Daily Herald the Brown
vol. cxlv, no. 72 | Friday, September 17, 2010 | Serving the community daily since 1891
Hicks ’11 Religion and spirituality collide in PW’s ‘Judas’ honored in service By Kristina Fazzalaro Senior Staff Writer
By Anne Speyer Arts & Culture Editor
Friends and family of Paige Hicks ’11 gathered in Manning Chapel on Thursday night to share in a service of thanksgiving for the life of a beloved member of the Brown community. Hicks, who was killed July 20 during a cross-country trip for the charitable organization Bike and Build, was remembered by those who knew her as an exuberant, loving person who could not help but leave a mark on everyone she met. After a musical performance of The Beatles’ “Yesterday” by Christiana Stephenson ’11, Chaplain of the University Janet Cooper Nelson addressed the overflowing chapel. Cooper Nelson said Hicks had tied together the lives of the members of the audience with a “thread I would be hard-pressed to label.” Referring to a magical device used to process thoughts and memories in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” a favorite book of Hicks’, Nelson invited the audience to think of the service as a sort of Pensieve, “a place where we can put all our feelings and thoughts and let them swirl.” Those feelings and thoughts took the form of remembrances, musical and spoken word performances and a slideshow set to some of Hicks’ favorite mucontinued on page 4
Set in the courtroom bowels of purgatory, “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot” opens Friday at Production Workshop. Exploring controversial issues of religion, forgiveness and spirituality, “Judas” invites audience members to continuously question the paradoxes and contradictions that characters face, even after the
ARTS & CULTURE last curtain call. Judas Iscariot, played by John Racioppo ’11, has been in hell since the day he hung himself in a potter’s field over the shame of betraying Jesus. Now his case is being appealed, but does he want it to be? Calling forth a long list of witnesses, including apostles, Mother Teresa, Sigmund Freud and Satan himself, the court debates religion, politics and motive. continued on page 6
David Chung / Herald
Elana Siegel ’11 plays Judas’ attorney in Production Workshop’s play opening today.
Online newspaper planned at RISD By Rebecca Ballhaus Senior Staff Writer
Three Rhode Island School of Design juniors are planning to launch an online newspaper called the AllNighter on Oct. 1. The paper will include school news, an opinions section and other components that will be discussed in the upcoming weeks. “Our goal is to increase the dialogue that happens between students on campus, and make it more central,” said Micah Barrett, one of the paper’s editors. The editors — Rachel Hallock, Erica Morse and
Barrett — said they hope to make the paper a true RISD creation by incorporating all areas of student life. For example, they are planning to create a section called “Inspiration,” in which students will be able to upload their work to the website and receive comments from other students underneath, Morse said. “One problem with RISD is that people don’t communicate between different majors,” Morse said. “I’m most excited about the collaboration opportunities (the paper) offers.” Morse added that the newspa-
per is a good way to communicate both with other students and with the administration. “Right now, everyone is excited about sharing in some way, but it’s very scattered,” she said, noting that various members of the school’s faculty, including President John Maeda, have their own blogs. “This is one unified place where people can come to.” The idea for the All-Nighter came when the director of RISD’s student life program approached Hallock last year, while she was
Courtesy of Jim Head
inside
Jim Head led a team of researchers in mapping the moon’s surface.
News.....1–4 Sports........5 Arts.......6–7 Editorial....10 Opinion.....11 Today........12
www.browndailyherald.com
Lost deep in the flatlands of the Orientale Crater, sucking the last drops from their oxygen tanks, lunar backpackers of the future will thank their lucky stars for Jim Head. Head’s research team has compiled the first comprehensive topographic maps of the Moon’s cratered surface. His work — featured on the cover of this week’s Science Magazine — provides
By Kyle McNamara Contributing Writer
researchers with a fresh window into the early solar system. But Head will not be looking to take a celestial day hike anytime soon. Instead, he will use the images to better understand the long history of bombardment on the lunar surface. Both the Earth and its satellite have been pummeled with meteors, asteroids and comets since their formation. But while geological records of the earliest impacts
The National Science Foundation has awarded Brown a million-dollar grant after a competitive application process. The University will receive just over $1 million out of $20 million awarded to 17 universities in states around the country. The grant will go toward additional hardware for Brown’s supercomputer cluster, said Casey Dunn, assistant professor of biology. The supercomputer, which opened last fall, was a major factor in the NSF’s decision to award the grant to Brown, Dunn said. It was “Brown’s investing in core resources that ended up increasing our competitiveness to get grants,” he added. The main research goal of the grant is to analyze the genomes of marine ecosystems and the genetic responses of these ecosystems to climate change. Dunn’s lab, which is at the intersection of genome sequencing and computational analysis, will study the genome functions of these marine organisms through both computer work and field work, he said. Dunn said that someone is “almost
continued on page 2
continued on page 3
continued on page 4
Prof ’s new moon maps tell solar system’s story By Brigitta Greene Metro Editor
$1 million funds U.’s supercomp
Sports, 5
Arts, 6
Opinions, 11
football forecast Season star ter this Saturday against the Stony Brook Seawolves
Contemporary ‘camelot’
common Ground Susannah Kroeber ’11 on transcending religious divides
Trinity Rep’s ‘Camelot’ strikes parallels with the modern era 195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island
herald@browndailyherald.com