Top 10 Punctuation Marks

Charley Follet
Staff Columnist

For unknown, customary kinds of glib reasons, ending exclamations leads into Kiplingesque, feverish excitement when I am writing. I just love to throw an exclamation point at the end of a sentence and add a bit of jazz to it. It’s one of the few things I am passionate about, along with Zoroastrianism, passion fruit, and cryptography. But here are some lesser known punctuation marks that are just as fun to use.
10: $
Ah, the dollars sign. Some people place a lot of value in money. But I believe that true love and all that bull is more important.
9:@
The “at” sign. Why people need to shorten a two-letter word is beyond me…
8: ¿
Y de inmortalidades sólo creo, en la tuya, cangrejo amigo. Te aplastan, te echan en agua hirviendo,  inundan tu casa. Pero la represión y la tortura de nada sirven, de nada.
7: ¶
This is the “pilcrow”. Don’t you hate it when the formatting in your word document gets all messed up and you end up with these on every line?
6: °
This is the degree sign, used to indicate temperature or angles. It can also be used to make a little person giving the thumbs up: d(°_>°)b
5: *
This is the “asterisk”. It looks like a tiny butthole, and its purpose is unknown.
4:
Ah, this is the rarely used “interrobang”. When you want to state surprise and ask a question at the same time, an interrobang is employed. For instance, “Interro, did you just bang me on the top of my head‽”
3:
This is the rarely used “postmodernist” punctuation mark. A conscientious postmodernist author may include the at the end of a sentence to indicate that an argument is abstract or deconstructionist in nature.
2: &
This is the ampersand, more commonly known as the ‘and’ sign. It also looks a little like a person in a wheelchair.
1:
This is the “irony” mark, used to indicate that a sentence should be understood as satire or sarcasm.
Although it has rarely seen use since the end of the 19th century, I think I will employ it in the future to avoid misunderstandings.

Current Photo AMY BLAIR

Hand Dryers vs. Paper Towels

Charley Follet
Staff Columnist

It is our little decisions on a daily basis that have the most impact on the environment. As a society, if we want to be eco-friendly, we need to change our lifestyles. Bathroom habits, for instance: does it impact the environment more when one uses paper towels, or do hand dryers have more of an impact?
There is a wealth of research into the environmental impact of both products. On one hand, hand dryers use electricity on every single use, and their very manufacture impacts the environment. But even if paper towel-dispensers use recycled paper, they have strong impacts on the environment. Energy is spent manufacturing and transporting replacement paper towels, and once the paper towels are used and thrown in the trash, they cannot be recycled a second time.
Franklin Associates conducted a study into the energy usage of regular hand dryers versus recycled paper towels, and found that hand dryers are much more energy efficient than paper towels when all costs are considered. But they also assumed that the average person uses two squares of paper towels. If a person uses just one square, the difference is negligible.
Even with hand dryers being the more environmentally savvy option, many people are not a fan of the devices. They can be very loud, and excruciatingly slow. A survey conducted by Harris Interactive of 2,516 adults found that 59 percent of Americans prefer paper towels. But what preferences does Carthage have? Are we more eco-savvy?
To find out which Carthage prefers, I surveyed a sample of the student population by leaving a voting box near the cafeteria over three days, and the results were surprising. Of 109 respondents, 44 percent preferred hand dryers, 40 percent preferred paper towels, and 16 percent preferred both.
With Carthaginians at least wanting the option of hand dryers, why aren’t there hand dryers in parts of Hedberg Library, or the A.W. Clausen Center for World Business? Associate Vice President for Business Bill Hoare explained that he has personally been reviewing ecologically friendly hand dryers, although there are no plans to add more at the moment. “There is the Dyson Airblade. It’s advertised as being more eco-friendly, because it just shoots… a very intense blast of air. So it has shorter drying times, and therefore uses less energy.” He also mentioned other benefits to using hand dryers, “The other thing to remember is sanitation. Hand dryers are the most sanitary, because you aren’t making contact with anything.”
For those who still want to cling to paper towels, Bill Hoare affirms that Carthage only uses recycled paper towels in its bathrooms. Of course, there is a third option that costs no energy and has no impact on the environment: you could always wipe your hands on your clothing
Sources used:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/05/lca_handdryer_papertowels.php
http://www.slate.com/id/2193740/?y=1/
http://www.fal.com/

Wirelessly Charged

Michael Zasadil
Staff Columnist

One of the more horrific moments that a college student can experience occurs on the cusp of finishing a beautifully written essay, only hours away from its deadline.
The mood of satisfaction and contentment can quickly be replaced by a sinking feeling of sheer terror as a student realizes his or her laptop’s battery has only minutes left to live. With no hope of submitting the work with the limited time left, the frantic frenzy to find one’s charger leaves one with the sour thought: “There has to be a better way.”
And in the very near future, Dell intends to answer that inquiry, with the release of the new wirelessly rechargeable laptops.
No other company has put this new technology into practice for computers, according to Dell’s spokesperson, who unveiled the newest laptop earlier this week, The Latitude Z.
While similar technology has surfaced for phones or mp3 players, Dell will be the first major supplier to apply induction technology. It will be available to business customers in the middle of November, and to the rest of the public the following month.
The technology functions by placing the laptop on an inductive pad that can be built into a laptop table or stand. Instead of transferring power like a normal power cord, the concept of magnetic induction transfers energy into your laptop without the hassle of cords or outlets.
The pad can achieve a full charge within roughly the same time as a regular cable charger can, and is the flagship of what Dell is calling its new “Wireless ecosystem.”
“We really have two focuses for this new line of products; the business world, and student use at the college level,” said Dell CEO and creator Michael Dell during his most recent press conference regarding the new product.
Recharging will not be where the wireless innovations end, however. Microsoft has been hinting at a new “wireless table” with a fully interactive digital display as the surface. The user simply places their digital cameras on the table, and all the user’s pictures are seemingly spilled onto the table’s digital screen for your editing and viewing purposes. Again, this technology will not be open to the public for roughly five years, but consumers will first be exposed to this technology through more expensive and select restaurants. The intention will be to have customers use these tables to place orders on.
Not only will inductive magnetism prove efficient on a personal level; it may prove to be the answer to the world’s energy crisis as well.
Just recently, a German engineering company (Automotive Engineers of the Future) has been issued a patent to continue work on their inductive electric cars. These automobiles would function on the same technology, receiving an inductive charge through the road, completely eliminating man’s dependency on oil.