Fondren unveils new "One Search" tool for users
Standing on a street corner near the Pacific Ocean in Lima, Peru, I asked someone which bus could take me downtown. He pointed to a small 10-seater van pulling up behind us. A few of these minibuses would pass every minute and cost about a quarter.I'd seen them before, but never in such a system. And after using them to ride to and fro, I can honestly say that if there were minibuses in Houston and I had to wait less than a minute for one, I would probably sell my car.
// It's late. You're hungry. What's a bloke to do? Luckily, we at the Thresher love you, our readers, enough to provide you with a handy map of late-night eateries around campus.
Today, I am going to justify killing trees.The Rice University General Announcements that I received on the first day of Orientation Week three years ago still sits on my bookshelf, right between an unopened differential equations textbook and The Elements of Typographic Style. I don't consult it very often, but until the day I graduate from Rice that General Announcements book is not going anywhere.
In the first scene of the new mockumentary Paper Heart, Michael Cera (Juno), who plays himself, asks the director if the movie is "a quirky comedy, a romantic comedy." The director answers that it is. "Perfect," Cera says. "That's just what America needs."Of course, Paper Heart is not a necessary movie, or even an important one. But it is charming, funny and heartfelt nonetheless, cheerfully embracing its own insignificance and daring to break away from the clichés and celebrate young love between misfits.
As the newest additions to the residential college system since Martel College in 2002, Duncan College and McMurtry College have already begun forming their own unique cultures and traditions. While the question of how to integrate the new colleges has long been in the works, Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman and others working on the transition are confident that the colleges will be able to find their own identities. "On move-in day, McMurtry and Duncan won't have independent governing bodies," Forman said. "It will take them some time to develop a sense of what it means to be a residential college."
Despite a tough economy and cutbacks in spending, Rice received $11.1 million in funding this summer from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to aid in construction of the Brockman Hall for Physics. Rice competed for and was awarded one of NIST's construction grants as part of federal stimulus funding. A previous donation from the A. Eugene Brockman Charitable Trust allowed for construction of the building. With a new, additional source of funding, money originally slated for use on Brockman Hall construction will be freed up for use on other projects, a spokesperson for the development staff, who asked to remain anonymous, said.
A little under a month ago, the Thresher sat down with Charles Iyoho, aka "Black Caesar," one half of the hip-hop duo Rhyme University. He was in town performing at an AIDS Foundation Houston benefit in Rice's own Grand Hall that night. What makes these brothers different from all the other blinged-out rappers dominating the airwaves today? Firstly, Charles has a master's degree from the University of Houston and his brother Tony, aka "Grayhound Bustrip," has a Ph.D. (Try that on for size, Fitty.) Caesar and Bustrip's parents also hail from Nigeria and the duo has lived around the globe in places as diverse as Muscat, Oman and Paris, adding a unique flavor and outlook to their rhymes.
Two Bowl trips, a $27 million dollar renovation of the basketball facilities and the signing of one of the winningest basketball coaches in the nation are all just parts of Athletic Director Chris Del Conte's vision for the future of the Rice athletics. Simultaneously, with neither the resources of a full-time staff nor the ability to raise six-figure alumni donations, students leading the Rice spirit squads have been working to move their teams in a direction parallel to Del Conte's vision. The Owls' cheerleading and dance teams have both been through many changes in recent years after making concerted efforts to improve the quality of their performances. Their goal has been to significantly bolster student support on the sidelines.
With last week's commencement, we see another crop of young minds exit the Sallyport and begin their post-college years (see story, pages 8-9). Thus, congratulations are in order. While it may not be the most opportune moment to end your Rice career, we know that if anyone can succeed in what CNN calls "The Worst Year to Graduate," it is you guys. You slogged through years of cumbersome construction, made your teachers swoon with your performance (we hope they didn't swoon too much, though - see story, page 1) and rode the Todd Graham roller coaster to its infuriating end, only to see Rice reach even greater heights at this year's Texas Bowl. Your time at Rice, these so-called "greatest days of your lives," will always be with you. You will always have a home within the hedges, and we couldn't be more excited to see you take your first steps into the world.
