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NEWS 4/9/09 7:00pm

30Nights cancellation ruins excitement

By Staff Editorial

If you're reading this right now, it means that we're unhappy - 30Nights is still cancelled (see story, page 6). What was shaping up to be a great Wednesday night - senioritis-laced seniors mixed with Element is always a good concoction - has now turned into another typical, paper-churning slog. Yes, we're complaining, and here's why:30Nights, with its marketing blitz and higher sales of tickets, was set to go off without a hitch. People were excited about this party, and rightfully so. In a week that people needed to blow off steam, the team behind the party's planning was doing an excellent job, and with an expected 350 attendees - 200 pre-sold and 150 more expected, according to an e-mail - the club Element was due to be hoppin'.

NEWS 4/9/09 7:00pm

KTRU Pick of the Week: Siamese Sailboats

By Miguel Quirch

Every week at KTRU, eager DJs write out short reviews of music's cutting-edge albums. KTRU's Music Department uses these reviews to judge the quality of the albums it receives and to provide information for the DJs who play them. Each week, a DJ polishes one of these reviews so that KTRU's riches can shine for the larger Rice community.Hailing from Baytown, Texas, Ghost Mountain is an up-and-coming duo that plays a nice little mix of electro-pop that is quite reminiscent of MGMT, with influences from of Montreal, YACHT and other bands. Ghost Mountain has a certain quality to their music that makes it feel exuberant and alive, which is more than evident in its new Siamese Sailboats.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

Wednesday's Sports Update: Rice Baseball Team Holds On For 10-9 Win Over Lamar Wednesday Night

By Rice Sports Information

The Rice baseball team scored 10 runs on 14 hits, but had to hold off a Lamar rally in the bottom of the ninth inning to claim a 10-9 victory over longtime rival Lamar Wednesday evening on the road in Beaumont.The Owls led 9-2 early in the contest, but Lamar chipped away to get the margin down to just three, 10-7, with two innings left to play. The Cardinals scored two in the eighth on just one hit to make it a one-run game and set the stage for the ninth.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

Wednesday's Sports Update: Dallas Baptist falls under Rice's offensive surge

By Dylan Farmer

One more game, one more huge offensive effort for the baseball team. The Owls posted 16 hits in an 11-8 comeback victory over visiting Dallas Baptist University Wednesday night at Reckling Park, marking the 8th time in the past 10 games the Blue and Grey have racked up 13 or more hits.Redshirt sophomore Travis Wright picked up the first win of his Rice career with 2.2 innings of solid relief pitching. He allowed just one unearned run and had four strikeouts on the day.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

Saturday's Sports Update: Owls take down Tigers in rematch

By Dylan Farmer

Ryan Berry's absence from the pitching mound was conspicuous at the start of Saturday's game against the University of Memphis, but by the end of his seven-inning outing, freshman Taylor Wall had made the game uniquely his. Filling in for the injured Berry, Wall allowed just four runs and struck out six in seven innings of work - his longest outing of the year.Assisted by a Rice batting order that collected 14 hits and 12 runs - including six runs in the first two innings - Wall improved to 3-2 on the season.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

A plywood mindscape

By Leo Carter

This week Henrique Oliveira arrives at Rice for his first solo exhibit in the U.S., and with him he brings most of the salvageable plywood siding from his neighborhood construction sites in Sao Paolo, Brazil.Oliveira, only 35 years old, has found an ingenious and altogether stunning way of presenting the found object medium, plentiful in the surroundings in which he lives. Gathering it at construction sites or among the refuse of shantytown housing, known in Portuguese as favelas, the piles of painted and weathered plywood strips, organized by color, size and texture, covered the floor of the gallery in the weeks preceding the opening. At the audience's feet are what Oliveira calls "the fractured image of a painting" that he began to assemble during the days preceding the exhibit's opening.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

