Student newspaper of the University of Tulsa
Student releases Olympics themed podcast
Tandy shutdown incovenience
Tulsa’s supercomputing center closed its doors, leaving many students and teachers searching for an alternative. Adam Lux Satire Editor
Over winter break, many TU students and faculty received an email informing them that the Tandy Supercomputing Center (TSC) would soon be shutting down. TSC operated the Tandy, a 1600core supercomputer available for private, commercial and academic use. TSC was an initiative started in 2013 by the Oklahoma Innovation Initiative (OII) and a number of other institutions, including OUTulsa, OSU-Tulsa, TCC and TU, among others. It was funded partially through the A.R. and Marylouise Tandy Foundation as well as the U.S. Economic Development Administration. The physical system itself, Tandy, is housed in city hall. It has 1600 cores, 12.8TB of RAM and is running CentOS linux. It takes up about four racks, each about the size of a refrigerator. What will happen to the physical computer itself is still up in the air, although its likely at least some of the infrastructure will go to the city. The email suggested alternative computing centers at OU and OSU and offered to help any users with transitions. “Financial reasons” were stated as the cause for the shutdown. TSC Director George Louthan expounded on the reasoning for TSC’s shutdown. “I don’t think it’s a secret at all that higher-ed in Oklahoma is not in a very good place right now funding-wise.” He continued, “A major source of our funding has always been contributions from the member institutions … from TU, the two campuses of Oklahoma State in Tulsa and the OU campus in Tulsa. The kind of money that that historically has been doesn’t exist anymore.” Non-university funding sources have taken a hit due to the energy downturn affecting this part of the state. Louthan said operating a supercomputer like the Tandy costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. “Computational science and engineering is a third, co-equal, approach to doing science.” When asked about the role of supercomputers, Louthan said, “There’s questions for which we can the answer best by theory, some by experimentation and some by computation.” “At the end of the day it’s easier to help people when you’re three miles away than it is when you’re a hundred miles away or a thousand miles away,” Louthan said. Louthan also expressed that one of the consequences of TSC’s shutdown will be that they can no longer work to bring supercomputing to new areas of science. Scientists “can ask bigger, more exciting questions if we can get them comfortable using bigger tools.” he said. Louthan said that he wanted people to know that “we have a great supercomputing community in Oklahoma … even though we’re going away there’s still help and tools out there for people. We hope they’ll continue to think big about the kind of science that advanced computing can help them do and reach out to the resources that are available.” All TU students and faculty are able to use OU’s supercomputer Schooner and OSU’s supercomputer Cowboy for their academic research for free.
February 19, 2018 Issue 18 - Volume 103
photo by Kayleigh Thesenvitz
Haynes has produced three podcasts and written three novels. Hannah Kloppenburg Web Manager
TU student Jesse Haynes has made strides with three young adult novels and three wildly successful podcasts. Now he’s bringing a fourth podcast to life — one that focuses on the Olympics. Haynes is no stranger to sports writing. A passion for sports and success in high school athletics bled into his academic life and eventually led to a sports writing position at the “Skiatook Journal” and sports stringer work with the “Tulsa World.” The upcoming podcast will likely be titled “The History of Olym-
pic Politics.” Its focus is just that. “I’m starting with a history of the Olympics for episode one, then I’ll dive off into the different political factors affecting the Olympics, from race, to business, to government, to amateurism and more,” Haynes explains. Haynes says that the best part of his work on the show is the guests he’s worked with. The show features interviews with academics, including one of the world’s leading Olympic historians, past gold medalists and hopeful future Olympians. All of the featured guests will share their perspective on the interplay between politics and the Olympics. The show is mainly historybased, but Haynes thinks that the currently ongoing Olympics have their own political elements.
