The Rice Standard - Articles

Till Human Voices Wake Us

mdek — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:05:22 -0500

The carpet is extra individual tonight. As I lie on my stomach staring at the fibers beside me I realize that I can feel each individual thread beneath me and that beneath them, beneath their wooden base, is nothing but the long drop to the ground. I think of grabbing hold of the carpet, to reach out for security. But we will just fall together. I enjoy the sensation of the carpet against my bare skin but am frightened at the notion that at any moment the floor will fall forth from beneath me and I will plummet, naked, into the world.

A Great Year for Jazz: Herbie Hancock’s River

mdek — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:51:16 -0500

The annual Grammy Award by the National Academy of the Recording Arts and Sciences has lost its prestige in the last twenty or so years. First there was Jethro Tull’s victory in the “Best Hard Rock Performance” category in 1989, over Heavy Metal giants Metallica. Add to that the list of great bands belatedly recognized by the Academy, including Pink Floyd, who didn’t win a Grammy until 1994, and it’s no wonder that in some circles the whole award show is referred to as the “Shammys.”

The Great Sympathy Toss-Up

mdek — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:49:44 -0500

During the first week of March 2008, a video leaked of a soldier in Iraq apparently tossing a puppy by the scruff of his neck over a cliff while a comrade recorded the action. Gawker, a gossip site infamous for posting controversial images and commentary, took the video down and apologized hurriedly. YouTube unsurprisingly lifted the footage as well, indicating that it violated the website’s terms. Naturally, the video continued to proliferate and currently can be found easily on the internet for the rubber-necking curious.

Lakewood Church

mdek — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:48:22 -0500

Lakewood Church and Joel Osteen provoke strong reactions from Rice students. A good friend of mine thinks Joel Osteen is a genius and is currently arranging to have a conversation with him. Another one of my friends is confident that he is a quack and endearingly calls Lakewood “Six Flags Over Jesus.” When questioned on the topic, the majority of Rice students fall somewhere in between these two extremes. Their curiosity is piqued by Joel’s celebrity status and Lakewood’s size, but they have trouble placing Joel and Lakewood within their framework of understanding Christianity.

In Defense of Unpolished Nails

mdek — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:42:29 -0500

Today I happily approached my first manicure only to experience the stark realization that while bubbly and predictably dim young people take care of facials and massages, the majority of pedicures and manicures are undertaken by middle aged, immigrant-like, English-impaired Asians. And there is something indescribably awkward when a person like me receives such an annoyingly-mindless middle-high class service from them, such as a manicure. Hard to describe, but after speculation, I’d characterize it as a mix between culture clash, class conflict, national pride, relativism and shame.

From the Publisher

mdek — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:37:54 -0500

It’s hard to graduate. Really hard. We’ve spent four years trying our hardest to maximize our involvement in campus life: neglecting homework to organize an event, attending Student Association meetings, listening to speakers at the Baker Institute. We do all these things week after week and then a humid Saturday morning shows up and it’s over.

A Matter of Time

mdek — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 03:03:09 -0500

Eliza Butler is a middle-aged African-American woman who lives in a brownstone in East New York, Brooklyn. Across the street from her home is a tiny community garden she started years ago when her children went off to college. It is crammed between barren plots of undeveloped land. The sun sometimes blocked out by the rumbling elevated train, whose conductors reach out and wave at Ms. Butler when she is outside working in her garden. This train was one of the first things I noticed upon arriving at Ms. Butler's garden in the summer before my senior year of

The Politics of Egoism

mdek — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 03:01:46 -0500

The second part of this series was devoted to a closer examination of Judeo-Christian ethics. It was an exposé on what constitutes the fundamental Western hypocrisy, that is, the idea that poverty and meekness are values, but that they are values only worthy of reward in the afterlife. I argued that if these were genuine values (i.e. if we saw them as genuinely valuable to our lives) then we would reward them here as opposed to promising imaginary rewards in a land of rainbows and gold paved roads. The fact that Western man is at

To Have and To Hold

mdek — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 02:59:41 -0500

Despite the hurdles my parents have faced as immigrants, they have been married for twenty years. My parents' commitment to each other always grew stronger during tough times. When my mother was hospitalized five years ago, my father was by her side, holding her hand the moment visiting hours began. Instead of distancing himself from her, my father mentally comforted my mother in ways I, as a daughter, could not. Although my parents' marriage provided stability and safety in my household, marriage is a commitment I would like to

SimDarwin

mdek — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 02:57:02 -0500

Will Wright is at it again. The video gaming genius behind the SimCity series practically invented the simulation genre, and in The Sims, he created the best-selling game of all time. But now Wright has set his sights even higher. His newest project, titled Spore, aims to simulate nothing less than the entire history of life in the universe. Users take control of a tiny one-celled organism in the ocean on a simulated planet and gradually--very gradually--guide it onto land, up the food chain, into a