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Volume 90, Issue 18March 8, 2010
News 2Features 3sports 6opiNioN - 9
~world headlines~scientific discoveries~tech break ~geek of the week ~bouldering comp~basketball~what’s your beef?~minds at mines
satire 10
~filler, filler, filler...~FREE CHIPOTLE!!!
Wellness day is an annualevent. Though divided in the re-sponses it draws, it fostered anenvironment in which studentscan explore new opportunities forliving healthier lifestyles. It offereda mix of information and attentiongetting fun and goodies, drawingquite a crowd this year.“It was so good!” declaredCody Walega. He expounded,“It was fun. People came up withfun ways to get you to learn abouthealth.” However, when asked if he thought that the wellness faircould be any better, he admitted,“This is my rst wellness day.” After some thought, he noted,“There was just a little waitingin line.” Nate Caulum, a friendof Walega’s said, “It was prettysuper!” One aspect of value that
Men’s and women’s basketball teams play in quarternals in RMAC
Look around campus this week:you are bound to see price tagsattached to books, computers,lab equipment, treadmills andeven buildings. These price tagssymbolize the “rich” tradition of phi-lanthropy at Mines. Pun intended.Philanthropy has been at theheart of the Colorado School of he commented on, “They gave youtechniques to relieve stress, whichcould be useful at this school.”Near the end of the discussion,Walega asked, “Why was there abank there? Financial health?”On a less optimistic note, An-drew Naibauer complained, “Notenough free food.” He explained,“I wanted those iced tea peopleto come back.” Offering a posi-tive comment, he added, “I reallyliked the people with the sandwichtray… it was the health food store.” As far as what he felt he learnedfrom wellness day, Naibauer com-mented, “I’m gonna visit the Cham-ber of Commerce and get a bikeand trail map.” As to the long termsuccess of the event, Naibauer of-fered another negative review. Heexplained, “It obviously wasn’t verysuccessful because it’s mostly un-der classmen… The upper class-men didn’t come back.”In a positive appraisal, NubiaGalindo commented, “It waspretty sweet! You get free stuff!What more could you want?”Emily Coor, one of Galindo’sfriends, noted, “I learned thatossing your teeth can increaseyour lifespan.” Another friend, Jessica Vosler,noted “I learned that the majorityof the people at this school aretense.” She also commented,“We got a lot of discounts aroundtown for healthy food.” Continuingthe trend, Galindo commented, “Ilearned about businesses.” Shetoo, commented that she felt thecoupons would be very useful.Rummaging through her bagof loot, Vosler drew attention toa curious item jesting, “A rock for deodorant…It rocks!” Read-ing the label, Coor asked, “Whoputs deodorant on the soles of their feet?”
Levi Hamilton (#40) edges past a Colorado Christian University defender to score two points in Tuesday night's RMAC quarternal playoff game.Emily Dalton (#15) takes a jump shot just outside the key against MetroState.
See more photos on pages 6 and 7.
It’s price tag week again
Sara Pond
Associate Director, AnnualGiving
Mar 8 – FREE donuts (8-10amat the W Corner of Meyer Hall)While at the booth, besure to pick up a BINGOcard to complete by find-ing various price tagsaround campus. The first50 students to turn in acompleted BINGO card onFriday at the hot choco-late stand will receive a20% off coupon to BlueCanyon & Underground.Mar 11 – FREE cooKEYs (11-1pmat the W Corner of Meyer Hall)Mar 12 – FREE hot chocolate (9-11am outside the Student Centeror on Kafadar Commons)
Mines since day one. Donors to theschool have helped Mines becomea nationally and internationally-recognized university. Today, morethan 4,000 alumni, parents andmembers of the campus communi-ty make annual gifts to ensure thatstudents have the best resourcespossible.Be sure to visit giving.mines.edu/students to learn more abouthow philanthropy impacts you asa student.
