The editors of Pyxis write in about their latest issue:

Pyxis, Wesleyan’s student-run humanities journal, is proud to announce the release of our Spring 2013 issue! Pyxis presents student academic writing in the humanities, covering a variety of fields to shed new light on a topic and create engaging conversation and inquiry. Last Fall’s issue centered around the idea of “bodies”, and this semester’s issue offers fresh perspectives on “memory”. These essays, carefully selected and peer-reviewed, explore tradition, history, trauma, psychology, and postmodernism, among many concepts.

Featuring essays from:

Zach Schonfeld ’13
Peter Myers ’13
John Schmidt ’13
Nick Myerberg ’14
Christina Ermillio ’13
Kyra Sutton ’13

And art and photography from:

Tiffany Gerdes ’13
Piers Gelly ’13
Dat Vu ’15
Zach Fischman ’13
Aria Danaparamita ’13

Read this year’s issues here. And look for a print compilation of these issues soon!

For the last procrastination destination of the year, we bring you two rather similar and, again, rather self-explanatory websites: Siblings or Dating and Steak House or Gay Bar.

Siblings or Dating features pictures of people, generally who look alike, and asks you to vote on whether you think they are siblings or a couple. Frustratingly, it does not actually tell you what the answer is, but does tell you how many other people selected the ones that you chose.

Steak House or Gay Bar (see image above) is equally self-explanatory: the website gives you a name and you have to use your deductive reasoning to determine whether it is a steak house or a gay bar. It will tell you where the (steak house | gay bar) happens to be, and also what percentage of people also got the answer right or wrong. The website keeps a running tally so that you know what percentage of your guesses have been correct. It… is surprisingly difficult. I will tell you, however, that Loading Zone is indeed a gay bar.

From Kate Weiner ’15‘s book.

From Piers Gelly ’13:

Come to Espwesso at 7:00 p.m. tonight for the Stethoscope Press final reading and launch party! Our books are finally here and at this reading they’ll be free for the taking. Past experience has shown that the books go like hotcakes, so arrive on time in order to get your copies of:

• Relative Strangers, a book of poems by Josh Krugman ’14
• Oroitz, a philosophical mystery novella by Nate Dolton-Thornton ’15
• Informant, a collection of essays in China by Amy Zhang ’15
• Civics, a collection of Cold War-era short stories by Rachel Pincus ’13
• Home, a collection of short stories about homes and homelessness by Kate Weiner ’15

Refreshments will be served!

Date: Today, Wednesday, May 15
Time: 7:00 PM
Place: Espwesso
Facebook: Here

Today, we bring you a silly tumblr called “Reasons My Son Is Crying.” It’s exactly what it sounds like: a parent posts pictures of hir son crying with description as to why the kid is so upset. Many of them are quite entertaining, and will likely lead the kid to look back on this blog many years from now and curse his parents for their literally portraying him as a whiny baby on the internet.

For previous Procrastination Destinations, click here.

[Tumblr]
[Facebook]
[Twitter]

The famous Manolis Kaparakis sends me information about a crazy new course going up this fall under the designation of COMP 360, COMP260/QAC260 and called “Special Topics in Computer Science (“Big Data” Analysis),” taught by Professor Norman Danner.

Next semester (Fall 2013), Computer Science will be offering a special course on data analysis (COMP 260), in which students from non-computing disciplines will team up with Computer Science students (COMP360) to work on a research problem that requires significant data analysis.

All students will learn the fundamental techniques of such analysis.

The specific techniques to be learned will be determined by the research problems.  The non-CS students will fully develop their research proposals and produce an appropriate research paper describing the project and its results.  The Computer Science students will be responsible for developing a well-written software platform that can be used for the project-specific analysis.  Ideally the platform will be reusable in other projects.

Enrollment is POI, but to be admitted to the course, non-computing students must submit a one-half to one-page research project proposal via e-mail to ndanner[at]wesleyan[dot]edu by May 31, 2013.  The proposal must give a sense of the question(s) to be answered and the kind of data to be collected and analyzed.  We encourage proposals that have some faculty backing such as those that will contribute to an honors thesis or are part of an independent research course.  We encourage joint proposals from computing and non-computing students.  However, joint proposals are not required, and  we will match students as well as possible given project needs and student interests.

