The Osbournes are way more than just another partaker of the reality TV show trend. The unscripted, highly-censored show happens to be hilarious, and has gained an increase in buzz and hype every week. This certainly hasn’t taken anyone by surprise, except the family itself.

Each Tuesday, the usual young MTV crowd, and a wider and older audience gather, around the television to watch the same situation over and over again: Ozzy mumbling unintelligible sentences, half composed of swear words, his wife Sharon telling him what to do or not do, Kelly whining and complaining about her brother Jack, who always goes on angry rampages at everyone. The Osbournes is a comedic reflection of the typical dysfunctional family. What else could America ask for in entertainment, but to see its own reflection?

The Osbournes has also served as the adequate CPR to revive Ozzy’s career. The self-proclaimed “Prince of Darkness” wasn’t able to strike a chord or made any impact on the charts with his last year’s album Down to Earth. However, lucky for Osbourne, his show features concert footages from his tour and his new songs are played throughout the episodes. Unsurprisingly, this has boosted his album sales and promotion, which needed push.

The key element that makes the show intriguing and fun is that the viewer gets to discover the unknown and unexpected aspects of the Osbourne household: mellow Ozzy is last in totem pole of decision making; Sharon waits up for Kelly, 17, and Jack, 16, to get home at night; Ozzy is anti-tattoos and drugs; Jack is quite a ladies’ man, and both children go to high school.

Kelly and Jack’s ever -changing wacky hairdos and the multiple cats and dogs are also a pivotal part of The Osbournes’ charm.

MTV producers are currently negotiating with the family the possibility of a second season, since this one has been so successful.

The Osbourne family has become the 21st century version of the Bradys, the Jeffersons, and the Cosbys. The difference: no scripts, no acting, and no pretending to be the royal family or rock and roll.

One recent response by a Hurricane reader does wonders to support my thesis in an earlier column on eco-fundamentalism. Even UM’S ‘green’ environmental activists doggedly adhere to debate techniques contrary to achieving rational discourse in presenting a clear and concise viewpoint for a specific issue.

The respondent, Ms. Pitts, seems to be consumed by ideals to which many succumb in not having been exposed to knowledge and information that directly challenges paradigms prevalent in popular culture, the press or in the modern academy. This is usually the result of a steady diet of presumed moral superiority endemic in fundamentalist environmentalism, which she alludes to as the ‘nobility of our cause.’ This is no small foible committed by persons who seek to establish a superior moral position in social and environmental issues. And it hinders rational economic choices and freedom in grappling with such problems. Perhaps use of the word ‘zealot’ is what ignited her. But her agitated off-topic response is exactly the reason to use such words when describing the ideological eco-left.

Ms. Pitts uses words and phrases directly from my column so I will assume she is referring to me when she levels ad hominum attacks in an attempt to reduce the legitimacy of my position. Her attempt to connect an ‘ethnocentricism of benighted individuals’ to my statements is a veiled and slanderous charge of racism, meant to question the moral standing of any idea that challenges the ideological eco-left dogma and, in effect, denigrates free intellectual inquiry. Nowhere, in my column do I try to establish a purported superfluous connection between environmental issues and racial constructs. This accusation is far removed from legitimate debate that uses relevant examples leavened with descriptive words to specifically support a position.

Ms. Pitts further establishes her progressive credentials by cavalierly ignoring the argument I used to support my position found in Bjorn Lomborg’s Skeptical Environmentalist’s specifically faulty models of data analysis. This ministration is typical of the self-styled anointed and falls along the same lines as the skewed analysis techniques Lomborg cites, which she ignores and fails to address. For her to state that ‘criticism has stalled short of raising sensible compelling arguments,’ displays an unwillingness to devote minimal effort to hear and study the position on the issue I specifically present. In the column I also clearly state the importance of pressing environmental problems and the necessity of creating rational workable solutions to solve them.

Perhaps those like Ms. Pitts who are ‘transcending boundaries and empowering ordinary people to live extraordinary lives’ should first ask we ordinary people if we really want their ‘noble’ and purported ‘towering feats of altruism’ to represent our interests. This is hyperbole and obfuscation and is the real modus operandi of the eco-left, which seeks to dictate which public policies are best for humankind.

Ms. Pitts seems stridently conscientious and environmentally engaged. She may claim to be one who doesn’t want to ‘sink markets’, but by embracing the deceptively coded language of racial conflict, victimization, class warfare and irrational dogma of the totalitarian eco-left, she is allying herself with those who do. She is also profoundly incorrect when she dutifully restates the old canard that posits environmental issues have nothing to do with green ‘dead presidents’. Perhaps she would prefer an eco-friendly but incentive-destroying-and heavily taxed-income in ‘non-green’ sucres or rupees.

Steven Stanley is a graduate student in the School of International Studies.

Every male student at the University of Miami student should, when waking up each morning, take one or two minutes to be grateful to God for what we have been given. Our campus, thanks in part to President Foote and the ones that came before him, is filled with dozens of beautiful women, with whom I can only dream of going out on dates and see what might happen afterward.