Come celebrate that 40% of your education is funded by out-side support! Join us at one of the booths below to get a FREEdonut, cooKEY or hot chocolate:
Wellness Day comes back toMines to de-stress and inform
Alec Westerman
Staff Writer
S t e v e nW o ol Dri D Ge / ore Di G Ge r
S t e v e n W o o l D r i D G e / o r e D i G G e r
Prospector Flashback
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Oredigger Staff
Sara Post
Editor-in-Chief
Neelha Mudigonda
Managing Editor
Abdullah Ahmed
Business Manager
Ryan Browne
Webmaster
Barbara Anderson
Design Editor
Zach Boerner
Copy Editor
Robert Gill
Asst. Business Manager for Sales and Marketing
Ian Littman
Asst. Business Manager, WebContent
Steven Wooldridge
Asst. Webmaster
Mike Stone
Fool’s Gold Content Manager
Jake Rezac
Content Manager
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Content Manager
Forrest Stewart
Faculty Advisor
Headlines from around the world
Local News
Emily Trudell,
Staff Writer
Jake Rezac,
Content Manager
A group of parents met todiscuss pulling their children outof the
Sacred Heart of JesusSchool
in Boulder after a studentwas not allowed to re-enroll at theschool because that student wasparented by a gay couple. TheDenver Archdiocese defended theschool by arguing that homosexualrelationships violate the beliefs of the Catholic Church.Federal Judge
Wayne R. An-dersen
refused to dismiss thecivil lawsuit that accuses formerDefense Secretary Donald Rums-feld of liability for the torture of twoUnited States citizens who wereworking with an Iraqi contract-ing rm by US military forces. The judge said that it is unconstitution-al for federal ofcials to strip therights from US citizens regardlessof the situation. The Nasdaq closed Friday atan 18-month high, while the DowJones industrial average gained1.2 percent, and the S&P 500 in-creased by 1.4 percent, the high-est since January. The
U.S. un-employment rate
remained at9.7 percent despite forecaststhat it would increase to 9.8percent. A 6.5 magnitude earth-quake struck 215 milessouth of
Padang, Suma-tra
. The quake was cen-tered 13.7 miles deep, andthere were no reports of in- juries or Tsunami warnings.Six passengers werekilled and sixteen morewere taken to hospitalsFriday after a bus crash onthe Arizona interstate. TheDepartment of Transporta-tion said that the bus company
Tierra Santa Inc
. was operatingillegally as it had never completedits application to operate as an in-terstate bus company.Ofcials released that
JohnPatrick Bedell
, 36, the man ac-cused of shooting and wound-ing two police ofcers outside thePentagon, suffered from bipolardisorder. Bedell was shot andkilled when the ofcers returnedre. Ofcers Marvin Carraway andJeffrey Amos were treated and re-leased from a hospital.
Egyptian President
HosniMubarak, 81, underwent gall blad-der surgery, leaving the nation’sPrime Minister, Ahmad Nazif to actas president during his recovery.Mubarak has served as EgyptianPresident since 1981.President
Barack Obama
pledged to cut the number of nu-clear weapons in the U.S. arsenalto mark the 40th anniversary of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.Obama also stated that he wouldseek ratication of the Compre-hensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,which bans all nuclear explosions.It is estimated that the U.S. hasone of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons, roughly 2200warheads, compared with Russia’sestimated 2800. A report by the British group Ac-tion on Smoking and Health saysthat a
ve percent tax increase
for tobacco products would deterchildren from buying cigarettes,help adults quit, and ultimately leadto a drop in the amount of smokersin the United Kingdom.
Göttingen, Germany
– Al-though heat is often considered badfor computer performance, a newstudy suggests that random heatuctuations can make memory stor-age more energy efcient. By tak-ing advantage of random thermalchanges, a circuit could use lesspower and be, in essence, boostedby the change in heat. This wouldallow computers and other devicesthat use memory to be more energyefcient and just as powerful.
Yucatan, Mexico
– Scientists have reafrmed what hasbeen thought for years; dinosaurs, and many other creaturesliving in the time of dinosaurs, went extinct due to a huge as-teroid crashing into earth 65.5 million years ago. The asteroid’shuge size wiped out life within half a continent, and the dust putinto the air by the crash changed the Earth’s climate for at leasta decade. The Sun was blotted out by clouds and it rained sul-furic acid on the dinosaurs. The report says that other theorieson the destruction of the dinosaurs should be taken as falsefrom now on, due to the overwhelming evidence of the asteroid.
