Final Season of Lost Begins

The final season of Lost premiered two days ago on February 2nd with a two hour long double episode.  In case you somehow don’t know what Lost is…it’s an action/mystery/drama on ABC based around a group of plane crash survivors on a mysterious island.  The show is known for its continual cliffhangers and very “out there” ideas.  This is the start of the sixth and final season, and audiences are looking to finally get some answers.

After watching the season premiere I was pretty satisfied, and excited about what was to come the rest of the season.  The next day my dorm neighbor sent me the Lost picture that is in comic style fashion on the right of this post.  I personally found this pretty hilarious, and I think any true Lost fan would as well, however if you don’t really follow the show it’s pretty hard to appreciate, so let me explain a bit.

The two characters shown in the comic  are the main two actors of the series.  The first shown is Jack, and the second is Locke.  Jack has been the heroic leader of the survivors and typically the focal point of the show.  Locke came to the island in a wheelchair, and can suddenly walk when he wakes up on the beach.  He also is quite a knife fanatic and hunter, etc etc.

If you’ve seen Avatar and all of its unoriginal blueness then it’s pretty clear that the character of Locke and his background was picked right out of Lost and put into Avatar, with a facial makeover.  I’m not saying I’m mad about Avatar’s choice because the character worked out well being in a wheelchair and then being able to take on a new life as the Avatar.  However it does add yet another tally to the amount of ideas the movie is accused of ripping off of.  Those being Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas, FernGully, The Matrix, etc.

Comic-Con 2009: Top 10 Costumes

Now that Comic-Con 2009 from San Diego is over, the pictures that everyone took while there are starting to hit the web.  This event has evolved into more of a large costume display party rather than somewhere to go to get information about comics, games, upcoming movies, or anything else you can find there.  However, this isn’t always a bad thing, since it provides some great pictures with people in them ranging from those who spent way too many hours designing their costume, to the ones who will look sexy impersonating any superhero or character out there.

Instead of displaying hundreds of pictures I’ve gone through many sources and have filtered out what I believe to be the top 10 costumes from this summer’s Comic-Con.  I’ve tried to get a decent variety and (mostly) avoid the common costumes such as stormtroopers, trekkies, princess leia, etc.

#10 – Killzone Guys

#9 – Tomb Raider

#8 – Zombie Girls – Looks like they are promoting the movie Zombieland, but that’s not too important…these girls are just hot.

#7 – Wonder Woman – one of probably many, but she pulls it off well.

#6 – Anakin Skywalker and Aayla Secura

#5 – Sephiroth

#4 – Nick Fury, Ms. Marvel, and Black Widow

#3 – The Baroness from G.I. Joe

#2 – Rikku from Final Fantasy X. Fairly simple costume but this girl looks exactly like the game character.

#1 – Big Sister from Bioshock 2. The high detail put into this costume makes it my top choice from this year’s costumes.

New Rose-Hulman President Matt Branam Visits RH Ventures

After the effective resignation of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology’s President Jakubowski on June 30th, a search committee has proven unsuccessful in finding a new replacement for the position, however an interim president was chosen for the 2009-2010 year.

His name is Matt Branam, who has an experienced career as an executive in the private and non-profit sectors. He will serve while the search is underway for a permanent successor to Dr. Jakubowski. Branam is a 1979 civil engineering graduate from Rose-Hulman and started his career early at UPS. Since then he has been a vice president at UPS and chief operating officer at the American Red Cross.

