Cassandra J. Carlson and Lauren Rabainomustang daily

A picture of a student sitting in what ap-peared to be a children’s Power Wheels vehicle being ticketed by three San Luis Obispo Police Department motorcycles and one University Police Department SUV gained viral popularity

on Twitter last week and was plastered on the front page of the Mustang Daily with a headline that read “Little wheels cause a big deal.”

So what’s the real story behind this four-wheeled spectacle?

It’s more than just a toy. Rashed Talukder, a computer engineering junior, revamped a Power Wheels car as part of the first stages of his senior

project.Talukder was ticketed the afternoon of May

19 at South Perimeter Street for violation of Ve-hicle Code 21716: Golf Cart Operation.

The state motor vehicle code states that “No person shall operate a golf cart on any highway except in a speed zone of 25 miles per hour or less.”

University Police Chief Bill Watton said Talukder was ticketed for riding on California Boulevard’s bike lane, causing numerous com-plaints from drivers who couldn’t see the car, which is low to the ground.

“It would scare the hell out of me to be in that thing in a traffic lane,” Watton said. “There’s no way in the world I’d do that with the driv-ers and the cell phones and all the things going on.”

The California Department of Motor Vehi-cles Web site defines a golf cart as a “motor vehi-cle having not less than three wheels in contact with the ground, having an unladen weight less than 1,300 pounds, which is designed to be and is operated at not more than 15 miles per hour and designed to carry golf equipment and not more than two persons, including the driver.”

Although Talukder’s vehicle wasn’t designed to carry golf equipment, San Luis Obispo Police Department and University Police Department officials say the real issue deals with the student’s safety.

“SLOPD was just doing its job,” Talukder said. “They got a lot of calls so they had to re-spond.”

Taluker said he had no ill intent for his re-vamped Power Wheels.

Standing at about three feet above the ground, Talukder modified the plastic vehicle to include a solid frame, headlights and taillights, a horn, iPod connection and speakers, 500-watt motor, rubber wheels and an ignition.

In addition to creating an autonomous ve-hicle for his senior project — which will imple-ment safety sensors for children’s vehicles and potentially full-sized cars — the car is a cheap and green way of getting to school.

“I made this thing for really two reasons. It costs me like 10 cents each day that I drive it,” Talukder said. “And there’s no maintenance. I don’t have to drive my car around, it’s green, I can park it wherever really, it’s really convenient for me, especially with my chronic asthma,” Ta-lukder said.

Another reason Talukder enjoys riding in the car is the response he gets from the campus community.

“It puts smiles on people’s faces. It literally does,” Talukder said. “I go around and I think that’s one of the best things — one of the highs in life where you can do something for some-one and not really expect something back in return.”

Before Tuesday’s incident, Talukder was pulled over twice — once by the San Luis Obispo Po-lice Department and once by the California Highway Patrol — and was warned by Univer-sity Police. He said he was advised to stay on the

CALIFORNIA POLYTECHNIC STATE UNIVERSITYMUSTANG DAILY

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 www.mustangdaily.netVolume LXXIII, Number 152

TOMORROW: Partly cloudy High 76˚/Low 55˚

mustangdaily.netIN SPORTS, 12

Go online to see video of this weekend’s Rise and Run architec-ture show.

Find out who the Cal Poly baseball team will play in

the playoffs.

Famous Chicano activist Luis Valdez speaks on campus.

IN ARTS, 6

lauren rabaino mustang daily

Computer engineering senior Rashed Talukder was ticketed on campus May 19 for driv-ing a modified Power Wheels vehicle in the bike lane. see Wheels, page 2

Edith M. Ledererassociated press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council swiftly condemned North Korea’s nuclear test on Monday as “a clear violation” of a 2006 resolution and said it will start work immediately on another one that could result in new sanctions against the reclusive nation.

Hours after North Korea defiantly conducted its second test, its closest allies China and Russia joined West-ern powers and representatives from the rest of the world on the council to voice strong opposition to the un-derground explosion.

After a brief emergency meeting held at Japan’s request, the council demanded that North Korea abide by two previous resolutions, which among other things called for Pyong-yang to abandon all nuclear weapons

and return to six-party talks aimed at eliminating its nuclear program.

It also called on all other U.N. member states to abide by sanctions imposed on the North, including embargoes on arms and material that could be used in its nuclear and ballis-tic missile programs and ship searches for banned weapons.

In an AP interview in Copenha-gen, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon deplored the test as a “grave violation” of council resolutions and called on the council in a statement to send “a strong and unified message” aimed at achieving the denuclear-ization of the Korean peninsula and peace and security in the region.

Ban urged the North “to refrain from taking any actions which will deteriorate the situation.”

Leaders in the United States, Eu-ropean Union and Russia also offered quick and pointed criticism. Even

China’s foreign ministry joined the chorus of disapproval, saying it “reso-lutely opposed” the test.

“North Korea is directly and recklessly challenging the interna-tional community,” President Barack Obama said in a statement. “North Korea’s behavior increases tensions and undermines stability in Northeast Asia.”