So the second (apparently now annual) WesRave went down, ending around 1:00 a.m. Here’s a brief recap and some photos.

We weren’t allowed to go on any major roads or the athletic fields, so we kind of made a loop around campus. It went as such: 

1. Foss Hill (starting point)
2. CFA Parking Lot –> green near Crowell
3. Labyrinth
4. CFA Green
5. X-House
6. North College
7. Lawn near Alpha Delt
8. PAC
9. Olin Terrace
   • Then at this point, the rave somehow split. I ended up with about 1/4 of the rave at the base of Foss Hill and was kind of distressed and confused by the fact that so many people had gone home. But then…
10. CFA (again); met up with the other 3/4 of the rave
11. North College (again)
12. Olin Terrace (again)
13. Foss Hill (again)
14. CFA Green (again)
15. North College (again again)
16. South College
17. PAC (again)
18. Olin Front Steps
19. Olin Terrace (LAST TIME)

Send us your photos, videos, and stories about WesRave! Send them to staff[at]wesleying.org and/or bzodonnell[at]wesleyan.edu. See photos of last year’s WesRave here.

Evan Okun ’13 sends us the above image for his senior recital this Friday. He didn’t even send a blurb. I’m not sure if he expects me to write something, or just wanted me to post the image. I guess I could probably mention that he did a music video recently. And that his rap name E. Oks isn’t really hiding his identity very well. Also, there’s a Facebook event for his recital, and I’m probably just going to end this post with some event details before it gets more obnoxious and rambly than it already is.

Date: Friday, May 3
Time: 9:15 PM
Place: Russell House
Facebook: Present

Come check out a senior sound installation by David Preddy ’13.  Also, check out the above introductional film by David.

• Date: Thursday, May 2; Friday, May 3
  
• Time: 8:00 – 10:30 PM, both nights
• Place: Davidson Art Center
• Facebook? Yep!

By the Numbers is a seminar series sponsored by the Quantitative Analysis Center showcasing student research in the social sciences. This is a forum for students to present ongoing research and receive feedback from students and faculty. If you have done research, are currently doing research, or are just interested in learning more about contemporary topics in the social sciences, we hope to see you there!

Presentations will be by Eric Stephen ’13 and Catherine Doren ’13. Pizza will be provided. More details after the jump: 

Eric Stephen

Shamanism in the Russian republic of Buryatia has reemerged as an important indigenous religious tradition since the fall of the Soviet Union, an officially atheist state, in 1991. Survey data collected in 2012 at sites of Buryat shamanic rituals is used to analyze demographic, ethnic, and religious identity information of those who attended modern shamanic ceremonies in the area.

Catherine Doren

From one country to the next, the role of socioeconomic status differs in its relation to academic achievement.  In this study, I examine the role of country-level factors, specifically open and closed systems, in affecting this relationship.  The existing literature provides conflicting evidence, suggesting that open, democratic characteristics may either decrease or increase the effect of socioeconomic status in a country, as may closed, non-democratic characteristics. Using multi-level models to analyze data from the Programme for International Student Assessment and the Quality of Government datasets, I find that the relationship is more complex.

PIZZA WILL BE PROVIDED!

Date: Tuesday, April 23
Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Place: Allbritton 103
Food: Pizza! As I’ve said like three times.

Well, everyone else abandoned me, so I’m liveblogging this thing alone. Nicole Brenner ’15 is moderating, Chloe Murtagh ’15 and Andrew Trexler ’14 are debating.

I’ll write more shit here once I get a moment. No one from Wesleying is helping me out today so I’m doing this as Chloe is doing her opening statement.

As we mentioned yesterday, voting in the election is now open at this link, from now until Friday at 11:59 p.m. Our group interview with the presidential and vice-presidential candidates will be posted before then.