Quentin Tarantino's name carries a certain vicious connotation. His films are often gruesomely sharp, full of blood-splattered baddies and two-times-too-witty good guys. With his latest effort, Inglourious Basterds, a long, sprawling war-based epic, Tarantino rounds into form. Basterds is Tarantino at his best, and it's awesome.The film takes place "Once upon a time ... in Nazi-occupied France." After escaping a Nazi raid on the house hiding her family, Shosanna Dreyfus (Paris's Mélanie Laurent) establishes herself in Paris, taking on a new identity and becoming the owner of a cinema, where she reluctantly agrees to host a premiere screening of a new propaganda film for the upper echelons of Nazi leadership.
The theme of Post Grad was timed perfectly. Students are just returning to school, and like the film's main character, many recent college graduates are struggling to find jobs during these hard economic times.So, good for the filmmakers for releasing the film at the right moment. Because that was about all they got right in this comatose, dithering attempt at cinema.
This summer provided me with a new experience. My wife and I walked El Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the Way of St. James, a millenary pilgrimage to the tomb of St. James the Apostle beginning in the Pyrenees in Southern France and ending in Santiago de Compostela, near Spain's Atlantic coast. While one of the many reasons my wife and I walked El Camino was to honor Spain's patron saint, revered as the great teacher of the Gospel to the Iberian peninsula, I'm not here to discuss the saint's particular merits. Rather, I would like to first offer tribute to another James, James Castañeda, the former Rice professor and beloved friend of the Rice community who passed away last fall. Secondly, I would like to bring to light all those other professors who were, or could be, someone's James - great life teachers who we come to love and respect.
Following eight years of planning and months of construction at the corner of University Boulevard and Main Street, the BioScience Research Collaborative opened its doors on Monday to Rice students and faculty. The new center, designed with the intent to facilitate interdisciplinary interactions between Rice researchers and the Texas Medical Center, will focus on improving human welfare through scientific research. "There is an extraordinary frontier in biomedical science," Provost Eugene Levy said. "Fortunately, [Rice] is situated across from one of the world's best medical centers," he said of the Texas Medical Center.
With the fireworks settled and the students all moved in, the kinks of McMurtry College and Duncan College are now coming out of the woodwork. Clogged pods, busted sinks and a lack of cell phone service are not the way administration and construction officials planned to welcome the two new colleges, but that is the way that they have now entered the college system (see story, page 1).We are not here to lay the blame on any one group or organization; with so many players involved, there is shared fault, just as there is shared accomplishment in overcoming tragedy, a devastating hurricane and financial downturn to see McMurtry and Duncan rise in time for the 2009-10 school year. Even if we tried to, we could not disentangle the many projects and ideas which were both proposed and snuffed out before the McMurtrians and Duncaroos entered the Rice community.
Rice has once again secured a spot among America's top colleges, tying for 17th with Emory University and Vanderbilt University in U.S. News & World Report's "Best Colleges 2010." In addition to being named one of America's top universities, Rice also received the spotlight for its attention to undergraduate students and its top engineering program.The methodology used to rank national universities consists of multiple criteria, with a quarter of the weight attributed to a peer assessment, 20 percent weighted on retention rates, 20 percent based on faculty resources, 15 percent for student selectivity, 10 percent for financial resources and the remaining 10 percent split evenly between graduation rates and alumni donations.
In theThresher's first advice endeavor in years, Denver Greene, a Brown College senior, will attempt to answer your questions and quandaries, both Rice-specific and otherwise.Dear Denver,
As part of Orientation Week, each new student who matriculates at Rice must take an exam proving their understanding of the Honor Code. This year's exam, like many other aspects of O-Week, was different than in years past.Last year, the Honor Code exam was given on OWL-Space before registration on Friday, Honor Council chair Lindsay Kirton said. Students were allowed to take the exam as many times as necessary until they passed, with a score of 70 or higher, and scores were reported immediately. Once a student passed the exam, the judicial hold on his or her ESTHER account was removed, Kirton, a Wiess College junior, said.
New meal plan for OC students
As part of the Vision for the Second Century, President David Leebron recommended the addition of creative, memorable and impressive art onto Rice's campus, a way of expanding the aesthetic and vibrant aspects of a campus that is relatively lacking, at least compared to peer institutions. Now, with the donation from Suzanne Booth (Hanszen '77), this part of the V2C will see its first major thrust (see story, page 9).Since design specifications are not yet available, we cannot fully throw our weight behind the proposed skyspace. However, from the descriptions made available, we are thoroughly enamored with imagining watching the LED light shows as the Houston sun sets behind Fondren library. James Turrell is a highly-accomplished artist, and we are thrilled that he has selected Rice as his next canvas.
Rice welcomed its largest class ever this week as approximately 900 first-year students participated in Orientation Week, 50 more than anticipated and 121 more than in 2008, Vice President for Enrollment Chris Muñoz said. In addition to the influx of extra freshmen, the number of transfer students was also slightly greater than anticipated, with 69 transfers instead of the expected 60 having matriculated this fall, Muñoz said. The larger numbers meant that only two students came off the waitlist this year.
In the last few months, a Congressman from Maryland was hanged in effigy, a recent GOP vice presidential nominee forecast impending "death panels" - in apparent reference to a provision in a Senate bill written by a fellow Republican - and the eminent physicist Stephen Hawking was drawn into the tumultuous health care reform debate, which has been enveloped by a political black hole of misinformation.Beyond the misleading rhetoric and hyperbolic charges of a "government takeover of health care," our ailing health care system currently faces three central challenges: soaring costs, shrinking coverage and quality of care disparities.
The priorities of professional sports need some tweaking. When the NFL's biggest off-season story involves the return of a player after completing a prison sentence for cruelty to animals, when the NBA's heir apparent storms off the court without even an interview following his team's elimination, when even the seemingly-untouchable Big Papi comes out as a 'roider, I have to ask myself, "Are there no honorable athletes left?"
I know I'm not the first to say it, but welcome back! I trust that your summers were well spent, lounging about in your best hobo shreds, splashing around half-naked while soaking up some sun or like most of us, pasty as usual in our lab coats. Many of you will, without a doubt and for whatever reasons, continue to sport such uniforms well into the school year. Most of you will do so purely because it's college and you believe no one will care.
I love Rice. Whenever the Princeton Review rates us as No. 1 for "quality of life," I am thrilled to see our great little Sunbelt secret get such positive national recognition. I am convinced that through the residential college system, we really do have a social structure superior to the traditional Greek or dorm systems.However, there is one thing that really holds us back as a university. Given how dedicated we are to college politics at Rice, we remain somewhat apathetic to national politics and current events. My parents always stressed being well informed and opinionated, but I am embarrassed by the apathy I've acquired here.
