Members of Witness and Throat Culture speak about experiences
May 3, 2012
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May 3, 2012
In 1972, a group of students started the Johns Hopkins Outdoors Club (JHOC) because they wanted to experience nature close-up on weekends around the area. They decided to create an official student group that took adventurous trips as often as possible.
I know absolutely nothing about fashion. My trips to the mall don't extend past Macy's and Forever 21, and the only fashion shows I've ever seen were on "America's Next Top Model." I'm aware enough to know that wearing sweatpants in public is slightly unacceptable. And that's always been enough for me.
The News-Letter sat down with U.S. Senator Ben Cardin to discuss the upcoming congressional elections. Cardin is currently a junior U.S. Senator and a member of the Democratic Party. He represented Maryland’s 3rd congressional district in the House of Representatives from 1987 to 2007, and is running for his second term in the Senate.
The Hopkins Americans Partnership for Israel (HAPI) held its first event last Sunday, featuring United States Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), who addressed the importance of a strong relationship between the United States and Israel. About 35 people attended the event, which was only open to student leaders.
The Charles Village Civic Association held a meeting on Thursday, March 15 at Barnes & Noble to discuss the upcoming N. Charles St. construction and what it means for community members, including Hopkins students. The actual construction will begin this spring and will be completed during Spring 2014.
Tracey Oliver and Issa Rae came to Hopkins last Friday to discuss their hit web series, "The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl." Rae is the creator and star of the show and Oliver produces and acts in the show. The event, which consisted of a discussion, screening and Q&A session, was hosted by the Women's History Month Committee and co-sponsored by the Black Student Union, the Multicultural Student Volunteers and the Dunbar Baldwin Hughes Theater Company. The event was opened to Hopkins students and the public. About 130 people were in attendance. "One really key thing was opening [the event] to the public," junior Kessie Alexandre, who is a member of the Women's History Month Committee and is the Community Relations Chair of the Black Student Union, said. Rae came up with "The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl" because she wanted to create black comedy that depicted an awkward character. She was inspired by shows like The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm but wanted to include more diverse characters. Rae had the idea in her head for two years but decided to implement it when she read an article about what the black Liz Lemon would be like. "When I was reading this, I was like, oh my God, this is my idea, somebody's about to take it," Rae said during the discussion. "I wanted to show that we also can be quirky and mainstream just like The Office and also include color. Oliver, who went to Stanford with Rae and plays Nina on the show, wanted to produce because she liked the unique portrayal of black women, especially Rae's character, J. "The most notable aspect of the show for me is Issa. I think the reason why so many people respond to her is because she really embodies what a lot of us look like, [which] we don't see on television. The fact that she is dark and the fact that she does have short, natural hair is revolutionary. And it's something that reflects the changing times that we're in. Even looking around the room, I see so much natural hair," Oliver said. "You see a lot of women [on TV] that look a certain way, and here comes Issa, and she's awkward and black." Freshman Amanda Nwaopara liked hearing the actresses talk about the production of the show. "I really enjoyed their talk because you just see the show but . . . you never really knew what was intended, what wasn't intended," she said. "Now we have a lot of insight as to what went on behind the scenes." When Rae started the show, she had no budget. The first episode premiered on Feb. 3, 2011, with a new episode coming out every month. She had to quit her job after the first few episodes because she was constantly working on the show. This meant that the quality of the sound and the filming was not as perfect as they would have liked it to be. "I decided to shoot it guerilla style to just get my idea out there," Rae said. This also meant that they had to do their own hair and buy their own clothes for each episode because they did not have a professional hair stylist on set. However, by the sixth episode, the pair was broke. They were reluctant to send a direct email to their fans begging for money. They had heard about a website called Kickstarter where anyone could contribute money. They had to set a goal, and if that goal was reached in 30 days, they would receive the money. Since they were averaging 60,000 views per episode, Oliver and Rae decided to make their goal $10,000. They received over $36,000. Their goals for next year are to get picked up by a network like FX, where they would have creative control. They met with a major network producer, who they declined to name, who wanted to replace Rae with a celebrity like Lauren London. Both Oliver and Rae feel that this would completely take away the point of the show and the effort that Rae put into its conception. They also enjoy having the show online right now, as the screens can be filmed, edited and distributed in a short amount of time. "If you want to create your own opportunity, now's the time to do it because of the Web," Oliver said. "You don't have to be a millionaire; you don't have to be from LA; you can do it from anywhere you want." ?
