TressEx now has some competition. And it looks promising: there is finally a grocery store on campus that seemingly offers decent quality food at decent quality prices.

"The Market at Munger" is located in building 5 of the Munger Graduate Residences, the ludicrously large new pre-fab housing complex behind the Law School that looks like it got lost somewhere between Palm Beach and Orlando.

**UPDATE:
The event has been moved up to 7:30 pm. Getting there early still remains a good idea.**
Senator Joe Lieberman, former Vice-presidential candidate from Connecticut, will be speaking at Dinkelspiel Auditorium on Sunday, Oct. 18. Lieberman is speaking as this year's Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture--named after Stanford alum and newspaper reporter who was killed in Pakistan in 2002--on the topic of "The End of the War on Terror."

While I don't necessarily agree with all of Lieberman's political views, I am very glad to see a political figure speaking on campus. It will be interesting to see whether or not Lieberman steers clear of the most controversial issues surrounding the war, but given that the war itself is pretty controversial, it will be hard for him to avoid.

As the flier notes, there are no tickets; instead, it is first come, first gets seated. So get there early if you want to ensure a good view of the senator's unrivaled jowls.

While browsing HuffingtonPost this morning in an attempt to put off being productive, I saw a picture of the main quad; after doing a double take, I read the headline: Stanford U. Looking to Sell $1 Billion in Assets.

(logo from Stanford Management Company, the company responsible for much of the school's assets )

Reuters reports that our school is looking to shed another billion dollars worth of stuff. The school is apparently "weighing offers" on any of its illiquid assets, meaning that it is considering getting rid of any of the parts of the endowment that are not cold, hard cash--including 'private equity investments' and 'timberlands' (not the shoe or the music producer, but, I believe, forests). Since I have limited knowledge of the school's detailed financial processes and limited knowledge of general finance, I have no way of knowing whether or not this is a good move. Future or current investment bankers of Stanford--I am counting on you to weigh in here.

Regardless, this development proves that the campus clean up was the only fire sale happening on campus.

First of all, Look. At this blog, I serves up that common sense, fresh, out the pot and to yo momma. And If I am making too much sense for you I suggest you check this out. So without further adieu. I'm goin in <---(lil wayne voice)-------- So you know what's the worst?

Spencer Pratt.

No.

I'm not allowed within 500 feet of Megan Fox. (appellate court ruling pending, fingers crossed)

Nope.

It's living in a dorm where all you know is your draw group. I hate walking past people and giving them the "If I look away, you can't see me." Or the empty, "heyyyy, person I see everyday but don't actually know your name," as you pass in the hallway. That's why freshman year is the best, because like it or not, everybody knows everyone's business, but everyone knows everyone. It's like the Real World.

*TANGENT* Did anyone love this past season as much as I did? My favorite roomie was Emilee. I even follow her on twitter. But real talk, why is her name spelled all funky? Her momma must be stupid. creative! *END TANGENT*

I love dorms that are like families. That's why I went straight back to Uj after spending a year in Toyon. That, and like the black guy on the real world always does....I snapped:

Subject: Enough is Enough Toyon!

Tide WITH BLEACH....if you took my shit give it back. i'm not playin. I'm
living in a room with sol next year. needless to say i'm not happy, i'm
black, and most of you are afraid of me anyway...just imagine how it'll be
if i catch somebody using my tide WITH BLEACH. lets just say that yung joc
put it best when he said "If ya got a problem say it to my face, We can
knuckle up any time any place." I know what you're thinking...all this
over some Tide, some TIDE!! but this aint ya momma's Tide, this shit is
the real deal. BLEACH and everything... i don't appreciate my detergent
bein gone. now i got a load of laundry to do, and i wanna do it on the
first floor. i would love for my box to be in there.

As you can clearly see. I temporarily lost it. That wasn't even the worst. As most of my friends can attest to, I actually went through a phase where I carried a baseball bat, a megaphone, and a can of Lysol around the dorm and to the eating clubs. So what's the point of this story?? I dunno, go say hi to the person across the hall and see what they're up to. You could make a new friend...possibly prevent a potential freakout?

**UPDATE: Rumors have circulated that the university will actively police the quad tonight and not allow anyone to be there or to kiss. If this is true, it is by far the most egregious violation of personal rights and the laws of this country that I have ever seen at Stanford. I hope this is not true, and will update as soon as I see for myself.**

The cancellation of Full Moon on the Quad, which was scheduled for tonight's full moon, raises an important question: since when did the administration have the authority to cancel this event?