In Brussels, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, denounced the test as a flagrant violation of Security Council resolutions.

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the current Security Coun-cil president, made clear in a statement that the council’s condemnation was only an initial response, and that more will follow. He said it was too early to give any specifics.

“The members of the Security Council have decided to start work

UN Security Council condemns N. Korea nuke test

andy wong associated press

A Chinese paramilitary police officer stands guard in front of North Korean Embassy in Beijing, China. Leaders around the world strongly condemned North Korea’s announcement it conducted a nuclear test.see Korea, page 2

‘Power Wheels guy’ takes senior project to the streets

News editor: Rachel Glas; News designer: Omar Sanchez

www.mustangdaily.net2 Mustang Daily

Newsmustangdailynews@gmail.com Tuesday, May 26, 2009

sidewalk, instead of in the bike lane when driving the vehicle.

“They couldn’t find anything at the time, law and restriction wise, to keep me from driving around, so they said I should stay on the sidewalk and pos-sibly wear a helmet,” he said about the initial pull-over by the San Luis Obispo Police.

The day he was ticketed, Talukder wandered from the sidewalk to the bike lane for the duration of a block because he couldn’t find a disability ramp to get on the curb.

“If you were completely immobilized just with a man-powered wheelchair, you’d have to roll back down the hill or go back down the hill or go a block over and all the way around,” Talukder said. “That’s completely unacceptable in my opinion.”

Political science senior Tai Dang said the side-walk isn’t the best place for a motor-powered ve-hicle to be.

“He shouldn’t be on the sidewalk, that’s for pedestrians,” Dang said. “I have the same prob-lem with skateboarders, but at least (Talukder) has brakes.”

Talukder had been using the vehicle — weath-er permitting — for the past four months on his three-and-a-half mile journey from his home to Cal Poly’s campus. At the advice of University Police Department’s Associate Director Cindy Campbell, Talukder chained the Power Wheels car to a bike rack on campus.

One student, agriculture systems sophomore Stephen Abertolle, said he’d seen Talukder outside Kennedy Library and he was never disrupting the peace.

“He was just cruising,” Abertolle said. “It’s kind of messed up that he got a ticket. He can’t go that

fast.”“I think it’s ridiculous he got a ticket for it,”

said electrical engineering senior Myles Still. “I mean, it’s a Power Wheels car.”

Talukder wouldn’t say whether he plans to fight the ticket, but he researched vehicle codes before building the car to try to protect himself from receiving one.

“I tried to be civil about it, to be safe about it,” Talukder said. “When they say that it’s for my own safety, I find that a little hard to swallow ... I told them that I ordered a flag for it and I was go-ing to put it on as soon as it came in.”

However the flag is not need-ed anymore.

Talukder said that the police told him that his car would be impounded if he drives it again. Although he doesn’t intend to ride his Power Wheels again on campus, the image of possible impoundment is comical to Ta-

lukder.“I actually want to see the tow truck driver as

he tows it away,” Talukder said, laughing. “I think it’d be the funniest thing in the world, but at the same time not funny because I don’t want it im-pounded.”

Watton verified the possibility of impound-ments.

“If he drives it in traffic, that’s probably exactly the case (that the car will be impounded),” Wat-ton said. “On campus, as long as he stays on the sidewalk, we’re not going to bother him, as long as he’s not blocking the sidewalk or anything like that.”

Watton said he has never seen Power Wheels being driven on campus before, but has seen other vehicles that are sometimes hard to regulate, like power scooters and motor bicycles.

“There are so many of them out there now,” Watton said. “The laws are real strange in that you have to really look closely to see how it fits and what it fits.”

immediately on a Security Council resolu-tion on this matter,” he said.

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said the 15-member council agreed that work on the new resolution will begin Tuesday.

“What we heard today was swift, clear, unequivocal condemnation and opposition to what occurred,” she said.

France’s deputy U.N. ambassador Jean-Pierre Lacroix said France wants the new resolution to “include new sanctions ... be-cause this behavior must have a cost and a price to pay.”

Japan’s U.N. Ambassador Yukio Takasu, a non-permanent council member, said his country was pleased that the rest of the coun-cil agreed there should be a new resolution. But he noted that sanctions imposed against three North Korean companies after Pyong-yang’s missile test in April obviously had no effect.

“So therefore I think we really have to think very carefully what will be an effective way to deal with this kind of behavior,” he said. “We have to do something more, and the question is what is more.”

Churkin was asked whether Russia viewed the nuclear test as more serious than the North’s launch of a missile in April.

“This is a very rare occurrence as you

know, and it goes contrary not only to reso-lutions of the Security Council but also the (Nuclear) Nonproliferation Treaty and the (Nuclear) Test Ban Treaty,” he replied. “We are one of the founding fathers — Russia is — of those documents, so we think they’re extremely important in current international relations. So anything which would under-mine the regimes of those two treaties is very serious and needs to have a strong response.”

Before the council meeting, the five permanent veto-wielding members of the council — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — met behind closed doors for over an hour with the ambassadors of Japan and South Korea.

