REYKJAVIK, Iceland — Plumes of volcanic ash continue to billow from Iceland’s Eyjafjalla glacier, grounding European flights, stranding travelers around the world and coating the countryside in a thick layer of gray dust.

Steam rises from the Blue Lagoon, a popular tourist destination near Reykjavik. Photo by Kyna Damewood, Point Park News Service

When the eruption at Eyjafjallajokull began, some here worried it would cripple Iceland’s tourism industry at a time when the country remains in poor economic shape from the financial collapse of 2008. Yet, despite airport closures that initially stranded visitors for days at a time, tourists are flocking to Iceland to see the results of the eruption.

The lure of the volcano appears to be overwhelming even the disruptions it caused. March brought a record 26,000 overseas visitors to the country, according to the Icelandic Tourist Board. Many tour guides say their business has not been affected much, because although fewer people are visiting Iceland, those who do come want a chance to see the volcano.

All of Iceland’s major tour operators are leading guided tours to Eyjafjallajokull.

The United Kingdom’s Daily Telegraph reported April 24 that nearly 100,000 people, including Icelandic residents, visited the volcano since its eruption.

Valdi Augustsson, a tour guide for Arctic Rafting, lives in Reykjavik and leads trips into the countryside. He has continued his usual schedule of hiking and rafting tours.

“If you’re here, why wouldn’t you go see it?” Valdi said. “It has been a big draw for people, and it’s really spectacular.”

One area where the eruption has affected business is the city’s numerous hostels.

“April and May are the months when we usually receive many school groups from abroad,” said Juste Cimermanaite, booking agent for Reykjavik City Hostel. “Several huge groups had to cancel because of the flight cancellations.”

Many hostels report a lower-than-average number of bookings. Some hostel managers say they are afraid this slow season will continue after flight schedules return to normal, because of misunderstandings about the safety of traveling to Iceland.

“Iceland is safe and there is no danger for health,” Cimermanaite said. “It is only the flights that have had disturbances.”

Ash from Eyjafjallajokull floats in clouds above southern Iceland, settling on some of the nation's main highways. Photo by Kyna Damewood, Point Park News Service

More than a month after the volcano’s initial eruption, ash was forcing the international airport in Keflavik to close several days per week. It canceled flights or sent passengers to connections at the nearest international airport in Akureyri, four hours away.

Oddly, just 70 miles from the volcano, in Reykjavik, the nation’s capital and largest city, residents’ lives continue untouched by the event. One of the only remaining signs of the disruption are a store window display with mannequins wearing the type of surgical masks meant to keep Icelanders from breathing ash.

Businesses in Reykjavik remain open and full of patrons, and crowds filled the main street, Laugavegur, on a recent weekend. Among them were the often-seen street performers and anti-government protestors.

Though the situation in Reykjavik is bright, other areas of the country face problems. The ash cloud looms large on the horizon, visible on clear days for 50 miles or more in some places.
Farmers are hit the hardest by the continued ash fall that has ruined crops and killed animals. Reykjavik’s weekly English newspaper, the Reykjavik Grapevine, reports that many farmers are trying to leave their farms, and those who remain could face low crop yields for years to come as the ash settles.

Plumes of ash form above Eyjafjallajokull weeks after its initial eruption. Photos by Kyna Damewood, Point Park News Service

Street musicians perform on Laugavegur, Reykjavik's main street, on Saturday morning. Photo by Kyna Damewood, Point Park News Service

How many times do you usually hear the word Facebook or Twitter in a day? Social Networking is ridiculously booming nowadays – it makes everybody friends, whether they are actually your peers, or strangers you met once or twice. Social Networking sites are reflecting your interests in various media platforms. You are now literally able to display your personal information, upload photographs or videos, link your other favorite sites in your page, and all those are actually available for your friends to see whenever wherever. But in this fast-paced social networking era where everything is mostly accessible, how far will you go in using networking sites?

With the presence of social networking starting around the year 2002 (Friendster), the culture and generation are changing instantly. I cannot lie; social networking is extremely fun and totally fit the profile of today’s generation. But we also have to be extra careful. We have to be aware that all people, not just our friends and peers, are actually able to see our profile, our history, and any other things that had been stored in the web that was supposed to make better your online experience.

