Issue 11 (2013-2014)

Issue 11 (September 5, 2013)

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Happy Thursday!

Today is Thursday A Day Fun Day. Predicted temperature is a high of 82 degrees Fahrenheit. Prepare to sweat your keesters off.

Works Cited

The first line of every stanza in Colin’s poem is taken from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, for stylistic accuracy. Colin would like to thank Edgar Allen Poe for having written the poem, and the Internet for making it easily accessible.

SPORTS!!!

There’s another home football game on Friday. Once again, there will be an opportunity for food before the game. Come if you enjoy sports! Or if you don’t enjoy sports!

Lyrics Quiz Winners!

Gloriana Xia, Dr. Moseley, and the effervescent Adam O. Davis correctly guessed yesterday’s lyrics quiz, which was “I Am the Walrus” by the Beatles. Goo goo g’joob or whatever!

Today’s Lyrics Quiz

What you want
Baby I got

What you need
Do you know I got it?

Please Submit Articles Please

Do you want your voice to be heard? Do you want to see your name in print?
Do you want something you worked very hard on to be displayed for all to see, but exclusively in bathrooms?

Then the DU might be your calling!

Please submit articles about any (age-appropriate) topic to the DU at thedailyurinal@gmail.com.

Just to Fill the Whole Sidebar

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Articles

Quoth the Raven

By: Colin Garon (DU Poet Laureate)

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,

The psychology homework that I had already procrastinated on for 3 days and which I inexplicably just felt unbridled hostility towards and couldn’t bring myself to complete or even, if I’m being honest, begin,

I kind of fell asleep, only to hear a kind of knocking on my door, which was totally harshing my homework vibe.

Open here I flung the shutter; when, with many a flirt and flutter,

A raven kind of flopped its way into my room, which stressed me out: don’t they carry disease or something?

“Sup,” I addressed the raven uncomfortably. “What’s your name?” I continued, pushing down the sense of shame that arises when one begins a discussion with an animal that can’t talk.

Quoth the raven, “Swiggity swag.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

As I had never heard an animal pronounce such a phonologically complex word as “swiggity” before,

And I thought briefly about that in a poetic fashion, in order to fill an otherwise uneventful stanza, when
Quoth the raven, “Swiggity swag.”

There I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing,

Why that stupid ugly bird had to repeat such an inane and overused phrase.

“You’re really grinding my gears,” I told it, wincing, as it took a nice splattery poop all over my desk.

Quoth the raven, “Swiggity swag.”

“Prophet,” said I, “thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil!
I’m super duper done with your crap.”
It shuffled, watching as I dug through my backpack, looking for some sort of weapon to menace it with.
Quoth the raven, “Swiggity swag…

What’s in the bag?”

I punched it repeatedly.

Plastic Guns Aren’t Just for Toddlers

By: Matt Gleeson (DU 3D Printer)

Because of the many deadly shootings that have occurred in the US over the past couple years, many people are becoming more aware of the dangers of widespread gun possession. But while everyone is examining the circumstances surrounding these shootings, they should also consider the potential of 3D printing to make guns commonplace.

Here’s a little background—3D printing, otherwise known as additive manufacturing, is the process of making a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model. 3D printing is achieved using an additive process, where successive layers of material (usually plastic) are laid down in different shapes, creating a 3-dimensional object. While 3D printing was created on the assumption that it would be used to create useful knick-knacks, some people have begun to use 3D printing for more devious projects, most notably guns.

Defense Distributed posted CAD (Computer-aided design) files for parts for a 3D printed gun last spring, available for anyone who wanted to download them. Although the rough prototypes fired only once or twice before breaking, considerable improvements have been made to the gun design, and one recent design was able to shoot 14 rounds.

Soon after the news spread about their gun files, Defense Distributed came under fire from the government, and were forced to take down their files due to the obvious security risk they posed. While the organization did take down the files, the files had already been downloaded 100,000 times, and were made available on sites such as The Pirate Bay, a website that facilitates illegal downloading of files. Currently, anyone can with Internet access can download the CAD files for the guns.

Coupling the dangers of 3D printed guns is their ability to not show up in metal detectors, because they are composed of plastic. Another factor that makes it hard to regulate them is that the files for the guns have been downloaded so many times that it would be impossible to get rid of every copy in existence; even if the majority was eliminated, a single copy could be passed to an unlimited amount of people.

If guns like these were to become commonplace, shootings like Chris described yesterday would be able to happen more regularly, and be almost impossible to predict, as the guns would never have to be registered, and would be available to anyone with access to a 3D printer.