Wed, Jun 17, 2009
June 15-19, 2009
NEBRASKA UNION PLAZA, THURS NOON
'Fountain Frolics' Summer Concert Series Continues
The Fountain Frolics summer concert series at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln continues on the Nebraska Union Plaza, 15th and S streets. This week, the David von Kampen Trio plays modern piano-driven pop/rock with a twist.
The concerts will be noon to 1 p.m. every Thursday through July 30 (except July 2). UNL's University Program Council sponsors local musical entertainment and sells a picnic lunch of a hot dog, chips and a Pepsi product for $4 under the north overhang of the Nebraska Union.
Introducing the Future Design of UNL.edu
A process within the UNL Web Developer Network to create a refreshed and reimagined UNL.edu has culminated in a reference design, presented to WDN last week. The design is currently being coded into a new version of UNL site templates and is set for release on August 17, one week prior to the beginning of fall semester. Read more about the new design here.
Farritor's Research Aids Railroad Safety
It's been said that the best way to see a country is on the footplate of a locomotive. As Shane Farritor knows, the best way to examine the sturdiness of a railroad track and keep trains rolling safely is from roughly the same spot. The UNL associate professor of mechanical engineering and his team of researchers are conducting research to identify soft spots in the nation’s rails that might help railroads find and fix problems before they cause derailments.
Farritor and his team have retooled an old railcar with lasers, cameras and computers that, when attached to a freight train, diagnoses the condition of the rails below. “We use the car to estimate the vertical stiffness of the tracks,” Farritor said. “This is something nobody else measures, and it’s shown us some pretty eye-opening things.” more...
MARY RIEPMA ROSS MEDIA ARTS CENTER
Hunger and Sugar Play at the Ross
UNL's Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center presents Hunger and Sugar. Hunger will show through June 18, while Sugar will play through June 25.
Renowned English video artist Steve McQueen's feature film debut, Hunger, is a cinematic punch to the gut. McQueen brings a visceral intensity to his retelling of the hunger strike instigated by Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) and several other detained Irish Republican Army members in the early 1980s, who were determined to live in a Northern Ireland free from British rule. In prison, Sands and other IRA members--including Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan) and Gerry Campbell (Liam McMahon)--at first protest by refusing to wear the standard prison garb, but soon, they take their protest dangerously further. McQueen comes from an experimental background, and it shows. He and co-screenwriter, the acclaimed Irish playwright Enda Walsh, blow all the prison movie clichés out of the water. They break their film into three distinct acts. In the first, Gillen and Campbell are tormented by prison guards and made to suffer in a cramped, feces-smeared cell. In the second, Sands and Father Moran (Liam Cunningham) have a startling battle of wits--and emotions--that occurs in a dazzling extended one-take sequence. Lastly, we watch as Sands slowly withers away to nothing. It's impossible not to make a political film out of this furiously political material, but McQueen chooses to concentrate on the more visceral, tactile elements of the story to drive his point home. Hunger is one of the more exciting directorial debuts of recent memory.
Sugar follows the story of Miguel Santos, a.k.a. Sugar, a Dominican pitcher from San Pedro De Macorís, struggling to make it to the big leagues and pull himself and his family out of poverty. Playing professionally at a baseball academy in the Dominican Republic, Miguel finally gets his break at age 19 when he advances to the United States’ minor league system; but when his play on the mound falters, he begins to question the single-mindedness of his life’s ambition.
More information is available at the Ross website.