I'm not the type of person who claims to know a lot about pop culture. I don't watch every movie nominated for an Oscar to adequately prepare myself to watch the Academy Awards. But I have friends who do, which is why I ended up watching the entire show this year.
Most Americans already know that their energy use results in pollution, but they may not know the extent of the pollution. A recent National Oceanic & Atmospheric Organization (NOAA) study shows that not even scientists are fully aware of the amount of pollution released from natural gas wells in Colorado. The study, led by NOAA atmospheric scientist Gabrielle P??tron, concluded that natural gas wells have leaked twice as much gas as Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists had previously predicted. Natural gas is used as a fuel alternative to coal because it releases less carbon dioxide. Before it can be used as a fuel, natural gas has to go through a processing stage, which releases methane. Methane is a gas that plays a large role in warming the Earth's atmosphere. There are about 18,000 to 20,000 natural gas wells in Weld Country in Northeastern Colorado, which is where the study was conducted.P??tron and her team tracked air composition by taking weekly air samples from their towers set up around the world. They started measuring at one of their tall towers in Colorado in 2007. Their measurements tracked the amount of gases such as methane, propane, butane, pentane and benzene in the air. "We tracked the air composition around the world and over the continent in the US by grabbing air samples weekly at our global network and daily at our network that's over the continental US," P??tron said. The team noticed that the data from the tower in Weld County consisted of a different composition of chemicals than the data from other towers throughout the country. They found a correlation between the previously mentioned gases - as the amount of one gas increased, so did that of the others. After collecting the data, the researchers tried to find the cause of the emission of all five of those compounds. By analyzing wind patterns, they found that these chemicals were coming from Weld County. They took air samples from Weld County in areas close to known methane sources and found equal amounts of the five chemicals. Their results proved that the natural gas wells had caused the increase in these chemicals. The EPA had previously thought that natural gas wells had leaked one to two percent of their methane. The measurements from this study, however, show that these natural gas wells are leaking four percent of their methane. The recorded methane concentrations are not only from the wells themselves but also from natural gas processing plans and compression stations. "When we say that the leak rate is twice what's reported in inventories, it's the leak rate for the entire infrastructure, not only the [wells]," P??tron said. According to Hopkins Earth and Planetary Sciences Assistant Professor Benjamin Zaitchik, this study is important because it focuses on methane, which has very powerful short-term warming effects. He thinks that this study may cause some to question whether natural gas is a viable alternative to coal-based energy. "Natural gas was such good news for the U.S. . .it's good for natural security, it's good for rural economies and it's good for climate, and now maybe [it's] not," Zaitchik says. She hopes that her study will increase awareness about how emissions are able to change from one area to another and show that these emissions need to continue to be studied. This study will help policy makers, such as the EPA, know exactly what gases and energy sources to target. However, P??tron emphasized that her study was not trying to denounce using natural gas as an energy source, as it did not go as far to study the effects of this extra methane in the atmosphere. "We're not pushing any judgment on which fossil fuel is better than the other," she says. "Our study is [just] making a clearer picture of all of this." ?
Hopkins Honeybeess, a student group that started keeping beehives last year, is now becoming an official student group on campus. Junior Caitlin Rosner, who is the president of Hopkins Honeybees, began beekeeping in high school and wanted to bring that experience to Hopkins students.
Rachel McAdams loses her memory and has her handsome co-star attempt to bring it back. Sound familiar? The Vow has a premise slightly similar to The Notebook, except this time, Channing Tatum is McAdams' co-star instead of Ryan Gosling. And that's where this movie went wrong.
Theta Tau, Hopkins's Professional Engineering Fraternity, kicked off National Engineers Week (E-Week) at Hopkins with the Tower of Power competition this Monday in the Glass Pavilion. 19 different teams made up of undergraduates, graduate students, alumni and one team of middle school students competed to see who could build the tallest tower out of uncooked linguini and marshmallows at the annual event.
Department of Physics and Astronomy Professor Colin Broholm is known for his research on neutron scattering and condensed matter physics. He currently is teaching General Physics II for the Physical Sciences.
On Wednesday evening, the Spring Fair committee, the HOP and WJHU announced in an e-mail to the student body that Passion Pit will be performing at the 41st Spring Fair on April 20. Kingsfoil will also be performing.
