Protest at Dimensions, the Student Week show

Classes have been cancelled at Dartmouth today. No, Hurricane Sandy has not been resurrected. Nor has a surprise blizzard blown its way into Hanover, burying the campus in snow and halting all meaningful work. The administration has cancelled classes because of a highly polarizing protest that has sparked anger, threats, and hatred throughout the campus.

Dartmouth hosts an accepted students weekend called Dimensions, which essentially the equivalent of ADOCH.  In the middle of a Friday show for prospective students, around 15 protestors barged in, screaming “Dartmouth has a problem!”  The students—holding signs with messages like “I was called a fag in my freshman dorm”—aimed to inform the accepted students about issues of homophobia, racism, and sexual assault on-campus.  We could tell you more, but see for yourself:

The performers from Dimensions hid to avoid conflict with the protestors, who were eventually shut down when one prospective student started a group chant of “We Love Dartmouth.”

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During one of my scroll sessions through the Brown University Compliments page (presented by BlogDailyHerald), getting my daily fix of insane jealousy the warm-and-fuzzies, I noticed something a little weird. After reading a few dozen compliments, the words “beautiful,” “life,” “caring,” and “kind” basically meant nothing to me anymore. It was kind of freaky. But I kept scrolling. To my amazement, I couldn’t find a single compliment that didn’t use at least one of about ten select words.

So, like any rational person, my first thought was to verify my somewhat biased findings by downloading every single compliment ever posted on the page, as well as a few classic novels from Project Gutenberg, and running some stats on them. Here’s what I found (click on the image below to enlarge):

So apparently, compliments on the page use “life” and “lives” more often than Mary Shelley did when she wrote a book about the creation of life. Next, the number of characters per word in the same texts (click on the image below to enlarge):

No comment on this one, except that if you send me a compliment, it better have an average of at least 15 characters per word.

Anyway, these stats revealed to me the magical formula for writing the best compliments ever. And now you, too, can give someone the most amazingly beautiful and genuinely passionate compliment without even having to think about it! Just hit the button below and copy-pasta to your heart’s delight.

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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A list of Alain Macklovitch’s countless achievements as a DJ, producer, performer and entrepreneur would make for a pretty substantial profile—but Liam has already noted many of these in his great piece “Why A-Trak is the best choice for Spring Weekend’s electronic musician.” So curricula vitae aside, what is A-Trak going to bring to the table (besides perhaps the most suitable dance track for describing what far too many students will be doing on Friday, April 19)? A great goddamn DJ set. That’s what. Although I’ve left my EDM obsession in 2010, A-Trak’s surprise set at Ed Banger’s 7th Anniversary remains one of my top concert memories. Mixing turntable prowess (prowess might even be an understatement) with a deep knowledge of all genres of dance music, A-Trak provides a unique experience that’s impressive to diehards and dilettantes. Familiarize yourself with some of his production work and treat yourself to an exemplary set after the jump. [Read more →]

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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As the all-nighter delirium sets in, your Louis eggs may turn into bear heads.

A few weeks ago, I did the SciLi challenge. No, not that SciLi challenge—think of this as the nighttime, SciLi version of the Ratty challenge. I spent all night in the SciLi, and capped it off with a little Louis. Like the Ratty challenge, my all-nighter consisted of food, some work, more food, and a hallucination or two.

For some, the all-nighter is a routine experience the night before that weekly problem set is due; for others, it’s only done on weekend nights when partying til the a.m. I had never pulled a real all-nighter before, so for the sake of journalism (and the fact that I had to finish two problem sets by the next morning), I did the new SciLi challenge and recorded my experiences gradual descent into delirium.

9:00 p.m. Guys, I think we can finish this problem set before midnight!

Spoiler alert: This did not happen.
Problems completed: 0/6

9:28 p.m. What the fuck is this shit? Physics? Ain’t nobody got time for that.

10:00 p.m. “Sorry y’all, we have this room reserved.” Really? You actually have the nerve to—okay fine, whatever. We move to another SciLi study room.

11:00 p.m. “Hey guys, sorry but we have this room—” Reserved, yeah, we get it, alright? We move to a third study room.

11:44 p.m. I GOT ONE! I GOT A PROBLEM GUYS!

Problems completed: 1/6

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Sadie Kurzban ’12 has completely changed the fitness landscape with her disruptive fitness concept, 305 Fitness. The dynamic 305 Fitness workout is not your typical cardio workout: it encourages you to trade in that boring, rinse-and-repeat gym routine for an intense, sexy, and invigorating cardio dance party (complete with a live DJ, glow sticks, and tons of sweat) that you’ll absolutely love.

While you may have read about how much we loved the 305 Fitness classes we attended here on College Hill last semester, the high-energy fitness craze that “make[s] sweat sexy” is gaining incredible traction beyond our Brunonian bubble. Sadie and 305 Fitness, which she launched in New York City this past fall, have been featured in several major media publications, including TIME, The Huffington Post, and Fast Company. We thought we’d follow suit and ask Sadie some of BlogDH’s most pressing questions.

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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There are times when it is necessary for the Brown community to come together, as a community, to help one of our own. We have been swamped with midterms, and we are about to go away and vacation for spring break. Before we leave, however, it is critical that we do what we can to help a fellow student.

Sunil Tripathi, a former member of the class of 2012, went missing Saturday morning from his Providence apartment on Angell Street. He was last seen on Friday, March 15. He has brown eyes, short brown hair, weighs 130 pounds and is 6 foot 2 inches tall. He was last seen wearing a Philadelphia Eagles beanie, jeans, and a black sweatshirt.  Tripathi had a history of depression, and left a note indicating suicidal intent.

Tripathi’s family and friends are extremely worried, and the Providence Police Department is conducting an extensive search. Please  “like” and share the Facebook page about his search. If you have any information, call the police at (401) 243-6191.

Image via.