Quite an interesting epidemic is sweeping our campus.

If you’re one of the millions who have viewed the third Google hit under the search term “Rick Santorum,” you’ve probably laughed, sighed, or clicked the “like” button linked to Facebook. But whether or not you like him, Rick Santorum is still a contender in the Republican Presidential Primary. 

In the meantime of searching for the name of that song from the latest Twilight movie or Facebook stalking that guy or gal you recognize from class but can’t quite put your finger on from where, you might have found that suddenly—oh no, what is this?

As the first week of classes comes to a close, I find I am still scrambling for classes.

The 2012 Presidential election is in full swing.

I learned today that octopuses have three hearts.

If the market jumps almost 500 points and the unemployment rate plunges to 8.6 percent, everything must be dandy, right?

This semester has been one to remember.

It was many and many a year                           
ago,

This past Friday, the wrestling team fell to Columbia University, 32-12, at home at the Mayser Center.

“I love dunking,” said Salandra. “I’m not gonna lie. Dunking and winning.”

As the days of January wind down, the victories for F&M’s women’s squash team keep on coming.

Given how much ink—and its similarly viscous cousin blood—has been spilled over the merits and shortcomings of Tim Tebow, the beatified love-child of Jesus Christ, John Elway, and Vince Young, you would think I could somehow resist the urge to write about him.

Both the men’s and women’s swim teams have put in a lot of work for the rest of their 2011-2012 seasons.

Triumph and success are the words to describe the women’s basketball team during the month of December, as teams like McDaniel, Gettysburg, Haverford, Randolph-Macon, and Scranton all  lost to F&M.

While many of us were sitting at home enjoying our winter break, the men’s basketball team was back on campus, doing two-a-days and competing in a number of games.

In the presentation of his book, HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth in the Bonchek Common Room on Wednesday, journalist Mark Hertsgaard discussed the current climate crisis, its future impacts, what he sees as the good news, and what actions we can take to combat its effects.

People say that Pennsylvania consists of Philadelphia, Pittsburg, and Alabama in between.  If that’s the case, and we are living in the otherwise called  “Pennsyltucky,” then where’s the fried chicken?

The first Women’s Center Discussion of the semester took place last Friday. The topic was “I’m not a feminist, but...” and the participants reflected upon the various meanings associated with being a feminist. 

Dr. P.M. Forni, professor of Italian literature and co-founder of the Johns Hopkins Civility Project, spoke about the importance of good manners and respect during Common Hour, entitled “Choosing Civility on Campus and in Life.”

When students returned from winter break, they quickly discovered changes to the dining location in Steinman College Center.

The first week of freshman year, the number of dining options so readily available seemed overwhelming.

“For a reporter covering the Supreme Court, this is not just a good year, it is a great year, a fabulous year, a genuinely historic year, but funny, it is not,” said National Public Radio’s legal affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg, during Common Hour.

Every semester, one Common Hour is run solely by the students of the Common Hour Committee.

As January draws to a close, the buzz about who will take home the Oscars this year increases.

Five must see movies to see this semester:

John K. Samson’s sophomore full-length Provincial perfectly suits this mild winter: soft yet up-beat, somber but hopeful—bright notes stick out in these melodies like blades of grass in melting snow (please refrain from envisioning brown grass for the sake of your figurative viewing pleasure). 

If you haven’t seen Die Hard by now you should say three Hail Marys and then rush to Netflix.  It’s simply inexcusable. It’s one of those movies that forces you to describe other movies as being “Die Hard on a boat” or “Die Hard on a plane.” 

Directed by John McTiernan, it combines everything you’ve ever liked about an action film into 133 minutes of edge-of-your-seat thrills. If you like the action genre even a little bit then Die Hard is definitely a classic, and maybe even your favorite movie.

Bruce Willis plays John McClane, an NYPD police officer traveling to Los Angeles to stay with his two little girls for Christmas Eve and hopefully patch up a rough spot in his marriage with his wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia). McClane is too dedicated a cop to leave his city behind and start a new life with Holly after her major promotion sends her to L.A., but he makes the trip anyway to surprise her at her office, which is on the thirtieth floor of a massive state-of-the-art sky scraper.  Unfortunately, he is not the only surprise, and, while washing up in the bathroom, he misses a group of machine-gun-toting German terrorists take everybody, including his wife, hostage. The shoeless hero takes to the air vents with a gun and his bad boy New York attitude to pick off the Fabio-looking thieves one by one while he attempts to crack the mystery behind the takeover.

While the terrorists, led by Hans (Alan Rickman), try to break the computer codes to get into a vault holding six million dollars in bonds, McClane is able to get his hands on a radio transmitter and contact the outside world and, more importantly, desk-cop Al, played by Reginald Veljohnson. Unfortunately, the terrorists also have radio transmitters.  This opens up a confession-like dialogue between hero McClane, head terrorist Hans, and former cop-in-the-field Al. This radio correspondence gives the viewer a sense of McClane’s humanity and vulnerability, but it also gives insight into Al’s crippling past–and most importantly Hans’ rapidly weakening plan. The fun is heightened because none of the characters know what the good guy or the bad guy looks like.

People who see Die Hard for the first time now will say the same things: “Those were high-tech computers!?” “Look at the old-fashioned hair styles,” and “Isn’t that Snape?” Once you get used to the vintage  90s look and the fact that the good cop is Winslow from Family Matters, you’ll settle down and strap yourself in for the ride.  Yes, the catchphrases might be a little cheesy, but they make each quick kill more fun and enjoyable. Plus, everything you want to happen will always happen. Machine guns rarely run out of ammo, the hero is always giving away his location and confronting terrorists, things go boom, tanks explode and people jump off skyscrapers tied to makeshift fire hose bungee cords. 

Die Hard is an essential action film, unlike the sequels that follow (Die Hard 2, Die Hard With a Vengeance, and Live Free or Die Hard). There are some anti-climactic cut-aways, but for the most part the movie packs punch after satisfying punch. If you call yourself a fan of the action genre then you have to see this movie. There are plenty of die-hard Die Hard fans out there who love watching it over and over again, quoting every line.

DJ Earworm has done it again! For those of you who don’t know who DJ Earworm is, allow me to inform you.

America’s been inundated recently with the late Stieg Larsson’s “Millenium” crime series.

Marie Antoinette probably never said “Let them eat cake,” since the infamous jest, which is actually taken from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, was published when the disgraced Queen of France and Navarre was the nine-year-old Archduchess of Austria.

This January thriller doesn’t aim for the stars and neither did Baltasar Kormakur, director of Contraband.