OVER THE EDGE

January 9-15,2008

Ex-Con Prohibited From Gambling

Wins Lottery: /rony at Its

Micne tre MARTINS

News Eoiror

Cape Cod resident, Timothy Elliot, with
high hopes but low expectations, pur-
chased a ten dollar lottery ticket from the
local Stop and Shop. The ticket was worth
a million dollars. Amongst the spectacular
chaos and celebration, Elliot must have
forgotten that he was a two time convicted
bank robbing ex-con whose probation not
only prohibited gambling but also restrict-
ed Elliot from even being present in an es-

tablishment that partook in any gambling
or lottery activities.

Elliot has already collected the first of
twenty annuity checks of fifty-thousand
dollars and a picture of him with the over-
sized check has been posted on the lottery’s
website. However, to Elliot’s dismay he
was not in the clear. The lottery regular-
ly checks the names of winners with the
Massachusetts state Revenue Department
usually to see if any winners owe taxes or
child support in which case the winnings
go straight to the state. It was upon this

st

routinely contact that Timothy Elliot was
discovered. Elliot faces the possibility of
losing his winnings topped off with time
in jail for violating the conditions of his
parole.

The Massachusetts Lottery Commission
released a statement saying technically
every citizen is eligible to participate in
lotteries. Debate whether Elliot can keep
the prize money or not will be decided in
court but it is expected to end favorably
for Elliot.

Tiglets Are
The New
Liger

MICHELLE MARTINS

News Eorror

Worlds collided on December 4th, 2007 in a Thai zoo
when a mother tiger and mama sow exchanged nursing
offspring. Four piglets were left with the fully grown
tiger in a shared cage where the tiger breast fed and
played with them. The adult sow nursed two tiger cubs.
The nursing will continue until the cubs are about two
months at which point their teeth will become too sharp

; inions
The

for the sow.

The opinions expressed in Over the Edge are those of the writers alone and
do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial staff or newspaper society.

Feedback can be e-mailed te over-the-edge@unbc.ca.

Rumbling Echo

- Cody Willett - Editor In Chief —

Damn it’s nice to have a break from writing
(and thinking) over the holidays. The trouble
is starting up again. That blissful respite from
the rigours of action and deadline seems so
fleeting, that between one semester, the next,
and then summer work, it’s a wonder we all
don’t crack up... or maybe we do and we just
don’t register it. I mean after a while we just
get so used to it, so conditioned, that the con-
tinuous breakup of our mental agility gets lost
amid the responsibilities of any one day. The
mind is a very supple organ. It may be fragile
in the sense that a knock to the head, copious
boozing, disease or certain drugs will damage
or kill brain cells, but it is also quite resilient.
When a person goes blind, their other senses
become far sharper to compensate. “It’s all in
your mind”, they say. Like a muscle tears dur-
ing exercise only to heal with stronger tissue,
perhaps our minds respond in a similar fash-
ion to stress and change.

Each time we rack our brains in prepara-
tion for lab finals, term papers and exams it
gets torn up and sore. I think we can all say
that at some point we’ye thought we'd bleed
out the ears if we read one more page out of
a textbook. Of course, like marathon train-
ing, we have a whole semester to work out
our minds and build up a tolerance to stress
and fatigue. At the end of the semester we
tun the race against time to complete all the
tasks designed to test mental preparation as
well as how sane one remains at the end.
What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. What

doesn’t turn your mind into mush must make it
more toned. So if the tests keep getting harder
and the breaks get shorter, yet we’re still here,
shouldn’t that tell us something? Could it be
that thinking and learning is like sports and
exercise? I mean, the more we work out, the
better we feel. The more we understand, the
more fulfilled we feel. I don’t mean fulfilled
in the sense of contentment though. Just with
toning our muscles, toning our minds leaves
us wanting to go further; one more repetition,
one more concept. The kind of fulfilment
I’m talking about is more along the lines of
satisfaction of a craving. Athletes crave the
endorphins and rush of contained energy be-
ing released. Learners crave the knowledge of
the universe and the rush of awareness. Over
time a learner gets used to the mental abuse of
deadlines and page quotas to feel satisfaction
in coming back to the classroom for another
dose of awareness, It does not matter that only
weeks ago he was pleading for all the classes
to stop and the exam period to end. He’s back
after a brief and probably frenzied ‘holiday
break’ to roll up his sleeves and digest another
helping of ideas.