Sorority recruitment had its highest turnout to date last week, with 238 women registering and 189 women receiving invitations. Only 197 women registered last year. Hopkins's four Panhellenic sororities, Alpha Phi, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Phi Mu and Pi Beta Phi participated in the recruitment process.
Ever look at a map and wonder what it would be like if South America and Africa still fit together like puzzle pieces in one massive supercontinent? Geologists had previously thought that the next supercontinent would either form in the same place as the prior one, Pangaea, or on the complete opposite side of the world. Yale geologist Ross Mitchell and his team, however, think that the next supercontinent, which Mitchell dubbed Amasia, will form over the Arctic Ocean. There have been as many as four supercontinents in the Earth's history, and most scientists agree that there is another one in Earth's future, most likely in the next 50 million to 200 million years. Some scientists believe that this will occur through introversion, which is when the young, Atlantic Ocean would close to essentially recreate a futuristic Pangaea, which was centered over Africa. Other scientists have an extroversion hypothesis, where the older Pacific Ocean would close completely, forming a supercontinent on the other side of the Earth. Mitchell and his team believe that the next supercontinent, named Amasia for the convergence of the Americas with Asia, will form according to their orthoversion model. They came up with this model by looking at past supercontinents to see how far apart they had been from each other. Mitchell's team examined the magnetism of ancient rocks to determine the previous patterns of continental plate motion. Through their modeling, they found that there was a distance of 90 degrees between Pangaea and its predecessor, Rodinia, which existed one billion years ago. There was also a distance of 90 degrees between Rodinia and Nuna, which formed 1.8 billion years ago. Due to those measurements, Mitchell and his team inferred that the next continent will also be 90 degrees away from the previous continent, which is called orthoversion. Instead of forming over the Pacific or over the Atlantic, this model predicts that Amasia will form as a result of the closing of the Arctic and Caribbean Seas. Mitchell sees his prediction as a middle ground between the introversion and extroversion theories. Instead of the new supercontinent existing zero degrees or 180 degrees from Pangaea, this one will be 90 degrees from the former supercontinent. Nevertheless, Mitchell's theory is only a model. Hopkins University's Earth and Planetary Sciences professor Peter Olson feels that any type of prediction about the future has to be determined by the past, which is what Mitchell's study is based on. However, he thinks that, since the study is focusing so far into the future, there is no way to know what trends will actually be repeated. Olson is particularly concerned about the fact that Mitchell's theory involves a change in plate tectonic patterns, as North America is currently moving away from Europe. These current trends most likely support the extroversion theory. "He's not arguing that the current trends will produce this; he's arguing that some expected trends will produce this anticipated trend," Olson said. "If the current trends need to be modified, even if you have a good reason why they are going to be modified, you're still asking for a modification. And that's where their prediction becomes more problematic." While there is no way to tell exactly where the next supercontinent will occur, Mitchell believes that studying these trends is important because they contribute to the scientific knowledge of how continental plates move. "There are numerous implications of our result, with relevance both to our concepts of the internal workings of the Earth and to the better understanding of its changing surface geography," Mitchell wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
Valentine's Day is less than a week away, but you don't need a calendar to tell you that. Just turn on a computer, and you'll immediately be bombarded by posts on Facebook about people hating on Valentine's Day, or, even better, people complaining about people hating on Valentine's Day. There are endless ads for Groupons for that special dinner, and various Internet memes making fun of all of the above. From this foray onto my computer, I have come to the realization that you can tell what kind of person one is based on one's thoughts about Valentine's Day.
The idea of "what if" has always been tantalizing, from the children who fantasize about being born into royalty to the adults who wonder what would have happened if they had made one different decision. In reality, it's impossible to know what would have happened in an alternate dimension of one's life. That's where television comes in.
A student discharged a fire extinguisher on the fifth floor of Wolman Hall at approximately 9:50 p.m. Friday night. Mistaking the fire extinguisher emission for smoke, another student pulled the fire alarm and the building was evacuated.
In response to student feedback, the Fresh Food Café (FFC) has made some changes to the food that is served to students every day. At the start of the second semester, there were many new features implemented including a fresh orange-juice machine, a panini station, baked pasta at the pizza station, a revamped salad bar and cereal selection.