On Wednesday the 22nd, Matt Branam made a visit to Rose-Hulman Ventures to be a part of the summer distinguished speaker series. He personally greeted and spoke to all of the summer interns, staff, and many of the professors that showed up for the event. His speech constituted of “Things I’ve learned” and highly focused on having a clear vision of what you want to accomplish. Branam quickly talked about his childhood, his time at Rose-Hulman, and how he got his roots at UPS. The later half of his talk was about his opinions and ideas on how he is going to move Rose-Hulman in the right direction during his year stay to maintain the college’s prestigious #1 ranking by U.S. News and World Report, which is for any college or university that offers the bachelor’s or master’s degree as its top degree in engineering. Matt stressed that the Institute needs to establish a clear vision to accomplish this goal. Specifics on how this will be done were not mentioned, but he will pull from his background in private and non-profit leadership to find a solution. As one of his speech morals, Branam stated that having a clear established vision is the key component to success in almost anything you want to achieve.

First impressions from meeting Matt Branam for the first time and from his speech seemed very reassuring. He appears to be very intelligent and delivered his speech very well. It sounds like he already has some plans and goals in mind for Rose-Hulman, and is determined to see them through. It’s going to be a nice change to have a more gritty business attitude leading our college than one simply focused on academics and how to collect more money for the Institution.

Economic Downturn Creates Jobs

Economic downturn forces seniors from #1 engineering school, Rose-Hulman, to pursue graduate school or new business start ups to offset the lack of new jobs available. Senior jobs down 10%, drives young entrepreneur to start local and national tutoring business. New technology makes it possible to connect tutors and students across the web on a whiteboard.

The current economic situation is a birth to new businesses. College seniors are not finding the jobs that they once were right after graduation. A candid source from the human resources department at Rose-Hulman casually stated that job placement of graduating seniors is down 10% from last year’s average. Knowing that some are not going to be able to make the money necessary to pay back college loans, seniors are choosing to start their own business or go to grad school.

One such student is Matthew Fouts, a junior at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (Ranked #1 ten years in a row by USA Today as the best Undergraduate Engineering School in the country), who said, “Knowing job placement will most likely still be low by the time I graduate, I wanted to take control of my income and not rely on other companies to make a living.” With his new start up, Rose-Learning ( http://www.Rose-Learning.com ), he provides struggling high school students a new means to get help on academic studies. Utilizing Rose-Hulman students to teach others in the Terre Haute, Indiana area he is helping students reach their academic potential. According to his website, the subjects that a student can receive personalized one on one tutoring help with are: Math, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. ACT/SAT and Advanced Placement test preparation are also available.

Now that more people are using the web instead of the newspaper or phone book to find services, Matthew has expanded his services and added an interactive online whiteboard to his website. This enables the student and tutor to be online together drawing and typing on the same screen even though they are hundreds of miles apart. This new technology by Twiddla makes it possible to tutor locally and nationally across the web. Rose-Learning is helping to provide jobs, help struggling students, and improve test scores. Rose-Learning can be contacted via phone at 812-241-5653.

Rose-Hulman President to Resign

On Monday morning I got out of bed to get ready for my 9am class, went to check my email…and saw the rare “message from the president” email. Usually I’ll ignore actually reading my emails until later in the day when I’m able to function properly, but this called for action. I opened it and there was just an attachment, which turned out to be Dr. Jakubowski’s resignation later to the campus. All that it entailed was three short paragraphs stating his resignation and how great Rose-Hulman is and has treated him.

As expected, the chatter on campus for the rest of the day was about this email, and everyone wondering why he decided to leave on such a whim. Plenty of rumors went around about him getting into some sort of trouble, arguments with the board, etc…however none of these ever proved to be true or false. The very next morning another email was sent out by Dr. J, addressing the fact that his first email was well, “vague” at best. Included was his future plan, which is taking the position of provost at The California Maritime Academy starting this summer. I looked into this some and it appears that he’s downgrading on jobs with this move, so there has to be some underlying reason for the transfer, but I’m not sure if anyone will find that out.

Dr. Jakubowski has been the President at Rose-Hulman all three years I’ve been there, so it’s sad to see him go. He did a great job at running things on campus, being involved with athletics and events, and being genuinely excited about the college and community. There will most likely be a new president, if just a temporary one, announced later this year or in the summer.