Imagine: Salmonella breaks out, people go mad, hundreds become ill. You, alone in your basement, have all the tools to design a simple biological test that determines the presence of Salmonella bacteria in your food; the tools to solve this particular problem, excluding the fancier machines already present in your laboratory, cost no more than $5.

Low attendance at Thursday night’s Catharsis open-mic event did not keep Graham Chapel from filling with finger-snaps and applause. The poem explored educational privilege amongst blacks with these lines but stressed that such privilege is conditional. Onejeme cited her black friends who were told to wear backpacks on campus at night if they didn’t want to be hassled by the Washington University Police Department and her own comparative ability to avoid police attention.

In Wednesday’s Assembly Series event, speaker Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., suggested that Mike Brown’s death on Aug. 9 unveiled a decades-old problem with continuing racial tensions. Ifill’s speech was planned before Brown was shot by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, but she incorporated the shooting and ensuing protests into her speech about civil rights.

Sustainability advocates on campus hope that changes to the Forsyth path and the accessibility of on-campus parking will promote students walking and biking rather than driving. This spring, sidewalks bordering Forsyth Boulevard were painted with symbols and lanes intended to direct student traffic.

Washington University’s official response to the events in Ferguson, Mo., has included lectures, forums and a food drive, but a number of students argue that the University is not doing enough to address the problems at hand. Given its 10-mile proximity to Ferguson, the St. Louis suburb where riots and protests have continued intermittently since police officer Darren Wilson shot Mike Brown, an unarmed black teenager, Washington University has made efforts to engage its community with the events.

For those of you who don’t know, let’s talk about John Constantine. He first appeared in issue 37 of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing. Since then he’s been written by a host of phenomenal folks (and a few assholes I like to ignore). He remains one of the most popular comic characters to date; while he is particularly of British national importance, also has a large audience in the United States. More than that, he’s… a pretty remarkable character, in that he represents a lot of minorities ignored even by “diversity in comics” efforts.

On good days, St. Louis’s Air Quality Index sits on the high end of green—polluted, but not dangerously so. During these days, the city’s air is often just about to slip from the green “good,” to the yellow “moderate.”. As summer intensifies, the year-round pollution caused by the coal industry, tobacco use, and radon gas starts to take its toll. Original version published at http://www.2014missouriexhibit.org/ and short-text version displayed at Material Monster's physical exhibit.

Doctor House. Doctor Cox. Doctor Lecter. These names, these titles—they have weight. Some of it is their pop culture clout: they are fun, they are snarky, they say it like it is (even if one of them does eat people, and another is a space alien). But there is something more than that. “Doctor.” We know who they are. Stories about doctors are not exactly a new thing. Doctor Faustus gave way to Doctor Frankenstein, and so on. But like any story that doesn’t die, the doctor fable has changed, reflecting the culture around it. _ Alternate version in publication through ICSJ.

Exactly as it says on the tin. (Also, you’ll want to hug him. ‘Cause he’s adorable.) Meet the protagonist of Rice Boy: a small boy shaped like a piece of rice. The plot is good, part prophecy-journey, part bildungsroman. Both of these do not go anywhere near as expected—the prophecy causes more problems than it foresees fixing, and it’s not the main character who ultimately grows up.

Reflection. You’re familiar with it, in its various forms. Your face in the mirror, your thoughts on a page; as the Latin suggests, little pieces of you are bent back on themselves and aligned on a surface for convenient viewing. Reflection often seems like arbitrary testing or busy work, the sort from which it would be nice to be freed in higher education.

Something beautiful is going down on the internet. And this is it: It’s called “The Hawkeye Initiative.”. Here, the often-forgotten member of the five six Avengers in Marvel’s 2012 film takes a stand (…or, rather, a spine-twisting pose) against sexist body positioning in modern comics. Its existence is an accident that can be—not surprisingly—blamed on Tumblr.