Ephemeral fantasies aside, my ultimate fantasy is a long-lasting fantasy. Not a quickie – a “one-time wham-bam-thank-you ma’am” – but one in which I work on my relationship with that special someone. Someone I can wine and dine, take to the movies, and give a kiss to every morning.

Call me old-fashioned, but I do believe there’s a big difference between a man and a woman making love and a man and a woman making whoopee for one night. In ordeer to achieve the second alternative, we have ten fingers that individually or simultaneously can do the trick. A good video or magazine can also help tremendously.

The foreplay, the smooching and the caresses are much better when the other side is more than a piece of meat with a B-size cup or half a dozen inches or more. Making love involves much more than just physical contact. It is an active expression of what we feel inside-the best of it, if the mood and the scent of the candle are right.

Besides the emotional concerns, we have health concerns-particularly HIV. Those 20 seconds of fun (or 40, if you’re a “good performer”) may end costing us much more than we ever bargained for.

I don’t believe that abstinence is the best protection. It would be too naive and too unnatural to ask college students at the peak of their heat to just hold on to their instincts until they meet their better half. But being careful and being selective would really help.

It’s funny but, in my Brazilian mind, the road to a sexual encounter is a long and tortuous journey. It takes charm; the right words at the right time, at the right place-with the right touch in all the right places. You might take a week or a couple hours to get there, but it’s still a lot of effort. Why waste all that energy on a one-night stand?

A good one night is followed by many others. It’s followed by two people getting to know each other, finding out how to make that one night into another better one, and an even better following that. And you can’t accomplish that on a one-time deal.

Daniel Paskin is a graduate student in the School of International Studies.

There is a game I like to play. These are the rules. Get in the car. Drive. Don’t read street signs. Ignore landmarks. Avoid main roads.

The object of the game is to get lost, and then to find the way home again. I take turns on side streets and hope the canals interrupt them or the highway brings them to an end.

It’s a game I’ve played in new cities, in old cities, and on two-lane highways and dirt roads. It’s the only way to know a place, to make it my own.

Since I don’t have a car these days, I have to hitchhike: Find some willing person to drive me around in circles with their eyes closed. I’m lucky; I know someone who knows the game and loves it as much as I do, and the other day we played it together for the first time. I had always known creating my own labyrinth was the way to find myself again, but when we lost ourselves together, I discovered its also a way to get to know someone else.

It takes away all the distraction and leaves just the inside-out navigation, the smell of oregano from a spice warehouse, and the surreptitious pleasure of a beautiful home with the lights on inside.

I know people who’ve lived in Miami as long as I have and have still never driven down Calle Ocho. This baffles me: For fear of getting lost, they’ll never know where they are.

Late at night the streets are quiet, and in a city, the sky is bright like dawn and midnight at the same time. The lights of the buildings reflect off the whites of the clouds, and the traffic lights blink on and blink off, as if they’re saying be careful-but like an anxious mother, they’re almost afraid to look. My friend says the way the sky looks at night makes him believe he could begin anything and it would be fruitful.

I ask myself what there is to begin now, and the red blinking lights tell me to look both ways and go; nothing otherwise will change. I wonder if I do this just for the surprise of coming out of a foreign street into something familiar, or if it’s for the satisfaction of knowing I will inevitably find home.

The thing is, it is impossible to get truly lost, in this game or in life itself. One way or another I will roll down the windows, sigh, and find the way back to something I know. In the end my way is the only thing I will have lost at all.

Angie Henderson is a graduate student in the School of International Studies

Has anyone else noticed those new anti-drug commercials lately? You know, the ones in which the government tries to scare you into believing that every time someone buys marijuana they are funding terrorism?

Indeed, the commercials are very dramatic, especially in light of the events of Sep. 11th. After all, who wants to fund terrorism? But I urge all you pot-heads to calm down and read closely.

Don’t you find it curious how the connection between drugs and terrorism is made to seem so obvious? At the same time, don’t you find it curious how the commercials mention nothing about how every time you buy gas you are conceivably helping to fund terrorists? Or how everyone with a sports utility vehicle is eating gas at an unprecedented rate and consequentially contributing tons of money annually to the countries that house these terrorists?

And why do they not mention anything about how our dubious dealings with the countries that give us all of this precious gasoline and oil are quite possibly half the reason these terrorists hate us so much? I mean, not only are we occupying their countries and exploiting their economies, but we are also destroying their plots of earth as fast as we possibly can.

Oh but wait, I forgot. No one likes to admit to the bad stuff. So I understand why we would want to pretend it doesn’t happen. And I can see how some marketing genius was able to turn it into a brilliant attempt to lend credence to our impotent war on drugs.

This all might sound very radical, but I’d bet you it’s not too far from the truth. I believe that blaming junkies for the problem of terrorism is too easy an excuse. It works too perfectly and seems like a ploy to appease the average soccer mom who drives an SUV and wants her kids to stay away from drugs. And my theory is that it is exactly that soccer mom, spending hundreds of dollars a month on gas, who is the real terrorist.

Travis Atria is a sophomore majoring in English literature.