According to a representative from Student Housing:

"The emergency water and food ration bars in the dumpster are Student Housing emergency supplies that have in fact expired. I did consult with Julie Muir our fantastic Recycling Program Manager at Peninsula Sanitary Service, and the University’s Surplus Property program to see if there was some way we could donate the supplies. However, we determined that because they are expired we could not risk human consumption, and the person-power it would take to open the individual containers to use the water for other purposes made that infeasible. Thus I made the difficult decision to dispose of the items. I will make every effort to do better with future emergency supplies by recommending we find ways to use stored supplies before their expiration date."

In summary:
1) The water is probably fine to drink (as previously determined)
2) Other food you find in the dumpster is a little more eat-at-your-own-risk

Props to housing for reaching out to PSSI (that's the recycling center on campus) to try to dispose of this stuff responsibly. And props to the universe for not cursing us with a disaster. But as pointed out above, it would be awful nice if all this stuff didn't have to go to waste. I guess that's up to the dumpster divers to solve.

According to an anonymous source, word on the street is that at this very moment "there's an entire enormous dumpster full of packaged water that was thrown out earlier this week between bob and theta Delt...The water seems to be past it's expiration date (whatever that means for water)...At the very least it may be worth salvaging some"

My gut environmentalist's first question is of course, "WHY WOULD YOU EVER BUY BOTTLED WATER??"
My second, more reasonable question is, "Wait, water can expire?"

Obviously to attempt to solve the mystery of this supposed 'expiration' I jump to my BFF, http://www.chacha.com/. The answer to my query? As follows:

"The FDA states that bottled water that has been bottled and stored properly does not expire."
"FDA states that it has no limit on shelf life if stored properly. Some laws and retailers require and insist on an exp. date."

Aha! It does not expire! And so my bottled-water drinking friends, I bestow upon you this knowledge of free packaged water in the dumpster between Bob and Theta Delt. Drink up.

The New York Times has been giving a whole slew of attention to Stanford recently--and for those who have given up reading newspapers in favor of problem sets and papers, here's a recap:

The Times profiled Stanford running back Toby Gerhart, who has been instrumental all season (and particularly helpful in obliterating highly-ranked Pac-10 foes Oregon and USC), as he becomes a likely contender for the Heisman trophy.

The Times' editorial observer writes about the diversity of bicyclists and their equally varied transportation devices on Stanford's campus.

As mentioned earlier on TUSB, Stanford and Google have teamed up to move the dissertation-publishing process online.

While not directly related to Stanford itself, the paper reports very big news from secondary education in California: the California Board of Regents has decided to raise tuition at UC schools by 32% to help keep the UC system afloat.

Other Stanford appearances in major news media? Comment or email it to blogforstanford@gmail.com.

Following in the great footsteps of overseas trips before us...
including this awesome trick that apparently got students in trouble with the Italian police several years ago:

...A couple of Overseas Programs decided to celebrate Big Game week with a little international flavour:

Florence:

Ponte Vecchio

Oxford:

Radcliffe Camera

Stanford House

Australia:

GO CARD!

Props to Alexis Arnold, Shruti Tibrewala and Joyce Truong for the pictures!

Big Game week at Stanford (and Cal) features plenty of Cardinal-Golden Bear showdowns, even outside of the football game itself. There is the Big Game Blood Drive (who can donate more), the Big Drive (canned food collecting), and there is the most unique--and by far the most interesting--Stanford-Cal competition of all: The Big Wheel, a 5v5 unicycle basketball game.

That's right--during halftime of the Stanford women's basketball game today (11/19 vs. Pepperdine), rival unheralded unicycle basketball players will face off to determine who gets to hold the bragging rights as the better one-wheeled hoopsters. For those who care more about circuses and less about football, this game might be the one to watch this week.

This year's Big Game Gaieties, Stanford's pre-Big Game comedy musical extravaganza, premieres tonight in Memorial Auditorium. And, as in years past, it will make fun of campus groups, feature plenty of nudity, and more than enough scatological humor to appease even the most lewd Stanford students. As such, this year's show is the epitome of what the modern Gaieties has become: the perfect example of why Gaieties could be, and should be, so much better than it is right now.

I say this from the point of view of someone who has been a member of the writing staff for the past two years. The actors, directors, and producers perform the marvelous feat of completing the show in a mere two months, and for this they deserve major credit. The fault, then, does not lie in the performance of Gaieties--it is in the writing of the show, which has pushed the play into a spectacle that is not even close to being the best show Stanford students can create.

Continue reading "Why Gaieties Could Be So Much Better" »

This week on TUSGraph, I've prepared a lesson in sports history. The graph shows the points for (black) and against (red) USC over the past three years. That red line only occasionally peaks above the black one, but I've marked the only times anyone ever cares about USC at Stanford. I was hoping a visual representation might highlight two things:

1. How amazing our victory was in 2007
2. How amazing our victory was in 2009

Still not getting it? Pretend Stanford football is the guy, and USC is the watermelon.

Now for some predictions. Based on highly scientific math, we can predict the score of Big Game.

In 2007, we beat USC by 1 point, and Cal by 7.
In 2009, we beat USC by 34 points, and....

