The Bowdoin Orient

Perennial groans regarding the inadequacies of the College's Internet connectivity may finally fall silent. The College has nearly completed the installation of the world's fastest wireless technology, a process which began in early December. Mitch Davis, Bowdoin's chief information officer, negotiated a deal with Cisco that brought the company's brand new, top-of-the-line wireless system to campus, placing Bowdoin among the first three organizations to receive a shipment of the company's new Aironet 3600 Series wireless access points.

With the application deadline for College House residency just around the corner, interested students will be subject to a new interview process designed to improve the increasingly competitive College House application process. The new method is meant to be more personal and to grant current College House members a larger role in choosing new residents.

The College announced Tuesday that Michael Bartini will replace Stephen Joyce as the director of student aid. Bartini will begin working at the College this week, but will not officially replace Joyce until July.

The Orbit, which replaced the Student Digest last spring as the College's announcement network, is in flux once again.

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) presented projects for the coming weeks and settled lingering matters from last semester this Wednesday in its first session of 2012.

Seventy-six would-be members of the Vassar College Class of 2016 had to put a cork in their festivities last Friday after finding out that the college had, in fact, not intended to offer them admission.

The students behind Mass Deactivation presented a challenge to the Bowdoin community this week, urging students to deactivate their Facebook accounts for exactly one month starting on February 8. The premise of the experiment is to re-experience what life would be like without the social network, and creators Tyler Patton '12 and Ruiqi Tang '13 think that Bowdoin—as close-knit as it is tech-saturated—is the perfect environment in which to do so. And they're right.

There were two major developments over this winter break. Both the Republican Party and the "Bowdoin Hello" were put on notice. Now, as a dedicated Bowdoin student and an avid politics junkie, the prospective retirement of these two institutional staples has me scrambling to figure out what happened.

I attended a Bowdoin men's hockey game last December with an old friend whose son is a Bowdoin student. Great hockey, great arena. But the deafening musical assault—which relentlessly attacks and overwhelms the ear of every attendee during every single possible break in the action (even for 20 seconds, while the players quickly "set up" for a face-off)—is extraordinary. But not just extraordinary, disorienting. We almost always had to yell at each other if we wanted to speak—and we were sitting right next to each other.

When the entertainments of a long break run dry—"Hugo" seen (in 3-D), cookies baked (and eaten)—what is a liberal young woman to do to occupy herself for the rest of a five-week break? Download NPR podcasts, obviously, and catch up on back issues of The New Yorker.

For better or worse, modern-day environmentalism has become an increasingly global movement. There is plenty of logic behind this transition: greenhouse gas emissions from a coal-powered plant in China or South Africa do not just impact local populations, but on people around the world. Population growth in Nigeria or India will increase demand for food commodities and valuable resources worldwide.

One of Bowdoin's biggest draws is its small course sizes. Tour guides love telling visitors that the median class size is 16 students. And yet, first years and sophomores are often disappointed to discover that while their first year seminar is 16 students, almost all of their other courses are bigger—much bigger. Often through junior year, students enrolled in the most popular majors—English, government, economics—find that their 200-level classes are consistently filled with upwards of 30 students. Of course, if the school was $500 million richer, smaller classes would be easier to come by. But given our present budget constraints, we still think there may be a path to improving the educational experience: allowing for more flexibility in class size.

Four years ago I wrote an essay about finding home.

My column is named after George Orwell's 1940s column in the British paper Tribune. With that in mind, I wanted to begin this column, and this semester, by paying brief tribute to a man who passed away a month ago and was heavily influenced by George Orwell.

Back in Maine for the spring semester, conditions outside are anything but spring-like. You can be forgiven if you're angry or confused.

