Kasey
KERBER
Judging judgment
Do the right thing, you still might go wrong
This week we’re talking “wrong.”
You see, wrong is a really
interesting word when it comes to
society.
I bet some of you are saying—
“this is leading
up to a serious
moral column on
something
wrong, right?”
Wrong.
For those
of you who still
aren’t confused,
I’ll go on with
the column.
You see, I’m going to take a look
at three points-of-view: what’s wrong
is right, what’s right is wrong and
what’s wrong is, well, wrong.
We’ll start with what’s right is
wrong.
Often, people’s intentions are
perfectly right, but their efforts end
up resulting in a wrong.
Take for example an incident that
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D.C. actually had a professional
baseball team. The team’s owners
promoted a special “Ladies Night.”
It was the “right” idea, but no one
in charge of the promotion reminded
umpire Bill Carpenter that most
ladies had come to see heart-throb
pitcher George “Winnie” Mercer.
Carpenter tossed Winnie out of
the game in the fifth inning and the
“ladies” went ballistic.
They administered a post-game
beating to Carpenter, in tearing his
clothes in the process. When he was
later “smuggled” out of the stadium,
they went ballistic again and ripped
out stadium seats.
Another right-gone-wrong
scenario occurred a few years earlier.
«
Often, people’s intentions are perfectly
right, but their efforts end up resulting in
a wrong.”
Hiram Maxim, a masterful American
inventor, was becoming too much to
handle for a handful of American
companies.
He was apparently becoming a
threat to the companies’ innovators,
so they paid him $200,000 to stop
inventing things.
Seems like the right idea, right?
No, not right. Maxim took the
money and sailed for England, where
he had no such agreements with
companies there.
The end result was Maxim’s
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weapon that would later be the most
lethal of all military weapons.
Many experts have since said that
the machine gun was responsible for
more lives being lost in World War I
and World War II than any other
weapon existing at the time.
So what started out as $200,000
for a capitalistic “right” cause, ended
up becoming a perfected weapon that
killed millions upon millions of
human beings.
Moving on, we encounter some
things that are wrong, yet somehow
end up becoming ri^it.
A recent example of this occurred
in Russia, where two climbers
illegally searched the site of a
crashed Russian airliner.
The right occurred when they
managed to locate what no other
authorities had—the cockpit voice
recorder.
To make matters even more
confusing, another wrong occurred
when the men were handcuffed (it
was shortly corrected by a right,
when they were unshackled).
A few small examples of wrongs
gone right might shed light on how a
bad idea can become a really good
one.
One example is taken from
Seventeen Magazine. On a page
talking about “pick-up” lines, a
woman tells how she fell in love with
her fianee for the first time
The guy in question approached
her and out of fear stood frozen and
said nothing. She recalled the event,
saying: “He walked up to me and just
stood there, smiling. It worked
though — I thought he was a cute
idiot.”
Gee, if only that lame (and wrong)
pick-up approach worked for all of
us guys.
Anyway, the final example of a
wrong gone right is occurring right
now. It’s simply a web page you can
access anytime.
The Dysfunctional Family Citrus,
<http://www.thoughtport.com/
spinnwebe-cgi-bin/dfc.cgi>, is a web
site that features the “Family Circus”
comics with one twist — empty
dialogue bubbles. You fill them in,
creating something that is in all
likeliness, wrong.
Yet your creation is also funnier
than the original comic, so techni
cally, the end result is right.
Finally, we’ll finish off with two
stories of things that can only be
classified as just plain wrong.
Ironically, both deal with a certain
fruit/vegetable that you might have
thrown at you if you do something
wrong.
The tomato.
For our first “wrong”, we go to an
ice-cream store in Merida, Venezu
ela. The store boasts 608 flavors,
including “cream of tomato.”
The last “wrong” leaves us with
President Bill Clinton.
No, I’m not saying that the wrong
was the 1992 election of Bill
Clinton. His wife maybe, but I won’t
go into it out of a fear of tomatoes
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No, good oF Bill had an incident
in his past where, as governor of
Arkansas, he ate 9 pounds of
tomatoes during a tomato-eating
contest at the state Pink Tomato
Festival.
Wrong. It can be only classified as
wrong.
Then again, it would be entertain
ing to see Bob Dole eat 9 pounds of
tomatoes.
