Opinion

Stories, legends and lore surrounding mimicry and songbirds stem back hundreds of years. To this day, people wonder how something so far removed from us evolutionarily can so closely imitate what many consider a uniquely human trait: speech.

It is said that President Andrew Jackson’s mouth was so foul that his parrot was ejected from his funeral for “uttering profanity.” Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” depended on the famed black bird’s capacity to mimic human speech.

A potential breakthrough in cancer treatment was made last year in Philadelphia, Penn. In a National Institutes of Health-funded clinical trial, doctors treated three late-stage cancer patients using their own modified immune cells.

It may not come as a surprise to some, but Portland has been named one of the most hipster cities in America. One of the Huffington Post’s several handy lists delved into the challenge of finding which colleges in the U.S. are home to the greatest number of these “witty-independent-artist-intellectuals,” and unlike 2010’s list, Portland did not go unnoticed.

There is a unique relationship between the military and higher education in the United States.

Some students may be surprised to learn that Portland State University was originally established to cater toward veterans and military personnel. Portland, like many cities across the U.S., was virtually flooded by American GIs returning from the Pacific Theatre, so much so as to warrant the founding of a secondary education institution with the express purpose of integrating these veterans into the skilled workforce. The school was initially named the Vanport Extension Center.

Plans are moving forward for the Oregon Sustainability Center, though not without major controversy over the building’s funding. While Mayor Sam Adams is highly in favor of the structure, much of the public is concerned about how the construction of the building will prove to be financially sustainable for Portland. The OSC would be a revolutionary step for green thinking, but every good idea comes with necessary drawbacks.

A humid summer evening in the swamps of Virginia’s semi-prehistoric wilderness. A platoon of sixty young men—sweaty, sun-burnt, caked with mud and smelling like a herd of gastro-intestinally distressed bison—sits in a semicircle around the one man with brass on his lapels.

Pens scratch on waterproof notebooks as we, the officer candidates of Echo Company, 4th Platoon, the future leaders of the United States Marine Corps, pick the brain of our platoon commander in an unusually casual question-and-answer session. Training is almost over. Our platoon commander, a captain, still speaks to us with a dry mixture of impatience, sarcasm and contempt.

This past month, while many students were (hopefully) still bronzing in Cancun, exploring Europe or trout fishing in the Gorge, the unionized PSU staff came within four days of going on strike, making final negotiations and avoiding the picket line just in time for the student’s scheduled return.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and PSU workers staged large rallies on Aug. 8 and Aug. 17 in the Park Blocks. The
Aug. 8 rally had over 250 SEIU workers, faculty and supporters. Tiffany Dollar of ASPSU led labor chants near the end of the rally, and the workers marched to University Place Hotel where the administration was meeting to send their delegation inside.

In early August, news that Seattle-born Evangelical church Mars Hill would be opening its first Portland location on Southeast Taylor and 32nd Avenue hit the press. Controversy surrounded it from the beginning, not only because many of the sermons available on Mars Hill’s website showed founder Mark Drissoll asserting extremely questionable ethics, but also because this time they would be doing it in a part of town many Portlanders believed was a place free from this particular set of beliefs.

On July 1, an estimated 6,600 prisoners at the Pelican Bay State Prison, a supermax California prison near the Oregon border, went on hunger strike refusing food. The strike lasted for 21 days, during which thousands of prisoners refused to eat until their demands for better conditions were met.