Central Chile
– The massive8.8 earthquake that devastatedparts of Chile last week sped upthe Earth’s rotation and changedthe Earth’s axis. By shifting hugerocks near the Earth’s core, theplanet’s axis was tilted and thelength of a day was slightly (andinsignicantly) changed. Accord-ing to researchers, a day is now1.26 microseconds shorter thanbefore the earthquake.
Riverside, CA
– Despiteclaims that children learn vo-cabulary from educational tapes,a new study says babies are nobetter off watching those tapesthan not. The study was per-formed by determining if childrenwho watched educational videosmade specically to teach wordsto infants knew those words after6 months of watching the videos. The answer was a conclusive no.In fact, the study suggests thatlanguage development may behindered by watching such tapes.Colorado School of Minesannounced the establishmentof the rst student chapter of the Underground Construction Association of the Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Explora-tion.CSM Baseball splits a twogame double header againstRegis University. In game one,Mines won 7-5 but lost in gametwo 4-6.CSM Softball posted a 4-2win against CSU-Pueblo onSaturday March 6th but lost intheir second game 1-6.Sarah Moore, a freshmandiver from Littleton, Colorado,was named the Rocky Moun-tain Athletic Conference wom-en’s athlete of the month forFebruary.CSM students captured thetrophy for the second consecu-tive year at the TMS 2010 AlcoaMaterials Bowl. The bowl washeld at the The Mineral, Met-als & Materials Society (TMS) Annual Meeting & Exhibition inSeattle, Washington.
Correction:
The article“ASCSM gets reality check?”incorrectly stated that ASCSMpassed bylaw changes. ASC-SM proposed bylaw changesbut did not pass them.
f e a t u r e s
march 8, 2010page 3
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Do you consider yourself ageek?
Certainly! I have a thorough fas-cination with geology and ground-water. It is a true hunger for allknowledge concerning the two.
How did you come to be atMines?
To be honest, it was nothingshort of miraculous. I rst encoun-tered Mines through its geologymuseum when I was a toddler.However, it was until the beginningof my Senior year in high schoolthat I re-discovered Mines. I semi- jokingly asked my advisor to sendfor information from the school andthen was surprised when a week later I was seriously looking at theinstitution. I visited the school twiceand the rest is history.
What is the geekiest thing you have seen or done?
I have a habit of stopping bygravel pits and rocked front yardsto examine the rocks and mineralstherein.
What is your favorite geek joke?
M.E.s break down, E.E.s losetheir charge, and P.E.s dry up, butG.E.s never lose their luster.
Star Wars or Star Trek? Why?
Tough one! I dig DS 9 and thelater TNG episodes, but I think Imust defer to Star Wars. It is justso much more epical [sic] from itsmusic to its visual effects.
What are your hobbies?
I’ve got a lot of them. Rock-climbing, rock-hounding, hiking,camping, shing, hunting, moun-tain biking, and various redneck sports like possum tag, car hood-ing, and mudding.
What is the geekiest thing you own?
By far it would have to be mymonstrous Gaming XPS laptopthat everyone makes fun of mefor having in class. It is quite large. Thanks, Ann!
What has been your favoriteclass at Mines?
So far, completed, I would haveto say GEGN 202 with Humphreyand Santi. Between the materialand the eld trips, it was simplyawesome!
What is your favorite pieceof technology?
My XPS and Canon camera. The combination of the two tech-nologies makes up my one favoritepiece of technology.
What is your favorite movie?
Another tough one. I have verydiverse tastes in movies. Top threethat come to mind, though, areJeremiah John-son, Day at theRaces, and Sing-ing in the Rain.
What is yourfavorite book?
Recently, Iread Horse Sol-diers, a recentbest-seller aboutthe amazingstory of the U.S.Special Forces in Afghanistan whocombined horsecavalry chargeswith moderntechnology toroute the Taliban. A must read inmy opinion.
What clubs or activities are you involved in?
I am the Event Planner for theStudent Chapter of the Associationof Environmental and EngineeringGeologists here on campus and anational member of both the AEGand the NGWA.
Who is your role model andwhy?