North Korea claimed the underground nuclear test Monday that was much larger than one it conducted in 2006, which led to the first U.N. sanctions resolution. Rus-sia’s Defense Ministry confirmed an atomic explosion occurred early Monday in north-eastern North Korea and estimated that its strength was similar to bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.

After the council rebuked Pyongyang for its April 5 rocket liftoff, which many nations saw as a cover for testing its long-range mis-sile technology, North Korea announced it was quitting disarmament talks and restarting its atomic facilities. The six-party talks, which began in 2003, had involved North Korea, South Korea, Russia, China, Japan and the United States.

Wheelscontinued from page 1

Koreacontinued from page 1

It puts smiles on

people’s faces. It literally

does.—Rashed Talukder

computer engineering senior

www.mustangdaily.net

Wire Editor: Cassandra J. Carlson 3Mustang Daily

News

ISLAMABAD (AP) — A Taliban spokesman is urging ci-vilians to return to the main city in Pakistan’s Swat Valley saying militants won’t attack security forces there.

But Muslim Khan refused Monday to call the move an at-tempt at a cease-fire as he urged residents to return to Mingora.

The army says it has no inten-tion of stopping its battle against militants in the valley despite the apparent overture.

Pakistan’s offensive in Swat has the support of the U.S. Wash-ington wants the Muslim nation to eliminate militant strongholds on its soil.

• • •BAGHDAD (AP) — Ameri-

can troops on Memorial Day honored their fallen on two bat-tlefields, one war winding down and another ramping up. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military remembered the toll so far on the troops — more than 4,900 dead — with the outcome still unclear.

In Iraq, soldiers and Marines stood solemnly during a playing of Taps at Baghdad’s Camp Vic-tory. They saluted a memorial of a single helmet propped on a rifle beside a pair of boots.

Thousands of miles away, in the Afghan capital of Kabul, sol-diers left mementos at a similar memorial for two comrades who recently died.

InternationalWASHINGTON (AP) —

President Barack Obama avoided a racial controversy on his first Me-morial Day in office by sending wreaths to separate memorials for Confederate soldiers and for blacks who fought against them during the Civil War.

Last week, a group of about 60 professors petitioned the White House, asking the first black U.S. president to break tradition and not memorialize military members from the Confederacy, the group of Southern states that supported slavery.

• • •CHICAGO (AP) — A Chi-

cago resident has died of swine flu, the first death in Illinois and the 12th nationally, from the illness, health authorities said Monday.

Authorities in Mexico, where the swine flu outbreak was iden-tified in April, announced three more deaths, raising its total to 83, and Canada reported its second death.

“With as many cases of H1N1 influenza that have been reported in Illinois, we have been concerned that there would be fatalities,” said Dr. Damon Arnold, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. The state lists 896 con-firmed cases of the illness, known both as H1N1 and swine flu.

Before the latest reports, the World Health Organization tallied at least 91 deaths around the globe from more than 12,500 swine flu cases.

NationalFRESNO, Calif. (AP) — A

21-year-old man is dead after being shot at a party organized on the so-cial networking Web site MySpace, officials said.

Chris Curtice, a spokesman for the Fresno County Sheriff ’s office, said the man was one of 300 people gathered at an abandoned property in Fresno County Saturday night. Authorities were called about a shooting at the scene about 1 a.m. Sunday morning, Curtice said. The victim, from Selma, Calif., has not been identified.

Curtice said the party, organized through text messages and MySpace, drew people from all over the state. “There was a DJ, there was five kegs of beer, there were several underage drinkers,” Curtice said. He said some of the attendees were as young as 13 years old.

• • •SAN DIEGO (AP) — Investi-

gators say a suspect in an early morn-ing shooting that left one woman dead in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quar-ter might have been photographed by bystanders.

Police are asking for witnesses who used cell phone cameras at the scene to come forward.

Police say several people began fighting in the downtown neigh-borhood, which is known for its bars and nightlife, at around 2 a.m. Sunday. One man pulled a gun and fired into the crowd.Lakiesha Ma-son of San Diego, who was celebrat-ing her 21st birthday, was struck and died at a hospital.

State

Briefs

Jennifer Peltz associated press

The reporter rushed up to his editor, thunderstruck by what the FBI’s acting director had just let him know: The former attorney general — maybe even the president — was complicit in the Watergate break-in two months before.

But The New York Times let the hot tip fall through the cracks, the reporter and editor say after decades of silence about the August 1972 conversation. They say it’s unclear whether the Times pursued infor-mation that might have let it beat The Washington Post to the block-buster story of political espionage, which was described in “All the President’s Men” and helped unrav-el Richard M. Nixon’s presidency.

“We missed out,” the now-re-tired editor, Robert H. Phelps, said in an interview Monday, after the Times published a story about the monumental miscue.

Phelps revealed it in “God and the Editor: My Search for Meaning at The New York Times,” a mem-oir published last month by Syra-cuse University Press. The former reporter, Robert M. Smith, now a lawyer and mediator in San Fran-cisco, confirmed Phelps’ account.