There might be walls on Facebook. But still, we are not actually sure that we want all the 100 people on our friend’s list to read what we have been doing, what the latest game we played, or who we have been chatting with. Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter collect and save personal information to increase the user’s experience. But what we don’t know is that those social networking sites are sharing our profiles and informations to Google and other websites or SMS service.

Personally, I don’t think I enjoy the fact that my age, occupation, gender, and the truth that I love 1990’s boybands are available for the general observation of the public at large. We put our information there for our peers to see without considering that random users would also have access to it. Also, posting personal information on social networking sites has become more problematic these days, as job recruiters are looking to these sites for revealing information about potential hires and opponents. Here’s a question to ask; do you really want your employer to examine your personal database in social networking sites that includes information that is not really suitable for your company? Perhaps I don’t have any controversial pictures in my site. But one of my friends uploaded a picture of me drinking a free flow whiskey with drunken face and tagged my name in the picture therefore the picture is automatically available in my site for users to view, meaning; even if you are a very private and not given into sharing personal information on the net, you will find that you are on someone or something’s database. Can I sue my friend? Of course not. Therefore I am powerless. Don’t forget that the picture will also be available automatically on Google and other websites, because social networking websites share their user’s information. It gets universalized and you can’t prevent it. Most people also often put their cell phone numbers and home addresses, and fix up dates thru scrapbooks to “maximize the online experience”.
Other than companies, this system also works frequently for attorneys performing discovery or testing jury pools who are looking to these sites for informative data about witnesses and potential jurors.

Yahoo, MSN, and other websites also have this whole “user experience” that they use as justification, which is basically hidden cookies that track every sites we visit and every product we see, so that they can jam our inbox with spam. That sounds more like invasion of privacy to me.

In this case, we should consider another values such as perception. It is not really fair for large corporations or government bodies having access to people’s entire Internet history. What if a man that had been through sex abuse as a kid and hence reads up a lot on that subject. If he mails his CV to Yahoo!, what if they decide to look up his search history? They will no doubt dub him as a “weirdo” or thinking that he has a bad taste and dump his resume. I don’t see any fairness in that.

One example of invasion of privacy on social networking websites is the Moreno vs. Hanford Sentinel, Inc., that happened back in 2009. A woman posted an article on her myspace expressing negative comments about her hometown and its residents. A high school principal in the area forwarded the article, not long after she removed it from her site, along with her name to a local newspaper, at which point it was republished in a letters to the editor section. The community reacted violently to the publication. The woman and her family had received death threats and that a shot was fired at the family home. The woman filed suit against the principal for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress based upon a republication of the article.

The Internet is considered as a public domain, where anything in it can be copied and pasted to anywhere else. It also can be considered as an International billboard that display anything we put in it and free for the world to see.

Have you ever wonder about our viewers? From our true friends, our peers, random users, to those little kids who are actually already have the skill to operate computers and Internet. Just one short interesting sentence on the computer screen, little Annie clicked it, and boom; it’s her father’s site with lots of controversial images while he was in college and it’s there for her to see. Have you ever wonder about how it will affect her and other young Internet user?

The action is actually in your hands, whether you trust your site to store your various personal information and history or not. The Internet is a tricky world. Put your identity in one site, and you are all over the place. Just as Yahoo! stated, “ Once you register with Yahoo! And sign in to our services, you are not anonymous to us.”

Because the recreational center at Point Park University can’t really be considered a full-size gym, students have always had the option of getting a greatly discounted membership to the nearby Gold’s Gym or YMCA.

Each membership cost only 35 dollars for the semester. All you need is your student ID and you can sign up at either location. This allows access to a seemingly endless supply of machines, weights and cardio equipment.
Since the start of the University’s multi-million dollar expansion they have not yet decided if they will continue offering discounted memberships.

The owner of Gold’s Gym sounded pretty certain that the relationship would be ending.

“I spoke to Point Park and it sounds pretty certain that they will only be partnering with the YMCA since they just bought it out,” said Gold’s Gym owner Tony Santella. “This is most likely the last semester that we’ll offer the discount here.”

Dean of Students Keith Paylo says “we are continuing to finalize plans for next fall,” and that it is not definite that the discount to Gold’s will be eliminated.

