The Oxford Student - Official Student Newspaper

Columns: jump, jump?

This week sees the premier event in Oxford's watersports calendar: the annual high-diving competition from Magdalen Bridge. Although speculation continues as to whether the bridge will actually be open on the day, there is no doubt that the boy band that is Magdalen College School Choir will attract their usual cult following....

Columns: Bite Size

May Morning is, let's face it, another excuse to binge on strawberries, cream, champers and the rest of it. However like much of the Oxford experience it is sadly overrated. You're pissed, knackered, and (if they open the bridge) most probably sopping wet. How about indigestion to add to your hangover, sir? Will you take your cholesterol in cream or the smoked salmon form? And your casualty unit of choice for when you finally collapse?...

Columns: Wise Words

There is no logic or purpose to anything. Is that clear? Good. We can proceed. The Sunday Times, the newspaper which proves definitively that size is no guarantee of quality, recently published a list of the Top 50 masterworks of all times. I'm sorry, is that really necessary? Of all the staggeringly cretinous lists which have dominated 1999 (Robbie Williams' Angels is looking good for HMV Song Of The Millennium), this may be number one. So, amusingly, the readers of this arsingly idiotic paper have been asked to compare all known art forms to rank the finest works from the past thousand years. ...

Columns: Music: Singles

Ash: Numbskull EP

Columns: Music: Gigs

Wired, Thursday April 29th, Club Latino

Columns: Music: Name-dropping

Columns: Mp3: Free CD-Quality Music on the Net

For many years the quality of sound that was broadcast over the internet was piss poor to say the least. The situation has improved with the advent of MP3 file format. These files mean you can download almost CD quality sound and play it on a PC. MP3 refers to MPEG 1 layer 3, a format which allows anyone to store music files on a computer or disc. The most important thing about MP3 is that file sizes are relatively small compared with older formats- meaning you can get a lot of music on a single disc. In addition the sound quality is superior to other formats such as RealAudio. Mp3 has created huge controversy in the music industry, with those in command of the major record labels fearing that people may stop buying music, if they can download for free from pirate web-sites. In most cases, downloading music from an official site is OK- it is likley that the site owners will own the copyright to the music. You'll usually be allowed to download music for personal use, but it'd be illegal to copy the file for redistribution on the Net. Around 75 seconds of a commercial track is the usual length, given to you as a taster on bona-fide sites. Legally you should never download any soundfiles from unofficial band sites. If the web site owner doesn't own the copyright, they could be prosecuted, and so could you for downloading it....

Columns: Drama: Tower-block shocker

This is a good little play. It is by a man called Johnathan Harvey who is, I am told, "one of England's hottest new playwrights." His formula, admittedly, is fairly standard - all of the ingredients for grim socialist realism offset by a liberal sprinkling of upbeat humour. But the formula is a good one, and plays that make you laugh, especially if they make you think, are good things....

Columns: Books: Classical education

It may seen spurious to attempt to recommend a play which is apparently so unpopular it is rarely available in bookshops, a playwright deemed to be such a literary backwater I was advised against writing my optional thesis, supposedly an opportunity to write on any aspect of the canon, on him as no one in Oxford, his alma mater, would be a specialist on him....

Columns: Books: Top 10

1 About a Boy

Columns: Film: Cinemania

The truffle shuffle".....need I say any more? The Goonies is the ultimate 80s film. A gang of kids trying to stop their homes from being turned into a golf course, escaped convicts, the search for a pirate's long-lost treasure, Cyndi Lauper, booby traps, a boy's first kiss and the belief that you should never give up on your dreams. The Goonies is as cheesey as they come. It's a classic. The era of Back to the Future, Cocktail, E.T., BIG to name a few. This is the most quotable film after Waynes World, with lines such as:...

Columns: Every man is an Ireland

Yves Bonavero is a mature foreign student of philosophy and modern languages, who as a sideline runs a successful film production company, Bonaparte Films. Their most recent venture, Waking Ned, is still doing well in Britain and America, they have a war film, The Trench, in the pipeline, his finals are looming, but he seems to have it all under control. The only sign of his extra-curricular activities in his bedroom at Harris Manchester College, sparsely decorated with philosophy books and modern language texts, is a little blue sticker on his door....