Smith was headed to law school and in his last day at the Times’ Washington, D.C., bureau when he went to lunch with acting FBI di-rector L. Patrick Gray on Aug. 16, 1972. Smith had cultivated a pro-fessional relationship with the FBI chief through writing several stories

about him that year.As they discussed the intrigue

surrounding the June 17 attempt to bug the Democratic National Com-mittee offices at the Watergate com-plex, Gray volunteered that former Attorney General John Mitchell was involved, Smith said Monday. Mitchell had stepped down to run Nixon’s re-election campaign.

Smith said he asked Gray, “’Does it go up higher?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’”

Then, Smith said, “I choked and said, ‘The president?’ And he looked me in the eye,” not denying it.

Gray also broached the name of Donald Segretti, an architect of the Nixon campaign’s endeavors to infiltrate and sabotage Democrats, Smith said.

Segretti and Mitchell would eventually go to prison for their roles in the roster of political dirty work that came to be known as Watergate — Segretti for distribut-ing political literature without at-tribution, Mitchell for conspiracy, perjury and obstruction of justice. Segretti wasn’t involved in the Wa-tergate break-in but was associated with an effort to discredit Demo-cratic presidential hopeful Sen. Ed-mund Muskie.

But Segretti’s name hadn’t emerged publicly when Smith hur-ried back to the Times’ office and told Phelps what he had heard. Nor had Mitchell’s link to Watergate been cemented.

—Associated Press writers Richard Pyle and Adam Goldman contributed to this report.

Ex-NY Times journalists: We fumbled Watergate tip

www.mustangdaily.net4 Mustang Daily

NewsTuesday, May 26, 2009

WORD ON THE STREET“What object would you put a

motor on for on-campus transporation? Why?”

“I’ve always wanted to put a motor on a reclining chair or a jacuzzi. That could end (badly) when you stopped though the water would go everywhere.”

-Brian Arnold,history junior

“A comfy chair from the (Unit-ersity Union). It’s comfortable and I could like hanging out at my favorite spot on campus.”

-Erin Brittain,psychology junior

“My bed because I don’t get enough sleep.”

-Kevin Bernotas,business junior

COMPILED AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY LAUREN RABAINO

www.mustangdaily.netAlways in color

Arts and Entertainment Editor: Emilie EggerArts and Entertainment Designer: Milena Krayzbukh

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 5

So, your boyfriend is graduat-ing but you’ve still got a few years left at Cal Poly? Your girlfriend is studying abroad this summer? Your high school sweetheart is still in high school (but totally 18 now, right?). Well friend, now is the time to consider attempting the long-distant relationship.

Not only am I currently do-ing long distance, but this is the second time I’ve done it with the same person. But don’t think I’m going to be sympathetic to you long-distancers. I think it’s a terri-ble idea. So here is a list of why my long distance relationship works, but yours won’t:

1. The distanceMy boyfriend lives in San Jose,

an easy three-hour drive from San Luis Obispo. While I can’t exactly give him booty call in the middle of the week, I can easily plan a trip to see him for the weekend. I’m even willing to spend six hours driving to make a day trip to visit if we’re having some sort of rela-tionship emergency. So how far apart will you be from your signif-icant other? When you live further apart, your visits will become less often and more expensive. Most couples try to compensate for this by spending “quality time” with each other during visits, i.e. never leaving the bedroom for the dura-

tion of the visit and calling each other every fi ve minutes for an update while they’re apart. These couples don’t have a lot of friends. Out-of-state relationship? Good luck with that. Out of country? Time to rethink your options.

2. The foundation of the relationship

I’ve been seeing my boyfriend, off and on, for a little over fi ve years now. The fi rst time we tried long distance it was about 10 months into our relationship, past several relationship landmines: ex-clusivity, “I love yous” and becom-ing sexually active. This seems like a no-brainer: make sure your rela-tionship works on its own before throwing distance into the

Long distance relationships: not for the faint of heart

sex column

You’re doin’ it

By Jenna Ray

You’re doin’ it

By Jenna Ray

see Relationships, page 6

Mustang Daily

Arts & entertainment www.mustangdaily.net

Tuesday, May 26, 20096

Bridget Veltrimustang daily

History came to Cal Poly Friday night in the form of renowned activist, playwright, author and director Luis Val-dez, known to many as the “father of Chicano theater.”

Valdez spoke to the packed audience not about his many awards or achievements, but the simple events that shaped his life while growing up.

“I have always believed that you can turn any negative into a positive,” Valdez said.

In many ways, Valdez’s life is living proof of this state-ment. In 1940 he was born to migrant worker parents in Delano, Calif. and by 1965 he was marching with Cesar Chavez, founding the theater group El Teatro Campesino and using a flat bed truck as a stage to voice the struggle of Chicano rights.

“For 24 years I have taught Valdez’s works in my classes because he represents a point in history and an important facet of Chicano and American history,” modern languages and literature professor Gloria Velasquez said. “And if we don’t know our history we don’t know ourselves.”