After all, the sole components of the event--a full moon and being in the main quad--are not in any way controllable by the university. If you think about it, it really doesn't make any sense that the university would have any role in running the affair at all: students gathering on a given day in the quad and doing whatever they want is not something the university should control, have any reason to control, or even want to control at all.

Despite the university's 'cancellation' of this year's Full Moon on the Quad, a large mass of people--unscientifically guesstimated at about 500 or more--gathered in the quad to celebrate and partake in the event.

As noted in the previous blog post, there had been rumors of strict university policing. However, there was minimal police presence and the security was distant and only in place to make sure nobody got hurt. The most surprising presence was actually of a number of administrators, including OSA/SAL director Nanci Howe and Vice Provost of Student Affairs Greg Boardman, who were overseeing the mass of people but, despite my prodding, would not participate in the Full Moon festivities.

I actually spent about an hour talking to Nanci Howe about FMOTQ, student rights, university policies, legal restrictions, the state of New Jersey, and much more. In this conversation, I learned a number of important things:

Firstly, there will not be another Full Moon this year. There were also rumors circulating that the university would sponsor an "official" FMOTQ next month, but Ms. Howe assured me that these rumors were untrue. However, she did say that Full Moon should resume as scheduled next year and would not be shut down for good.

Secondly, we talked about political rallies and she explained the restrictions on political events on campus. As it turns out, any group or student can bring a political speaker to campus as long as it is not 'partisan.' The definition of partisan only refers to, she noted, politicians running for office. And these 'partisan' figures can be on campus as long as they show up for free. This is radically different from what I had previously thought about political events on campus, which I presumed to be much stricter.

Thirdly, she claimed that party policies had not become more harsh recently; rather, she argued, they were the same or even less strict than they had been previously. I noted that groups had been complaining that parties had become much more regulated and expensive, and she only conceded that security costs had indeed risen. Other than that, she claimed, everything was the same as before.

On this topic I hope she is right, but I remain worried given the huge police presence surrounding the row these past two weekends and continued complaints from party-hosting students.

We had a few disagreements over what power the university did or did not have in being able to restrict or shut down student events, but other than that we agreed on most topics regarding the protection of student rights.

I can only hope that Ms. Howe's claims that she and the rest of the administration really want to help students and not restrict any of our rights are indeed true. And to all those who showed up for Full Moon, naked or not, I can only hope you had fun.

We have a disposable society. We love using things once or twice and then throwing them into pits in the ground. Cups, plates, gloves, hats…you name it. Perhaps this tendency towards the disposable is a reflection of our transient, liminal, earthly nature. Everything dies – everything, even our species, will be eventually “disposed of.” But more likely our love of the single serving is a sign of our inability to grasp the scale of our disposable lifestyle.

We are producing sterile, unusable trash outputs faster than we are receiving inputs from our planet. The scales are off. Units are wrong. We’re headed for trouble.

Luckily, a few simple changes in lifestyle can change our trajectory.

Try reuse.stanford.edu the next time you need something for your dorm room. Welcome to the craigslist of Stanford! Bulletin boards, desks, chairs and refrigerators abound. A sweet resource. And let’s face it, used stuff is super trendy right now.

Furthermore, if you’re feeling really saucy consider refusepact.org. This Stanford-produced idea is simple: refuse to use disposables. Bring your own plate/containers/silverware to those wonderful info session lunches. I know I go to them for the free food and am always dismayed by the predominance of flimsy disposable plates/forks/knives that are bound straight for the landfill with my saliva still on them. Join me in refusing disposables and bring your own! Feel nerdy or awkward bringing your own supplies? GET OVER YOURSELF. You are on the cutting edge of a snowballing trend. Be a role model and suck it up.

Stanford Says No to War, an anti-war student group on campus, hosted Noam Chomsky and a number of Bay Area anti-war activists as part of a rally in White Plaza on Sunday. Check out some pictures of the event, which drew a fairly large crowd compared to other politically-charged rallies of recent memory.

Satirical newspaper The Onion has found two new targets with relevance to campus: people who complain about beer being too warm and physics professor-slash-Nobel prize-winner Doug Osheroff.

This week's Opinion piece, written by "Pete Goldwag," is titled: Looks Like We Got Ourselves A Regular Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Douglas Osheroff On Our Hands.

