The city of Oxford has many things going for it, but being easy to navigate late at night is not one of them. At least, that’s how I feel on my first night at the University of Oxford. The rest of the “freshers” and I have been released into town after an evening of orientation, …
Category Archives: Other
Tips for When You’re Lost in London
One of my favorite parts about being in London is figuring out how to get somewhere. This has been my first trip abroad where I have been given so much freedom. However, I have discovered that for the price of freedom is the need of a good sense of direction. When walking down …
Pedestrians Beware
“One does not simply wait for pedestrians. One runs them down so as to herd them and remove them more quickly from the path of a car.” If there was an adage for London drivers, this would be it. If walking is scary (because from personal near death experience on many occasions it is safe …
Proper Appreciation of the Globe Theater
The Globe Theater, located right on the banks of the river Thames, has not changed overmuch from its heyday in the Elizabethan era. The modern Globe being an accurate reproduction of the original theater, the experience of attending a show remains virtually the same. Here are two Globe conventions which help an audience member appreciate …
The Search for the George
As a part of this course, our professors wanted us to get lost in London and learn about the city’s history, culture, and people. A small group of us did get lost, but probably not in the way Re and Steve anticipated. The night we were to see our first show of the block, The …
Ecological Restoration Week 1
Well, the first week of Ecological Restoration just ended! We have two professors, Marion Hourdequin, a philosophy professor from Colorado College, and David Havlick, her husband, a geography professor from University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. We’ve already read a lot of material, from ecological articles trying to pin down a technical definition of “ecological …
Miracolo a Milano
The last couple days have introduced a bit of levity to our material. As we learned last week, neorealist films focus on real life, everyday experiences of average people – usually the underdog – and often addressed World War II and contemporary social justice issues. Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan) is another film by De Sica, …
Neorealism
In the second half of the week, we shifted our focus to the post-World War II reaction to fascism, exemplified in a cinematic and literary movement known as neorealism. Neorealist directors like Rossellini sought to strip away the artificiality of propagandist films of the previous decades and explore not only the effects of reality – …
Italian Political Cinema
As a Romance Languages major who chose Italian as one of my specialties, I’m lucky that the few upper-level Italian courses we’re offered are so interesting! Many, like this one, are cross-listed courses, so I get to take class with not only Italian students (it’s a pretty small department – the few of us overlap …
Machine Learning: Classifying Films
In the era of netflix, there’s a wide array of available films to watch online. One of the features that made Netflix so successful was its ability to recommend new movies. This ability is equivalent to answering the following questions: If a person likes a particular movie, what are some similar movies? If a person likes a …
