Everyone has that one friend—the person that sweeps in right as life gets too predictable and gives a new definition to excitement. Mine, without fail, steered me to the front steps of Academy Hall at 8 pm Friday night. The normally stoic building was dressed up in rainbow streamers and balloons, a welcoming invitation by the Rensselaer Pride Alliance to come in and enjoy a quality Drag Show. Read more...

Climbing to 13th in national rankings since the cross country season kicked off in September, the women’s team showed 44 teams what they were made of on Saturday when they placed third overall at the NCAA Division III Atlantic Regional Championship Meet held at Letchworth State Park just outside of Geneseo, NY. Never in Rensselaer women’s cross country history has the team performed this well at a regional meet. Read more...

The Executive Board meeting opened Thursday, November 12, with the introduction of the new Student Activities Assistant, Alex Pizzola. Her duties include advising service clubs such as Colleges Against Cancer, Habitat for Humanity, and Circle K. Read more...

Over the weekend of October 30, a steam pipe in West Hall 325 sprung a leak, causing the humidity in the the room to rise to the point where water was condensing on the walls and puddling on the floor. The problem was discovered on Monday, November 2 by Rensselaer Orchestra French horn player Patrick Celentano ’18. “I have music theory on Mondays [before the orchestra rehearses], so I usually bring my French horn with me to West and drop off in the storage room... I opened the door and was immediately hit with a wall of humidity and heat. There were little pools of water on the floor from condensation and any paper that was left in there—music, or otherwise—was wrinkled from saturation,” says Celentano. He informed Professor Nicholas DeMaison, director of the orchestra, of the problem, who, in turn, informed the Arts Department administration. According to Burgess, a violin manufacturer, when wooden instruments are stored in locations with improper humidity, they “swell and contract...When [they] get smaller, parts of the instrument, like the top, are under tension, the perfect condition for the formation of cracks and failure of the joints and seams.” Burgess recommended a relative humidity of between 40 percent and 60 percent for storage of wooden instruments. When asked if climate control problems were persistent in the orchestra’s rehearsal and instrument storage areas, Celentano responded “Yes. West Hall has a good number of problems, but those rooms are particularly bad.” In this instance, Celentano only had a mute damaged. Read more...

I have been playing Hearthstone since the first official season back in April 2014, so I have been there for every adventure and expansion Blizzard has released. Hearhtstone’s previous expansion left much to be desired. With the newest adventure, League of Explorers, Blizzard has given players the best Players vs. Environment content to date. Read more...

RPI men’s soccer spent the weekend in Waltham, Massachusetts, participating in the NCAA tournament. The Engineers defeated Stevens Institute of Technology 2-1 on Saturday, and lost to Brandeis University 1-2 Sunday, barely missing the Sweet 16. Read more...

ISIL operates a 24-hour jihadi help desk

According to United States intelligence groups, ISIL operates a technical help desk available to any of its worldwide terrorists. A popular question answered is how to encrypt communications so law enforcement has a harder time catching them before they strike. Read more...

Saturday, November 7, at the chipper hour of 5:30 am, members of Rensselaer’s Engineers Without Borders Chapter loaded into two cars and drove to the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, where the Northeast Regional Conference would take place. In attendance was Project Leader and mechanical engineering major Mike Kubista ’17, Vice President and civil engineering major Alison Luongo ’17, Professional Liaison and materials science and engineering major Tom Rebbecchi ’16, secretary and biomedical engineering major Kyra Dauwalder ’17, treasurer and chemical engineering major Elizabeth Kwon ’18, fundraising coordinator and electrical engineering major Frank Sokolowski ’18, membership coordinator and mechanical engineering and design innovation and society major Tim Andrews ’18, mechanical engineering major Jonathan Blumers ’17, environmental engineering major Paige Shovelton ’19, and chemical engineering major Elisabeth Ryan ’19. Read more...

As the Student Senate at RPI continues to play politics, the campus community has begun to question the relevancy of student government. To be fair, the group has struggled to implement changes, and it’s reasonable for the student body to question the group’s relevance. However, we at The Poly feel it is important to mention that student government serves several integral roles in the life of students on campus. Read more...

On October 30, a downloadable content pack came out for the little known indie game called The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. The update, Afterbirth, features a new Greed Mode, Daily Runs, Online Leaderboards, more than 1,000 new room designs, items, transformations, and achievements, amongst a sea of countless other features. This is a much needed update to Rebirth, which came out almost a year ago, on November 4, 2014. Though the original game contained hundreds of hours of gameplay, most people that have the game don’t just sit down and play one run; they play for hours. I am a huge fan of Rebirth, and this DLC provides more content than I know what to do with. I have more than 200 hours clocked into the original, and still haven’t unlocked everything. Read more...

The Rensselaer Engineers headed to Potsdam, New York for a 7 pm game last Friday night against Clarkson University. Coming off of a sweep against Union College last weekend, RPI skated out ready to play. They started the game off right with junior Riley Bourbonnais taking the first faceoff and sophomore Mike Prapavessis taking the first shot of the game. After about seven minutes of intense play, senior Travis Fulton put up a goal assisted by freshman Meirs Moore. A minor penalty for each team later, the period ended with the Engineers’ goal having gone unanswered. Read more...

