Tired of waiting for that special guy to make the first move, ladies? Well, with Esperanza around the corner, it is up to you to take the initiative and ask him to "Take me out to the ball." "It's a Cinderella-esque baseball theme," Esperanza organizer and Rice Program Council Social Co-Chair Libby Ulman said. "We're really excited about it."
How often does the first of anything stand the test of time? We don't see too many people driving around in Model-T's these days, nor do we see anyone carrying textbook-sized cell phones except in 20-year-old films. American director Robert Flaherty's silent documentary, Nanook of the North, the first nonfiction feature of its kind, remains surprisingly fresh today, nearly 90 years after its release.Flaherty is not a household name, but if you have ever seen a documentary, you have seen one of his great-grandchildren. Filmmakers of old and of new have long sung the praises of Flaherty's films: Nanook of the North was a favorite of Orson Welles, and contemporary director Ramin Bahrani (Chop Shop, Man Push Cart) said the film "is a visual poem that challenges how we live and how we see, and all the while accepting life for what it is."
Rice has recently acquired various buzz-inducing rankings, including #1 Quality of Life from The Princeton Review, #1 in Materials Science from Times Higher Education, and #17 among national universities from U.S. News & World Report. However, Rice's student-taught course program has been steadily gaining a different sort of national reputation over the past two years.The student-taught course program at Rice started in fall 2007 with three courses at Wiess College and has since grown to include courses at Brown College, Hanszen College, Jones College, Lovett College, Martel College, McMurtry College and Will Rice College. In all, 30 classes are being offered this semester, with subjects such as North Korea, casino gaming and witches.
Two police agencies in Florida recently announced that they've billed Pastor Terry Jones a total of $180,000 for police security related to his abandoned plan to burn copies of the Qur'an on Sept. 11. The reaction to this news has been alarmingly tepid at best and borderline sadistic at worst. A post on New York Magazine's Daily Intel blog, for instance, offered this take: "Seems kind of strange and unfair for Jones to be charged for that ... but who cares, the guy's a jerk."There's something very ugly about the fact that the police are treating this man as if he were not entitled to expect them to do their jobs simply because he had the gall to draw attention to himself and his unpopular views. The barely concealed message is as clear as it is chilling: Your right to free expression is protected, and if people try to harm you as a result, the police will do their jobs and keep you safe - that is, unless they don't like what you have to say, in which case you'll get a fat bill and some indignation for making them do their jobs.
Provost George McLendon has already made his spacious corner office on the fourth floor of the Allen Center his own. The decorations include many things that might seem unexpected in an administrator's office. There is a wide variety of art on the walls and several paintings are still in bubble wrap waiting to find their place on the wall. A baseball collection adorns the bookshelves and several bottles of wine sit on a shelf for potential guests. A native of Fort Worth, Texas, McLendon returned to his home state to become Rice's provost July 1 after spending the last six years at Duke University. He said he is proud of his Texas roots that can be traced back to the 1830s and his extended family still calls Texas home.
There really could not be a better time for the football team to start playing Conference USA games. After one of the most punishing non-conference schedules of any non-BCS conference team in the country, Rice (1-3) is looking for a little bit of relief. Outside of their win against the University of North Texas, the Owls have consistently gone up against teams that were bigger, faster and stronger. "It's been a tough stretch all four of these games," Head Coach David Bailiff said. "The good news is we're getting into conference play. I think we're continuing to get better, even if we're not winning."
Everyone's been griping about Facebook these days. Mothers shed tears when they realize the disgusting amount of time their kids spend on the site. We've all been warned to "privatize" our accounts so future employers can't see our sloppy, inebriated pictures. People keep tabs on their clients by policing Facebook photos - one health insurance company stopped covering a woman's depression medications ... because she looked "happy" in photos. But something must be working for the site, or we wouldn't use it so much, right?Contrary to what people say, it's NOT "sooo distracting." I see Facebook as a fun, fulfilling study break that'll force me to keep my head in front of the computer screen. Getting up to "take a quick walk" is much more dangerous. More often than not, my "walks" turn into a series of more questionable activities, like stealthy people-watching through Brochstein windows, badgering my busy friends and playing with that automatic stapler by the library printers.
