Because of hectic, time-consuming finals schedules, the Thresher will publish the final issue of the spring semester on May 14.
Metro Police shot and killed a man carrying a knife Tuesday morning just outside of the Rice campus. The police had been following the man after he became involved in an altercation at METRORail's Dryden/TMC station, south of campus. When he took off along the outer loop, Metro Police fatally wounded the man, Rice Director of News and Media Relations B.J. Almond said.A female bystander sustained an arm injury from the shooting, but was treated by Rice EMS and was then transported to Ben Taub Hospital for further treatment.
For the full article with graphs and information about individual department budget cuts, please see this pdf.
One down, one to go. That's the motto for the Owls this week in regard to their junior starters, as they celebrate the return of Mike Ojala and eagerly anticipate Ryan Berry's arrival back from injury. Ojala, a junior, made his first start since March 20 last Sunday against East Carolina University, throwing the rubber game in a three-game away series and pulling home the win for Rice. Berry, also a junior, is expected back sometime after finals. The Owls (25-9, 9-3 Conference USA), currently ranked first by Rivals.com and second by Baseball America, played a three-game road series against ECU last weekend, who at the time was leading the C-USA standings and is now ranked 23rd nationally.
For a higher resolution version of this week's LAFFS, click on the image above.
Tolga Unaldi, here playing the reed flute, traveled from Turkey to share traditional Turkish music with Rice students at Tuesday's Turkish Night, hosted by the Turkish Student Association in the RMC.
Participants perform a traditional Native American dance in the Rice Native American Student Association's 11th Annual Powwow March 28. The day-long event is a celebration of Native American culture.
Clive Owen and Julia Roberts acting in a movie together should be a double dose of fun and adventure. Roberts should be able to pull off starring in an action film, as she is a fabulous actress. Great filming locations such as Rome, New York City and the Bahamas should give a film an exciting sense of place. The collection of these factors should produce a great Hollywood film.But it doesn't always do so, at least in the case of the newly released action-adventure movie Duplicity.
To prevent ESTHER from crashing during registration this semester, three changes were made to the registration process. Three registration start times were changed to three 20-minute intervals per day and were applied Monday through Friday. Registration also started at 7 a.m. instead of 8 a.m., and in-progress hours were no longer included in determining a student's eligibility for registration, Registrar David Tenney said. The three time slots were created due to concerns that the load on the system during the first few minutes of registration each day could cause it to crash, Tenney said.
Move over electric slide; Lovett College freshman Josh Rutenberg, winner of the Miles Revolution Contest, is dancing to the hum of an electric car. The contest, hosted by the Miles Electric Vehicles company, which manufactures fully electric vehicles, awarded a $1,000 scholarship to a student based on which entrant's video, centered on the electric car, received the most views on YouTube. Rutenberg's three-minute video trumped the other 14 competing videos by gaining 20,000 hits by the end of the competition in March. In addition to providing Rutenberg with the scholarship, the company presented a ZX40S electric car to Rice University.
Two weeks ago in Austin, Texas, the golf team played against one of their toughest fields yet, posting a 17th-place finish at the Morris Williams Intercollegiate. Along with the stiff competition, the tournament boasted the University of Texas Golf Club's long course and windy conditions, two factors that combined to produce a disappointing finish for the Owls. The Owls head to Wallace, N.C., to play in the River Landing Intercollegiate, the team's penultimate tournament of the year, hosted by North Carolina State University. The field at River Landing Country Club will include Duke University, the University of Virginia, Wake Forest University and the University of Maryland. Though the Owls do not have a chance of making the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team, they still look to finish strong and possibly earn an automatic bid at the conference tournament.
Over the last nine-game homestand, the men's baseball team proved it could play without its top two aces, juniors Ryan Berry and Mike Ojala, who are still out with arm troubles. Actually, the Owls (22- 7, 7-2 Conference USA) did more than play: The team went 8-1 and won two weekend series against C-USA rivals, taking two of three from the University of Memphis and swept Tulane University. Those conference series were interspersed with wins over Dallas Baptist University and Sam Houston State University. With this record, Rice is sporting its best start since 2004. The Owls have jumped up in the rankings, as well, with five different polls putting Rice in the top six. Baseball America ranks Rice third, while Rivals.com has them in first. Rice is also holding down second place in the C-USA standings, a game behind East Carolina University.
Ed. note: This article has been changed from the printed version.In a 2008 study of graduate students on the Rice-subsidized health plan, 97 percent of over 400 respondents were unhappy with the plan coverage and cost. Indeed, a comparison of the plan with other similarly-sized schools in the top 50 US News and World Report rankings shows that our current plan is well behind our competition in almost every way, such as co-pay percentage and out-of-pocket maximum.
What was once a cool relationship between the People's Republic of China and the United States is now an open relationship, helped, in part, by Rice. To honor the 30th anniversary of full diplomatic relations between these two nations, Rice's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy hosted a conference on April 3 entitled, "America and China: The Next 30 Years." The event consisted of a panel of distinguished guests, including former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker III, and China's Ambassador to the U.S., Zhou Wenzhong.
Cancer is a devastating disease that has affected over 10.8 million Americans. The American Cancer Society estimate that approximately 565,650 Americans died of cancer in 2008. That means that across the nation, 565,650 families experienced the loss of a son, daughter, mother or father to cancer in the year 2008 alone.Now, imagine this devastation happening every year.
The famed American composer Aaron Copland once wrote of being "overwhelmed" by theater, sometimes to the point of resentment. Clearly, he was writing of the great tragedies, loves and disputes that have been born on stages across the centuries. Lovett College's currently running drama, The Visitors, would not overwhelm Copland, but it has a well-constructed story, a strong cast and unique staging, which all compensate for its few narrative and thespian weaknesses.The Visitors follows a wealthy Manhattan couple who relocate to the Caribbean because of the husband Barry's (Lovett senior Nathan Bledsoe) heart condition. Once there, they are visited by aging rock star Azure Ray (Lovett junior Viren Desai), who tries to start a charity with Barry as the spokesperson, among other shenanigans.
The past two weeks held some mundane results for the men's track team, but there was one result that left everyone, if not speechless, then at least in awe. First, the typical. Over the last few weeks, the Owls stayed in the Lone Star State to compete in the Victor Lopez Bayou Classic, held at Rice Track Stadium, and the 82nd Annual Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays in Austin, Texas. During a fifth-place finish at the Bayou Classic, Head Coach Jon Warren (Jones '88) spotted some star performances, as senior Simon Bucknell took first place in the 1500-meter run and freshman Collin Shurbet finished third in 400-meter hurdles.
The women's tennis team, it appears, cannot catch a break. Despite breaking their four-match losing streak against University of Texas-Pan American with a 7-0 sweep, the Owls began another losing streak against formidable opponents University of Tulsa and University of North Texas, running their record to 10-11. On March 27, Rice faced off against unranked UTPA, which had lost 7-0 against Lamar only a day earlier. Coming off a pair of 4-3 losses to the University of Louisville and the University of South Alabama, the Owls desperately needed a convincing victory against this less-talented squad to start fresh and put the past behind them.
Pitching and hitting woes plagued the Owls Tuesday night, and under the watchful eye of former president George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara, the second-ranked Owls fell 7-3 to unranked Texas A&M.Sophomore Travis Wright got the ball for the 25-9 Owls and only lasted one inning, giving up one run on two hits. Rice immediately got that one back in the bottom of the frame, when a double by freshman third baseman Anthony Rendon scored Holt. Both players finished the night with a team-high three hits.