Some things are supposed to come in a box. Shoes are one example. Rings, computers and board games also come in boxes, as they should. But macaroni and cheese? I suppose an argument could be made for convenience. Kraft is easy, Kraft is quick, Kraft is cheap, and Kraft gathers all the ingredients you need together, packaging them in expedient, individual plastic bags. But macaroni and cheese from scratch does not take particularly long to make, none of the ingredients require much prep time, and macaroni and cheese from scratch tastes infinitely better than macaroni and cheese from a box. It's sort of like the time that I bought a frozen pack of Wyngz. They did not taste particularly good, and I asked myself why I hadn't bought real chicken wings, instead of a product that appeared to be created by a fourth grader using imaginative spellyngz. So make your own macaroni and cheese using this recipe. Because if you don't, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

Shortly before most of us departed for break, yet another Asian restaurant opened for business on Maine Street.

A Chadian man sends his son to war; a failing magician forms an unlikely friendship in Scotland; a disabled woman travels to the Pyrenees. These diverse characters and more will come to Bowdoin next week as part of the Tournées Festival.

Of all of the remixes, music videos, and performances one can find online of Lana Del Rey's hit single, "Video Games," none are more beautiful or poignant than her performance at the Corinthia Hotel in London.

Toby Gard had a problem. Back in the summer of 1993, Gard—a famous British video game designer and consultant—was tasked with creating a more distinctive character for his studio's upcoming game, a 3-D action-platform inspired by the "Indiana Jones" films. However, the game's engine could only display a limited number of polygons, the basic building blocks of any 3-D model. Whereas modern game characters are composed of up to 60,000 polygons, Gard could only use a maximum of 230. It was hard enough making a computerized figure recognizable as a human being, let alone one that would stand out against a glut of similar games.

Four professional Maine-based poets will be coming to campus tomorrow and Sunday for the first two events of Bowdoin's annual Longfellow Days celebration.

Richard F. Thomas, professor of classics and director of undergraduate studies in the classics department at Harvard University, will deliver a lecture on Wednesday that should appeal to classics and English majors alike.

Artist Kristen Martincic will deliver a lecture about her printmaking, sculpture, and installations when she comes to campus next Thursday.

I never saw the Muskie School of Public Service atrium before Professor of Art Mark Wethli's new sculpture, "Civitas," was installed, but I try not to imagine the space without it. With its bare white walls, stretches of glass and gray trim, it is no wonder the space, part of the University of Southern Maine in Portland, "struck a lot of people as being a little cold."

On Tuesday, the studio heads at Fox and actor Andy Serkis lost their campaign for an Oscar nomination in the category of Best Supporting Actor. Serkis played the chimp Caesar in the sci-fi prequel "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" (2011) and was probably Fox's best chance for a nomination in the category. Nonetheless, his performance is still distinguished in that, unlike those who were named nominees, Serkis did not appear in a single frame of film.

Welcome back! I return for the spring semester energized and refueled because this break was exceptionally fruitful in terms of awesome releases of electronic dance music (EDM).

In his latest work, "The Marriage Plot," Jeffrey Eugenides alternates between the points of view of three different characters and flashes back to different moments in their past ad nauseam. This facet of the 406-page "epic" might make the act of reading it easy for those of us who suffer from internet- and texting-induced A.D.D., but, ultimately, it betrays an utter lack of inventiveness.

One of my favorite movie scenes of all time has to be in "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective," when Jim Carey pretends to be Heinz Getwellvet—the trainer of the Miami Dolphins mascot, Snowflake—and addresses a pack of ravenous reporters concerning the whereabouts of their prized halftime act for the Super Bowl.

With the NESCAC championship just two weeks away, the women's swimming team put up a fight against Trinity and Wesleyan last weekend. Teri Faller '15 won the 100 backstroke and the 200 backstroke, while Patty Boyer '15 won the 50 freestyle. The team finished second in the women's 400 medley relay.

Despite missing a rare triple-double—just the fourth in school history—by a single rebound and steal, women's basketball captain Jill Henrikson '12 was nearly unstoppable in Bowdoin's 65-45 win over Eastern Connecticut State on Tuesday.

The women's track team had a strong showing at the Bowdoin Invitational last Saturday, beating Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (109 points) and Colby (128 points) with 276 points.

A 6 a.m. departure and a 4-hour-long drive were not enough to stop the men's swim team from defeating two strong NESCAC foes last weekend. The team outscored Wesleyan 222-68 and Trinity 211-86 in Hartford.