I expect to see Osheroff expounding on why the beer at the parties this weekend is not as cold as it could be, though everyone around said beer will probably leave before the explanation is finished. Unless there's a party at Phi Psi, that is.

The blog is a powerful tool, but can it influence your decision on where to go to college? Apparently, our friendly and socially-awkward semi-rivals at M.I.T. think so, according to an article from the New York Times this week. The admissions office at the school has been hiring students to blog about their life and experiences as a student and posting them--uncensored--on the school's web site for prospective applicants to read.

The article calls it a "powerful marketing tool," and students interviewed by the reporter claim that reading some of these blogs really helped them get a feel for the school and decide they, too, wanted to attend M.I.T. And while other schools, including other semi-rivals of ours, have adopted similar strategies, the blogs at M.I.T. stand out because the admissions office doesn't censor what the students say.

And we thought we were unique: Harvard, too, in the wake of losing a similar percentage of its endowment, has slashed its budget in all kinds of places. The latest victims? Hot breakfasts on weekends and cookies at faculty meetings.

The New York Times reports that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences--Harvard's name for its school of Humanities and Sciences--is facing a deficit of $130 million, has cut $75 million already, and will soon cut more.

Columbus Day: The national holiday only relevant when it results in a day off from school. In fact, the only reason I realized it was Columbus Day at all was some chalking done around highly-trafficked parts of campus denouncing Columbus and the eurocentrism/abuse towards natives that followed his "discovery."

Click "continue reading" to check out the pictures of the chalking--some of which was hilarious and some of which was bitterly angry. In any event, we at TUSB support free speech in any of its forms, whether or not you think Columbus was a douchebag.

That seems to be the only explanation for the exponential increase in number of banners and flags that have appeared all over campus.

The most noticeable of these new morsels of eye candy (of sorts) are the red quarter-circles with an unidentified leaf on them that adorn lampposts and poles along various sections of Campus Drive. The question, here, is not 'do they look nice?'; nor is it why did Stanford spend money on them/who donated them/it was Arrillaga, wasn't it? Rather, the important question here is: what does that leaf mean?

It is a widely known fact that at 3:30, there is a Stanford Football game; however, a lesser known event on campus is the Fall Intramural Quizbowl Tournament, an open competition to anyone on campus to spend the day hitting buzzers and answering trivia questions. To some--including me--quizbowl holds far more potential to be exciting than football; and if sports fanatics can live-blog any football game, so can I live blog any quizbowl match.

UPDATE 9, FINAL UPDATE: Due to the round robin taking forever, there were no playoffs. So we ended up in 3rd place (tied for 3rd, but with the highest point total of those teams by far). The team we lost to at the end won the overall, and the Ralphs took 2nd. This was fun--and maybe we won the football game. Who knows?

Let me just say that I love twitter. I LOVE it, and I seriously don't get why some people are not down with tweeting. First of all, twitter is da bomb. Yes da bomb, like that play in NFL Blitz that EVERYONE used to run. (Good times) So why does it seem like maybe four of my friends are on twitter? Look, I get it. It can seem weird, juvenile, or maybe even daunting. I saw it as a burden to be constantly funny. I mean that's what I was thinking before I decided to jump in. Believe me, tweeting takes practice. You'll probably start off with the "I'm going to eat an apple now." or "taking a sip of some vita water." It's cool. I'll let it slide. You're a noobie. But after a while, you get the hang of it, and start to appreciate all it has to offer.

Things I've learned from Twitter: via Trending Topics

1. #lilmamais creating buzz for her new show w/ kanye called "so you think you can make things awkward"

2. if #SouljaBoyIsGod then I wanna go straight to hell!

3. there are certain #textthatgetnoreply like "ay girl. Remember when I said I aint got no herpes? Psyche, I does got some herpes!"

As far as I can tell, the Board of Trustees operates something like the secret Republican headquarters of The Simpsons (pictured below). However, this is probably not true.

Luckily, there is now an opportunity for anyone interested to find out what the Board of Trustees actually does: an event titled What Does the Board of Trustees Actually Do?

Dear Barclays Global Investors,

I attended Stanford's 2009 Career Fair in White Plaza last week. I have zero interest in working for you or for any of the companies represented, and neither you nor any of the other companies represented should have any interest in hiring me. We have a great symbiotic understanding in that sense.

