Special Projects

Houston a perfect fit for Rice experience

Rice would not be the same if it were located anywhere else but Houston. And Rice would not be able to take such great advantage of big-city Houston were it not for its forested, small campus feel.Houston is a dynamic city, although it can be overwhelming. Houston's distinct neighborhoods, from Midtown to Montrose, and a variety of events and things to do and see, such as the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, could keep students busy 24/7. As the biggest city in Texas and the fourth largest in the United States, Houston boasts an impressive array of shopping, dining and cultural fare that can satisfy any urbanite. The only city to surpass the number of Fortune 500 companies headquartered here is New York City. And although Houston does not have a mass transit subway system like New York City does, its METRO light rail and bus system run throughout Houston, with stops conveniently located all around Rice.

Tiger Woods a terrible role model but terrific athlete

As a society, we have an outrageous propensity to idealize our athletes and entertainers. However, in the end they are no different from you or me - they have a single skill set and they get paid for it. We should respect the jobs that celebrities do, but the admiration needs to end right there. In the end, what Lil Wayne keeps in his tour bus, what Amy Winehouse snorts and who Jon cheats on Kate with is no business of ours. As a concerned member of society, I certainly don't approve of their actions, and I believe the judicial system should always interfere when necessary. However, I strongly disapprove of the media attention and gossip that surrounds these scandals for months at a time.

This week's Editorial Cartoon

Slideshow: Crosslist this: Archis tour Brockman Hall for Physics

Photo: Blue bells for MBA students

MBA students rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange by the bull and bear sculptures near the entrance of the Jones School.

Econ department restructures major

Economics dictates that as market forces change, players must constantly readapt. Taking this lesson to heart, the Economics Department has reevaluated its course offerings and major requirements. A sixth required elective has been added to the economics major, the numbering of several courses has been changed to clarify difficulty level, research methods have changed the minimum required grade point average has risen for honors candidates. Economics Department Chair Mahmoud El-Gamal said the changes were deemed necessary after a departmental review.

Sparks sings up a stinker

Think of novelist Nicholas Sparks as the Stephen King of the romance genre. He consistently churns out novels that are easily adapted into tear-jerking movies: Novel quality notwithstanding, he explores profound sadness, passionate romance and time-honored life lessons about family, and audiences eat it up. The latest Sparks novel-turned-flick, The Last Song, follows this pattern, with Disney Channel star Miley Cyrus stepping in as Sparks' leading lady. But while the addition of a teenage superstar to the mix makes the film's cast slightly more youthful compared to past Sparks adaptations, there is really nothing truly original about The Last Song. It fails to top Sparks' most acclaimed novel-to-movie incarnations, such as The Notebook and A Walk to Remember.The Last Song begins with Ronnie (Hannah Montana: The Movie's Cyrus), a rebellious teenager, being sent with her brother (Post Grad's Bobby Coleman) to live with their father (Green Zone's Greg Kinnear) in Georgia for the summer. While she stays at her father's beach house, Ronnie rediscovers her passion for playing the piano, befriends an abused neighborhood girl (The Consultants' Carly Chaikin), works to repair her relationship with her father and manages to fall in love with volleyball hunk Will (Triangle's Liam Hemsworth).

Wednesday's Sports Update : Baseball blows by Islanders 23-1

The Rice Owls were firing on all cylinders on Wednesday evening at Reckling Park, as an overwhelming offensive attack and sound pitching delivered a 23-1 victory in seven innings over the Texas A&M - Corpus Christi University.The Owls (21-14) jumped on the Islanders' (13-21) pitchers early when sophomore Jeremy Rathjen drove a three-run home run over the left field fence in the first inning. The first seven batters of the game would reach base for Rice as the Owls scored seven runs on six hits in the inning. Freshman Michael Ratterree drove in two runs with a double in the second to extend the lead to 9-0 for starting pitcher Anthony Fazio. In the third inning, eight straight Rice batters would reach base as the Owls plated eight runs on seven hits. Rathjen drove in two more runs on a double while senior Jimmy Comerota's single also brought in two. The Owls scored seventeen runs on sixteen hits in just the game's first three innings, as Fazio worked through the Islanders' lineup.

Relish: The Turquoise Grill is great

Looking for a more authentic Mediterranean experience than you can find at Niko Niko's or Yia Yia Mary's? Consider a small Turkish restaurant called the Turquoise Grill. We stumbled upon the restaurant in our search for something in the realm of Mediterranean cuisine, looking for a dining experience a little less Americanized than the large, more popular Greek-American restaurants in town. We definitely found what we were looking for at the Turquoise Grill - the family-owned atmosphere is refreshing in a city full of impersonal, commercial establishments, and while there are a few "American-friendly" items on the menu, like hamburgers and philly cheesesteaks, the offerings are overall very true to Turkish cuisine. This is one of those places where the owner takes time to greet you himself, and, if you ask, proudly explains each dish in detail. If you're lucky, he may even offer you baklava on the house for dessert. From what we could tell, everything we ordered was homemade and fresh to order. Dining here was as much a culturally broadening experience as it was a culinary adventure.