If all goes according to plan, the Hubble Space Telescope will not be the only one reaping the benefits of Mechanical Engineering professor Michael Massimino's second mission to space. "[I have] a Mech-E T-shirt signed by all the students and faculty of the department," Massimino said. "It's on the Space Shuttle Atlantis now, and I hope to fly it in space and return it to the school."
"Don't have any pressure on you not to live your truth on a daily basis," Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International said during the 96th Commencement, held on Saturday. "Live your dream. It is not worth living life without that." Salbi founded Women for Women International, an organization that gives support to women in war-torn areas by providing basic necessities, education and microcredit loans for new businesses, at age 22. She said once she had discovered this was her passion she was often ridiculed for being so young.
"Some of life has to be mysterious. Sometimes in life you wanna just keep walkin'." This is what Peggy Noonan, Reagan speechwriter and frequent Republican pundit, had to say about the U.S. Attorney General's recent declassification of documents that describe a number of methods explicitly authorized by Bush Administration officials for use as "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the CIA. Among the approved procedures described are facial slaps, sleep deprivation, stress positions, enclosure of the prisoner in a small box with large insects and the most controversial of all these techniques, waterboarding.
Information Technology will be changing the way e-mail is sent starting Oct. 15 by requiring authentication for all e-mail being sent from computers on campus networks.IT already requires authentication for e-mail sent off campus, Information Security Officer Marc Scarborough said. Requiring authentication is being applied to mail sent on campus to prevent Rice's e-mail servers from being blacklisted. Currently, Rice's e-mail servers can get blacklisted when computers connected to networks on campus are infected with a virus that uses Rice's server to send spam, Director of Systems, Architecture, and Infrastructure for IT Barry Ribbeck said.
Beer Bike may have just ended, but plans for next year's event are already underway. The campus-wide Beer Bike Coordinators for next year will be Jones College junior Nazish Malik and senior Brian Henderson.
After a one-hour turnaround, No. 1 Rice (42-16) was back on the field Sunday evening, taking on No. 2 Kansas State (43-17-1). The Wildcats were fresh from last night's victory, but it wasn't enough to overcome the determined Rice team which pulled out an 8-0 victory.Unlike the first game, scoring didn't start until the fourth, though the excitement began to build early on with a miraculous catch junior center fielder Steven Sultzbaugh in the second inning. Rice struck first with sophomore right fielder Chad Mozingo's single to score junior catcher Diego Seastrunk. Then in the fifth, sophomore shortstop Rick Hague added an RBI double. In the same inning, Kansas State chose to intentionally walk Seastrunk in order to face freshman third baseman Anthony Rendon, the first in history to be named Conference USA Freshman of the Year and Player of the Year in the same season.
Don't stand so close to your professor! The Faculty Senate updated its Statement on Consensual, Amorous Relations with Students for the first time in over a decade last month. The new statement, which goes into effect in September, prohibits any romantic relationships between faculty and all undergraduate students, and between faculty and graduate students directly under their supervision or in their department. The updated statement, which was approved in a 17-2 vote by the Senate on April 15, includes stricter language and more precise definitions of expected behavior, Faculty Senate Speaker Deborah Harter said.
Rice's (43-17) success this season seems inversely related to the numbers of pitchers the team employs. Considering five arms got work in tonight, the team's chances did not look good. Junior Mike Ojala (5-0) got the ball for the Owls Saturday night as they took on LSU (50-16) in Game 1 of the 2009 NCAA Super Regionals. Ojala, coming off a win last Friday in the opening game of the Regionals, is pitching with a torn ulnar collateral ligament that will require postseason surgery.
Even though classes have been finished for a month, the Rice women's track team has been training hard and busy competing in three major meets. The team has used the extra free time that comes after finals conclude to prepare and rest for the Conference USA meet this Thurdsay, Friday and Saturday in Tulsa, Okla., on the campus of the University of Tulsa.
Catching on to the dance fever, the Rice Chowl Bhangra team earned its place in fame by securing first place at Nasha 2009, a state-wide competition in traditional Punjabi dances held at the University of Houston on April 10. Chowl Bhangra, which means Rice Bhangra in Punjabi, competed against six other collegiate and dance academies in Texas, placing first overall.