His internationally-known play “Zoot Suit” was the first play to appear on Broadway by a Chicano. The play was eventually made into a motion picture. He also wrote and directed the motion picture “La Bamba.”

You could say that Valdez discovered theater through the art of papier-mâché. His teacher was making a mon-key mask out of the material for his school’s production of “Christmas in the Jungle,” which he tried out for. He was cast as a monkey but never set foot on stage, since his family was evicted from the labor camp they were living in and had to move. Valdez was heartbroken, and had what he

referred to as a “hole in his soul.” He re-framed that experi-ence and now credits that “hole” as the source of his cre-ativity. He also credits that teacher, who forever influenced the life of a first grader she only taught for 30 days.

“Teachers don’t know what they do for their students,” Valdez said.

As a teacher, Velasquez is trying to do everything she can for her students by bringing people like Valdez to Cal Poly.

“At Cal Poly, underrepresented students need more role models and successful examples,” Velasquez said. “This is just another example of making our campus more diverse. It is not just for Chicano students. It is for students of all backgrounds who can benefit from this; we learn from each other,” she added.

Debra Valencia-Laver, associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts and secretary for the Chicana Latino Faculty Staff Association, was also excited to have Valdez speak.

“We are trying to celebrate Chicano culture and contri-butions both at the university and in the community,” Va-lencia-Laver said. “Someone like Luis Valdez is the perfect person to come have because he showcases the important contributions that Chicanos have made to California and the United States in general.”

The event ended with a standing ovation. After speak-ing, Valdez signed books and posters for audience members waiting in a long line that stretched to the door of Philips Hall.

The event was sponsored by the Chicana Latino Fac-ulty Staff Association, Cal Poly’s College of Liberal Arts, the modern languages and literatures department, ethnic studies department, theatre and dance department, the Di-vision of Student Affairs and the Movimiento Estudiantil Xicana/o de Aztlan.

Legendary Chicano writer and activist speaks at Cal Poly

So, your boyfriend is graduat-ing but you’ve still got a few years left at Cal Poly? Your girlfriend is studying abroad this summer? Your high school sweetheart is still in high school (but totally 18 now, right?). Well friend, now is the time to consider attempting the long-distant relationship.

Not only am I currently do-ing long distance, but this is the second time I’ve done it with the same person. But don’t think I’m going to be sympathetic to you long-distancers. I think it’s a terri-ble idea. So here is a list of why my long distance relationship works, but yours won’t:

1. The distanceMy boyfriend lives in San Jose,

an easy three-hour drive from San Luis Obispo. While I can’t exactly give him booty call in the middle of the week, I can easily plan a trip to see him for the weekend. I’m even willing to spend six hours driving to make a day trip to visit if we’re having some sort of rela-tionship emergency. So how far

apart will you be from your signif-icant other? When you live further apart, your visits will become less often and more expensive. Most couples try to compensate for this by spending “quality time” with each other during visits, i.e. never leaving the bedroom for the dura-tion of the visit and calling each other every five minutes for an update while they’re apart. These couples don’t have a lot of friends. Out-of-state relationship? Good luck with that. Out of country? Time to rethink your options.

2. The foundation of the relationship

I’ve been seeing my boy-friend, off and on, for a little over five years now. The first time we tried long distance it was about 10 months into our relationship, past several relationship landmines: exclusivity, “I love yous” and be-coming sexually active. This seems like a no-brainer: make sure your relationship works on its own be-fore throwing distance into the mix. There are already so many other factors working against your new relationship. And don’t fool yourself into trying to make “just dating” work over long distance.

Relationshipcontinued from page 5

courtesy photos

Well-known Chicano writer and activist Luis Valdez came to campus Friday to speak of his experiences and influences.

By the year 2050, nearly 80 percent of the Earth’s population will reside in urban centers. Ap-plying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the in-terim. On an urban planet, closing resource and energy loops — creating zero-waste systems for meeting the needs of people who live in highly dense cities — floats in front of us, grail-like, as a goal. An estimated one trillion hectares of new land (about 20 percent more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80 percent of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use. Historically, some 15 percent of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster?

An entirely new approach to indoor farming must be invented, employing cutting-edge tech-nologies. Columbia University professor Dickson Despommier has generated a fair amount of at-tention with his concept for “vertical farms”: stacked, self-contained urban biosystems that would — theoretically — sup-ply fresh produce for city residents year round. The New York Times show-cased artists’ conceptions of what such farms might look like. Twelve pilot proj-ects are supposedly under consideration, in locations as far-flung as China and Dubai.

The concept has captured the imagination of at least the sliver of the public, who laments the enormous resource demands of our food production system and yearns for something easier on the land, easier on our aquifers, and less demanding of fossil fuels. Vertical farms seem to promise all that. But first and foremost, a vertical farm must be efficient, cheap to construct and safe to operate. Vertical farms, many stories high, could be situated in the heart of the world’s urban centers. If successfully implemented, they may offer the promise of urban renewal, sus-tainable production of a safe and varied food sup-ply (year-round crop production) and the eventual repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal farming.

I still need a bunch of convincing that vertical farming can, with the designs offered and tech-nologies currently available, make sense on a grand scale. But it’s a promising idea.

