Posts by Ana Colón

Let's hope this isn't in the Toys 'R' Us catalog.

The TSA stopped a man and his son at the security screening area of T.F. Green this morning after the X-ray machine picked up on the 4-year-old’s stuffed animals’ hidden carry-ons… Each of the otherwise friendly toys contained “parts that could be assembled into a loaded handgun,” according to a TSA officer quoted in a CNN article on the incident. The father claimed not to have known the gun parts were inside his son’s toys, and the pair proceeded with their travels. Casual. Apparently the reason for the hidden gun is related to “a domestic dispute.” (????) Check out this video for some prime teddy bear footage.

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It’s time for a history lesson: Cinco de Mayo is not the date of the independence of Mexico. Is that going to stop people from getting friendly with José Cuervo and donning sombreros? Probably not. If you still haven’t planned your noche, here’s something to consider: In-Downcity Providence is closing down Westminster Street from 4 to 8 p.m. on the fifth of May for a full-blown fiesta. With appearances from food truck legend Mijos Tacos and our very own Mariachi de Brown, the Cinco de Mayo Block Party is as authentic as it gets in New England. (FYI: It’s not very authentic. But it’s a pretty good attempt.) If mariachi music is not your cup of té, the people from Craftland will be making piñatas for you to take out your finals week anger on smash. ¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo, everyone!

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It’s that time of the year again! The ever-generous Starbucks gods have announced the return of Frappuccino Happy Hour! Today through May 13, you can go to Starbucks any time between 3 and 5 p.m., unabashedly order your favorite Frappuccino drank and get it half off! Just because we’re not middle school preteens who exclusively wear sweatpants and Abercrombie jeans doesn’t mean we can’t indulge in a Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino every once in a while. So leave the SciLi stacks and treat yo’self to a venti. After all, it’s reading period and it’s not going to get much better.

But where do you come from, pensive dog?! (J-play, this one's credited.)

In honor of reading period’s kickoff, we are making the transition from time-wasters to study breaks. Same deal, just more of them (and a different name). Good luck studying (and breaking)!

Reading period is not a happy time. You’re still attempting to relive Spring Weekend by immersing yourself in Community, the beautiful warmth of Spring Week seems to have gone for good — hell, you still can’t get over the fact Spring Week ended. The last thing you want to do is study for finals. Luckily, BuzzFeed has racked up production on their cute animal lists, just in time for reading period. (Was this planned? Is it a coincidence? Ask these existential animals.) In dark times like these, you don’t question where these pictures of animals, who are clearly concerned about your well being, came from. Despite BuzzFeed’s good intentions for improving your day, one journalist from The Atlantic raised an eyebrow to BuzzFeed’s uncredited pictures. He went straight to the head honcho of BuzzFeed, Jonah Peretti, to find out where BuzzFeed gets its cute but uncredited pictures from. The full interview can be found here. But (spoiler alert!) the answer should not come as a shock: They get a lot of their uncredited content from Tumblr, Pinterest, and 4chan, where copyright infringement doesn’t exist (or rather, users are protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and is just a figment of that rude Anon‘s imagination. But it’s okay, this chihuahua promises to “make everything better.”

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After two years of nagging, pleading, and incessantly bragging about the grandeur of Thayer Street at lunchtime, I finally achieved the seemingly impossible: I convinced my friend from home to come visit me. In a very fortunate turn of events, our availability matched up on Spring Weekend. If you haven’t caught on by the midnight raging on Wriston our festive banner, Spring Weekend is kind of a big deal. However, your non-Brunonian friend might not know that.

My goal for this weekend: convince my friend that Brown, Spring Weekend, and everything that goes with them, are awesome. So if your friend, sibling, or acquaintance from ADOCH who chose Harvard is crashing on your floor for the most wonderful time of the academic calendar, here’s a guide to making Spring Weekend as authentic and memorable for your friend as possible, after the jump.  [Read more →]

If you own a smartphone, you may have already fallen for the most addicting craze since Words with Friends. DrawSomething, a Pictionary-like game, has recently developed a cult following, with amateurs and artists alike bonding over the beauty of collaborative play.

We three bloggers thought it would be fun to interpret Brown through doodles, using DrawSomething as our artistic medium. For a week, we challenged each other to depict Brunonia-related words using the limited DrawSomething palette (hey, not all of us have enough coins for all those color expansion packs). We now present to you the fruits of our labor: a series of drawings, ranked from Easy to RISD, of what Brown looks like on DrawSomething:

EASY

SciLi

Image via The Dartmouth

If you’re not fighting in the first night of the Shelter Games, here’s an event to stimulate your brain as your peers battle it out for 315 Thayer.

The Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World presents Leonardo López Luján, one of the leading Mesoamerican archaeologists in the world. He will be giving two lectures on campus this week: one on Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Moon and the other on Tenochtitlan’s Templo Mayor. López Luján has written over nineteen books and eighty articles on Mesoamerica and is one of the most respected figures in the study of Tenochtitlan and Teotihuacan.

López Luján will discuss his current research at the Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan on Tuesday at 12 p.m. in Rhode Island Hall 108. On Wednesday evening at 5:30 p.m., he will return to the same classroom to talk about Templo Mayor, where he has served as director of archaeological projects since 1991.

For those not well-versed in Mesoamerican archaeology, Teotihuacan is like the Atlantis of Mesoamerican archaeology (aside from the fact that it lacks its own Disney movie…and isn’t quite a mythical city under the sea). One of the most powerful and influential civilizations of pre-Columbian times, Teotihuacan fell in a mysterious collapse in the 5th century AD. Close your eyes and think of Mexico before the arrival of Spanish conquistadors; the elaborate pyramids that come to mind probably resemble those that are found at the Teotihuacan site. Tenochtitlan came later and rose as the capital of the Aztec empire before the Spanish conquest.

There will also be pizza at both events. Can’t say no to that.

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EcoRI News reports that the beloved Farmers Market — typically held on Wriston Quad and co-managed by Farm Fresh Rhode Island and Brown Dining Services  — will make its spring debut in the Jewelry District at Ship Street Square tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The Farmers Market will take place every Tuesday at this location through May 1; while this is exciting news for the med school students that have been on rounds for 36 hours, we undergraduates must take the BrownMed/Downcity Express (stop #7, in case you were wondering) to buy our crisp apples and organic baked goods. Also making appearances at this week’s Farmers Market are a couple of our favorite Thayer Street visitors: Mama Kim’s and Mijo’s Tacos. Guess we’ll have to wait until the fall for the return of the beloved cow on Wriston…

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We know it’s been a long week. We also know it’s just Tuesday — we don’t judge. Luckily, today will be a good day. Why? Because it’s FREE CONE DAY AT BEN & JERRY’S! If you’re still bummed because you missed IHOP’s National Pancake Day, fear not: you don’t need a Zipcar to enjoy this sweet deal. Head over to the dangerously close convenient Ben & Jerry’s scoop shop on Meeting St. anytime today from noon to 8:00 p.m. for your free cone.

If you’re really intense about your free ice cream, go to our local shop’s website to check out the selection of flavors available to plan strategically. Ben & Jerry’s recently launched a Greek frozen yogurt line, and while it might be too adventurous, it’s still free. It’s all about the big picture, people.

If you’re reading this during class, get off the Internet start devising your game plan now. Last year’s line got pretty cray pretty fast, so plan accordingly. Also, be respectful of those around you and don’t cut in line. It’s not in the spirit of free ice cream. Spread the love, it’s the Ben & Jerry’s way.

Hey there, sophomores. Think back to when you first got accepted Brown. All your friends (and their obnoxiously competitive parents) would ask you why you chose Brown over, say, that other school. You’d nonchalantly speak of the open curriculum — ah, such a wondrous concept! — in which you have the flexibility to take classes in any department you choose, mix and match lectures and seminars to your liking, and not have to deal with pesky distribution requirements. You get the bragging rights of the Ivy League with the flexibility of a liberal arts program. #winning.

Then second semester of sophomore year hits. You automatically delete skim over all the ASK and Curricular Advising e-mails — you don’t possibly have to think about this now, it’s only January, right? But before you know it, March rolls around. You’re sunbathing on the Main Green and casually checking your Facebook when you see that your acquaintance from orientation has posted a status update: “Officially declared in _______!” Crap.

Better move those emails from trash to your inbox, friends. It’s almost April 1, which means it’s time to declare your concentration (haha, very funny, Advising Central. April Fools?) and actually decide which department you can stand like the most. You’re either dead set on one, or have absolutely no idea where to go from your ENGL/AMCV/ECON/GEOL schedule. If you fall in the latter category, you’re in luck: BlogDH has put together a little personality test that will help you determine which concentration is most compatible with your interests. Yuuup, we just went all Seventeen magazine on yo’ ass. Check it out after the jump.

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