Patrick Celentano ’18 and S. John Trombley ’17 from the Rensselaer Orchestra presented to the Senate about how a steam pipe burst in the ceiling of their instrument storage room, causing thousands of dollars in damages to instruments. On Monday, November 2, Celentano explained how he walked into the room to put his instrument away, and saw “pools of water on the ground” and that the humidity in the room was extremely high. Orchestral instruments are designed to be stored in climate-controlled conditions, and West Hall has had consistent climate control issues which recently climaxed with the burst steam pipe, according to the presenters. To add further insult to injury, the RPI FIXX service did not even address the problem until the following Wednesday, and did not determine that a steam pipe had burst until Friday, November 6. Read more...

These days, in my free time, I find myself playing Sid Meier’s Civilization V. Even though the new game—Civilization: Beyond Earth—came out, I can’t bring myself to play it. I just love the ancient world and the dawn of human civilization. That we came from nothing and built the human race on slowly progressing technology blows my mind. Even in the wee morning of human existence, we managed to construct wonders such as the Colossus of Rhodes, the Pyramids of Gaza, and the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Considering the technology available at the time, historians and architects still do not know exactly how these structures were built. But as sad as I am to admit it, not many people nowadays have a burning interest in the ancient world or even mythology, from which almost all fantasy literature attributes inspiration from. Read more...

People who have read my reviews and notebook know that I never assess actors’ and actresses’ performances. However, I cannot help but remark on the acting in Amelie—I know a cute girl whose name is Amelie, and I want to tell you her story. Read more...

In a manner fitting for Senior Day, senior quarterback Jeff Avery found senior wide receiver Logan Gaddar for a 44-yard touchdown to give the Engineers the lead late in the fourth quarter against the Pride of Springfield College. Avery passed 185 yards along with his 19th touchdown pass of the season, and Rensselaer won 17-14 to improve to 7-2 in 2015. Read more...

After 17 months of widespread Ebola infection, the African country of Sierra Leone has been deemed Ebola-free by the World Health Organization. WHO Director Anders Nordström stated in a recent release that the country had gone 42 days without any new cases of the infectious blood disease, which goes to satisfy the criteria that the WHO uses to declare an area free of an outbreak. The community of Freetown, the nation’s capital, responded to the news by holding a large demonstration both in memory of those lost to the disease, and as a reminder to survivors of the disease to stay vigilant. Read more...

Although you may know me as the contributing editor of The Poly, I have another group that I hold near and dear: chairman of the Web Technologies Group. WebTech, as it’s commonly called, is the committee of the Student Senate tasked with creating technological solutions that will benefit and serve as useful tools for the student body. As the committee approaches its tenth anniversary next year, I wanted to reflect on some of the services that WebTech has created for RPI students, along with a sneak-peek into what’s coming soon. Read more...

It must first be said that Spectre cannot be the first James Bond movie that someone new to the franchise watches. In fact, this movie makes a fleeting attempt to justify the storylines of the most recent films with Daniel Craig as Bond, so all of them become a prerequisite. Going into this movie cold would leave an individual confused, misguided, and unlikely to watch any more films from the franchise.
If this is the case, then what does it do for the die-hard Bond fanatics? Frankly, nothing good. The first 51 minutes of the film are squeamishly uncomfortable to watch and can only be likened to the comedic antics of the Roger Moore era. Unfortunately, it did not stop there; to follow was the subtle sampling of ideas throughout the film from several previous movies: GoldenEye (1995), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), From Russia with Love (1963) ... the list goes on. At first it is taken as the recycling of ideas, but it is in fact a purposeful echoing of Bond’s past as the franchise attempts to reconcile the chronological issues caused by having six actors play Bond over a span of five decades. The reconciliation weaves a Möbius strip of a timeline that, when juxtaposed with certain previous films, makes one’s eyebrow raise quizzically.
Everyone is asking if Spectre is better than Skyfall (2012). The only answer is no. Were expectations higher for Christoph Waltz as a villain? The only answer is yes. Could more have been done with the essential elements of the Bond formula (henchmen, gadgets, Bond women, etc.)? Yes, yes, and yes. It cannot be said that Spectre is Daniel Craig’s worst installment, nor can it be said that it is the worst installment of the franchise. It is simply a dense movie for Bond fans that has far reaching implications.
The last topic worth discussing is Bond’s demeanor towards love. Bond has been infamously, and aptly, described within the franchise as a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur.” For better or for worse, the mentality that “men want to be him and women want to be with him” has proven to be financially beneficial to the franchise. Historically, any deviation from this mantra is met with ridicule by fans. The Daniel Craig films have been an attempt to humanize Bond and move him into the modern era of thought; Spectre pushes this boundary significantly. In fact, the final act of the film has love as such a prevalent theme that it casts doubt on Bond’s ability to maintain the ruthlessness required to be an assassin; effectively alienating the Bond the world has come to know.
For fans that are unsettled by this addition to the franchise, the only solace that can be provided is the recommendation that you stay in the theater all the way through the credits, where you will be given four simple words any Bond fan has surely seen before, and you will learn to cherish the franchise once again. Read more...

While it may have seemed like it was going to be a disappointing weekend for the Engineers after Friday’s 2–0 loss against the St. Lawrence University’s Saints, it turned out to be quite the contrary when the number four nationally ranked Clarkson University was taken down on Saturday night at the Houston Field House. In a 2–1 upset of the Clarkson Golden Knights by the RPI women’s ice hockey team, RPI jumped to 4-5-1 for the season, and Clarkson fell to 10-1-2. This is the Golden Knights’ first loss of the season, having won ten times so far and tied only twice. Read more...