Sid Richardson College is saying goodbye to four members of its family at the end of this year: Nick and Kate Pascuzzi, one-year-old baby Lluisa and their famed DVD collection.The Pascuzzis are moving to Boston to be closer to family. Students agree that they have offered a great support system during their three years at the college. Sid Rich President Mary Johnson said that she has noticed a definite positive change in the dynamic at Sid Rich since the Pascuzzis' arrival.
This week, the Thresher was given one of the first looks into the thoughts and life of our new provost, George McClendon (see story, page 1). We would like to take this time to officially welcome him to our community and share the parts of his vision that excite us the most.First, we were happy to see that McClendon places such emphasis on understanding the traditions and unique attributes of this university. His three points of emphasis exhibit willingness and desire to continue pushing forward toward goals that the student body wants to achieve.
When people make the common claim that optimism is contagious, they are often thinking of a certain kind of optimism, one that is prevalent among teams hovering around .500 or facing a slew of easy games in the near future. For teams that are 3-5 coming into conference play, coming off one of the worst seasons in club history, missing their star player with no timetable for her return and undergoing an unprecedented midseason change at the coaching position, optimism tends to be buried where it was born, never having learned to walk far enough to spread its beliefs.
Rice students are accustomed to rodents prowling the quads and walkways, but mostly in the form of squirrels. When rats began invading Hanszen College, Rice rodents became much less appealing. Hanszen and Wiess College have both given reports of rat sightings around their residential and common areas. Ransacking trash cans and haunting hallways, rats have become a noticeable pest for the south colleges, Hanszen and Wiess in particular. However, Manager of Communications for Facilities, Engineering and Planning Susann Glenn said the rat problem has not actually worsened in the past two years.
Upon entering Mi Luna, you are hit by a sheer wall of sound - the place reverberates with echoes of conversations, clinking of dishes from the kitchen and, above it all, the ever-present live music. Once seated, you have to shout across the table to be heard and calling a waiter over must be done through elaborate gesturing, as using your voice is almost ineffective. If you're looking for a quiet night out where you can sit and talk with friends, look elsewhere. But if you want great food at low prices, Mi Luna is the place to go.The menu is divided into cold and hot tapas dishes, with a small section at the bottom for paellas and rice dishes. Unfortunately, Mi Luna is not equipped with a separate vegetarian menu, forcing the vegetable-inclined to hunt through the menu for the veggie dishes. However, once found, there prove to be a good dozen vegetarian options with seven or eight vegan dishes as well - the beauty of Spanish cuisine being that it relies on olive oil far more than butter.
Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in economics, visited Rice Sept. 23 to speak at the biennial Social Dilemmas Conference, held in the Baker Institute for Public Policy by the School of Social Sciences. The program featured presentations by prominent social speakers on causes and solutions for today's collective issues. Ostrom's lecture was entitled "Cooperating for the Common Good: Challenging Supposed Impossibilities and Panaceas." During her speech, Ostrom addressed the research she had done on the management of common resources. Ostrom said that humans can work together to combat the tragedy of the commons - the belief that people, being self-interested, will deplete a shared resource - and instead ensure resource sustainability. Ostrom's findings contradict the popular belief that this phenomenon is inevitable. Ostrom said that communities which utilize common resources can devise regulatory systems that help prevent resource exhaustion. In fact, she said that when people communicate, they manage natural resources with 92 percent optimality.
In response to "Sid's '80s fails to impress" Sept. 24:While I agree that some more effort can be spent in explaining what will work and will not work, blaming Sid Rich and RUPD for enforcing fire code and evacuating a building is unfair.