Here there be Pirates ... of Penzance

By Joe Dwyer

These last two weeks have been crazy as far as college theater is concerned, and Rice Light Opera Society has only added to the number of quality shows opening this week with its production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance.The basic premise of the play is that Frederic (Geoff Copper, Sid Richardson College '07) has completed his indentures with a ragtag group of pirates and is looking for some loving. He falls for the beautiful Mabel (Sid senior Quinn Shadko) but is soon caught up in a conflict centered around his duties to his former masters and his newfound love.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

Week-long support of protection for women well-received

By Jocelyn Wright

After five days of promoting female safety, the Stop Violence Against Women Week ends today with a lecture by Nobel Peace Laureate Rigoberta Menchú at the Rothko Chapel. Rice Amnesty International Vice President Julia Lukomnik coordinated the week, which combined events hosted by Rice Amnesty International and the Rice Women's Resource Center to promote awareness and prevention of violence against women. According to the UN, one in three women is abused sometime in her lifetime.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

Sunday's Sports Update: Reckling leads Rice past Memphis

By Meghan Hall

Freshman Matthew Reckling got the start in the rubber game of Rice's conference series against Memphis this weekend. After a loss on Friday and a win on Saturday, the Owls came out on top Sunday 9-5 to take the series, improving their record to 17-7 (4-2).Reckling threw a career-high 5.1 innings and also notched the first win of his Rice career. He had a no-hitter through three innings and didn't allow Memphis to score until a solo home run by junior Shawn Ablett to lead off the fifth.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

Bikes-for-cars for grad students

By Jaclyn Youngblood

Trees are not the only thing spring has turned green around Rice. A new green initiative spearheaded by Graduate Housing Manager Abeer Ali Mustafa and Associate Vice President of Housing and Dining Mark Ditman has brought 35 bicycles to graduate students living at the Rice Village Apartments.Students who sign up for a 12- month housing agreement and agree not to register a car at the apartments are eligible to receive one of 33 free bicycles. The other two bicycles have been set aside for temporary use by those students who have a car but still want to bike occasionally, Mustafa said.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

Tuesday's sports update: Homestand ends with Sam Houston shellacking

By Meghan Hall

The third-ranked Owls finished up a nine-game homestand Tuesday night with a 9-3 win over Sam Houston State University. The Owls currently sit at 22-7 (7-2 Conference USA) and are second in the C-USA standings behind East Carolina University, which they face this weekend on the road. The Owls struck first in the bottom of the second, when back-to-back singles by freshman Daniel Gonzales-Luna and junior Jimmy Comerota prefaced a sacrifice fly by sophomore Michael Fuda.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

Bikes-for-cars program almost perfect

By Staff Editorial

Since the Thresher's main mode of communication still takes place via dead trees, it may seem a touch ironic that we would espouse the Rice Graduate Apartments' attempt to go green (see story, page 1). With the installation of the bikes-for-cars program, Rice has taken the environmental ball and run with it, all the way to a sustainable future.The meat of the program is commendable - trading cars for bikes will eliminate both congestion and carbon emissions - but a few details need to be tweaked in order for this program to reach its fullest potential. First, the cost of the bikes, $750, is an exorbitant amount. As we are all aware, we are in the midst of the Great Recession, meaning that any inordinate expenditures should be axed before they reach their final stages. While we understand that the bikes are LEED certified, there are times when you must make sacrifices for the health of the pocketbook. If you halve the price tag of these bikes, you will still receive a quality bicycle and double your potential consumer base. You could even consider giving the tenants a voucher for a bicycle instead of selecting one for them, although that may limit discounts.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

