Neill on the hot seat heading into this fall.

The Trojans had high hopes for 2012-13, as USC brought in a slew of transfers, including senior forward Eric Wise from UC Irvine and arguably the top junior college transfer in the country in junior J.T. Terrell, a former Wake Forest standout. The talent was improved over the prior season, but the early results were all too similar.

After starting the season 3-1, the Trojans lost five in a row in a difficult non-conference stretch that included losses to three ranked teams.

“We overscheduled,” Cantu said. “We should have had more bye games in there.”

At 5-8, the Trojans were the only Pac-12 squad to finish with a losing record in non-conference play. USC won its Pac-12 opener against Stanford, but then dropped winnable games against Cal and Colorado. The Trojans defeated Utah 76-59 on Saturday, but the team’s first road victory in nearly 14 months was not enough to save O’Neill’s job.

At the end of the day, it came down to winning: something O’Neill was not able to do enough of during his tenure.

“It was hard for me to evaluate him as a head coach until this year when he had enough players and veterans to compete,” Haden said in the statement. “As the season progressed, it became evident to me that we needed new leadership in our men’s basketball program.”

O’Neill is known for his loud and witty personality but also became infamous for an altercation with a U. Arizona booster in March 2011. O’Neill was previously the interim head coach at Arizona for one season as well as head coach of the NBA’s Toronto Raptors, among other NBA and college stops.

“He’s someone I’ll hopefully remain in contact with for the rest of my life,” said Fontan, who called O’Neill this morning after learning of his firing. “He taught me a lot on what it takes to be a pro at the next level, about going through life changes and how you just fight through a lot of things.”

Wise, the team’s leading scorer, also expressed surprise at the decision.

“It was shocking, but it’s just something you have to go through and we all have to deal with,” Wise said.

Cantu has never been a head coach at the college level outside of one game after O’Neill’s suspension in 2011, and was mum on whether he thinks he’ll be considered for the position over an outside replacement.

“As an assistant, your goal was always to become a head coach,” he said. “It’s always been my goal, [but] you never envision it happening this way, that’s for sure.”

The Trojans are only four games into their Pac-12 slate, giving Cantu almost half a season to make his mark.

“There are 14 games left and there are a lot of things that can happen,” Cantu said. “Anything is possible.”

When 26-year-old computer programmer and political activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide last Friday, news of his death spread across the Internet with the same speed as the viral videos and the applications he had helped to produce.

At the time of his death, he faced unnecessarily harsh felony charges entailing a possible 35-year sentence and a $1 million fine. His crime? The theft of some scholarly articles from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology JSTOR digital library with the intent to distribute the papers to the public. MIT announced yesterday that they were investigating its role in his death.

The issue of online piracy has incited passionate debate since the creation of the World Wide Web. Aside from the ethical issues of using another person’s property without their permission, U.S. Congressmen have recently argued that online piracy is severely detrimental to the American economy and is destructive to individual businesses.

Both of these claims are misleading.

Recent articles have indicated that online piracy has little to no effect on businesses, and that the restriction of free, public information sharing could actually work against the favor of the economy. Moreover, these restrictions stifle creativity, encourage censorship and are a disservice to the budding social entrepreneurs of the 21st century.

The emphasis of the U.S. government on prosecuting and restricting “information-sharers” such as Swartz is unnecessary and ultimately counterproductive. In the past year, Congressional bills such as the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act, known as SOPA and PIPA, have invoked uproar in the online community because of their intent to restrict and limit the flow of information flow on the Internet, essentially censoring online interactions.

Though neither bill passed, Congress continues to contend that online piracy costs the U.S. economy between $200 and $250 billion per year, resulting in a loss of around 750,000 jobs.

If those figures sound too high to be true, it’s because they are. Julian Sanchez, a research fellow from the Cato Institute, investigated those claims last year and found they “[could not] be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” suggesting that the U.S. government might have just made them up. In fact, Sanchez argued that it was virtually impossible to measure the effects of online piracy on the economy, because of the variable nature of its economic effects. Any attempt to do so, Sanchez argues, is misleading and most likely exaggerated.

Instead, research suggests that music and entertainment businesses, which are most likely to be affected by online piracy, have done better in recent economic crises than similar businesses in other industries.

