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Wednesday, December 04, 2024

Columnists

Jim Dayton
COLUMNS

Heisman Watch: Week 7

This is the fourth edition of the Heisman Watch, a weekly feature tracking the candidates for college football’s most prestigious award. To read last week’s piece, click here.


Jack Baer
COLUMNS

Column: Rankings don't necessarily indicate team superiority

The transitive property: If a > b and b > c, then a > c. It’s one of the most basic tenants of mathematics and an idea that every person on Earth has used at one time or another, whether they’re aware of it or not. For our purposes, let’s talk about its use in the college football rankings, or at least in how the rankings are perceived.


Jake Smasal columnist mug
COLUMNS

‘Twin Peaks’ revival breeds skepticism and excitement

On Monday, it was revealed that David Lynch’s acclaimed psycho-drama “Twin Peaks” would come back after more than 20 years for a third season on Showtime. Lynch’s sprawling vision of a northern town and its seedy (and mostly psychotic) underbelly failed to live up to lofty ratings expectations in its second season and has since become a cult classic, gathering legions of new fans as the years have gone by.


Maham Hasan
COLUMNS

Riveting horror novels to get you ready for Halloween

Happy October folks! We have officially transitioned to what only the Wisconsinites call “fall,” rife with pumpkin spice lattes, a multitude of other pumpkin cliches and the countdown towards what will be my first official Halloween! I did not grow up dressing up in costumes to celebrate Halloween or go trick-or-treating; therefore my experience on that front is abysmally little.


Daily Cardinal
COLUMNS

‘Tomodachi Life’ offers comic blending of gaming and reality

I’ve been playing Nintendo’s new life sim, “Tomodachi Life,” since a couple weeks after its release in June. To summarize, the game gives the player use of the Mii creation system—the same one used to make the avatars who populate Wii Sports—to create residents in an apartment complex on a resort island. The game encourages you to create your friends, your family, or your favorite celebrities. A handful have signed on to provide their likenesses; official Wayne Brady, Zendaya and Christina Aguilera Miis are easy to find online, and a commercial displays Shaq and Shaun White Miis tasting some of the food in the game.


Jim Dayton
COLUMNS

Heisman Watch: Week 6

This is the third edition of the Heisman Watch, a weekly feature tracking the candidates for college football’s most prestigious award. To read last week’s piece, click here.


Jack Baer
COLUMNS

Column: Wild Card round brings instant excitement

Well… that Kansas City Royals game was fun. Twelve innings of multiple ties and lead changes, truly memorable plays and heroes like Brandon Finnegan, Brandon Moss and Jarrod Dyson all in front of an electric crowd and in winner-take-all, no-tomorrow stakes? Yeah, I’d like to see more of that.


Conor Murphy
COLUMNS

Digital TV leads in transgender roles

I didn’t watch much of MTV’s Video Music Awards this year, but the one clip I did see was 15 seconds of Laverne Cox dancing and singing along to Beyoncé’s performance. Most of the crowd around her looked disinterested in the whole affair, but Cox was turning it out in the aisle. After watching, and re-watching the clip, my reaction was the same: I just kept shouting “YAAAAS” at my computer, if you’ll forgive my stanning.


Jake Smasal columnist mug
COLUMNS

Hopeful predictions for ‘True Detective’ Season Two

Last week, it was announced that Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn, along with a yet to be cast female lead will star in the upcoming second season of “True Detective.” Farrell will star as a detective, while Vaughn has been cast as a career criminal and seems to be the antagonist of the new season. The only other details that have been revealed about the new season are that it will take place in California and will have something to do with, in the words of show creator Nic Pizzolatto, “the secret occult history of the United States transportation system.” That certainly leaves a lot of room for speculation, and because I am a huge fan of both speculation and “True Detective,” I have decided to come up with some scenarios of what the new season might have in store, as well as which female actress would be best cast as the lead.


Brian Weidy
COLUMNS

Spotify study reveals campus music trends

A couple of weeks ago, Spotify released a big ol’ batch of data on the Top 40 musical universities. The fine University of Wisconsin-Madison came in at 15, the top school in the Big Ten, though that last clause holds true on just about everything, not just how much students here listen to music through Spotify.


Jim Dayton
COLUMNS

Heisman Watch: Week 5

This is the second edition of the Heisman Watch, a weekly feature tracking the candidates for college football’s most prestigious award. To read last week’s inaugural piece, click here.


Austin Wellens
COLUMNS

"Belle" provides beautiful example of the unspoken language of film

So there’s this really terrific film called “Belle,” and if you haven’t seen it I really recommend it. The premise is (basically) that the mixed race daughter of an English admiral runs into trouble when she tries to be a black person in 18th century Britain. It intelligently tackles social and racial issues, it’s visually stunning, and the cast, especially star Gugu Mbatha-Raw and veteran Tom Wilkinson, give fantastic performances.


Jake Smasal columnist mug
COLUMNS

New Gotham City makes television debut

Gotham City is dark. It has always been dark, and “Gotham,” Fox’s new drama that has basically been billed as Gotham City before Batman, is not about to lighten it up. The pilot opens with a sequence of what can only be a young Catwoman climbing about and eventually witnessing that most heinous of crimes, the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne. Soon the future commissioner James Gordon and his corrupt partner Harvey Bullock are on the case. As Bullock says, “This isn’t a job for nice people.”


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