Knowing Review

By Faheem Ahmed

If given the opportunity to sit in the DeLorean from Back to the Future, I wouldn't go back in time to bet a million dollars on the Giants winning the Super Bowl, and I wouldn't tell my dad to invest stock in Google. Heck, I wouldn't even warn people about impending national disasters. What I would do is gun that baby to 88 mph to the year 1996 and assassinate Nicholas Cage. Why 1996, you ask? That was the year The Rock was released, the last decent movie ever made by the over-the-hill loser. Since then, Cage has unleashed a torrent of crappy films, ruining comic book franchises (Ghost Rider), forcing us to acknowledge horrible hairstyles (Con-Air, Bangkok Dangerous ... dude, you're bald, get over it) and worst of all, making hot women look like coked-out hookers (Angelina Jolie in Gone in 60 Seconds). It's been thirteen years, dammit! Enough is enough, Cage. Either you retire from acting, or I call a national boycott on your garbage movies.Seriously, America. When will you learn? Knowing actually was No. 1 in the box office this past weekend, raking in over $24 million. The only thing I know about Knowing is that it sucked. That's my entire review. I wasted $8.50 - thank you, student discount - and almost two hours watching this steaming pile of crap that vaguely resembled cinema. But believe it or not, the first twenty minutes of the movie really was not that bad.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

Commentary: Graham is true leader within hedges

By Casey Michel

Patrick McAnaney has just changed over to Student Association president, Chris Del Conte is in his third year as Rice's Athletic Director and David Leebron has guided our university for nearly a half of a decade. But none of these men have ever held court like Wayne Graham.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

Beer Bike safety depends on efficiency

By Wen Wen

It is said that Beer Bike security is the most "sucky" on-campus volunteering experience that one could possibly find. Yet for people who are "forced" to do security, knowing how to outwit all the rules and regulations is of vital importance. After all, you don't want to miss out on this annual festival consisting of weeklong water balloon filling, campus-wide underage drinking, sporadic cheer battles and, unofficially, the largest water balloon fight in the world.Rule No. 1: The Beer Bike coordinators will tell you that you should never show up drunk. Well, the truth is that you just can't show up obviously drunk. And the best way to avoid that is to start drinking as early as possible, so that you can avoid any hangovers or puking during security hours. Early bird catches the worm.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

SA passes new bylaw

By Margeux Clemmons

The Rice Student Association voted to pass a by-law amendment to the SA Constitution Monday, instating the SA president as one of two undergraduate representatives to University Council beginning in the 2009-'10 academic year. The University Council, one of Rice University's advisory groups for the university president, serves as a method of communication between President David Leebron and the rest of the university. The University Council is comprised of Faculty Senate members, the faculty speaker and deputy speaker of the Faculty Senate, two graduate representatives and two undergraduate representatives.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

Friday's Sports Update: Owls fall to Tigers thanks to defensive blunders

By Meghan Hall

Although Rice outdid Memphis in the hit column-17 to 14-the Owls fell short to the Tigers, dropping the first game of a three-game conference series 10-7 Friday evening at Reckling.Trouble started early for the 15-7 Owls, currently ranked second by Rivals.com and fourth by Baseball America. The Tigers scored two runs in each of the first three innings, while the Owls were only able to put up single digits.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

My First Time spills the beans on relationship stories

By Erika Kwee

"It was like taking my mom's car up and down the driveway ... while no one was looking." Thus begins the slew of awkward sex analogies that pepper the script of My First Time, directed by Wiess College junior Tiffany Kim, who is putting on this unusual Off-Broadway show with the help of eight fellow students and funding from the Dr. Bill Wilson Student Initiative Grant.The overall presentation of the show is sharp, beginning in darkness as an awkward tune plays in the background. In between periods of snappy one-liners ("I lost my hymen in a bike accident") and longer monologues, the stage projector serves to intersperse random fun facts about sex. Did you know that the average French person loses their V-status at 16.8 years? Germany is 16.2! And the United States is ... well, you can just ponder on that for a while.

NEWS 3/26/09 7:00pm

Friday's Sports Update: Green Wave no match for high-scoring Owls

By Meghan Hall

Rice must have still been on a run-scoring high from last Wednesday's thrilling comeback against Dallas Baptist, for the team opened with a bang against conference rival Tulane in the opener of a three-game series Friday night. The 19-7 (5-2) Owls are ranked as high as second by Rivals.com and fourth by Baseball America.The offense lately has been rolling: in nine of Rice's last 11 games, they have had at least 13 hits. The magic number tonight was 15 hits, which the Owls used to top Tulane 11-3.

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