“Look at the unity of North and South Korea in 2018. In fact, I am beginning to think it’s impossible to separate the Olympics from politics. The former couldn’’t survive without the latter,” he says. Haynes’ upcoming podcast is part of a Media Studies independent study project — he is a class of 2019 Media Studies major with minors in Creative Writing and Digital Humanities. He first began making his own podcasts after becoming an avid podcast listener. He recorded his first show, “Cryptid Creatures,” with a $30 microphone on the floor of his closet. The show is a nonfiction show that explores the science and myth behind various cryptids. The success of “Cryptid Creatures” led to the creation of “The Others,” an audio drama about a
man stranded on an island crawling with paranormal monsters, and “The Mazie Meadows Morning Show,” a series of “live broadcasts” from a small town full of strange creatures. The two podcasts have been downloaded over one million times and both made it into the Top 50 on iTunes. With over two million podcasts hosted on the website, this is no small feat. Haynes says he’s “a one-man production team. From writing the scripts to layering the sound effects and producing the final product, I do all of that.” He does, however, rely on the help of friends and TU affiliates to contribute to voice acting. See Haynes, p. 4
Upcoming “1984” promises to delight The play appeals to both fans of the book and those unfamiliar with the story. Brennen Gray Student Writer Don’t call this propaganda, but the TU Theater Department has done it again. Laura Skoch directs Andrew White’s adaptation of “1984” by George Orwell. I sat in on a dress-rehearsal, and the production proved fantastic. The adaptation follows the novel’s Winston Smith and his struggles with a dystopian society controlled by a tyrannical regime known as the Party. He meets Julia and starts to fight against the Totalitarian regime by daring to think for himself. He then must face the consequences. Beginning with the acting, the execution was perfect. The chemistry between Corey Allcorn as Winston and Emma Lucas as Julia felt authentic. I rooted for their relationship with genuine interest. Samantha Potrykus played a convincing O’Brien: intimately terrifying and a fitting symbol for the tyranny of the Party. The ensemble delivered a top-notch performance as well. As I sat in on a dress rehearsal, I
Lacking a full set did not prevent the cast from giving an enjoyable performance.
did not receive the full visual power of the set. The set I viewed made for a solid imitation of a concrete bunker, with lighting that made the dark stage look like it was floating in the dark theater. However, the actual performances will also include custom-made backdrops. “We had to do tons and tons and tons of CGI. We spent five hours shooting underwater,” said Susan Barrett, head of projection design and CGI. The TU-made CGI will provide the setting for the world of
Oceania, and the underwater moments will provide a backdrop for the romance scenes. The plot does not require analysis; George Orwell proved its success almost 70 years ago. The adaptation mostly cut out the world building and descriptions from the book, compensating for it with CGI and other backdrops. Anyone who has not yet read the novel will be able to follow the story without problem. Any fan of the novel should be satisfied as well, as long
photos by Brennen Gray
as they recognize that it is an adaptation and should not be compared too much to the original text. The director said she chose the play as part of an outreach to local high schools. “We wanted to find books on the high school reading list. Last year we did Julius Caesar,” said Skoch. She also commented on why “1984” of all the books on the average high school reading list. See “1984,” p. 9
Mail room an underappreciated resource More is going on behind the scenes of TU’s mail room than some may realize. Tori Gellman Student Writer Everyone gets mail at some point. Maybe you order a cool new gadget on Amazon or your mother sends you a care package for finals week. Regardless of what you’re waiting to receive, the place you’ll have to go is the TU Mail Room. I have been a work study at the TU mail room in ACAC since the
start of this academic school year. And I absolutely love my job. I love the people I get to work with, and I love when I get to see my friends, or even meet new people as they come to pick up their packages. But I think what a lot of students, and even faculty, fail to realize, is how much goes on in this little corner room. Every morning, under the supervision of the amazing Weldon Hurd, package scanner extraordinaire Leah Leffingwell arrives to campus before most students are even awake and gets the mail room set up for a day of receiv-
ing and delivering packages. We receive mail from seven different delivery companies, including UPS, DHL and FedEx. For USPS, the wonderful Kenny Byerly, with the help of the terrific Marcoe Holmes and eclectic newbie Mark Mayer, drive out to the post office every morning and load typically hundreds of packages into carts, which they then unload and wheel into the mailroom where Leah and I are waiting. And then the sorting begins. We separate boxes from flats, sort departmental and student mail, PMB packages, etc. Then we indi-
vidually scan in each package, using the appropriate barcode which varies depending on carrier, and we type in the last name of each person – you know, when people bother to put their names on their orders instead of just leaving it blank or as “Valued Customer” It’s not that we don’t want to find your package, but if your name isn’t on it, we can’t possibly know who it goes to. See Mail room, p. 6