“My goal is to have an “interim” Student Center in place for fall 2010. I am working hard, along with the administration, to make this happen. If all is approved and it is possible to have everything in place for the Student Center for fall 2010, the subsidy for the Gold’s and YMCA memberships will end,” said Paylo. “The Student Center will be equipped and would function as a student center and recreation center for students, therefore not needing the Gold’s or YMCA relationship.”

The news of the partnering with Gold’s Gym possibly ending is coming as a shock to students.

“Wow, I’m really surprised. I had no idea that we couldn’t go to Gold’s after this semester,” said sophomore Katie Gordon. “I’m going to have to tell my roommates because I’m pretty sure they don’t know either.”

There is an optional tanning package at Gold’s Gym that students could sign up for at 10 dollars per month for 12 months, which Gold’s will still honor. So if a student signed up for the package they can still tan without a full membership.

“I’ll still go tanning there even though I can’t use the actually gym itself,” said junior Ashley Janosco. “I pay 10 dollars per month; I might as well get my worth.”

The new YMCA, located at 236 Fifth Avenue, does offer summer and fall memberships for the same 35 dollar cost and offers an array of weights and machines. They also include a pool, basketball courts and more.

View Point Park, Gold’s Gym, YMCA in a larger map

“I got really acclimated to Gold’s Gym and had a system,” said Janosco. “I’m not too upset though. The YMCA is closer, so that’s nice.”

A lot of students are going to have to, as Janosco put it, “suck it up” and head over to the new YMCA to get their fitness needs.

“I heard that the new YMCA is really nice even though I haven’t been there yet,” said Gordon. “I guess I’m going to find out.”

So we’ll have to wait until the fall semester to see where students will stay in shape.

Located just five miles outside of Downtown, Squirrel Hill offers Pittsburgh residents the full gamut of shopping and dining experiences. The restaurants range from the cheap and easy to the finest dining. There are salons, specialty shops for almost every need and even a Rite Aid and a Giant Eagle for the bare essentials.

“I wouldn’t live anywhere else,” said Squirrel Hill resident of three years Jenny Michlich, a student at the University of Pittsburgh. “It’s so convenient. Sometimes I’ll go weeks without leaving the area except to go to class.”

A Clothes Shopper’s Delight

While Walnut Street in Shady Side may be the preferred East End shopping drag for Pittsburgh’s wealthier residents, Squirrel Hill offers many options for those not looking to break the bank. Avalon Exchange, a consignment clothing shop for the hip, is an epicenter of Pittsburgh youth cool.

“You can probably find me at Avalon like three times a week,” said Sergi Robles, a CMU acting student. “It’s completely taken over my wardrobe.”

For those not interested in the discount designer offerings of Avalon, there are stores specializing in everything from maternity wear at Becoming Mommy to naughty lingerie at The Pussycat.

What’s your Niche?

One of the most intriguing aspects to Squirrel Hill is the wide array of specialty shops catering to the specific needs of Pittsburgh’s hobbyists.

For the avid cycler, there is not one but two bicycle shops—Biketek and Bicycle Pro Pittsburgh. For those that tend to play indoors, there is the national video game chain Gamestop as well as one of the area’s few boutique board game stores, Games Unlimited.

For foodies with special needs, Squirrel Hill also offers places like Gluuteny—a Gluten and Dairy-free sweet shop, and Murray Avenue Kosher.

Got a Sweet Tooth?

You may want to avoid Squirrel Hill if you’re on a diet, because in addition to the six places to grab ice cream, there are also specialty sweets shops that prove irresistible to some.

“[Dozen Cupcakes] is going to be the death of me,” said Felicia Watterson with a mouthful of lemon cupcake. “I feel like I can’t walk past it without going in.”

If chocolate is more your style, The Chocolate Moose offers chocolate-covered just about anything–from frozen bananas to Gummi Bears.

Whether it’s an eating binge or a shopping spree, Squirrel Hill can accommodate the desires of just about any Pittsburgher.

Michael Jackson, Jon Bennett Ramsey, John F. Kennedy. These are just some of the names of deceased celebrities and victims of infamous crime that appear under Google’s first page of results when one searches the term “autopsy photos.”

Pictures of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt’s tattered body were sought by the press soon after his demise in an attempt to discover whether his death during the Daytona 500 race was a result of inadequate safety measures used while driving.

