Bring out your inner-hippies! Twins welcome! Nerds and cowboys giddy up! Mines students and faculty decked out in blue, come one, come all! Spirit week at Mines is unmistakable when the students decide to go all out in celebration of their upcoming homecoming. Each day of the week allows the students to express a different side of their, well, unique personalities.
Throughout the fall, one ingredient seems to pop up everywhere: pumpkin. From coffee drinks to bagels, from pies to cookies, the season just would not be the same without it. Most homemade pumpkin goods are prepared with store-bought, canned pumpkin pie filling. However, this really is unnecessary and unfortunate because preparing a pumpkin is relatively simple and more than pays for the time it takes with the improved taste of the final product.
The Nintendo DS has not had much publicity with the older and more mature members of its audience, but Level 5’s release of “Professor Layton and the Unwound Future” allows them to wrap their brains around brain teasers and other logic puzzles. The third game in the Unwound Future series, Professor Layton is filled with logic puzzles that are still challenging, even to the most extraordinary Mines student. This sequel is an great improvement when it comes to game play, difficulty of the puzzles, and the overall aesthetics of the game. Even the non-player characters are amazingly hysterical and whimsy as their personalities help drive the campaign of the game.
This week’s haunted house visited the Field of Corpses in Arvada. At this haunted house, a personal guide leads groups through a menagerie of spooky scenes. The fun begins by crawling through a hearse into a cemetery, followed by a trip through a swamp, creepy candy store, nuclear facility, and much more. This haunt plays on all the senses. All of the props are made by the owner and are very impressive. The use of projected scents creates an atmosphere that is very real. Visitors are subjected to small spaces, pitch-black corridors, and bursts of air at times. All of these different and new components create a unique experience.
This week’s Geek of the Week is a very unique Mines individual who strives to be extraordinary in every aspect of her life. Her car is lined with ducks on the dash board, she loves to dress up and she is a free spirit in everything she does. Undergraduate Kari Kron is obsessive about things she enjoys while being socially acceptable at the same time. “I feel like a geek because I fit into my society here at Mines,” Kron expalined.A junior chemical engineer at mines, Kron hails from Louisville, Colorado, and walking to the beat of her own drum has defined her personality. She is the epitomy of a Geek of the Week.
If there were any two words that could embody the Geology and Geological Engineering department at the School of Mines, it would be community and diversity. Along with the general education provided by the world-class faculty, the department also functions as a unique community on campus. Dr. John Humphrey, head of the Geology and Geological Engineering department expects that with a degree in this field, “You will know how the Earth works in a way that you can use it in a variety of situations… the department has two tracks, geotechnical engineering, which has more engineering, and minerals and fuels exploration, which focuses more on geology. Regardless, each of these gets you a bachelor of science in geological engineering.”
Friday night at the Skylark Lounge was a bit of déjà vu. It was last February when I found myself there basking in the yellowy light, listening intently as Fellow Citizens and Old Radio filled the night with music. This past weekend’s show, a showcase from local-arts/music collective Hot Congress, brought me back to the Skylark to see… Fellow Citizens and Old Radio.
Although Colorado is surround by beautiful wilderness, students often fail to take advantage of what it can offer. Bent Gate Mountaineering helps students utilize Mines’ wonderful location with backpacking, climbing, and skiing gear.
While many of the stars we see in the sky have been around since before humanity was able to admire them, there are elements of the night sky that change very readily, usually with a splendor unmatched by their more eternal counterparts. At the time of writing, one of these events is visible to the fortunate residents of the northern hemisphere, and with basic equipment you too can enjoy one of the joys of our Solar System.
The Brewers’ Association calls it an American-Style India Black Ale. Guinness calls theirs Foreign Extra Stout. West-coast breweries prefer the term Cascadia Dark Ale. And, to confuse matters further, the Tommyknocker brewery refers to their dark and bitter brew as a Black India Pale Ale. Seemingly a contradiction of terms, this new emerging style combines the dark roasted sweetness of a porter and the tart bitterness of an IPA. While no one can agree on what to name it, most agree that the ASIBA/FES/CDA/BIPA is the next big thing in craft brewing.