I attended this event, however, just as I attend every possible Career Fair. This is not to seek out jobs, or marvel at all of the juniors, seniors, and graduate students at Stanford attempt to look professional for a small portion of the day; rather, my attendance is solely based on the ubiquity of free pens and other desktop knickknacks being dispensed like free candy.

It's free advertising, and I'm happy to do it. We have a great symbiotic relationship in that sense.

This building, of course, holds Stanford's new Departments of Murder and Death by Stoning. Next quarter I will hopefully be taking Death by Stoning I: Introduction to Large Blunt Objects--it's a prerequisite for Methods of Torture, taught by Condi Rice.

If there is one thing Stanford lacks, it is good, cheap food. Palo Alto doesn't do anything unless there's a double-digit price tag attached, and the Stanford campus fails to attract the type of vendor that makes quick, fast, tasty, food that maintains part of its appeal because it can only be served in a place with zero available seating.

This has been particularly noticeable since the one eatery that resembled any of these qualities, the Thai Cafe in the basement of the Psych building, was displaced at the end of last year . And with that gone, the next most relevant place on campus that does serve tasty food at reasonable prices is the Treehouse--a place compared to, as I overheard the other day, a "madhouse" during the lunch hour.

The United Nations Association Film Festival (UNAFF) is now on campus--it is day 6 of its overall run, which started in Palo Alto and will conclude on Sunday. This year's slate of films hailing from all over the world are centered around the theme of "Energy and the World," and feature a number of prominent documentary films.

Today's lineup includes films from Tanzania, Ghana, Nepal, Zimbabwe, and Pakistan, and will be held in Annenberg Auditorium. Check out UNAFF.org for complete listings. I saw Sliding Liberia (a film made by former Stanford students) at last year's UNAFF and thought the whole festival was very impressive.

The best whiteboard comment ever.

From Synergy's kitchen board

Kristina Johnson, the Under Secretary of Energy, will be speaking on Monday at Tressider Oak East about clean energy opportunities in the United States. The event is sponsored by Energy Crossroads. Johnson works under former Stanford professor/Nobel prize-winner and all-around awesome Over Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.

As I dive head-first into midterm/paper week without a paddle, I can only offer my best tools to help you be similarly unprepared in your studies.

Even if you've heard of it before, Cake Wrecks blog--When Professional Cakes Go Horribly, Hilariously Wrong--is a highly entertaining time-waster featuring an assortment of sugary treats that either look repulsive, feature inept spellings/decorations, or some combination of both. There are few things more entertaining than human stupidity, and since you are laughing at the cakes, not the people, it's a guilt-free way of releasing a little repressed schadenfreude. Eating the cakes, though--probably not guilt-free.

The most enthusiastic cake ever created.

The Creative Writing Program's 4-minute reading series--an event in which 10 students and 2 Stegner Fellows read four minutes of any work they have written.

This year, the event moves to the co-op Kairos (586 Mayfield) at 7:30 pm. Tonight's reading will feature poetry exclusively, but later iterations of the series, the organizers have told me, will be dedicated to fiction and non-fiction as well.

Check out the flier below, featuring a lonely fork--very poetic.

Unlike Full Moon, which we at TUSB blogged about as Full Moon on the Quad Will Happen, the Mausoleum party will officially happen. Apparently the Junior class presidents have found a way to scrounge up enough money to run the event, which was in danger of being canceled.

Mausoleum Party has declined in recent years, a decline punctuated by last year's event being held in the sterile, psychiatric-ward-evoking viscera of Old Union. However, the obvious peril of the event and the likelihood that it will struggle to exist in the future may bring back enough desperation to make the event fun again. After, all, partying like there's no tomorrow is undoubtedly more fun than partying anywhere in Old Union.

I'm pretty sure that there's not much controversy here, but in the vain hope that the unaware motorized biker will read this, I'll address it anyway. You may have seen (or more likely, heard) one of these demonic baby pocket rockets around campus. The other day I was walking down the thoroughfare on the Green Library side of the Quad, when I heard a buzz-roar coming ever nearer. A motorized bicycle. I was confounded and angry by the time it passed.

A group of students part of something called "Project Love" attempted to inspire some impromptu "unofficial blogging" of sorts in White Plaza today, offering free chalk for people to write anything they wanted on the ground.

There's no such thing as free lunch, but there is such a thing as free chalk at lunchtime.

