Special Projects

HedgeHopper Week 3: Winds are calm, but yogurt is Swirll

Swirll Frozen Yogurt, located at the corner of University Blvd. and Kirby Dr., right next door to Half Price Books, is a dainty little hole-in-the-wall frozen yogurt shop that captures the eyes of Village pedestrians. Despite its unimposing exterior, its interior boasts wireless Internet and two huge plasma-screen TVs. One screen displays all of Swirll's flavors, offered on rotation only a few at a time with favorites like green tea and original available permanently, while the other is locked on premier products like smoothies, available in flavors such as blueberry, blackberry, café latte and cappuccino.Go with your friends or go alone; Swirll will accommodate any group size with room to stretch out. In fact, while the ambiance is good, it feels a bit cavernous. If the weather is beautiful, the patio provides another place to kick up feet. Customers can pick something up to go or bring their own board games to kill time. People who have work to do should not hesitate to bring it with them.

GoCrossCampus back for more virtual battles

This Monday, the residential colleges will form armies and the campus itself will become a battlefield as GoCrossCampus, a virtual war game analogous to the board game Risk, launches into its second year at Rice. In GXC, student players log on to a Web site and acquire virtual armies, which they build and direct strategically in a campus-wide war lasting several months. Founded by Yale University students and piloted at Rice last year, the game serves as a new channel for college system rivalries. The game's Web site includes a detailed map of the Rice campus, upon which students place armies in accordance with instructions from college commanders. Each day, players read a posted battle plan from their commanders and are granted one turn for deploying armies. Colleges compete for campus territories and alternatively form alliances and mobilize against each other, stoking inter-college competition.

Second-half collapse costs Owls road victory

The football team outgunned Vanderbilt University early before running out of ammunition in the second half of a 38-21 loss Saturday night. Rice gained nearly 100 more yards of total offense than the Commodores in the first two quarters and looked to carry a seven-point advantage into the half before a late score by Vanderbilt tied the game and stole whatever mental advantage the Owls had. The Owls are reloading for this Saturday as they look to beat the well-rested and undefeated University of Texas at 6 p.m. The seventh-ranked Longhorns are 2-0 after defeating Florida Atlantic University and University of Texas-El Paso. The Longhorns' game against the University of Arkansas last week was postponed because of Hurricane Ike.

MSA petitions for more tetra points

For some students, fall means a return to school life, colder weather and football. But to some Muslim students, this time of year is one for fasting, forgiveness and prayer, as they observe the 30-day Ramadan period. Since Muslim students who fast during Ramadan are unable to eat during the serveries' normal operating hours, Housing and Dining has been working with the Muslim Student Association to make special accommodations. After discussions last week, a university oversight committee agreed to add 65 extra tetra points to Muslim students' meal plans. Martel College sophomore Selim Sheikh led a petition to add 100 tetra points - 50 more than on-campus Muslim students are currently allotted - to the meal plan, since Muslim students miss 20 to 30 lunches in September during Ramadan observance. As of last week, his petition had gained 400 student signatures from a Student Association meeting and from SA senators at different residential colleges.

Families Weekend starts Thursday

Families Weekend, when parents are invited to visit their children on campus, will start next Thursday Sept 25. The event, organized by Jennifer Harding, Director of Reunion Programs and Special Events, at the Office of Alumni Affairs in collaboration with Student Association External Vice President Nicholas Muscara, will emphasize the leadership qualities of Rice students this year. The theme is "Rice Students. Leading. Locally. Globally." Muscara, a Martel College sophomore, said this year's Families Weekend would be more centered around a theme than last year's, when the theme was simply "Students."

Bangkok Dangerous hits theaters with a whimper

Why . oh, good lord, why? What concoction of drugs and alcohol spurred me to watch this god-forsaken crapshoot of a movie? Alas, pre-Ike weekend was another long and sad one for the movies. Butt-crust cinema appears to be in full force, with Bangkok Dangerous claiming the number one spot at the box office. The new Nicolas Cage flick debuted with an opening total of $7.8 million, just barely beating out Tropic Thunder's total of $7.5 million. To put that into perspective, this was the worst weekend box office total in five years! In my opinion, the only thing worse than a movie starring Nicolas Cage is an action movie starring Nicolas Cage. He's only made one awesome movie in the action genre (The Rock), and since then, he has disappointed time and time again (Next, Gone in 60 Seconds and Ghost Rider come vividly to mind). Needless to say, my expectations were incredibly low when I entered the empty theater.

TCU's late-game heroics spell heartbreak for Owls soccer

Escaping before the bad weather could trap them in Houston, the soccer team traveled to Fort Worth on Friday looking to climb up the regional rankings with a win over Texas Christian University. For most of the game, it looked as if the Owls were going to reach that goal, but two late scores by the Horned Frogs proved to be Rice's undoing. The first half of the match was a dead heat. TCU outshot the Owls 6-4 as both teams fought for the upper hand. However, it was Rice that first connected with a goal. As Junior forward Erin Scott registered her second score of the year after a deflection from the Frogs' goalkeeper rolled directly in front of her.

With great budget comes great responsibility

This year, Rice Program Council's budget has increased from $35,000 to $130,000 - a whopping increase (see story, page 1). The reason for this budget hike is that certain programs such as Passport to Houston and the President's and Dean's Study Breaks have been moved under the jurisdiction of RPC.Whereas in the past RPC was mainly in charge of small on-campus events like Esperanza, Rondelet and a few tailgates, this year's change is huge - and it could either be a grand success for RPC or a grand failure.