Despite this evidence, threats of legal action against illegal downloads continue to escalate. Most common are the pre-movie advertisements that ominously send the message that piracy is a social evil. “Would you steal a purse? Would you steal a car?” the advertisements ask viewers, implying that clicking a button to download a song or a movie is the legal equivalent of petty theft. It’s, of course, not as simple as that.

Unlike the theft of a car, the illegal downloading of a song does not necessarily imply tangible loss or harm to another. Equally compelling is the increasingly obvious truth that online piracy restrictions are difficult to enforce. Illegal downloading has become a norm for the Millennial Generation. We would all be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t downloaded something off the Internet without permission.

The openness and anonymity of the Internet has afforded the Millennial Generation enormous advantages, enabling individuals access to music, entertainment, information and community where they otherwise might be deprived.

The resources of the U.S. government could perhaps be better spent by enacting policies that will actually benefit the economy and potential business leaders. Losses caused by piracy are far outweighed by the benefits of a free, unrestricted flow of information. In the case of Swartz, the real loss is the incalculable tragedy of an inspirational and influential talent gone too soon.

As Swartz said, “It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.”

Tragically, it may indeed have been greed that led the U.S. government to its decisions.

In light of the recent Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., people across the nation are still struggling with how best to cope with the devastating tragedy. From prayer vigils to calls for political reform, people have come up with a variety of solutions, but the question remains — what is the best way to both honor and respect the victims while discussing strategies to prevent such future attacks? Regardless of one’s stance on gun control or mental illness, this tragedy affects every member of the national community in some way. Shootings are chilling because nobody is safe — not even children.

As people struggle to react, the media must also find the proper way to report such a delicate story. Regardless of the underlying ethics of giving the media such immense power, the tone of media coverage heavily dictates national opinion. While most coverage of the tragedy itself is respectful and informative, there is a small portion of news stories that serves to fuel and perpetuate a twisted interest in the killer himself. Where is he from? Who is he? What is his family like? Articles that aim to answer questions like this give the killer exactly what he wants — fame — and undermines the evil of the incident.

Many pro-gun supporters such as conservative strategist Grover Norquist strongly condemned calls for gun control. “We have got to calm down and not take tragedies like this, crimes like this, and use them for political purposes,” Norquist said. This backlash under the guise of being respectful and tasteful actually masks a fear of confronting the nation’s most pressing issues. Oddly, this expectation of tact seems to be absent when it comes to sensationalist stories about Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza. This conventional sensitivity sadly prevents people from fully addressing the politics at the heart of tragedies involving mental illness and, especially, gun control, but it also prevents the media from indulging in the nation’s perverse fascination with the killer.

After the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., film critic Roger Ebert wrote an editorial for The New York Times criticizing the media for its shameless obsession with the shooter, James Holmes. “I don’t know if James Holmes cared deeply about Batman. I suspect he cared deeply about seeing himself on the news,” Ebert wrote. He argued that the media gives shooters the exact notoriety and fame that they crave, as most killers become household names. Ebert urged the public to address the root problems behind the issue. Instead of focusing on the killer’s identity, his past, family, motives and so on, the victims and the media should focus on the underlying causes, such as the lack of proper mental health care and the accessibility of assault weapons.

We can talk about Holmes or Lanza as minor celebrities, men so horrible that a careful investigation into their histories and psyches must be launched, but it only elevates them to the notoriety they desire. This media obsession with the killer plays right into the hands of other potential shooters. Not only is this disrespectful to the victims of school shootings, whose names are often forgotten long before that of the shooter, but it also is counterproductive. Realistically, the only way to enact permanent change is to foster political dialogues regardless of the taboo of “politicizing” a tragedy.

If the media focused on the victims and the controversies regarding mental health and gun control as opposed to emphasizing the killer and his backstory, not only would more intelligent dialogue result, but a clear message would also be sent to other shooters that their plan would not get them the national infamy they may desire. When major media outlets accidentally pander to the murderer by fact-mongering for any sort of particularly salacious piece of information about his tumultuous family life, recent job loss or divorce, they throw the real issues to the wayside. The proper way to honor the victims would be to actually have the gumption to address these inflammatory political conflicts that are inseparable from cause of these national tragedies. Trying to enact permanent change that could prevent these shootings is not disrespectful — in fact, it is more disrespectful to ignore these issues.

Frat bros everywhere, rejoice: The much anticipated book version of the wildly popular website Total Frat Move, affectionately referred to as TFM by its fans, has been released Tuesday.