When hesitant passersby approached Robin Thomas, holder of the Free Chalk sign, they almost always asked the question, "What is this for?" The response to which was, "For fun" or "just because." Other acceptable answers, it seems, just as they are for blogging here on TUSB, were: "express yourself," "free speech," "get a chance to write," "share your thoughts," and "here's a blank canvas--do what you want."

Parking and Transportation Services is sponsoring a photo contest to take pictures of, that's right, the Marguerite shuttle. Spot the new hybrid versions of the bus and take a photo, and you could get your photo on the next Parking and Transportation Services calendar--which is, to be fair, arguably the hottest Parking and Transportation Services calendar in the Bay Area. And next year, hopefully, we will all be able to write our schedules under a picture of Marguerite making a voluptuous hairpin turn past Parking Structure #5.

Sexy.

This popped up recently:
Parkour To Class Day

Imagine all us nerds running, vaulting over benches, somersaulting, jumping off the second floor of Meyer, and doing backflips off of palm tree trunks on our mundane way to class. Date has been set for Thursday, November 5.

If you've never heard of parkour, check the wikipedia article.

Little known fact:The wastewater treatment plant that Stanford sends its water to cannot remove all chemicals from our water before they dump it into the bay. They get the major ones, and treat the water for things that can kill humans, but chemicals from things like birth control and Prozac still get into the bay water and make our fish sterile (albeit un-depressed?).

We can thus assume that the effects of this biodegradable "natural" (whatever that technically means) laundry detergent are less harmful than whatever we're doing to the fishies now.

Eco-friendly laundry detergent. Do it for Nemo.

Stanford likes to outdo itself: as such, if the previous blog post of a Stanford typo was decently unfortunate, a recent typo in a Daily column by Shelley Gao makes it seem downright innocuous.

From her article The GAO Report (Beltway Edition): More Pantsuits in the Halls of Power (why is GAO capitalized? It's not an acronym):

We can look to other institutions for inspiration. For the most part of this week, I was in Cambridge visiting Harvard. The Kennedy School of Government’s “Women and Pubic Policy Program” (WAPPP) is an ideal model, as it fulfils the gap in the gender discourse at Stanford.

Yeah, I didn't notice it the first time I read the paragraph either. But as it turns out, The Kennedy School's program suddenly seems much more appealing to me. Grad school, anyone?

Thanks to commenter "bubba," the only person to comment on the article, for pointing this out.

Like T.I. once said, "it ain't trick'n if you got." Well I got it. So I'mma give it to ya'll straight. No chaser. Fuck Taylor Swift! But we'll get back to her a little bit later on.

Trick'n: You know for all the Halloween parties yesterday, I did not see one Lady GaGa. This upsets me. Lots of where the wild things are *SMH* snore..... Anyway, I love my girl to death, and I'll be real, if she has a penis I'm fucked. Because I have been on her jock for a little over a year now. If I see a girl wearing this contraption at the Mausoleum Party tonight I'm going to wife her up!

Treat'n: Lil Wayne's Mixtape officially came out yesterday. And I gotta say. It's fire. Lil wayne is a master of wordplay, and honestly one of the most intelligent people around. At the grammy's he performed a song dedicated to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, but that often gets overlooked. You should check out his interview with Katie Couric last year. If wayne weren't seen by the mainstream media as a "thug" and often dismissed as just another black gangster rapper, he would be bigger than Kanye. trust. But back to this mixtape titled "No Ceilings." (which btw, I only knew about it because it was trending on twitter) Weezy attacks beats from hit records of the past year ( Run This Town, Ice Cream Paint Job, D.O.A, and Break Up to name a few) and illustrates what makes him so special as an MC. Seriously, listen to track one, then listen to it again, and you'll see that you missed half of the references he makes on the track. It's def, a treat for you to check on this Holiday. Here's a Weezy sample. (It's a beat i'm pretty sure you're familiar with, enjoy)

After spending a solid hour duct taping cardboard boxes together to create part of my costume (as I seem to do every year) I certainly respect the hard work that goes into making a Halloween costume. As such, we at TUSB want to salute the ingenuity, originality, and creativity of this year's Halloween festivities with 2009's Halloween Costume contest.

Keep an eye out for awesome costumes, judged by whatever standards you deem appropriate, and email them to blogforstanford at gmail.com. Take a picture if you can, and you might see your suggestion and/or snapshot appear tomorrow in our follow-up post saluting the best and brightest of Stanford who pour their hearts into something that will meet its demise mere hours later at the hands/bodies/fake weapons of revelers enjoying the Halloween parties.