After the summer 2009 passing of cultural icon Michael Jackson, a media frenzy ensued, and the threadlike barrier between the public’s right to know and their want to have their curiosity satisfied was blurred.

In 2008, public access to autopsy photos was prohibited based on the revised Pennsylvania Right to Know Law. The name, cause, and manner of death of the individual would still be considered public record, and the photos and reports would become public record if the case were to go to court, according to Section 708 of the document. Denying autopsy photos to the common Joe seems reasonable, since there’s a chance they could be used for illegitimate reasons, but they should be granted on a case by case basis to journalists.

And while reporters are not held in higher regard than any other citizen, it should be noted that the job of a journalist is to investigate and report the truth, which requires research, and that job description should be taken into consideration when rewriting laws that affect public record.

For journalists working within the Innocence Network, a loose confederation of 76 Innocence Projects around the world that conducts investigations into claims of innocence from those behind bars, autopsy records may be the key to exoneration. The reporters working within the movement often bring to light evidence hidden during the trial-and some of that evidence is contained within the autopsy photographs.

Pete Shellem, an investigative reporter at the Harrisburg Patriot News who was single handedly responsible for the release of five innocent people from jail, was adamant about the fact that autopsy photos remain public record. Shellem told the American Civil Liberties Union during their Southwestern Pennsylvania chapter’s meeting regarding open records in December of 2007 that when he started his investigations, he would begin with the coroner’s report and found pertinent information there that was overlooked by the investigative authorities initially assigned to the case.

He said in a 2007 editorial in the Harrisburg Patriot News that “every innocent person behind bars means a guilty person is out walking the streets.”

Without investigative reporters like Shellem, the people he helped exonerate would remain as sealed behind prison walls as the autopsy photos forbidden to be seen by journalists, preventing them from finding the truth.

Natalie Parks, a student at the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science, noted the benefits of exonerating wrongfully convicted inmates based on autopsy photographs but remained concerned about the dignity of the dead. “I am all for people that are wrongfully accused being relieved of their sentence…but if the (autopsy photos) become public record, it won’t be long before they are floating around on the Internet,” Parks said.

Parks has a point. As mentioned earlier, anyone can take note of the morbid interest in the deceased just by searching the word “autopsy” in Google-and those search results just don’t come from anywhere, according to a study conducted by Stanford University. “The Anatomy of a Search Engine” explained in laymen’s terms that the popular search engine site keeps a list of the most frequently searched for terms in a given topic to appear on the first page.

The definition for autopsy does not appear, and sadly nor does any recent cases of exonerees released from a life behind bars due to evidence discovered while studying autopsy photos. Rather, a motley list of names is displayed, from the dearly departed in the celebrity world to victims of grizzly crimes that have long since passed away. If one is not researching the murder of Jon Bennett Ramsey, a child when she was found dead in her home in the early 90’s, for the sake of an article about, say, a possible suspect in the case and the autopsy photos help support this claim, then there really is no reason to view said autopsy photographs.

Victims need to stop being remembered as “the dead” or “the missing.” Jon Bennett Ramsey was a little girl with her own thoughts, feelings, and interests before some unknown monster that is still at large sealed her fate and added her name to the long list of unsolved murder cases. She has been gone for well over a decade and by having her or any other murder victim’s autopsy photos readily available to anyone who wants to see them, it is undermining the memory of who they were in life.

“I always tell people to think of what they would want if it were their own family member,” Parks said.
“Autopsy photos are very gory images for family members to see and they do not respect the memory of the individual.”

So the law did the right thing in shielding reports from the public. But for reporters, there are two types who want to obtain autopsy photos: The type that wants to run them for shock and the type conducting an investigation where the photos might contain important information needed for their story.

In 2001, the press and the public were eagerly seeking autopsy photos of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt after he died during a race. According to the Mass Media Law textbook, his wife Theresa Earnhardt soon filed a request asking the Volusia County medical examiner’s office to seal his autopsy photos from public access and was granted her demand, but the Orlando Sentinel filed a motion to intervene. They stated in the motion that “…the Sentinel and the general public enjoy strong rights of public records” and that “…Because of the Sentinel’s right of access to public records, it has the interest to intervene in this action, and to present arguments on the merits.”