The learner learns that despite the mental
toll learning takes on the mind, each crackup
of old knowledge makes way for the formation
of new, more powerful thought and cognitive
ability. Reading a little from the “Teachings
of Don Juan” over the ‘break’ (now working
on grad studies, it seems I’m beyond hope),
I stumbled across the ‘four stages of know-

ledge’. Embarking on the path of acquiring
knowledge, the learner first confronts fear.
This fear is naturally of the unknown. I mean,
there so much knowledge out there and you
cannot comprehend ever knowing it all or how
learning might affect one’s currently safe pic-
ture of the world! Should the learner let this
fear overcome her will to gain knowledge, the
journey is over almost before it began. If the
learner learns to ignore fear of the unknown
and its magnitude, she gains clarity. This clar-
ity is the presence of mind that accepts how
little she knows, and how much there is left
out there to find. After all, it’s the journey
and not the destination, right? So this second
stage, clarity, needs to be mastered too. The
learner, blinded by her clarity, thinks she can
see the ‘big picture’ of knowledge’s magni-
tude, charges ahead of herself in her quest for
knowledge, leaves important concepts behind
and gets lost in the forest looking at trees she
can’t recognize. Clarity involves the patience
necessary to methodically build idea upon
idea, knowledge base atop knowledge base.

_ Once the learner has mastered her clarity

through the mental-abuses of patient study-
ing, she has reached the third stage of know-
ledge: power. We’ve all heard it; knowledge
is power. The more we know and understand,
the more we know the rigours of hard work
in studying. This mental discipline is the hall-
mark of a powerful mind. However, we also
know that power corrupts. Giving in to the
power knowledge gives its master defeats the

learner at this third stage of knowledge. If the
learner believes that her knowledge makes
her powerful over others, knowledge is lost as
power assumes control over her actions. Yet if
the, learner manages to resist the temptations
of power, she can be said to have defeated
power through her-ability to keep it in check,
knowing when it is useful and when it is not.
Now, having overcome fear, clarity and power
the learner has journeyed long and hard on the
path to knowledge. The impulse at this fourth
and final stage of knowledge is to rest. This is
where Old Age, the last enemy of knowledge,
appears. Once the learner stops the process
of study and stops her acquisition of know-
ledge, atrophy sets in. Like the muscles of a
washed up hockey player fifteen years into a
life of golf and retirement, the mind of a rest-
ful learner loses its sharpness. Old Age fuzzes
the inactive mind, no matter how trained it
once was. However, if the learner decides that

-she cannot bear to lose the fulfilment of con-

tinued learning, she still wanders down the
path of knowledge. On this path Old Age is
less formidable since the mind of the active
learner is still toned and aware of its creep. Of
course, Old Age cannot be fended off forever,
but in not giving up to it the learner wanders
off into the path’s twilight having conquered
fear, clarity and power. This achievement is
fulfilment in itself. Besides, that most know-
ledgeable of wanderers, Gandalf the Grey, put
it best when he said “Not all those-who wan-
der are lost”...

Dear Over The Edge,

It has recently come to my attention that CFUR has decided
to be payed to broadcasting Timberwolves games on Friday
and Saturday nights. Unfortunately, this decision has forced
several CFUR deejays to reschedule or otherwise lose their
timeslots that appear in this time. Dear Over The Edge, this is

wrong, if the Timberwolves, or any other group would like to
broadcast on the air at CFUR, there are set regulations as to
proposals, acceptance and the like, any time these standards
are malformed by people in a position of power (be it the Ath-
letics Dept, EARS, NUGGS, etcetera) we lose the just society
sought for and built by standing up against corruption and its
many forms. As a result of this decision, myself, as Friday’s

Thank You,

Office Coordinator have lodged a formal complaint with the
decision (not with CFUR itself, just the decision) and would
like it to be known that these decisions are the worst kind of
oppourtunities for the better world.

Dan, VOC CFUR Friday Nights