Posts by Jason Hu

Looking for a good-luck omen during finals period? Look no further than the sky… in Australia.

At 4:25 today, you can watch via SOOH’s live video feed the annular solar eclipse happening in the Southern Hemisphere. Since the moon is at its furthest point from the Earth while passing in front of the sun, it’ll form a particularly bright halo called the Ring of Fire.

And if you missed it? The next solar eclipse will be in our backyard will be this November 3rd.

Image via.

Go outside. Like, right now. Spring might have decided to show up fashionably late this year, and we might still be a bit bitter from the overcast Spring Weekend. But the sun is out, the grass is soft, and it’s socially acceptable to take off clothing during the day.

On a day that’s as nice as today is, here’s what you should be doing:

1. Iced, iced coffee

If you’re not drinking liters of iced coffee, you’re doing it wrong. Because, seriously, who’s going to need Flex Points in two weeks from now? Alternatively, find out when fresh baked cookies come out of the Blue Room oven and attack like a cloud of descending locust.

2. Throw a frisbee.

Or, if you’re like me, get hit by a Frisbee.

3. Get a farmer’s tan…

… and then lose it. Let’s lose those shirts and show some skin. Who cares if you’re shivering because it’s just a few degrees too cold for your outfit? Refuse to put on a sweatshirt because you look too damn good.

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Spring Week is mysterious to freshmen. By this point in our second semester, few things still make us feel like freshmen; we have studying regimes, and there are currently young ADOCH pre-frosh wandering around, reminding us that we’re not even close to as confused as they are. We seem to have it all together.

But Spring Week(end) reminds us that we have not actually been here all that long. Because if you don’t know who Binder is, you don’t know anything.

It’s also difficult to find out things about Spring Week(end).

“Why is it Spring Week? What are the week elements?”

“Because it’s a whole week!!! And it’s the best week ever.”

That is really about as much you can get out of anyone about The Greatness of Spring Weekend. I’m thinking this has to do with the magic really being that inexplicable, and also intoxication reasons.

According to Wikipedia, which is always the solution, here is the most important element of the next six days:

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Despite efforts to ensure that last year’s Spring Weekend ticket clusterfuck would never happen again, history seemed to repeat itself this morning. Spring Weekend ticket sale malfunctions? It must be spring! But you shouldn’t blame BCA. It was clearly a problem with the TouchNet payment processor that has exclusive contact with Brown. According to BCA’s most recent update, the only way you’ll know that you have successfully purchased tickets is if you have already received an e-mail confirmation. If you are one of the many frustrated confused exhausted people whose credit cards were charged but did neither received tickets nor e-mail confirmations, all processing/pending charges will be removed from your statement within 48 hours, according to BCA.

Don’t lose all hope…at least not yet. BCA also announced that both tonight (4/15) at 8 p.m and tomorrow (4/16) at 7 a.m. an additional 1250 tickets per concert will be released.

Here are some funny statuses to keep your mind off the stressful Lord of the Flies dynamic into which we seem to have devolved. Hey, at least we’re not alone…

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In case you missed the news, the Engineering Department got a generous donation of $44 million. The University is probably going to be spending it on boring practical things, like infrastructure, but Blog would like to remind the Corporation that this is Brown—incubator of crazy, innovative, and not-necessarily-feasible ideas. Thus, we present a list of suggestions of what we’d do with $44 million and faculty doing awesome research.

1. Martian Housing

I mean, we already have professors who send robots to Mars. How hard could building a new dorm on the Red Planet be? This could be for the students who really, really want to study abroad. Besides, it couldn’t be a worse trip than going to Perkins.

2. Weather Machine

Of course, there are the practical applications, such as global climate change, and professors here are doing really cool work on that. But really, that’s missing the bigger picture: Never a rainy Spring Weekend ever again. Spontaneous snowball fights in spring. No more freak Halloween snowstorms.

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The time has come for another exhilarating, drunk season of Game of Thrones. What does the future hold for the land of Westeros? More importantly, what does this season mean for your liver?

Behold, the Game of Thrones Drinking Game: Brown Edition. Take the quiz below to get sorted into a house and let the fun begin.

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The $10 holiday shopping challenge is back, and this time with some good ole’ fashioned Blog v. Blog competition. Looking for the most bang for your Valentine buck? Well we are here to help. Who said wooing your sweetheart had to break the bank? It’s the thought (and $10) that counts, right?

While I took my $10 budget to CVS, Jason headed to East Side Mini Mart to see which convenience store would prove to be the most fruitful in our pursuit of a seemingly-expensive wow-worthy Valentine.

CVS:
- Singing Hallmark Card – $4.99
- Russell Stover Assorted Chocolates – $4.99
TOTAL: $9.98

East Side Mini Mart:
- Lays BBQ Flavor Chips – $2.00 (on sale)
- Easy Mac – $2.69 (giggle)
- Ben+Jerry’s – $5.60 (big money!)
TOTAL: $10.29

Bottom Line: If you’re looking for the route of the classic romantic, CVS is your destination. C’mon, you can’t really go wrong with Hallmark and chocolate. Though many say that the way to a college student’s heart is through convenience foods, I don’t know if Easy Mac is going to get you “lucky” this Valentine’s Day.

Judging from the veritable army of snowmen outside, snow-engineering is the school’s biggest new independent concentration. But because we love facilities for saving the world and keeping the end of days from happening, here’s a handy approval matrix between snow-bound shenanigans and accidentally causing a five-car pileup from a stray snowball.