The Rice men’s basketball team fell 90-81 to Florida Atlantic University on Thursday. It was a matchup of the Owls, but ultimately Sammy and Rice were no match for Owlsley and FAU, who remained undefeated at home and moved to 23-2 on the season. The loss was Rice’s fourth consecutive in conference play, dropping the Owls to 6-7 record in Conference USA and 15-9 on the season.
Wayne Graham lives in Austin now. A lifelong Houstonian, the former Rice baseball coach decided to move three hours east in 2020 after spending nearly each of the first 84 years of his life in the Bayou City. But according to Graham, who left the Owls after 27 seasons in 2018, he doesn’t miss his hometown.
When your name is mentioned in the same breath as former Rice Owl and MLB all-star Anthony Rendon, you’re in good company. For sophomore infielder Aaron Smigelski, that honor was bestowed early in his career, as he became the first Owl since Rendon to hit two home runs in a game three different times over the course of his freshman campaign.
When Rice baseball named Jose Cruz Jr. as their new head coach in June of 2021 — on the heels of the program’s first four consecutive losing seasons since the 1980s — the decision was lauded as a step in the right direction. The 2022 season, Cruz’s first at the helm, was anything but, with the Owls’ posting a 17-39 record and failing to appear in the Conference USA tournament for a third consecutive year.
Walking into the theater in a three-piece suit and a beret, we were salivating. Sara was salivating thinking of the food we planned to grab afterwards. Hamza was salivating for some of that Magic Mike action. Neither of us had seen a Magic Mike movie before this one, hoping that the fresh perspective we could offer would lead to greater insights, or at least some surprises. What this actually led to was one hour and 52 minutes of laughter and Hamza attempting to dance along to scenes that had no business being danced to.
As epic as the genre of poetry it is imitating, Salman Rushdie’s “Victory City” is an exquisite novel. Reading like a rom-com, a heroic adventure tale and a political thriller at the same time,s it is a powerful return for Rushdie – the first book he has published since he was brutally attacked in August 2022 at an event in New York. “Victory City” is Rushdie’s thirteenth book, and was released 42 years after he published “Midnight’s Children,” which won the Booker Prize and was also named the “best novel of all winners” twice.
One of my all-time favorite meals is a rice plate. The varying protein options, sides and sauces make for a highly customizable meal catered to many different preferences. Every restaurant has its own rendering on the traditional concept, creating unique flavor profiles from different seasonings and cooking styles. Naturally, I had to compare two Asian-style steak rice plates around Rice campus.
The Moody Center for the Arts recently unveiled their newest Moody Project Wall exhibit, “Swarm Migration,” by Houston artist Bennie Flores Ansell. The new exhibit features a mural made of 3D-printed wishbones representing student and artist stories about migration. The opening reception for “Swarm Migration” will be Feb. 15 from 6 - 8 p.m. and feature the artist and other project collaborators.
Concerned that you won’t find love at the ripe age of 18 to 22? Fear not. Rice students now have a new opportunity — or backup plan — for romance. The Marriage Pact borrows from the romantic comedy trope of two friends agreeing to get married at a certain age if they don’t find anyone else. Essentially, they agree to be each others’ romantic backup plan. Developed by Stanford University undergraduates Liam McGregor and Sophia Sterling-Angus as their final project for an economics class, the Marriage Pact takes this idea and translates it into a 50-question survey that students have brought to 78 colleges and universities across the U.S., now including Rice.
The circulation desk at Fondren is perhaps one of Rice’s most underrated matchmaking spots. Back in 2001, it was where now-married professors Sarah Ellenzweig and Scott McGill first met. Ellenzweig had already been teaching at Rice for a year, while McGill had just started teaching in the Classics department.
When petitions finished filing in and the candidates for Student Association executive positions were announced, the Thresher Editorial Board was disappointed to learn that out of five executive positions up for election, none were contested. In fact, no one is running for the secretary position, necessitating a special election process.
Over the past year, the back-and-forth between science educator Professor Dave and Rice’s own James Tour has reached a new level of fervor, accompanied by name-calling, accusations of dishonesty and hordes of angry YouTube comments. To Professor Dave, Dr. Tour misunderstands origin-of-life research and purposely misrepresents the field. Dr. Tour, on the other hand, claims his issues with OOL are based on the science itself and expresses concern that the public and students are misled about OOL research. Beneath all the incivility are two people who seem to care very deeply about science and science education. I encourage the Rice community to focus on the science itself, not any of the personal attacks.
Yes, this article was written by a real person. The most recent issue of the Thresher included an opinion piece about the use of the artificial intelligence technology ChatGPT in academic contexts. The article, which was generated by the program itself as a display of its writing capabilities, highlighted ChatGPT’s efficiency and usefulness for “students at Rice University who are short on time and need to quickly finish an assignment.” As Rice and many universities grapple with AI’s place in their classrooms and plagiarism policies, I want to contribute a perspective that I found absent in the original article: efficiency is not the point of higher education.
Few artists can capture specific experiences with lyrics that still feel relatable. Noah Kahan accomplishes this in spades with his third album “Stick Season,” released last October after the titular track went viral on TikTok in 2020. “Stick Season” was inspired by Kahan’s tiny Vermont hometown, where he wrote the album during the pandemic. Kahan describes the landscape there as a “wasteland” once winter creeps in — the opposite of Houston’s evergreen city life, although our humid climate is rather sticky. Despite the album’s somewhat niche New England setting, its broader themes of isolation and homesickness are universal experiences, as evidenced by the crowd screaming along to every word throughout the show.
Housing & Dining announced on Jan. 31 that they had reached an agreement with “YOYO” to operate on campus. But the next day, H&D sent the Rice community a follow-up email with a flyer for the vendor they had actually secured: True Dog Houston, operated by Damion Loera, a former partner of YoYo’s Hot Dog who has since opened his own business selling similar hot dogs.
Last week, the Rice women’s basketball team flew east for a two-game road trip. Their first stop was a visit to the reigning Conference USA champions, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where they lost 66-61. For the second leg of their trip, the Owls took on the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where they bounced back from Thursday’s loss with a 67-57 victory over the Blazers. After the trip, head coach Lindsay Edmonds was pleased with how the team was able to bounce back on Saturday after Thursday’s loss.
