Special Projects

Eater's Digest: Lamenting restaurant labeling

The good news is, grocery store consumers are pretty well informed about what is actually in their food. Because most foods on grocery shelves come equipped with nutrition labelsmandated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, one can easily reference the calorie count, sodium and sugar content and other important considerations when purchasing packaged foods.But what about restaurants? According to the National Restaurant Association, Americans spent 26 percent of their wages on eating out in 1970. In 2006, this percentage shot up to 48 percent. And on to the bad news: Nutrition information is not very easily accessible in restaurants. Most are mysterious about the contents of their dishes, leaving customers merely to guess at their nutritional content and value. How much salt is actually in this cheeseburger? What type of oil is used to fry these potatoes?

Baseball returns to winning ways

Before the baseball season began, Head Coach Wayne Graham concisely and honest replied when asked about what his team would have to accomplish to make it to the College World Series. "I don't think we have to have great pitching to make it to Omaha, but we will definitely need good pitching," Graham said.

Schedule for Willy Week

Monday

Sunday Sports Update Baseball splits series with Cal with Sunday matinee victory

Coming off a game yesterday with 37 total runs and 41 hits, one would expect both Rice and the University of California to be moving a little slower today. But the Owls were still riding high from yesterday's offensive exhibition and scrounged up enough runs to beat Cal 7-4 and split the four-game series. Rice (10-7) picked up its first run in the second, with sophomore catcher Craig Manuel's single that scored sophomore third baseman Anthony Rendon. In the third inning, senior first baseman Jimmy Comerota walked and later made his way around the bases to score on a sacrifice bunt by junior shortstop Rick Hague.

Former Owl in top office

Recently elected Mayor Annise Parker (Jones '78) talks to the Thresher about her time at Rice and her journey to become the first Owl to serve as mayor of Houston. Rice Thresher: How did you first decide to go into politics?

Online only: Swim team earns third-place finish at C-USA Championships, Huston wins Coach of the Year Honors

Some say the best way to improve at a sport is to focus on the positive and forget the negative. The swim team looked to do just that and forget missteps from their regular season while concentrating on earning a top finish in the Conference USA Championship Feb. 26-27. The team has come to expect nothing less than a third-place finish, as they have placed in the top three at the conference championship for the past three years.The swim team started out strong in the C-USA championships, looking for its third second-place finish in the last four years in a close battle with East Carolina University. However, the team ended up falling short in the final day of the competition, as they finished third behind champion Southern Methodist University and runner-up ECU. The University of Houston, Tulane University and Marshall University also competed in the conference championship and finished fourth, fifth, and sixth respectively.

Haiti forum sparks discussion

More than a month after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Rice students, staff and faculty are still helping in whatever way they can. On Feb. 25, the Office of Multicultural Community Relations, part of the Office of Public Affairs, hosted a panel entitled "Haiti: Past, Present and Future." The information presented initiated debates over the next step for Haiti, and afterward Rice students sponsored a bake sale that raised $200 for Haitian relief efforts. Art Rascon, an Emmy award-winning reporter and anchor for KTRK-TV, was the moderator of the discussion, which had on its panel two Rice professors and one Rice alumnus. About 60 people attended, including Rice students, members of the community and even visitors from Haiti.

This week's crossword puzzle

See this week's events and complete this week's crossword in this pdf.

On-campus dining options inadequate

The Hoot is the best thing that has happened to this university since it introduced co-ed housing.Yes, I love food - and it turns out I'm not the only one. As news of this magical late-night food joint spreads across campus, the West Servery has quickly surpassed Club Fondren as the place to be at 1 a.m. on weeknights. The Hoot's easy success proves one important fact: Rice students are always hungry.

Burton's Alice ventures into dark territory

The highly anticipated Alice in Wonderland, the latest Tim Burton production based on the children's classic, delivers the magnitude of spectacle one would expect from a director who has cultivated a reputation for quirky retellings of well-known stories. In a startling departure from the book, however, unexpectedly dark themes ripple under bright, otherworldly colors and special effects in this re-imagining of the story - this romp through the looking glass seems like it's aimed more at adults than kids. But featuring a cast led by the eccentric Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and backed with beautiful computer-generated imagery, Alice in Wonderland is still an enjoyably unique yet gloomy film.Though the movie gets its name and premise from Lewis Carroll's books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and sequel Through the Looking Glass, here it follows a much older, teenage Alice (Amelia's Mia Wasikowska). After her father's death and a surprise marriage proposal, the 19-year-old revisits the Underland of her childhood. In the course of her adventures, Alice re-encounters the Mad Hatter (Public Enemies' Johnny Depp), the White Queen (Valentine's Day's Anne Hathaway), the Red Queen (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince's Helena Bonham Carter), the Cheshire Cat (House of Boys' Stephen Fry), twins Tweedledee and Tweedledum (both played by Astro Boy's Matt Lucas), the White Rabbit (New Moon's Michael Sheen), the Blue Caterpillar (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince's Alan Rickman) and many other fanciful forest creatures.