Student concerns spark debate about meal plans

At a Student Association meeting Sept. 8, Martel College senator Selim Sheikh proposed to the SA that Muslim students be refunded Tetra points for the meals they miss during Ramadan, when they must fast from dawn to sundown (see story, page 1). Muslim students are currently reimbursed 50 Tetra points, but Sheikh said the cost of the meals missed is closer to the value of 100 Tetra points.We are not going to debate here the relative merits of missing a series of meals for religious reasons against missing them because one sleeps late. That discussion is too large for an editorial column, and seems better suited for another time and place. What we would like to see, however, is a re-examination of the way meal plans at Rice are currently handled.

Cousins of the classics

So you're afraid your favorite music has become too popular? Maybe you're beginning to realize it always was? Never fear. With this list of ten relative unknowns that smack of the artists you know and love, but without that hypey aftertaste, you can stay indie forever.Rilo Kiley ? Land of Talk

This week's Editorial Cartoon

Job fairs should provide better options for humanities majors

Last week as I browsed through my Thresher, I was surprised and a bit disappointed to discover a Career Expo insert. Those few sheets of paper meant that it was that depressing time of year again: not midterms or finals, not Valentine's Day, but Job Hunting Season. Not everyone approaches the expo the same way I do. While I see this fair as another way of being reminded of the limits of my humanities major (outside of graduate or professional school), my scientifically-geared friends see it as a glowing chance of opportunity. The career fairs at Rice are designed to cater to and pique the interests of only a select group of students - the future scientists and engineers - while leaving the rest of us with few options.

News in Brief: Valhalla closed indefinitely

Valhalla, Rice's graduate student pub, is closed indefinitely because of noncompliance with the dry campus policy that took effect during Hurricane Ike. Rice University Police Department Sergeant Carla Barnette said the pub violated alcohol restrictions that applied to the entire campus, which includes all graduate student institutions. Valhalla manager David Fortunato said he could not comment on the matter, but that the official story was that the pub was closed for renovation.

This Week in Photos: Hurricane Ike

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Two Million Minutes an intriguing study in contrast

In the four years that students around the world spend in high school, just over two million minutes (60 minutes times 24 hours times 365 days times 4 years) will tick by. What the students do with that time and its impact on not just the rest of their lives, but even the economies of their respective countries is the focus of a new documentary titled Two Million Minutes.Directed by Chad Heeter and produced by Robert A. Compton, the 54-minute film takes a look into the lives of six high school seniors from the United States, China and India and manages to offer up some candid footage and interviews with not only the children but their parents as well. In addition to a camera that follows each of the students around, interviews with several prominent entrepreneurs, education specialists, politicians and university professors round out the discussions in the movie.

Comic: Cingle Cellularity

Edge of Heaven leaves audience feeling on edge

The Edge of Heaven is a film in which very few things happen, and many things fail to happen, all in a quiet, heartbreaking way. It is a drama concerning three families thrown together by chance and tragedy, across three languages and two continents. This German-Turkish production reflects on basic ideas of mortality and resilience through the lives of very disparate characters.One is Ali Aksu (Tuncel Kurtiz), a dapper old Turkish gentleman who lives in Germany and whose main concerns are betting on horses and sleeping with whores. The first third of the film deals with Ali's relationship with a Turkish prostitute, whom he ends up inviting to live with him. His conversations with his son, Nejat Aksu (Baki Davrak), are largely concerned with sexual matters as well. "Who are you screwing these days?" Ali asks Nejat in a rare moment of family bonding.

ANTH 201 creates controversy

Last week, plans for an anthropology assignment had college presidents and masters in discussions with the professor about students' privacy issues. In the week since, the professor has dropped the requirement for using photo or video records in the observational study.Assistant anthropology professor Elizabeth Vann, who teaches ANTH 201: Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology, assigned her class a college ethnography project, which requires the students to conduct observational research at a residential college other than their own.

Academs need funding, too

For people who hold only a little about this university, the name Rice is generally associated with strong science and engineering programs. Thanks to the record $100 million Rice received in external funding last year (see story, page 1), we can be sure of maintaining a strong reputation in those areas in the near future. However, this shouldn't mean that the social sciences and humanities should be neglected. More funding for non-science research, more department chairs and better resources are all aims the university should have in mind. Career fairs focused on those of us not planning on working for engineering firm or energy companies could be another. With the strong pursuit of these goals, Rice's overall reputation cannot go anywhere but up, and someday a few lucky academs might be able to avoid the presently inevitable reaction of "You're majoring in English? But you go to Rice!"

Obama's ballot history startling, hypocritical

In April 2007, David Jackson and Ray Long wrote in the Chicago Tribune the history of Senator Barack Obama's 1996 campaign for the Illinois Senate. In an article titled "Barack Obama knows his way around a ballot," the Tribune challenged Obama's self-styled image as a different kind of politician. A decade earlier, the presidential candidate who just fought to restore full voting rights to his party's delegations from Michigan and Florida to the 2008 Democratic National Convention fought to eliminate the voting rights of his opponents in a 1996 Democratic primary for the Illinois Senate.I want to offer a glimpse into Obama's 1996 Illinois Senate campaign because it exemplifies the audacity of his claim to have a monopoly on hope. Obama's politics are only new to the extent that Obama has the requisite amount of charisma and brilliance to sell a post-partisan reformist image he hasn't earned. I am not voting for Sen. John McCain - Google "Keating 5," and you'll see a counter-claim to his "Country First" slogans.