RLOS delivers solid show with The Mikado

The Rice Light Opera Society has dared to take on yet another challenging Gilbert and Sullivan piece, The Mikado. The overall performance is humorous and pleasurable, but it encounters its fair share of problems and theatre glitches.The Mikado first premiered in March of 1885 at London's Savoy Theatre. The show went on to run for a record 672 performances, and it still maintains a great deal of popularity with today's audiences. The musical takes place in Titipu, Japan, a city full of ridiculous laws and names that appear to be nothing but a series of racially tinged Catch-22s. A traveling minstrel named Nanki-Poo (Geoff Copper, Sid Richardson '07) arrives in the city to find his love Yum-Yum (Lauren Cordray, Sid '06), but he cannot marry her right away due to a previous arrangement with the Lord High Executioner. Through a series of random and highly entertaining events, just about everyone's head is eventually wanted by the ruler of Japan.

Letters to the Editor

RUPD concerned for campus safety

Track blows past competition at Victor Lopez, Texas Relays

While students relaxed over spring recess, the men's track team was rising to the occasion against one of the nation's finest collection of athletes in the Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays held in Austin on March 31-April 3. Senior pole vaulter Jason Colwick began his outdoor season with a vault just one centimeter short of his personal best, winning the meet championship for a third-straight year with a 18' 6" mark. His performance ranks as the third highest in the world this year, with 2008 Olympic pole-vault gold medalist Steve Hooker owning the top vault of 2010.

Outdoor track begins with record-setting weekends

As the saying goes, everything's bigger in Texas. Even track meets. Last weekend, the women's track team competed in the 83rd-annual Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays in Austin, the second-largest track meet in the nation, behind only the historic Penn Relays in size.

Dreams takes flight

Andrea Dezsö's new installation at the Rice Gallery transforms the front of the gallery into a network of various portals and windows, which transport the viewer into another world. Sometimes in My Dreams I Fly, which runs April 8 to Aug. 8, challenges the viewers to suspend their earthly cares in exchange for passage to a lunar landscape of fantastical creatures and unidentifiable objects. Dezs? grew up in Transylvania, Romania under the regime of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Rampant censorship, the inability to freely move about the country and the launch of Sputnik during the space race shaped her childhood. The impossibility of travel caused Dezs? to turn inward and use her own imagination as an avenue to different locations, both on Earth and beyond. Throughout her artistic career, Dezs? has elected to give great agency to her viewers' ability to escape past their physical location with their minds.

Online only: Golf on the bubble for postseason after 10th-place finish

Facing stiff competition, the golf team could not crack the top half of the leader board at the BancorpSouth Intercollegiate, leaving the team on the bubble for postseason play.Looking for a strong performance at the Intercollegiate, hosted by the University of Mississippi, the Owls stumbled out of the gate with a first-round score of 298, placing them in the back half of the 15-team field immediately. Senior Christopher Brown led Rice with a two under-par 70. However, no other golfers for Rice posted scores of par or under, and the team entered the second round of play in 11th place.

Jones school ranks top 15

With another rise in the rankings, the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business has proven that it means business. The Jones School was ranked in the top 15 in The Princeton Review's "Student Opinion Honors for Business Schools" finance category. Other categories ranked include programs with the highest student evaluations in the accounting, finance, general management, global management, marketing and operation categories. Schools are listed alphabetically, rather than individually ranked from 1 to 15. The results will appear in this month's issue of Entrepreneur magazine.

A rainbow for Rice

Students put a new spin on diversity at Rice during spring recess by spray-painting bicycles for ColorCycle!, a large-scale, student-initiated, student-run art project in celebration of Rice's continuing commitment to culture and innovation. Funded by an Envision Grant, the project aimed to reclaim abandon bicycles to add a vibrant installation on campus.Project Director Sam Jacobson said 64 students assembled at noon last Saturday in the academic quadrangle to spray-paint 85 reclaimed bicycles. Volunteer Coordinator Alex Tseng said the bicycles would be distributed among 236 bicycle racks located across campus.

Eater's Digest: FDA Claims

Food manufacturers are keen to make their products seem appealing, giving the impression that their products not only taste great, but are good for the body too. On an average trip to the grocery store, shoppers walk by hundreds of food items proudly displaying healthy claims, like "made with whole grain" or "light" or even "calorie free."The Food and Drug Administration regulates some of these claims, and asserts that these labels give customers more information to make healthier food choices.But are these labels helping us to become healthier, or are they just making us more confused? Is it really possible to lower your risk of heart attack simply by switching your cereals?

Owls down Houston, claw way to conference tops

As the calendar turns to April and school's end comes into sight, the schedule is just heating up for the baseball team. At the midway point of the regular season, all concentration shifts to the conference schedule, as Conference USA foes become the focus of the squad's attention. Conference play began slowly for the Owls (17-13) two weeks ago at the University of Memphis, as Rice dropped the first two games of the weekend series to the Tigers (13-16). But in the tail end of a Saturday doubleheader, the Owls' offense erupted for 13 runs as Rice cruised to an easy 13-4 win to salvage the final game of the series.

KTRU 19th Annual Outdoor Show

Ghost Mountain