Errata

In the article "Non-major Humanities courses cut" in the Feb. 26 issue, the Thresher reported that all Humanities courses not directly related to a major would be cut next year. Instead, just two pre-professional journalism courses, HUMA 250: Writing for Print Media and HUMA 251: Typography and Design, will be cut. No other courses are slated to be cut at this time. In the article "Tuition rises 5 percent due to endowment losses" in the Feb. 26 issue, the Thresher reported the total for tuition, fees and room and board for 2010-11 would increase to $48,500. Tuition will actually only increase to $45,500, which is $3,000 less than the Thresher reported.

RESET, RPC earn blanket tax increase, while KTRU fails

While the Rice Endowment for Sustainable Energy Technology and the Rice Program Council will both get the funding they hoped for via blanket tax, KTRU will have to try again next year. Six of the eight proposed amendments to the Student Association Constitution, which required a two-thirds majority to pass, succeeded in the SA General Election, which began at 11:59 p.m. last Thursday and ended at 2 p.m. Wednesday.Of the three blanket tax proposals, only RESET's was meant to create a new subsidiary organization of the SA. RESET received a 71 percent vote in favor, and will now receive $9 annually from every undergraduate.

Eater's Digest: Unconscious overeating

For most of us, it's a simple premise: You eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full. Right? Wrong. It turns out our stomachs are terrible indicators of satiety. Current scientific studies show that our sense of "fullness" is more affected by environmental cues than by our bodies' need for energy. It's not that your stomach lies - it's just that it's pretty susceptible to peer pressure.

Mock trial offers rewarding experience

Rice University has a mock trial team, but not very many people know it exists. I've only been in the club for a semester, and I'm already used to the incredulous "Is that a club here?" As much as their reactions dishearten me at times, I can't blame these students.The Rice Mock Trial Team disbanded last year and was restarted last semester by a group of freshmen and sophomores, including myself. We were busy, to say the least. As we struggled to rebuild the team and learn the course material, all the while honing confidence and skill, we admittedly found ourselves more concerned with making it to the regionals unscathed than with promoting the club on campus.

Slideshow: The James Surls Sculptures

Seven large steel and bronze sculptures by renowned modernist artist James Surls were installed on campus last weekend. Concentrated in the Central Quad and the West Quad, with an outlier at the Bioscience Research Collaborative, the sculptures were previously featured in an exhibit on Park Avenue in New York City sponsored by the New York City Parks Public Art Program. Check back with the Thresher after spring recess for a feature on the other-worldly structures.

Tuition rises 5 percent due to endowment losses

SA General Election Results

In the Student Association general elections, held from Feb. 18-24, students flexed their civic muscles. The ballot featured 22 positions and eight proposed amendments. Candidates who did not win are given in parentheses. Also be sure to take a look at the official election results page on the SA website.

Transfers require open mind, initiative

Transitions are never easy, especially transitioning mid-year into a completely unfamiliar environment and leaving behind everything you know. This is what I went through last month when I transferred to Rice.I knew, being a mid-year transfer, that I was coming into an unfamiliar territory where social groups were already sorted out, the general university procedures understood. In addition to adjusting to a new academic structure, I imagined feeling increased academic pressure as I worked to secure transfer credits.

Women knock off first top-20 foe in ten years

The women's tennis team's matches against No. 4 University of California-Los Angeles (9-1) and Pepperdine University (3-5) two weeks ago - matches in which the Owls (5-3) won a total of just two points - seem to have been exactly the kind of wake-up call the team needed. After seeing what it's like to play championship-caliber teams, Rice has been on a roll: the Owls have won their past three matches, two of which came over ranked opponents.

Tuition hike inflicts financial burdens

Rice recently announced that it is perpetuating a disheartening trend in tuition hikes, increasing undergraduate tuition by 5.4 percent for the 2010-11 school year to reach a whopping $33,120 (see story, page 1). This continues the university's decades-old pattern of steadily increasing tuition year after year, often without regard to the national economic picture or external considerations of its students. In the past 10 years alone, the increases have combined to entail more than a doubling of undergraduate tuition. The latest increase is, frankly, insensitive. The administration has spent the past year preaching about the difficult economic situation in justification of multiple budget cuts. Since the fall of 2008, we have endured cuts in academic departments, budget reductions in the residential colleges, staff-wide hiring freezes, the non-renewal of contracts and the elimination of many courses. Times are hard, we're told, so we simply must learn to do without luxuries such as newspapers and college courses taught by professionals.