Promising, of course, is different than deliver-ing. Construction requires a lot of energy. Keeping vegetables warm in winter requires a lot of energy.

Recycling water requires a lot of energy. Gener-ating artificial sunlight requires a lot of energy. In other words, the secret ingredient that makes vertical farms work (assuming they work at all) is boatloads of energy. No one seems to have actu-ally done the math on the monetary and environ-mental costs of such a scheme, but they would no doubt be considerable.

In its most superficial aspect, the vertical farm is a hot-looking amenity for a progressive city. But its deeper potential is as a tool that might prove in-valuable when times get more desperate. Climate-controlled skyscrapers aren’t as susceptible to crazy weather fluctuations as conventional farms. As the global population struggles to shrink its footprint by congregating in cities, reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and devising ways to feed more peo-ple without degrading more natural green space, a working farm in the sky wouldn’t be a bad thing to know how to build.

I do think it may be worth investing now in developing an idea that might help to save us when we need it. And I applaud thinkers like Despom-

mier (and Seattle-based Mithun), whose creativity will bring us closer to the solu-

tions we need. It’s also worth consider-ing that what we are building in an

urban farm is more than just a showpiece of great design. I hope that, no matter which city ac-cepts the challenge first, executing a wildly

imaginative idea like this one should be a project

considered with utmost practical-ity. As the world’s population booms, we need

to keep to continue growing and greening our cities. And that means keeping the focus where it

belongs: on people. Our cities could be seen as ma-chines for transforming water, biomass and miner-als into people and pollution. If we’re serious about building a bright green future, we need to redesign those machines, keeping the people, but bring-ing the mechanism into a balanced cycle with the Earth. That’s going be a bit challenging.

One thing we can do to increase our odds of success is to understand how our cities grew into the complex systems they now are. Indeed, not understanding what accidents, choices and forces shaped our cities almost guarantees that the new designs, policies, plans and technologies we intro-duce will either fail or produce monstrous unin-tended consequences. As Wendell Barry once said, “All good work remembers its past.”

Ben Eckold is a business administration senior, the for-mer president of the Empower Poly Coalition and a Mustang Daily columnist.

8

Opinion/editorialMustang Daily

Tuesday, May 26, 2009Editor in chief: Marlize van RomburghManaging Editor: Giana Magnoli

mustangdaily@gmail.com

www.mustangdaily.net

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May 26, 2009Volume LXXII, No. 152 ©2009

Mustang Daily

“If we ever had kids, they’d be little ‘fro kids with big noses.”

Vertical farms could supply fresh food year round

It is unfortunate such a tragedy has struck our campus. But really who can say that this could not have happened elsewhere on our campus? Many people are quick to point the finger to greek orga-nizations and members. But what about other organizations that also hazing and alcohol abuse? In a national study on hazing (haz-ingstudy.org) it was found that 74 percent of varsity athletic teams take part in some form of hazing, 73 percent of greek and 64 per-cent of sport clubs. What has been done to educate them?Being greek myself, I know that the school has taken steps to help prevent this tragedy from oc-curing again. When will people realize that hazing and binge-drinking is not a greek issue but a Cal Poly issue and help to stop the tide of students going to Sierra Vista Hospital on any given weekend? Think about when you pass out or “black out” from drinking. Essentially, that is your body telling you to stop drink-ing. This is anyone’s danger of drinking. Luck in the game of Russian Roulette ran out for the members of SAE and it is sad to see. The justice system is harsh. These young men already feel the pain and guilt of what happened. Their lives already ruined and from December on would never be the same. Please take a lesson from Carson’s death, one which does not point to the Greeks but to binge drinking instead: “Less is more and look out for your friends, if your Greek or not, it can happen to you.”

— DResponse to “UPDATE: Four SAE

members charged in hazing death”

Those who say that Carson chose to consume beyond his limit dangerously belittle the severity of hazing. In a “brown bag” event, the pledge’s ability to monitor their alcohol intake is taken away from them because they do not know what they are consuming. By the time they feel the effect, it is already too late to realize they needed to have stopped. Car-son put his trust in his fraternity brothers to be, and their criminal irresponsibility killed him. Hazing of this type intentionally strips people of their power to make their own choices. Suggesting that Carson was somehow respon-sible for his own death or that he should have made better choices is to me just as harmful as saying that rape victims are somehow responsible and should have made better choices to not have someone rape them. Instead of saying that Carson was the victim of hazing, if these convictions are accurate, it should be said that two men hazed Carson to death.

— Steven WolfResponse to “UPDATE: Four SAE

members charged in hazing death”

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Tuesday, May 26, 2009 Mustang Daily

Sports11

www.mustangdaily.net

Sports designer: Kate Nickerson

“Offensively and defensively we just got caught in a couple of lapses that could have made the game a lit-tle bit easier at the end and didn’t, and they took advantage of it.”

Henry Blanco, who had replaced Hundley, led off the 10th with his second single, then Headley hit a 1-1 pitch from Tony Pena (4-2) some 424 feet off a sign above the swimming pool in left-center.