The book sets out to provide the public with a national update on college fraternities, claiming that Greek life today “makes Animal House look like a Pixar movie.” It promises a hilarious and enjoyable reading experience, tracking the journey of college freshman Townes Prescott as he encounters the college party scene for the first time.

Current and former college students alike might find themselves smiling at the familiarity of the classic college experiences he describes, such as Prescott’s first college party, first college hookup and initiation into his fraternity.

Other familiar issues are introduced to the reader as well, most notably the freedom that ensues following the separation from one’s parents and a failed attempt to make that classic long-distance high-school relationship work.

The book seemingly intends to be every teenage boy’s dream and every mother’s nightmare. TFM flaunts a barrage of alcohol, drugs and debauchery from page one, said W.R. Bolen, the book’s author.

“The point of me writing it was to create the most entertaining and hilarious book possible, focused on capturing the unique insanity that comes with this incomparable lifestyle,” Bolen said. “I want people to have the [best] time they’ve ever had reading a book. Personally, I can’t get through a chapter without wanting to go out and rage.”

The website that inspired the book rose to notoriety over the past few years for its postings about fraternity life in college, amassing comments and stories from Greek communities across the United States.

The site was so successful that it garnered the attention of literary agent Byrd Leavell, who submitted an inquiry to the TFM website.

“I came across the message, we got in contact with him and the next thing I knew I was writing this thing,” Bolen said. “A few months of writing later, Byrd sold the book to Ben Greenberg at Grand Central Publishing, and the rest is history.”

Bolen started his career writing for TFM in college. The original founders of TFM, Madison Wickham and Ryan Young, were two of Bolen’s older fraternity brothers. They reached out to Bolen during his last semester of college and he began writing for TFM, launching the “Columns” section. A few weeks before graduation, they offered him a job as a staff writer, and Bolen was brought on as TFM’s first employee.

“Writing was always something I wanted to do and I was already working as the staff writer for TFM, but I never would’ve imagined the opportunity to write a book would come just weeks after I graduated,” Bolen said.

As far as inspiration for the actual material inside the book goes, everything was either ripped from events in Bolen’s life, friends of his or stories he had heard.

“It was obviously very important to me that the book be as real as possible,” Bolen said.  “I made sure there was inspiration behind everything, instead of just [making stuff up] and slapping it down on paper.”

Bolen is new to publishing, but he said the creative process ran pretty smoothly, even if it did go by in a blur.

“The writing part was a nice little crash course for me as a first-time author. It turns out that writing a book isn’t like writing an essay for class, or writing a column to post on your comedy website,” Bolen said. “Fortunately, I got the hang of it pretty quickly.”

And it’s a good thing he did, as Bolen has crafted a tome of over-the-top collegiate hijinks that will likely trigger a bit of nostalgia in many who peruse it.

“[The book will] make you wish you were still in college, wish you’d done more when you were there or want to go out right now,” Bolen said.

After taking a six-year hiatus from his music career, Justin Timberlake is back and better than ever with his new single “Suit & Tie.”

The release of the single coincided with Timberlake’s announcement via an open letter to his fans that he will release a new album, “The 20/20 Experience,” later this year.

Although Timberlake has enjoyed success in his acting and producing career, it is nice to see him back to doing what he does best –– singing.

While not as catchy as past Timberlake songs, “Suit & Tie” has a very smooth, almost hypnotic sound that works well with Timberlake’s smooth falsetto. The up-tempo track heavily features horns and harps in the background, which provides a refreshing twist on the typical R&B style.

The lyrics, in typical Timberlake fashion, are not exactly philosophical. As the title would suggest, the song is quite literally about putting on a suit and a tie and showing off on the dance floor.

The song starts off slowly, but after a mysterious voice asks, “Are you ready JT?”, Timberlake kicks it into high gear.

With lines such as “I can’t wait to get you on the floor, good-looking” and

“As long as I got my suit and tie, imma leave it all on the floor tonight”, this song is perfect to listen to while getting ready to go out for the night.

The song abruptly transitions from Timberlake’s vocals into an unexpected verse from Jay-Z near the end of the song. The rap seems a little bit out of place, but it is hard to complain when two powerhouse artists such as Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake come together for something like this.

If this single is any indication of what the rest of Timberlake’s album will be like, fans are in for a long-awaited treat.