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Ever since fall semester started, I’ve been waiting for a new police beat to be posted. While there are no jaw dropping stories, I did find one story slightly ammusing.

Sept. 12: A custodian reported screaming near the MCKB at 4 a.m. The screams were later discovered to have come from a female student sprayed by a sidewalk sprinkler.

I’m guessing there was more going on than a girl walking along and getting sprayed by a sprinkler, because most of the time, you see a sprinkler before walking through it, especially if you are walking along at 4am.

Then there was this story with which I have a question:

Sept. 11: BYU police received a phone call complaining of a band playing music too loudly at 10:30 p.m. in the Foreign Language Housing. The police arrived and the band was quiet.

Did the police arrive to find a quiet band? Or did the band quiet down when the police arrived? Perhaps the band was too loud and they quited down for the benefit of neighbors. Or, there could have been some cranky neighbors. If you are living in student housing, you have to realize that you are going to hear some noise. That is just student life. Just because you hear un-invited sounds doesn’t mean that it is too loud.

If you were to walk across a typical university campus, you would most likely see many students with little white iPod earphones, listening to music. It is nearly impossible to ride public transportation without seeing someone listening to their portable music device. Just about everywhere you go, people listening to music. Music has found its role in just about every aspect of modern life. From television programming to shopping establishments, music has the potential to influence our moods and behaviors (Bruner 94).

Flooding our environment with tunes everywhere, music has the potential to influence our intellectual development. Can particular listening habits increase our intelligence? This question was made famous by a 1993 article in Nature magazine titled “Music and Spatial Task Performance” by university professors Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw, and Katherine Ky. They presented research results that suggest that, after listening to Mozart, college students increased their scores on spatial sub-tests in the Stanford-Binet IQ test (611). The spatial sub-tests measure a person’s ability to reason and mentally manipulate shapes and figures. In their research, students listened to about ten minutes of Mozart’s Piano Sonata, and subsequently scored eight to nine IQ points higher on spatial tests taken within ten minutes of music listening. Students did not improve in IQ tests taken later than fifteen minutes after listening to Mozart, nor they did they improve their IQ tests after sitting in silence or listening to relaxation instructions (Hetland 105).
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I’m lookin’ for a brotha’ or sista’ who knows somthing about the art of rap. General advice about rappin’ or rhymin’ is needed.

Also needed for an unrelated project is someone who can draw pictures of invading alien overlords.

I’m not the type to quote song lyrics in my blog. I might make a few exceptions tonight.

Tell me there’s some hope for me. I don’t know how to dismantle an atomic bomb. I mean, who do think I am? But maybe by some unwritten rule, everything will be alright? I’m so scared about the future, but I don’t think I want to talk to you about it.

I was so wanting to do something that has never been done, but now I must move along. I needed, but instead I got something for which I had no use. It is because of you. I’m no fool. Was it all pretend? I am afraid. How could you dare? Was I sabotaged?

I hear the songs, in the middle of the night, they speak my words, they fill my sight. In this nocturnal state.