On Campus

What students are talking about today (Aug. 28 edition)

Hockey, marijuana v. IQ, sex drive, sea ice and Sarah Palin

Vancouver Canucks' Ryan Kesler (Loxy!!/Flickr)

1. University sports writers are being driven crazy by all this talk of another NHL lockout. Karen Aney of UFV’s The Cascade blames both the players and commissioner Gary “Buttman” Bettman. “Last time there was a lockout, we saw the emergence of poker. Seriously? That was the best that sports networks could do?,” she laments.

2. Teens who smoke marijuana regularly may suffer long-term brain damage according to a study that observed how IQ changed between the ages of 13 and 38 for more than 1,000 New Zealanders. Those who smoked heavily and early are most at risk. IQ dropped among those who were dependent on marijuana before the age of 18 by eight points on average. That’s a big drop.

3. Autumn is here and that means not just falling leaves but falling sex drives. A study that looked at five years of Google searches showed “strong and consistent” seasonal spikes in searches for pornography, online dating and prostitution in spring and early winter, with lulls this time of year.

4. Students are turning to Pinterest for dorm-room decorating ideas. Brock U. has been pinning.

5. “It took jurors three days to decide what an eight year old could have told you in seconds: Samsung copied Apple. Look at an iPhone, then look at a Galaxy. It’s obvious. But so what?,” writes tech expert Jesse Brown before warning that “U.S. courts are stifling innovation and quite possibly creating in Apple a tech monopoly that will make Microsoft look like the public library.”

6. Companies like Imperial Oil have been warned by the RCMP that they could be attacked by the hacker group Anonymous. This shouldn’t be too surprising as Anonymous issued a press release in July 2011 accusing oil sands companies of being greedy and harming the environment.

7. A 49-year-old Maine grandmother gave birth to her own grandson. Her daughter had a heart condition that made carrying the baby dangerous, so mom stepped in to babysit for nine months.

8. NASA-supported scientists say Arctic Sea ice is at the smallest ever observed, which could be the result of climate change. Mind you, they’ve only been observing it by satellite for three decades.

9. Citing family values, NBC’s Salt Lake City television affiliate, owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Letter-day Saints (that’s presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s church), will not run a comedy series called The New Normal about a gay couple having a baby via a single-mom surrogate.

10. On the topic of family values, an infamous stripper has apparently been performing as Sarah Palin in Tampa, Fla. where Republicans are meeting to crown Mitt Romney at their convention.

Keep up with Maclean’s On Campus. Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

Looking for more?

Get the Best of Maclean's sent straight to your inbox. Sign up for news, commentary and analysis.
  • By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.