Jennifer K. Perkins

Have you ever been in the passenger seat of a car listening to music and watching out the window when all of a sudden you feel like you have experienced the exact same scenario before? Have you had that particular déjà vu experience? My most vivid memory of experiencing déjà vu while travelling happened three years ago. I knew for a fact that I hadn’t had the exact same experience before because I was on a different continent in a place I had never visited before. It was around this time three years ago; I was less than halfway through my study abroad semester at the University of St Andrews in...

“The survey found that 79 percent of Republicans and 73 percent of Democrats believe social media companies are responsible for the spread of misinformation,” states an article from the Associated Press, published by LEX18 on Oct. 8. The data reportedly came from a poll from The Pearson Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Contrary to the claim that social media companies are to blame, social media is not the problem when it comes to misinformation. The real problem is much more severe and much harder to correct. The problem is our personal biases which are reflected in our social media feeds. Before I start my explanation, I want to go...

What do woolly worms, the fogs in August and persimmons all have in common?  They are subjects of folklore tales used to predict the upcoming winter.  While folklore tales differ as they are told, they are all rooted in a similar truth.  Tales of woolly worms, also known as woolly bears, began in 1948 when Dr. Howard C. Curran, a curator of insects at the American Museum of Natural History decided to study the catepillars and found that many of his test subjects had wide orange bands, according to Farmers’ Almanac. The bands correlated to a milder-than-average winter.  Curran allegedly relayed his findings to a reporter, and his findings were published in the...

Every generation has their moment, or moments, when the world seems to stand still.  For my great grandparents, it was the attack on Pearl Harbor. For my grandparents, it was the John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinations. For my parents, it was the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and September 11, 2001. As a 23-year-old, I don’t remember first-hand what happened on 9/11. I know the stories I have heard. I can recite the facts that I learned in history class. For me, I don’t remember a world before 9/11, so when people say that the world changed after the terroristic attack, often they forget that there is now...

Anyone who knows me, knows I am directionally challenged. My family jokes that my sister got all of the navigational genes in the family. So much so, that we joke that she is Sacagawea and I am Lewis and Clark.  My lack of navigational skills is the reason I hate driving.  I am always the person who recommends carpooling because I will get lost if I am left to my own devices. Because my devices are so terrible, my dad purchased me a GPS navigation system for my birthday last month.  While I often use it for navigating to interviews and local places (because I really am that bad at directions), my...

In 1974, one of the public’s greatest tools for holding public agencies in Kentucky accountable was passed by the General Assembly.  The Kentucky Open Meetings Law gives the public the right to attend the meetings of public agencies. With a few exceptions, the public has the right to know and see how decisions are made and who is making the decisions.  While many public meetings do not see a large numbers of attendees, it is important for public agencies to host meetings in accordance with the law for several reasons: 1) It is the law.  2) We live in a democratic republic not an oligarchy. 3) People have the right to know how decisions...