Viva Mexico!
Since it's almost February, we naturally can't stop thinking about what we're going to do when school lets out for the summer. Unfortunately, every hypothetical plan we come up with is full of kinks and coils. Europe is out, unless we start paying attention in language class. We could go home to see our parents, but the $350 plane fare seems an awful lot to pay to watch Oprah in our childhood bedrooms. We need to get out of here for a while - and for as little cash as possible. What are students to do?
Luckily, a new low-cost airline called vivaAerobus will begin operating out of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on May 1 with nonstop flights to Monterrey and Cancun. Yes, we know - "low-cost" and "airline" aren't words that necessarily go well together. But vivaAerobus has a lot of potential, most of which lies in its price: $9.99 for a each one-way jaunt.
Austin is vivaAerobus's flagship city in the U.S., although the airline has been operating in Mexico for the past 14 months. In this day and age of exorbitant travel costs and floundering public transportation systems, affordable air travel seems like an oxymoron. But vivaAerobus is going to do its best to make trips to our Southern neighbor as economical as possible.
VivaAerobus was designed after RyanAir, the dirt-cheap European carrier that is famous for losing passengers' luggage. VivaAerobus will function with similar conditions - no jet bridges, communal ticket counters and a sketchy baggage system - so make sure you take your gold chain-link bikini in your carry-on.
Go ahead, you've earned it
Professor Margaret Morris from the University of New South Wales presented research this week at the Austrailian Neuroscience Society showing that rats who had been seperated from their mothers and given "junk food" appeared less "stressed and agitated" than those put on a healthy diet.
But lonely students preparing to repeat this experiment at the Jester buffet should be warned - the mere addition of Vegemite to a diet may be enough to "agitate" even the most Zen of rodents.
Update your Facebook profiles
According to Cal Tech graduate student Virgil Griffith, some of the books you list as your favorites on your Facebook profile may not only indicate your taste in literature but your level of intelligence as well. Via Facebook, Griffith analyzed the 10 most popular books at select colleges in relation to the average SAT scores for the students at those colleges. The holy Bible stands to represent those on the lower spectrum of SAT output, correlating with students who scored an average of 900 on the test. Those who scored in the upper bracket tend to profess a taste for foreign literature: "Lolita" and "100 Years of Solitude" are the favorites of students who scored above 1300.
UT's average SAT score is 1240, which means we're more inclined to enjoy, or say we enjoy, "Atlas Shrugged" or "Catch-22." Work a little harder and we'll be at "Crime and Punishment" level. Of course, the only real measure here is one of pretention - but please excuse us while we take "Of Mice and Men" off of our profiles. Our SAT scores were way above 1000.
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