“It’s just the best feeling in the world,” Hundley said. “You go up there and you get a big hit in a big situation and it ends up being the game winner. There’s nothing better than that.”

Edward Mujica (2-1) pitched a scoreless ninth for the victory. Heath Bell had a perfect 10th for his 13th save in 13 tries.

Drew Macias had the big blow of the rally, a three-run double to slice the lead to 7-6.

San Diego relievers have allowed one run in the last 33 games.

Arizona’s Chad Qualls blew a save for the second time in 13 opportu-nities, giving up a leadoff double to pinch hitter Brian Giles, who ad-vanced to third on David Eckstein’s ground out and scored on Scott Hairston’s single to tie it at 7-7.

The Padres’ Adrian Gonzalez hit his 17th homer, a leadoff shot in the fourth.

A grounder through the legs of Arizona shortstop Stephen Drew opened the way for the San Diego rally.

After started Doug Davis left with the bases loaded and one out, reliever Jon Rauch gave up RBI singles to Kevin Kouzmanoff and Henry Blan-co. Lefty Clay Zavada, who had yet to give up a hit in two appearances since being called up from Double-A Mobile, got Headley to pop out, but Macias doubled to the right-center gap to make it a one-run game.

“He threw a slider and it didn’t really slide,” Macias said.

Hundley and Black were tossed after Cooper ruled that the catcher had come off of home plate af-ter receiving a throw from the first baseman Gonzalez for what would have been a force out with the bases loaded. Hundley then threw to first for what the Padres believed was a double play to end the inning.

“We were thinking home-to-first double play,” Black said. “From what I saw, that’s what I thought we got. But Eric thought Nick had slid off the plate before he caught the ball. Nick disagreed with him, and so did I.”

The run that crossed the plate on the play made it 7-1.

Chris Snyder’s home run and Da-vis’ triple on the first two pitches of the inning from Chad Gaudin ignit-ed Arizona’s five-run third.

After the game, Black watched a television replay of him being tossed as Sen. John McCain grinned broadly in the background.

“I’ve never been thrown out in front of a presidential candidate,” Black exclaimed. “I love it.”

Padrescontinued from page 12

Baseballcontinued from page 12

associated pressSan Diego Padres’ Chase Head-ley rounds the bases after a 10th inning homerun in San Diego’s 9-7 victory on Monday.

“I think it’s a good regional for us,” Lee said. “We’re an offen-sive team and it’s an offensive ball-park. Arizona State is a good team; they’re as good as anyone in the country. A team like them is there year in and year out.”

Despite having to bus to San Jose and fly to Tempe, Lee was pleased with the team’s regional selection. The Mustangs would not be allowed to travel to Irvine or Fullerton due to those host teams being part of the Big West Confer-ence, so Tempe was the next closest

place to travel.“It was the logical (regional

venue),” Lee said. “If we continue to make re-

gionals it’s a logical place to send us. It’s probably the best possible scenario for us.”

The regional is a double-elimi-nation format meaning that to ad-vance a team will need to win at least three games to move on.

The winner of the Tempe Re-gional will play the Clemson Re-gional champion (Clemson, Ten-nessee Tech, Oklahoma State and Alabama) June 5-7 or June 6-8 for a trip to the College World Series in Omaha.

The Mustangs hope to follow the blueprint set forth by Fresno

State last year. The Bulldogs arrived at the NCAA Regionals unherald-ed and ran a streak of hot hitting straight to Omaha.

Fresno State would go on to beat Georgia 6-1 in the national championship game.

“Once you get to a four-team regional anything can happen,” Lee said.

“If things fall into place anything can happen — that’s what hap-pened to Fresno State last year… I think the most important game is that first game. We just need to come out and weather the storm early in the game and be in control ourselves and try to get that first win. Once that happens it seems like everything settles down.”

Scott Silveymustang daily

Larry Lee’s wait is fi nally over.After a number of years in which

the Cal Poly baseball team had its bubble burst by the NCAA selec-tion committee, Lee’s team will fi -nally see the postseason for the fi rst time at the Division I level on Fri-day at 2 p.m. when they travel to the Tempe Regional to face Oral Rob-erts (31-13).

“I didn’t think we were a bub-ble team but you just never know,” Lee said. “I know it’s not a Western United States based committee.”

While the committee may not have caught many Cal Poly games this year, it couldn’t ignore the Mus-tangs solid résumé this year. Cal Poly (37-19) fi nished in third place in a

Big West Conference that saw the top two teams, UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton, earn two of the top eight national seeds this year.

The Mustangs weren’t far behind, earning a Top 25 ranking through-out the majority of the season and holding victories over several Top 25 teams including then-No. 3 Rice

and two victories against defending national champion Fresno State.

Lee said that regardless of how his team performs in this postseason, the Mustangs have taken a huge step forward.

“I think getting to the regional is the important thing,” he said. “No matter what you do it helps out in

every aspect of your program. It breaks down that initial barrier of getting to the playoffs. It gets you accustomed to that and it allows continuing athletes to know what its all about.”