Their motion was denied, and the Sentinel took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that their rights had been violated, as referenced in the Mass Media Law textbook. The Supreme Court refused to hear the newspaper’s case, writing in the Sentinel’s petition for a writ of certiorari that “Legislative finds that photographs or video and audio recordings of an autopsy depict or describe the deceased in a disturbing fashion…(they) may depict or describe the deceased as nude, bruised, bloodied, broken…(these records) are highly sensitive depictions or descriptions of the deceased which, if heard, viewed, copied, or publicized, could result in trauma, sorrow, humiliation or emotional injury to the immediate family of the deceased or to the memory of the deceased.”

The writ went on to read that further problems could arise with the availability and immediacy that the Internet provides, and a law was signed into place in 2003 that called for all autopsy photos in the state of Florida to be sealed.

According to the Mass Media Law text, the reporters at the Sentinel were looking to research legitimate concerns surrounding the circumstances of Earnhardt’s death. They were trying to determine whether or not “a particular safety device might have saved his life.”

The Orlando Sentinel working on the Earnhardt piece did not consist of yellow journalists ready to plaster Earnhardt’s remains for the world to ogle at over their morning coffee, all in a cheap attempt to spike newspaper sales. The purpose of their research was for a legitimate cause-did Earnhardt die of safety malfunctions? Was NASCAR responsible?

When one thinks about the most highly sensationalized story of death in recent history, nothing was more classless than headlines of ‘JACKO DEAD’ proclaimed across the front pages of tabloids around the world, such as cover of The Sun’s take on declaring the death. Immediately, a quest for his autopsy photos began.

“A girl that graduated from (the Pittsburgh Institute for Mortuary Science) two years ago works at Forest Lawn Mortuary and worked on Michael Jackson and his funeral. Do you know how much people would have paid for those pictures? That would not have been ethical and that is what it comes down to,” Parks said.

Rumors quickly spread that alluded to a leaking of the photos to British tabloid The Sun.

“The horrifying state of pop superstar Michael Jackson in his final days can be revealed by The Sun today,” the UK tabloid insolently proclaimed in a June 29, 2009 edition of their paper, continuing in the article to announce their findings by “experts.”

The article prompted the medical examiner of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office to issue a press release to the entertainment news station TMZ, stating that “The report that is being published did not come from this office. I don’t know where the information came from, or who that information came from. It is not accurate. Some of it is totally false.”

In this case, the public does not need to know; they want to know, and there is a difference. Michael Jackson’s autopsy photos would not have been of merit to anyone, and so the press should not have been able to get a hold of them and subsequently should not have been allowed to run the photos in their news outlets.

The cause and manner of death and the identity of the victim are more than enough for reporters who are simply covering a story and whom are not looking to investigate further. When the circumstance arises that reporters are seeking the photos for a reputable reason, such as the journalists involved with innocence movement, the government needs to realize that the photos are pertinent to the investigation and the story and should allow access to the reporter.

There is room for compromise, if state officials are willing to see things in shades of grey rather than black and white. Perhaps autopsy photos of high profile deaths, such as that of Jackson or Jon Bennett Ramsey, should be sealed from public disclosure and only given to those involved in investigating those cases. Or maybe a deal could be struck; the reporters can have the photos to examine and send off to the experts needed in order to study them, but they do not necessarily need to run them. Running the photos in their news outlet depends on the manner in which they’re needed.

If the public needs to be shocked so that the right officials will pay attention, then publish them.

According to PBS’ American Experience, it was the murder of black teen Emmitt Till in 1955 by a gang of white Southerners—who were later found innocent at their trial and allowed to walk out of the courtroom without so much as a slap on the wrist– that helped to “mobilize the Civil Rights Movement” after his mother opened his funeral up to the public and thereby the press, allowing them to run the photos of the boy’s bloated and disfigured body. The coverage attracted attention from the right people, ultimately aiding civil rights activists in their quest for equality-and a small token of vengeance for Till, whose post mortem photos did not force upon him the legacy of a little boy gone, but rather a historic first step in the journey for civil rights.

Journalists should not need to jump through hoops to get their point across. Rather than working in extremes-all access to autopsy reports vs. no access-officials should be willing to meet with reporters somewhere in the middle.

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