Tuesday, April 7, 2015 | Volume 210 | Number 131 | 40 cents | iowastatedaily.com | An independent student newspaper serving Iowa State since 1890.
What would we do without Google? By Carolina.Colon @iowastatedaily.com on’t know the meaning of something? Back in the day, a dictionary or encyclopedia was the correct method of finding the definition. Today, Google is the brain of society. Making its appearance in 1998, Google is the No. 1 search engine worldwide. According to Statista.com, the engine has 1.17 billion users, compared to Baidu with 293 million, Yahoo with 292 million and finally Bing with 267 million.
“Search engines work like a skeleton of Google or Yahoo,” Chapman said. “It builds an index of pages that launches crawlers, which link to more pages in order to get to the page you want.” Chapman also said Google is a little robot that crawls around building pages with references perfect for the user. So how is Google such a big influence in the daily lives of individuals? GOOGLE p10
Elected GSB president, vice president sworn in By Michaela.Ramm @iowastatedaily.com
Dalton Gackle/Iowa State Daily
Hector Avalos, professor philosophy of religious studies, presents his research during a lecture about scientifically proving the benefits of praying.
Professor discusses possibility of proving prayers are beneficial By John.Kruse @iowastatedaily.com Hector Avalos, professor of philosophy and religious studies, spoke with the Atheist and Agnostic Society on Monday to discuss the possibility of scientifically proving the benefits of prayer. “I don’t want people being hurt by beliefs that won’t work,” Avalos said, asserting his belief that science cannot prove the benefits of prayer. Throughout the lecture, Avalos guided his audience through the many problems science would face if it ever did attempt to prove prayer’s scientific benefits. Many of these problems revolved around the plethora of unpredictable variables. “Someone might pray for the health of all people, so it’s impossible to scientifically study prayer,” Avalos said. “Most people receive medical help and
prayer, so there’s no way of seeing the separate benefits of medicine and prayer.” On top of this, Avalos discussed scientific studies that already attempted to scientifically prove the benefits of prayer. “In some studies, you’re actually worse off receiving prayer in this case,” Avalos said, speaking on studies where the prayer control group yielded worse results than the control group without prayer. Another issue Avalos said was present involves the inability to point to God as responsible for anything if his existence cannot be proven. “You need to know that a being is to know that it did something,” Avalos said. “That’s like saying I don’t know if martians exist, but they set my pants on fire.” While the lecture title asked if prayer could be scientifically
PRAYER p10
Dan Breitbarth and Megan Sweere were sworn in as president and vice president of the Government of the Student Body on Monday night. Breitbarth and Sweere were elected for the upcoming year, receiving 66 percent of the 4,135 total student votes. Breitbarth said they were more than ready and excited to see what they can accomplish in the upcoming year. “The upcoming year will be filled with many triumphs and probably a few tribulations as well,” Breitbarth said. “But [Sweere] and I are looking forward to it all.” The pair was sworn in by former GSB President Hillary Kletscher, which marks the end of her time in office. Kletscher said reflecting back, she believes a lot was ac-
Schuyler Smith/Iowa State Daily
Dan Breitbarth and Megan Sweere are sworn in as the new GSB president and vice president on Monday. The two were elected after receiving 66 percent of the votes.
complished during her time as president. “Our voice had a difference,” Kletscher said. “The things we said we would do actually made a difference.” Kletscher said accomplishments that have been made
GSB p10
Eating Wildly lecture tells of foraging By Kyndal.Reimer @iowastatedaily.com Foraging causes some people to jump to images of nomadic people scouring for greens, while others think of dumpster divers or backwoods country folk. To Ava Chin, foraging for food in New York has become a way of life. Chin, author of the book “Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love, and the Perfect Meal,” gave a lecture on Monday in the Great Hall of the Memorial
Union. She is also an associate professor of creative nonfiction and journalism at the City University of New York and is the former “urban foyager” writer for the New York Times. Chin covered her history of foraging and the events in her life that led her to this unique lifestyle. She also shared facts and led the audience on a virtual foraging tour of some of her favorite plants growing in the Ames area. Chin grew up in Queens,
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N.Y. with her single mother and Chinese grandparents. She owes most of her knowledge and passion for foraging to her grandfather, who owned his own restaurant when Chin was a child. She spoke fondly of the earth-grown, homemade meals her grandfather used to cook for her. “I’ve always been fascinated by the things growing around me.” Chin said. “When I was little, I was always getting in trouble for picking and tasting
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