I change my mind. The consump
tion of 9 pounds of tomatoes was
right.
Now eat up, Bob.
Kerber is a sophomore news
editorial major and a Daily
Nebraskan columnist.
Nick
WILTGEN
My hometown SUX
Geography questions leave one in strange state
Sioux uty... isn't that,like, the
armpit of Iowa?”
Many people have asked me this
question and questions similar to it.
Mostly people from eastern Iowa, but
Nebraskans are
guilty too.
It’s a
symptom of a
problem I, along
with the dozens
of other UNL
students, face
every day. The
problem: nobody
takes our
hometown seriously!
It seems like every time I tell
someone I grew up near Sioux City,
they laugh or snicker or chortle.
I’ve come up with several shot-in
the-dark theories as to why this is the
case.
Maybe it’s because we humans
have a natural tendency to laugh at
words that start with “s” and end with
“x.”
For example, the word “SUX.”
OK, it’s not a word, but it’s the
abbreviation for the airport in Sioux
City. Wonderful. The thing is, people
who have lived in Sioux City their
whole lives don’t realize it.
And so one of them named a radio
station after the airport and called it
“KSUX” (officially pronounced “K
Sioux” which is pronounced “K
Sue”). After the station went on the
air, one of the head honchos was
quoted in the newspaper as saying
something like, “Well, we didn’t
ft— --—
It seems like every time I tell someone I
grew up near Sioux City, they laugh or
snicker or chortle...May be it’s because we
humans have a natural tendency to laugh
at words that start with ‘s’ and and with
x.J”
even realize that connotation until it
was too late.” (All righty then.)
Another possibility for the jokes is
Sioux City’s reputation for, uh,
“fragrance.”
Anyone who’s ever driven through
Sioux City on Interstate 29 has
smelled it. It’s a meat-packin’ town.
It’s not like Omaha where you can
take 1-680, or like Lincoln where the
interstate somehow managed to miss
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When you drive through Sioux
City from the south you are greeted
first by SUX, and then the sewage
treatment center, and then the meat
packing plants whose smokestacks
are about 8 inches from the highway
shoulder.
By the time your lungs become
reaccustomed to oxygen, you’ve long
since passed one of the most visible
signs of Siouxland sophistication —
the world headquarters of the
Gateway 2000 computer company in
North Sioux City.
Which brings me to another point:
People act like they know Sioux City
geography. But if I bought an atlas
for everyone who’s pegged me in
another state, I’d be working 150
hours a week to get out of debt.
I am actually from South Sioux
City, which is in Nebraska, right
across the river from Sioux City,
which is in Iowa. But a typical
person I meet says: “South Sioux
City... that’s in South Dakota,
right?”
And before I can correct them
they say, “No! It’s in Iowa. I forgot.”
South Sioux City is in Nebraska.
North Sioux City is in South Dakota
(I know it’s confusing). Sioux City is
the one in Iowa.
It’s amazing what people from
Nebraska don’t know about their
state’s third-largest metropolitan
area. That’s right, Grand Island’s got
nothing on us. According to the
' I •
Census Bureau, the Sioux City
metropolitan area (which includes
Dakota County, Nebraska) has
120,033 people. Grand Island isn’t
even considered a metropolitan area.
Of course, even though I am from
Nebraska, living in South Sioux City
tends to give a person a split identity.
The local daily newspaper is pub
lished in Iowa. The local TV stations
are in Iowa. The local radio stations
are in Iowa. The hospitals are in
Iowa. Good grief, you even have to
go to Iowa just to see a movie or go
to the mall.
So as you can understand, I have
splintered allegiances. I’m kind of
half-Nebraskan, half-Iowan.
But what are borders? Sioux City
has a lot of cool things that Lincoln
will never have. OK, one cool thing.
The Missouri River. You can go
boating on the river, you can watch
fireworks displays over the river, you
can go to art festivals by the river,
you can celebrate the annual River
Cade and go to a concert by the river.
Plus, being from two states is very
convenient. You can just be from
whichever one you want to, depend
ing on which is the more fashionable
one to be from.
And our airport spells “sucks,” uh
huh huh huh. That’s pretty cool,
Beavis.
Wiltgen is a junior broadcasting
and meteorology major and a
Daily Nebraskan columnist