To choose one out of the manyis impossible for me. I derive wis-dom and inspiration from a lot of folks. My parents, my grandpar-ents, and people I don’t even know. The story pretty much follows thatif you follow the truth regardless of the outcome, you stand a goodchance of being a role model of mine.
What is your favorite OS?Why?
Windows 7. Need I say more?
What is your favorite formulaand why?
Darcy’s Law pretty much saysit all for me as a Hydrogeologist. Itdeals with the relationship betweenthe amount of water dischargedper unit of time through a givestrata and the permeability, crosssectional area and drop in gradient.
If you were stuck on a de-serted island and you couldonly bring 3 items, what wouldthey be?
Easiest question ever. K-bar,beef jerky, and a de Havilland Bea-ver.
If you were to come up witha class for CSM what would itbe?
An archery class would be cool.It is one sport that I miss a lot andif I had a class that would give metime and a place to do it.
If you could be anyone else,who would you be?
I’ll defer that question to any40-year old overweight bald manwearing a professional sports jer-sey.
What is one thing you loveat Mines? One thing you wouldlike to see changed?
They are still preserving the in-tegrity of the curriculum. Minimum15 credit hours, tough exams, andtough yet meaningful courses.God, I love it like a Marine loveshis Rie. May that standard of ex-cellence continue forever. What Ido not like is the disbandment of some of the traditions like the M-climb. In my view, it is but a shell of its former signicance. The memo-ries that I will forever carry with medidn’t involve getting a pat on theback from upperclassmen. Whatmade the M-climb for me was bat-tling the upperclassmen with songand irreverence.
Geek Week
ofthe
...Elliot Matthews, Sophomore: Geological Engineering
Dan Haughey
Staff Writer
COURTESY ELLIOT MATTHEWS
Four months or so ago, I wroteabout Comcast’s accomplish-ments in the internet arena. Sincethen the changes, which affect asignicant number of people in theGolden area, have kept on com-ing.First and foremost, Comcasthas launched the “Xnity” servicein some areas. The brand followsin the footsteps of Verizon’s FiOSand AT&T’s U-Verse and carrieswith it some minimum specica-tions on TV, internet and phoneservice to compete with the ber-to-the-home technologies of itstelephone company competitors. They key word here is “compet-itors.” The brand hasn’t launchedin Colorado because Qwest usesDirecTV to provide TV service,and still serves much of the areawith several-year-old plain-vanilla ADSL service. Qwest is push-ing ber closer to its customers’homes and raising speeds as aresult, but many areas have awhileto wait until Qwest’s cute photon-focused web advertisements areeven ten thousand feet from thetruth. That said, Comcast did up-grade last summer, and Xnityrides on this new platform. Thecompany, now the single larg-est internet provider in the U.S.by subscriber count, is promisingthat their top internet tier – clock-ing in at 50 megabits per secondon downloads and 10 Mbps onuploads – will increase to a fullhundred megabits per second of download speed by the end of theyear in 20% of its markets. Com-cast has also thrown out a muchhigher percentage gure on theirinternet service: by the end of thisyear 100% of their markets willhave the same speeds that folksin Golden have enjoyed for the lastseven and a half months.One nice thing about Comcastis that they’re dropping non-Xnityusers a bit of a bone as well; bysummer, their Blast internet tier,one notch above their standardoffering, will be bumped from 16Mbps down and 2 Mbps up to20 Mbps down and 4 Mbps upregion-wide. To my understand-ing the tier, which costs $65 plusmodem rental per month without TV service, has already been up-graded in Denver itself. Speakingof modem rental, the fee now pro-vides a wireless router as well as amodem for those who don’t want toshell out $50-$100 for the device. The company hands out higher-end 802.11n routers to customerson their advanced speed tiers, and802.11g units to folks who pay lessper month.Going back to Xnity, the com-pany is eschewing analog channelsfor HD offerings, pushing a full hun-dred HD channels in Xnity marketslike Chicago, where they competewith AT&T U-Verse, and Chattanoo-ga, where the city’s Electric PowerBoard has launched Fiber to theHome (FTTH for short). The com-pany has also amped up niche andinternational programming in theseareas, though technically none of these enhancements require thebrand name to exist. On the phoneservice side, Comcast’s customHomePoint handset is closer toa cellular phone in features than alandline, something that Comcastapparently hopes will keep peopleon their service rather than a land-line, VoIP or cellular competitors.Back on the broadband side,Comcast has announced that it hascompleted trials of upstream chan-nel bonding on its cable modemsystem. When upstream bondingis implemented, the company willmore than double its upload ca-pacity per-area cable system. Thiswill allow it to compete on uploadspeed with, for example, Qwest’slimited-range 40 megabit down-load, 20 megabit upload VDSL2service. The great thing about thisupgrade is that most current DOC-SIS 3 modems can already do up-stream bonding; it just isn’t enabledon the provider side yet. Upstreambonding could very well spell theend the cable company stigmaof lopsided download-to-uploadspeed ratios, a problem that FTTHdoesn’t have. That said, Comcastis experimenting with eight-channeldownstream DOCSIS 3 service, de-livering a whopping 250 megabitsto a well-heeled subscriber or two,putting service back on the asym-metric side again. Comcast doesn’tappear to be planning a responseto Google’s gigabit ber project, but250 Mbps isn’t too bad for a servicerunning on coaxial cable.It appears that this format will
To Xfnity and beyond!
