Facebook.com now faces an additional competitor in the procrastinator market: boredatbaker.com, modeled after a similar website at Columbia University. Boredatbaker.com aims to please those who are frustrated with Facebook.com and crave an anonymous forum to post their innermost thoughts.
Jonathon Pappas, who graduated from Columbia this year, said he started boredatbulter.com --named for Columbia's Butler Library -- because he was "starting to feel the [social] restrictions of Facebook[.com]." So far, Pappas has created "boredat" sites for six of the Ivy League universities and New York University.
While boredatbulter.com had taken off at Columbia, boredatbaker.com has yet to garner the same popularity. Most of the conversations on these "boredat" sites revolve around familiar topics: hookup invites, midterm exam lamentations and campus politics. While Pappas is currently financing the sites using his own money, he has not ruled out the possibility of selling advertisements once the sites attract a stronger visitor base.
Researchers at Pennsylvania State University are conducting a follow-up study on a 2002 Dartmouth Medical School report that explored the risks of skin cancer from indoor tanning devices.
The study, which investigates why college-aged women continue to expose themselves to the ultraviolet rays indoor tanning beds emit despite the major risks, is led by Penn State professor Rob Turrisi.
The DMS study confirmed the negative medical effects of tanning beds. "Tanning device users had 1.5 times the risk of basal cell carcinoma and 2.5 times the risk of squamous cell carcinoma," which the most common forms of skin cancer, the DMS report said.
Dartmouth's Ethics Society competed in the Fall term Ethics Bowl at Williams College this past weekend. It defeated Franklin Pierce College, lost one round against the United States Naval Academy and another round against Williams College.
The debate-style competition is based on 15 different cases or ethical dilemmas that the teams discuss before they arrive at the Ethics Bowl. Each round involves two cases, and each of the 12 teams present at this year's bowl competed in three preliminary rounds, which lasted 1.5 hours.
"We felt we were very prepared. The cases are very complex and intricate," Dartmouth Ethics Society president and team captain Ezra Tzfadya '07 said.
