1998 v26 i1

Page 1

W e a t h e r ...

The Student Newspaper of Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Rain most likely today with a chance of rain or snow tomorrow and Thursday. Lows in the 20's to mid 30's , highs in the mid 30's to 40's for much of the week.

Volume Twenty-six, Number One

Tuesday, January 13, 1998

Tenth annual ISO Dinner brings campus together by Jason Craley Newspeak Staff On Saturday, December 6, 1997, the International Student Council, (ISC), held its tenth annual Interna­ tional Dinner in Alden Hall. A p­ proximately 200 people attended the event, the highest dinner a tte n ­ dance to date. T he IS C -sp o n so red event in ­ cluded the participation of several diverse national, ethnic and reli­ gious organizations on campus. Several o f these organizations, in cooperation with DAKA food ser­ vices, contributed to a collection o f ten dinner dishes and four desserts, w hich included entrees such as Korean noodles, Vietnamese spring rolls, M exican chicken and MidEastern sweets. The evening also featured eight m usical perform ances which in ­ cluded Indian, Korean, Greek, and M uslim songs and dances. T he W PI Dance Club also performed a sp ecial re n d itio n o f a w altz to S trauss’ “ On the Blue D anube” ,

while violinists Josh and Zachary Addison, sons of Professor Bland Addison, played an Irish jig for the audience. During the Dinner, a collection o f special prizes w ere given out, in c lu d in g a g ift c e rtif ic a te to G om peii’s and ISC coffee mugs, courtesy o f both H ealthy A lter­ n a tiv e s an d the I n te rn a tio n a l H ouse. This year also marked a new ad­ dition to the International Dinner, as the ISC joined with the National Society of Black Engineers, (NSBE), in prom oting an N SB E holiday canned food drive. All attendees to the dinner were encouraged to bring at least one can to donate to th e d riv e . ISC c h a ir S ashe Kanapathi stated that both ISC and N SBE realized the advantage o f connecting the International Din­ ner with the canned food drive. Kanapathi believes this to be the beginning of expanding service-ori­ ented programs for future Interna­ tional Dinners. At its second year in Alden Hall,

N E W S P E A K S T A F F P H O T O / JE N N IF E R C O O P E R

Members of the Korean Association, Ji-Yong Moon, Mun-sook Kim, Young Jod Kim, and Hyun Ik performed the two modern korean songs, "Waiting for you" and "Now, Goodbye". ISC advisor Tom Thomsen sees the International Dinner as an invalu­ able asset to the holiday environ­ ment of the WPI community. “The din n er has alw ays been held in D ecem ber during the h oli­ days, and h a sn ’t been affiliated

Evidence found of escape from black hole by Kathy Sawyer The Washington Post WASHINGTON - Astronomers have detected method in the m ad­ ness around a black hole 40,000 light-years away, where a titanic version of Yellowstone’s Old Faith­ ful geyser has been erupting at regular intervals about every half hour in je ts o f hot gas traveling

more than 600 million miles per hour. The findings indicate that it is, af­ ter all, possible to escape the in­ tense gravitational power o f a black hole even after riding to within 40 miles or so of the brink. A black hole is a collapsed object o f such den­ sity that nothing, not even light, can escape once it has passed through the dark boundary known as the “event h o rizo n.” B ecause black

Spreading Christmas cheer

ATO recently held a Christmas party for Worcester Area orphans before break. Over $900 was raised to help the children.

holes are therefore invisible, scien­ tists struggle to study them indi­ rectly, th rough th eir effects on nearby matter. In the case o f this particular black hole, its flamboyant flares of glow­ ing plasma, shooting out at 90 per­ cent of the speed o f light, have been a ttra c tin g a tte n tio n fo r y e ars. W hat’s new is that astronomers for the first time have been able to peer close to the bizarre heart of the ob­ ject and glimpse a synchrony in the processes that produce the star­ tling fireworks. They even trans­ lated the mood swings into a rhyth­ mic audio recording. ‘T h e great value o f these obser­ vations is that potentially they are giving us a key to answ er some big qu estio n s,” said Jean Sw ank o f NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Cen­ ter, one o f the researchers. “I be­ lieve this black hole will be one key to finding out lots o f things about black holes and jets.” The black hole, known as GRS 1915+105, is in the constellation Aquila (the Eagle), inside E arth’s home galaxy, the M ilky Way. T he new o b s e rv a tio n s , a n ­ nounced Wednesday at the annual w inter m eeting o f the A m erican Astronomical Society here, focused on a roiling disk o f matter, heated to millions o f degrees, that is spi-

See Black Hole, cont ’d to page 3

with religion, ” said Thom sen. “ T his enables us to bring together a mix o f faculty, students, alum ni and parents from different back­ grounds, w hich educates ev e ry ­ o n e on th e d if f e r e n t c u ltu r e s around them .”

Social Web finds yet another communications solution by Sarah Walkowiak & Justin Greenough Last fall, much to many student’s despair, the beloved events post­ ings were removed from WPI UNIX systems for various technical rea­ sons. The sequel to the events sys­ tem was a solution offered by the College Computing Center, known as the BBoard, a similar posting system , a c c e ssib le th ro u g h the World Wide Web, and in a text for­ m at through UNIX. Although the BBoard solved the problem o f un­ necessary posts and mail server clogging, many still do not utilize the system to its fullest potential. A nother service which has re­ cently begun filling the empty void left by the events removal is the So­ cial Web. The Social Web system was created last year by Troy Thompson, who is also an employee of the CCC. Users may login and get information abo u t events at W PI and oth er schools within the Worcester con­ sortium. However, both the BBoard and the Social Web, in the past, have been under-utilized because both the

See Social Web, cont’d to page 3

C o n t e n t s ... News .......................—.. 2,3,10 National News.........................3 Sports.................«...—.......----- 4 Arts & Entertainment........... 5-9 West Street House........... . 1C International House ............. 10 Computing............................. 11 Gaming.................................. 11 Letters to the Editor................11 Club Comer...........................14 Announcements.....................15 Classifieds.............................. 19 Comics............................... 18,19 What's Happening.................20


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