¢ A California couple that traveled across the country with their boat complains about dealing with cigarette smoke at a Lawrence bar/restaurant – despite the smoking ban – in this story in the San Bernadino (Calif.) County Sun._In Kansas, they had a smoky experience that had nothing to do with the mountains.__”Judy and I arrived at the Lawrence, Kansas KOA late in the afternoon as we had driven all day in from Oklahoma City and this was the third night at a KOA sleeping on the boat on the couch,” wrote Rogers in his travel notes. “We asked at the office where there was a good place to eat near and the Slow Ride was suggested… the Slow Ride was a biker’s bar and the food was supposed to be good. In some states there are both smoking and non-smoking areas. Our table was both, smoking on one side and non-smoking on the other. You got smoke whether you wanted it or not from the butts on cigarettes and a stogie in the table ashtray.”_¢ Diana Carlin, dean of the Graduate School and international programs at Kansas University, co-wrote an article in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education about helping young faculty members advise doctoral students._You are a doctoral student, selecting a dissertation adviser. Option A is a scholar who is renowned but imposing, distant, and busy. Option B is a freshly stamped Ph.D., new to the tenure track, near your age, friendly, supportive, interested in your work, and seemingly ready to devote unlimited time to helping you. The choice is not so simple as it seems._¢ A KU doctoral student who is finishing up his degree despite having suffered a ruptured appendix in a remote area of New Guinea is the subject of a profile in today’s Kansas City Star._In a tent at least 3,000 feet up a mountain in the South Pacific, University of Kansas student Edwin Scholes awoke in the middle of a rainy night, screaming in pain. Scholes, who had been conducting research for his dissertation, was several hundred miles from proper treatment for his ruptured appendix.__And if anything looked promising, it was death, not his doctorate._