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Voices

Phones are damaging English

Having grown up with instant messaging and texting, I don’t bat an eye at slang as diverse as “irlol” (or “in real life laugh out loud”) and “iucmd” (my friend Matt’s favorite, meaning “if you catch my drift”). Yet I was shocked a few weeks ago when my dad sent me a text message for the first time. It read “miss yu, yu have pro status as spanish tutor lv dad.” I had helped my 14-year-old brother Sam study for a Spanish exam over Christmas break, and it was nice to be informed he did well. However, I was more interested in those dropped vowels. I love my dad, but I don’t consider him to be the most culturally adept person. He uses email, but I’ve always found his communication there to be very precise. As recently as a few months ago my brother was still showing him how to open the text messages he had received, so I wasn’t prepared for his sudden embrace of text slang.

Voices

Declining music sales require industry adaptation

You may or may not remember the band Cake, best known for a pair of novelty hits at the end of the ‘90s. But apparently someone does. The group’s latest album, Showroom of Compassion—released ten years after their last charting single (“Short Skirt, Long Jacket” got to 124 on the top 200) and 13 years since anyone thought they were relevant—hit number one on the Billboard charts last week. It was far from an impressive accomplishment, however: at just 44,000 units sold, Cake’s sixth album was the lowest-selling number one since the advent of SoundScan in 1991.

Voices

Qatar student discovers treasures in Moroccan medina

Morocco, If you were a person, you would be one with multiple personalities. In the past two months, I have discovered your ethnic richness, multi-linguistic culture, and different moods. You can be the hottest person in the world and at times, the coldest, conservative, liberal and sometimes in-between. Most importantly, you have, in your own charming way, allowed me to explore your various characteristics in a series of epic adventures.

Sports

Collars come off for Jesuits’ annual grudge match

The Society of Jesus has a diverse and colorful history, and for the past 10 years the students of Georgetown University have organized Jesuit Heritage Week in order to celebrate and make visible the school’s Jesuit character. While all of the week’s events are meaningful, one gathering is far more important and consequential than the rest.

Sports

The Sports Sermon: Back and better than ever

Georgetown has won five games in row. That means they’re back, right? Or do the Hoyas have to win six in row to officially be “back”? What if they were never gone? The team certainly wasn’t looking too good a couple of weeks ago.

Sports

Hoyas extend streak in clutch

Georgetown has shown this season that they can win games in every fashion, but the last two games have shown that they know how to win in the most important way. Monday night Georgetown defeated Louisville 62-59, which followed a 69-66 win at Villanova on Saturday.

Sports

Rodgers hits 1,000 in win

For the Georgetown women’s basketball team, sometimes one notable act isn’t enough. The No. 17 Hoyas (18-5, 6-3 Big East) came back from a fourteen-point deficit in the second half to beat the Louisville Cardinals (14-9, 5-4 Big East) 76-52.More impressive than the comeback was how they did it.

Sports

Backdoor Cuts: The Super Bowl? You bet

Over 100 million people will watch the Super Bowl this Sunday, but only a fraction of viewers will be Packers or Steelers fans. The audience is just too massive—the entire states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania won’t even account for one-fifth of the game’s viewership.

Leisure

Don’t miss the climax of The Vagina Monologues

Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues confronts audiences’ discomfort from its very first line: “I bet you’re worried.” As the play’s introduction points out, it “doesn’t matter how many times you say it, it never sounds like a word you want to say.” But past the shock of The Vagina Monologues’ frank language lies a well-crafted, emotionally gripping play, and one the actors, directors and producers of Georgetown’s rendition hope will bring to light women’s issues and sexuality on the Hilltop.

Leisure

Georgetown filmmakers shine at Sundance

Who says Georgetown doesn’t breed creativity? This past week at the Sundance Film Festival, the creative minds of Georgetown were well-represented, with five films whose directors, actors or producers that have graduated from the University competed in the world-famous film contest. And one of these movie, Another Earth, won big. Way big. Another Earth, directed by Mike Cahill (COL ’01) and starring fellow alum Brit Marling (COL ’05), is a sci-fi drama about the discovery of a duplicate Planet Earth in the solar system.

Leisure

If Caravaggio knew cardiology

While scientific advancement has led to solutions and cures that had previously seemed impossible, it has also bred confusion. In fact, very few average people can grasp the small, intricate details of how things actually work anymore. In the exhibition “What Was There To Be Seen,” on display now at the Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery on 16th Street near DuPont, Kindra Crick and Carolyn Bernstein convey their personal fascinations and frustrations with the often cumbersome subject of biology.

Leisure

3D can’t save Sanctum

How does one of the world’s best-known directors follow up the most commercially successful film in cinematic history? For James Cameron, director of mega-blockbusters Avatar and Titanic, the answer is surprising. Taking a break from fantasy and iceberg-smashing romance, Cameron signed on as executive producer for Sanctum, the tale of a father and son on a life-threatening cave expedition.