Ian Littman
Tech Break Columnist
be around for awhile too; theyhave multiple vendors working ona high-density software-dened“god box” to deliver both internetand TV in a single chassis, ratherthan spreading duties over a muchlarger system that needs separatecomponents for the two services. The spec should be completedaround summertime, with hard-ware hitting the streets sometimenext year or the year after.On the wireless side, Den-ver will soon be blanketed withSprint’s “4G” WiMAX coverage,which Comcast resells under itsown branding at a discount for itswireline internet customers. Ve-rizon’s LTE network might end updelivering more than the six to tenmegabits down and one megabitup that Comcast WiMAX users inother areas see, but LTE won’t bearound for another year or two. Asfor the other big cellular rivals, T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network certainlywon’t beat WiMAX speeds, and AT&T appears content with sittingon their 7.2 Mbps HSPA hands,scurrying around their tower foot-print in an effort to ramp up capac-ity to keep the mobile bandwidthapocalypse at bay. Plus, WiMAX doesn’t have a 5GB data transfercap, something that Verizon mayor may not institute on their next-gen service, which is resold byQwest in these parts. The bottom line here is thatComcast is actually doing a de-cent job at serving their custom-ers. I’m not debating Comcast’srate increases over time, or themerit of its decision to leave price-conscious buyers to the DSL dol-drums; these observations aretrue enough. I won’t even arguewith the folks who despise Com-cast’s 250 gigabyte per mothresidential broadband soft cap,avoidable by a quick upgrade torelatively inexpensive businessclass internet service. My singlepoint is that, as cable operatorsgo, Comcast in this area remainson the leading, if not cutting, edgeof its eld by its own volition.Okay, I’ll admit it: I want some-one else to come in and give Com-cast a run for their money in thisarea so I don’t have one choice forinternet that isn’t hanging with theSlowskys. But at least I have onehigh-quality, albeit expensive, op-tion for a pipe to the inter-tubes.
Music Review: The Knew’s Pulpería
First order of business: Dene“pulpería.” One translation of-fers this denition, “In America,a grocery store (tienda), where allsorts of provisions and liquors areretailed.” While the newest full-length from Denver-based TheKnew may not be Latino grocery-store-music, it is certainly thekind of music that will have youdancing as if you just visited thepulpería to pick up some beer.Second order of business: Re-view Pulpería. From the rst track,four-on-the-oor drum beats pro-vide the base for most of the11 guitar-rock songs. The entirerecord reminds me of good oldsurf music (complete with shim-mery guitar tone), which mixeswell with singer Jacob Hansen’saccessible vocal style. The tracks“Citytown”and “Still OnFire” standout as two of my personalfavorites fortheir dance-ability and rawenergy.Pulperíawill ofciallybe releasedon SaturdayMarch 6 atthe Bluebird Theater (alsoplaying: ThePhoto At-las, Common
Tim Weilert
Staff Writer
Anomaly, Jonny Woodrose & TheBroken Hearted Woodpeckers,and DJ Iridel).
COURTESY
THE KNEW
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