While Cal Poly may feel postsea-son jitters in their fi rst regional ex-perience, Oral Roberts has become

accustomed to it.The Golden Eagles have made

12 consecutive trips to the NCAA postseason. They defeated South Dakota 6-2 on Saturday in Tulsa, Okla., to win their 12th straight Summit League championship.

“(I don’t know) a lot about them,” Lee said. “Pitching is one of their strengths but we’re just col-lecting our scouting information on them right now.”

The Mustangs will have three full days to prepare for Oral Rob-erts, but Lee has already made the decision on who is going to start for his team on Friday.

“We’ll throw Radeke on Fri-day night,” Lee said. “He’s our most consistent pitcher. He’s able to spot his fastball inside and out. He allows you to call a game for him and he competes.”

Radeke (6-1) has become one of the Mustangs best starters late in the season. The freshman has al-lowed just 18 walks in 71.2 innings this year.

“He’s resilient,” Lee said of Rade-ke. “We know we can throw him on Friday and he can come back on one day’s rest if we need him to.”

The winner of Cal Poly’s fi rst game will play the winner of the Arizona State (44-12) and Kent State (42-15) contest. The Sun Dev-ils are the No. 5 seed nationally af-ter winning the Pac-10. Kent State defeated Toledo 5-3 on Saturday to capture the Mid-American Confer-ence tournament title. They fi nished third in the regular season.

mustang daily staFF report

Cal Poly junior second basemen Adam Buschini was named Big West Player of the Week after col-lecting seven hits — including four homeruns in four games last week.

Buschini, who currently has a 15-game hitting streak, raised his team-high batting average to .412 over the weekend — tying the school Division I record set by Scott Kidd in 1997.

Many of Buschini’s hits came in clutch moments including a home run Friday night snapped a 3-3 tie and he also drew a bases-loaded walk in the eighth inning to force in what proved to be the winning run in a 6-5 victory.

He also hit a two-run homer to snap a tie in the eighth inning on Sunday but UC Riverside would rally for three runs in the ninth to claim the victory.

Buschini, who missed the entire 2008 campaign following Tommy John surgery, now has 23 multiple-hit games and a team-leading 18 multiple RBI contests this season. He leads the team in RBI (57), to-tal bases (128), doubles (18), triples (2), homeruns (11) and slugging percentage (.723). He was second to freshman second baseman Matt Jensen’s .493 on base percentage and also had 11 stolen bases in 13 attempts this season.

MUSTANG DAILYSPORTSmustangdaily.net

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

sPOrts eDitOr: Scott Silvey

mustangdailysports@gmail.com

Buschini wins fi nal Big West Player of the Week award

NICK CAMACHO MUstaNG daiLY FiLe pHotoCal Poly junior second baseman Adam Buschini, shown above, had seven hits last week to claim Big West Player of the Week honors.

associated pressArizona Diamondbacks’ Augie Ojeda, front, up ends San Diego Padres second baseman David Eckstein on a double play attempt on Tuesday.

REGIONAL CHAMPION

SUPER REGIONAL CHAMPION

REGIONAL CHAMPION

#1 Arizona St. (44-12)

#4 Kent St. (42-15)

#3 Cal Poly (37-19)

#2 Miami (FL) (36-20)

#1 Clemson (40-19)

#4 Tennessee Tech (30-22-1)

#3 Oklahoma St. (32-22)

#2 Alabama (37-19)Cal Poly’s road to the

Men’s College World Series

COLLEGEWORLDSERIES

Bob Baumassociated press

PHOENIX — The San Diego Padres were down by six runs with two innings to play. Their manager had been tossed. So had their starting catcher.

Those old road woes seemed to be back.

Then came one big hit after an-other, capped by Chase Headley’s two-run homer in the 10th, and the Padres won their 10th straight game, beating Arizona 9-7 on Monday.

“It’s not unlike the fi rst couple of weeks of the season,” manager Bud Black said. “We came back from 7-1 in Philadelphia ... We’ve done it be-fore. It’s something we as coaches al-ways remember, to remind our guys that we can do it. If you do it once,

you can do it again.”San Diego, which snapped an 11-

game road losing streak, trailed 7-1 before scoring fi ve in the eighth, one in the ninth and two in the 10th.

“It’s been a lot of fun to come to the ballpark these last 10 days,” Head-ley said. “We come here and we ex-pect to win. It’s not that we come in here and hope to win, we expect to win. We just couldn’t give up today.”

Black and Padres catcher Nick Hundley weren’t around to watch the impressive fi nish. They were thrown out by home plate umpire Eric Coo-per in the bottom of the sixth.

It was a painful loss for an Arizona team just back from a 6-3 road trip.

“We just didn’t fi nd a way to fi n-ish the game,” manager A.J. Hinch

Headley’s homer help Padres win 10th in a row

see Padres, page 11

THEY’RE IN!After years of close calls, the Cal Poly baseball team

fi nally got its fi rst Division I postseason invite on Monday.

see Baseball, page 11KaTe niCKerSon mustang daily