Leisure

Critical Voices: Hercules and Love Affair, Blue Songs

Blue Songs, the new album by Hercules and Love Affair, is awful. I’m not going to mince words here: it’s brutal, terrible, miserable, abominable, abhorrent, and appalling. And it’s really a shame. The band’s 2008 debut was rightly praised as one of the best albums of the past decade. Mixing old school house and disco, the group brought a surprisingly fresh twist to DFA Records’s aging nü-disco shtick.

Leisure

Critical Voices: The Boxer Rebellion, The Cold Still

In today’s alternative music scene, too many indie groups have abandoned their original sound in favor of mass appeal. So when a band can deliver emotion that is both honest and unpretentious, and stays true to the successes of its past albums, it’s grounds for major commendation. London quartet The Boxer Rebellion achieves just that on The Cold Still, with unassuming but powerful lyrics and melodies, the band rises above the rest of the indie pack.

Leisure

Banger Management: It’s all about the Benjamins

Hip-hop has always been a regional art. Seminal groups such as Run DMC of Hollis, Queens and N.W.A. of Compton represented their neighborhoods with songs chronicling local troubles and lifestyles. But in the early 1990s, rap’s focus shifted and hip-hop crews began forming record labels to better promote their own music. All of a sudden, the West Coast had Suge Knight’s Death Row Records, which included the likes of Tupac and Snoop Dogg, while the East had Puffy’s Bad Boy label, which centered on Notorious B.I.G.

Leisure

Internet IRL: This is your brain on Tumblr

Studying can be difficult when your most important tool is also your biggest time waster. All of us are familiar with being holed up in the library, intent on doing homework, only to catch ourselves surfing the net. It is virtually impossible to stay focused with the giant bag of potato chips that is the World Wide Web at your disposal. Betcha can’t click just one.

Features

Lord of the wings: One night in Wingo’s

Chicken is my favorite meat. It’s comfort food, familiar and unpretentious, and it’s versatile, providing moist, savory substance to dishes from almost every culture. But for chicken enthusiasts, one of the meat’s most essential styles is also one of its simplest: a short, unbreaded section of the bird’s wing that is fried and basted in sauce, sometimes called a buffalo wing or hot wing if the sauce is spicy.

News

Amidst revolution, students witness history

Earlier this week, 15 Georgetown students studying at the American University in Cairo were evacuated from Egypt. Three of the students, who were set to begin a semester abroad at the American University in Cairo in the midst of an uprising against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that began on Jan. 25., will return to campus on Thursday to finish their spring semester.

News

Students face fines, arrest under amended D.C. law

Noise violators can now incur up to 90 days in jail or $500 in fines under a newly amended disorderly conduct law. Under the amendment, which unanimously passed last November by the D.C. Council, took effect on Tuesday, outlawing any “unreasonabl[y] loud noise between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. that is likely to disturb one or more persons in their residences.”

Editorials

Endowment growth a welcome development

Well-endowed has never been the first adjective that comes to mind when describing Georgetown, but that is slowly changing. Last week, the University’s endowment was ranked 67th largest in the country by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, up four spots from 2009 and a full 10 spots from 2004. This climb reflects prudent fiscal management and bodes well for Georgetown’s financial future.

Editorials

Outage response leaves students in the dark

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for students living in the East Campus. On Wednesday night students in LXR and Nevils were hit by a power outage that lasted into Thursday morning. The situation was exacerbated by the largest snowstorm of the year, which hindered efforts to restore power. The well-being and safety of the students, who were forced out of their pitch black rooms into the storm, should have been the top priority of administrators that night, but, as is often the case, the University’s response was marked by poor communication and poor planning.

News

Gov’t may reduce federal aid, warns GU officials

On Wednesday, Dean of Student Financial Services Patricia McWade and Associate Vice President of Federal Relations Scott Fleming hosted a meeting to discuss potential cuts in federal aid for the coming academic year and discuss ways for students to get involved in the debate as the White House and Congress prepare to begin the process of creating a budget for fiscal year 2012.

Editorials

University stuns with capable Cairo response

Students studying abroad in the Middle East understand that living in the tumultuous region comes with a degree of risk. But for the 15 Georgetown students studying in Cairo, that risk became a reality on Sunday. The University’s decision to pull the students out of the country when it did was appropriate, and it conducted its evacuation effort amidst massive protests with surprising quickness. Georgetown should be commended for its well-organized response, but its support should continue as these students adjust to the rest of their semester.

News

Saxa Politica: A bright future for GUSA?

Too often, student government can devolve into self-promotion with little substantive achievement. But having voted in Student Activities Fee Endowment reform and launched a new, usable website last semester, the Georgetown University Student Association looks poised for a strong semester. If last Sunday’s meeting is any indication of the sessions to come, the Senate appears to be maintaining its momentum with a set of initiatives that will make important contributions to student life.

Sports

Wright powers Georgetown past Louisville to extend streak to five

Even though Georgetown got the victory over Villanova on Saturday, it was hard to look past Chris Wright’s stat line: zero points. Against Louisville two days later, Wright was once again impossible to ignore, but for very different reasons.