Weekend Primer

Your guide to the weekend, SIOC style.

Pennvention Finals, University of Pennsylvania, 12 p.m.

More than $60,000 in cash and prizes is up for grabs at Penn's annual student invention competition. Finalists include an alarm clock which uses "advanced physiological signal analysis" to wake you up at the perfect time, and a machine which can automatically assemble and package burgers. It's all more evidence the future of America will be a lazy and obese one.

Lecture of the Week: Twitter Founder Evan Williams Talks About Twitter, University of Nebraska, 3 p.m.

This lecture seems pointless. What could you possibly learn from hearing somebody speak in paragraphs that you couldn't learn from random five-word sentence fragments?

Rare Films from the Baseball Hall of Fame, Ohio State University, 7 p.m. The seldom-seen films contain highlights of the 1954 World Series as well as footage of Ty Cobb, Willie Mays and Babe Ruth. One extremely rare piece of footage shows a recently traded Ruth cursing the Red Sox by proclaiming they will have eternally annoying fans.

NCAA Women's Bowling Championship, Canton, MI In an effort to piggy back on the popularity of men's basketball, the NCAA has asked CBS to produce a One Shining Bowling Moment montage to follow the new ceremonial "cutting up of the bowling shoes."

University of South Florida Student Combine, 7 p.m. Coach Jim Leavittplans to run the 40-yard dash as part of the festivities leading up to his team's spring game. Leavitt, who predicts a 5.9, still isn't sure if he'll follow Andre Smith's advice to run shirtless.

NCAA Men's Ice Hockey Championship, Washington D.C., ESPN, 7 p.m.

It appears hockey stole all the excitement set aside for the entire NCAA postseason. Three No. 1 seeds went down in the first round, two game tying goals were scored with under one second left, and two game-winning goals were scored with under twenty seconds left. The result is a Frozen Four consisting of one top seed (Boston University), one No. 3 seed (Vermont) and two No. 4 seeds (Bemidji State and Miami of Ohio). It's almost exciting enough to make people in D.C. care about college hockey.

Men's Baseball: No. 7 Rice at No. 14 East Carolina, 11 a.m.

Things are looking up for Conference USA. In addition to having two baseball teams in the top 25, John Calipari's departure will soon make it less obvious that everybody but Memphis stinks at basketball.

J.R.R. Tolkien Conference, University of Vermont

Not so fast with that hobbit costume. Vermont's annual Tolkien shindig is an academic conference (i.e. the attire should be "casual" and not "fantasy.")This year the focus will be on "sex and/or gender in Middle Earth." Scintillating.

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