Believe it or not, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is STILL playing.  Thankfully, our friends at the Avon have also added the German mystery/thriller The White Ribbon into the mix.  As a series of bizarre incidents (including some unfortunate cases of torture and a fire or two) rock a Northern Germany town in the years preceding WWI,  the local schoolteacher finds himself looking in the oddest of places for the culprit.  If you’re still recouping from Spring Weekend, this might just be a good alternative to a good ol’ Thirsty Thursday.

The White Ribbon plays each night at 6:15.

Do you remember all of the intellectually stimulating discussions about the assigned summer reading that you shared with other freshmen during Orientation?

Yeah, neither do we. What finch beaks? Where are the places in between? Proust who?

But maybe 2014ers will actually read their assigned book this year, since it’s a work of fiction by acclaimed Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat. Titled The Dew Breaker, the novel promises prison guards, torture and Brooklyn. What could be better?

Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Mustafa Barghouti will speak Thursday night at 7 pm in Barus and Holley 168. The Palestinian medical doctor and peace advocate came in second to Mahmoud Abbas in the 2005 elections for president of the Palestinian National Authority. On Wednesday evening, he spoke to The Brown Daily Herald.

The Herald: What will you be discussing in your talk?

Barghouti: First of all, I will make introduction to the situation in Palestine because I think people know very little about it, because the media here does not show much and I think there is a need to tell the narrative about the situation. And then I will speak about the rise in the power of non-violent struggle, and the importance of non-violence. Maybe I will speak about what others can learn from Palestinian struggle as well.

What do you say to Palestinians who feel so disenfranchised that they see violent uprisings as their only remaining option to protest Israeli occupation?

What is not very well known is that in most of the time — I cannot give a percentage — but if I might, I would say maybe more than 90 percent of the time of our history — in the last century — our struggle was non-violent. The problem is that the media does not show that. When there is something violent, they emphasize it. [Read more →]

The famous Connecticut quadruplets who were accepted early into Yale indeed will all become bulldogs, the students confirmed.  We definitely don’t want Yale to start shit or even more shit, so there’s no reason to speculate as to why all four got waitlisted at Brown (or accepted/rejected from other places).  As much as one Eli might want, there is no Brown-Yale rivalry.

For the sake of our print budget, I’m just relieved that The Herald won’t have to write about any parents who are P’14 P’14 P’14 P’14.

Rhode Island’s First Congressional District may have a Cook PVI of D+13, but Republican John Loughlin, currently the State House Minority Whip, will be looking to pull a Scott Brown this fall and turn another Kennedy seat red. Loughlin had almost $190,000 on hand through the first quarter of fundraising, and is heading to New York City next week to raise money with the help of Rudy Giuliani. This is not the first time a major national figure in the Republican Party has helped bring in money for Loughlin–earlier this year Senator John McCain joined him at a fundraiser in Washington.

In other RI-1 news, speculation abounds about a possible run by State Rep. David Segal (if you’re unfamiliar with Segal, check out this article). Rhode Island liberals are excited about the possibility of Segal entering the race.

And our own Governor Donald Carcieri was named to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s list of worst governors. The group is generally considered left-leaning, and a Carcieri spokeswoman argued the report can’t be considered authoritative.

Today’s Morning Mail had a submission about Brown’s plans for a new website. The message provided a link to a survey about three possible templates for the new Brown website. As we all know, the current one is a bit…drab. It’s pretty outdated to say the least, and not very exciting.

Brown finally realized there were serious problems with the site, and the new templates are completely different from the current site.

To check them out and to give your input, go to the survey here. As they say in the message, it really doesn’t take more than 10 minutes, so give it a shot.

Immigrant activists in Rhode Island are calling for a boycott of Arizona in the wake of the state’s new law that would allow police to detain anyone they suspected of being an illegal immigrant. These Rhode Island activists are planning protests on May 1, International Workers’ Day, against the law “so that it doesn’t become law in Rhode Island,” Committee of Immigrants in Action Head Juan Garcia said.

The Warwick City Council unanimously passed an ordinance Monday that would require all pit bulls and related breeds in the city to be spayed or neutered unless they are owned by licensed breeders. The proposal still needs to go through second passage, but although the American Kennel Club has spoken out against any measure that targets specific breeds, the director of the Warwick Animal Shelter supports the proposal because she hopes it will lead to fewer abandoned pit bulls. Other cities in the state, like Pawtucket and Central Falls, have banned pit bulls altogether.

A poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports shows Rhode Island gubernatorial candidates Lincoln Chafee and Frank Caprio as “dead even” in the race. Each has the support of 33 percent of likely voters. Chafee’s numbers have dropped; a month ago, he led Caprio by 11 points.

You never know what you’re going to find on the Main Green.

While heading to class today, some of you may have seen this:

Cute.

Jason Lee ’12 won 58.2 percent of the vote to become vice-chair of the Undergraduate Finance Board over Tyler Rosenbaum ’11. Only 455 votes were cast.

A nifty Adult Swim game that’s not for the weak-stomached.