Well, it doesn't take a non-fuzzy to show that we're going to beat Cal by 238 points this year (34 * (7/1)). Thanks for following Graphematics!

BEAT CAL!

The paperless trend has taken another leap forward at Stanford: doctoral dissertations, the lengthy piles of paper that culminate the work of Stanford PhD students, will now be published online.

Unsurprisingly, Stanford mega-start-up Google is behind the new idea, which makes Stanford "the first university to take the whole dissertation approval and publishing process electronic." The new paperless plan also saves money (printing and distribution costs), space (our library is only so big), and makes it much simpler to view and read published dissertations.

The only problem: nobody really wants to read dissertations.

Jim Harbaugh might be the best thing that has ever happened to Stanford football. Since he became head coach, he has engineered a complete turnaround of the team--the culmination of which was yesterday's resounding defeat of USC. And while his ability and success would normally dictate a salary raise, I stand firm in my conviction that giving Jim Harbaugh an enormously lucrative new contract right now--as is about to happen--is reprehensible and shows that Stanford's priorities are extraordinarily misguided.

I don't even dislike Harbaugh--I might even have a touch of the wildly contagious Jim Harbaugh fever, which seems to be the newest incarnation of swine flu. But in the midst of an economic recession that has ravaged the athletics department, to increase Harbaugh's base salary to around 1.25 million dollars per year is ridiculous.

Continue reading "Harbaugh is a Great Football Coach, but His New Contract is Ludicrous and Repugnant" »

Two years ago, Stanford's football team needed a 4th and 10 one-handed catch in the endzone to defeat perennial football powerhouse USC. This year, the team not only upset USC again, but did it in style--winning by an improbably large 55-21 margin.

Granted, this win is slightly less heroic since Stanford (now 7-3) is actually a good team this year with an impressive record, and USC (now also 7-3) seems to be slowly fading from the heights they reached with Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, and Carson Palmer. But USC football is still USC football, and Stanford football is still Stanford football, so any victory over the Trojans is impressive nonetheless.

Continue reading "Stanford Football Crushes USC" »

Welcome to the first installment of Aural Fixation, the Unofficial way to stay abreast of musical goings-on in the Bay Area and beyond.

Them Crooked Vultures is what you get when you combine the bassist from Led Zeppelin, the drummer from Nirvana, and the guitarist from Queens of the Stone Age. If you enjoy bluesy and soul-crushing rock music, then this convergence should be a serious cause for celebration. John Paul Jones (bass), Dave Grohl (drums), and Josh Homme (guitar) aren't doing anything revolutionary, but they're laying down some heavy music and doing it quite well.

Their self-titled debut album is due out November 17th, but they've generously allowed the album to be streamed in its entirety in advance of the official album release. Them Crooked Vultures will be also landing in the Bay Area next Thursday the 19th for a show at Oakland's Fox Theater. Check out the album at themcrookedvultures.com.

Keep your ears to the ground,

Ian

From rankings, at least. While Stanford has an on-again-off-again attitude towards college rankings such as the U.S. News and World Report's annual statistics related to our continued appearance in the top 5 best colleges, Stanford's president, John Hennessy, didn't manage to make a similar list--Time Magazine's top 10 University Presidents.

In fact, none of the presidents of the "powerhouse schools"--schools such as Stanford, the techstitutions (MIT/Caltech), or the Ivy League--were to be found on this list, which instead favored presidents of bigger public schools (Ohio State, Michigan) and unknown schools (UT Brownsville, Miami Dade College). Heading the list, though, is Ohio State's E. Gordon Gee, who also happens to be the country's highest paid president of a public school with a salary of about 1.3 million dollars per year.

Continue reading "Hennessy Can't Get No Love" »

Two emails have been making the circuits lately, and both highlight interesting aspects of the Stanford community/experience.

The first is an invitation to an event with that intends to address the 1 in 4 depression rate at Stanford by "just good old venting and problem-solving" by those feeling the effects of an inexplicable drear just below the surface of each day. Thursday, November 12 at 9:00 pm in Old Union 216C. (See below for the complete email and my brief opinion).

The second is certainly more frivolous. It's a blog in the vein of FML where the catch phrase has been altered to: SMIF (Saving Money Is Fun!). The blog is the project of the ASES frosh intern team (whatever that is) and was designed to compete in the Global Innovation Tournament, which asks its entrants to find innovative ways to making saving money fun. SMIF Blog

(Read more below the jump)

Continue reading "Unfulfillment and SMIF" »

To mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Stanford students tore down a replica wall in White Plaza--captured on video below. Unfortunately, the wall was a little too well built in places--the protesters had some trouble tearing down sections of the mock wall.

If you haven't been in an accident in the circle of death, you will. Luckily, TUSB is here to help you learn the (lack of) rules of the road.

1) As you can see, in section 'A' anarchy takes hold: make up your own rules. Ride through the middle, do a wheelie while going counterclockwise, do whatever you want. This works perfectly, until you get more than a few people making up their own rules. As soon as you get an athlete going 50 mph clockwise and a freshman on a cruiser bike going counterclockwise, the death rate rises at an astonishing rate.

Continue reading "TUSGraph: Circle of Death" »