The women's volleyball beat the University of Texas-El Paso, 3-1, in a crucial Conference USA match on Friday night at Tudor Fieldhouse. The win brings the Owls to an 8-8 record with a 3-1 record in conference play. It wasn't an easy game as UTEP made sure Rice earned it.In the first set, Rice got off to a good start by taking a 14-8 lead. UTEP stormed back to tie the set at 15-15, but Rice pulled away as they won the set 25-20. Senior middle back Nancy Cole and junior outside blocker Ashleigh McCord led the team with five kills in the set. Senior libero Tracey Lam had six digs while senior setter Meredith Schamun had 11 assists and three digs.
As homecoming approaches, so does the annual Esperanza, girls-ask-guys dance (see story, page 5). Offering Rice students a rare chance to dress up and revisit the high school glory days of proms and homecoming dances, Esperanza is traditionally an anticipated event. The past two years have both sold out their allotment of 1,000 and 600 tickets, respectively. This year's number of available tickets has been set at 800; although this is a sizable increase from last year's allotment, there is still concern that this year's Esperanza will fail to accommodate all of those that wish to attend, especially with yet another enrollment increase in this year's freshman class pushing Rice's population to 4,000 undergrads.Furthermore, the decision to host the dance off campus is one worth second-guessing. The 2008 edition of Esperanza, often dubbed as the most successful incarnation of the event, was hosted on campus. Yet, the Rice Program Council has elected to move away from this proven formula for the second year in a row. The Thresher hopes that Minute Maid Park's distance from campus doesn't make university-provided transportation unfeasible. While frequent shuttles are slated to bring students to and from Minute Maid Park, there is a great possibility that wait times will make the classy event a mess for many partygoers. In addition, the Thresher hopes that the privileged students who are able to drive to the dance have the luxury of complimentary parking around the stadium.
"I make an obscene amount of money," one CEO proclaimed at a recent talk I attended. "All CEOs of Fortune 500 companies make too much money," he continued. He then quickly moved onto the next topic as if cursorily mentioning the issue was enough. It was that comment and my subsequent research into CEO salaries (on average, 200 times greater than that of the average worker) that inspired this piece.In our winner-take-all culture, we value the superstars, the CEOs and the elite to such an extent that we neglect the masses of the country. We insist on paying LeBron James almost $15 million annually, yet we cannot pay our teachers even $50,000. We reward our CEOs with million-dollar stock options and bonuses, yet, to quote Vice President Joe Biden, "[CEOs] make $10,000 more in one day than the average worker makes in a year." We watch in admiration as 58 percent of real income growth from 1976 has gone to the top 0.1 per- cent of Americans while the salaries of middle-class Americans have been virtually stagnant.
According to Wikipedia, a Great American Novel is one that, when it is published, insightfully captures the zeitgeist - "the spirit of the times," also according to Wikipedia - of the nation. Time magazine pegs Jonathan Franzen as this generation's Great American Novelist, and his new book Freedom is the work that clinched the title for him. That kind of instant canonization makes reading Freedom an interesting challenge: Not only do readers have to think about whether they like or understand the book, they have to decide whether their zeitgeist has been captured.Franzen has been on the unofficial Great American Shortlist since 2001, when his novel The Corrections earned the National Book Award and got him into an infamous public dustup with Oprah. Freedom came out in August and has already gained truly stunning amounts of critical praise, a #2 spot on The New York Times best-seller list and a path back into Oprah's good graces - the hardcover carries an Oprah's Book Club sticker.
Just as some students in the middle of their first semester began longing for home, Rice's annual Families Weekend brought a little bit of home to them. According to Director of Reunion Programs and Special Events Jennifer Harding, this year's Families Weekend, whose theme was a "Dynamic Community," brought more than 1,200 parents to campus. The event was coordinated by Harding, as well as Carl Nelson, the chair of the Families Weekend Steering Committee. Both Harding and Nelson, a Brown College senior, said that the weekend was truly successful without any reports of problems.
