A new age has dawned at Amherst. Gone are the days of thumbing through slice after slice of stale bread to find the last piece with some moisture. Gone are the opaque bins that surround the island near the servery entrance-well, some of them, at least. The future is here. The future is now. The future ... is a bread dispenser.

Proving once again that necessity is not always the mother of invention, the new bread machine in Valentine is making a number of students ask, "What the hell is that for?" Upon seeing the new machine in action, Renee Burgher '05 commented "How nifty."

"It's a pretty good idea, though," said Dominique Ng '04. "It's good during the cold [and flu] season."

Operating on a simple system of levers and springs, the machine brings a new style of decor to Valentine-stainless steel. "It's very 1950s futuristic," said Doug Orbacher '04, who feels that the sliced bread dispenser might very well be the greatest thing since sliced bread itself. "It's hip. I dig it. I thought it might even have had a laser," he said.

The new dispenser features white, wheat, raisin and multigrain bread-four mainstays of the Valentine bread line. Left out of the shuffle, however, are the cult hits oatnut, dark and light rye and the ever-popular rice cakes.

For all the dough the school spent on the new machine, some students feel left out and are yearning for a return to the old system. "I don't eat the varieties of bread that they have in the machines," said Ng. "I like oatnut the best. They should put oatnut in there, because it always gets dried out. They put all the crappy breads in there. I like the raisin bread, but why is the white bread in there?"

Burgher questioned how it was at all helpful. "It doesn't save space-it actually takes up more. And it doesn't keep the bread any fresher. It's such a waste," she said.

Being patriotic

From the moment that Patriot kicker Adam Vinatieri's instep first touched pigskin with the 6:33 p.m. kickoff, football fans everywhere crowded around the television in an almost religious gathering to watch the Super Bowl. Friends became enemies for three short, but tense, hours, especially in the last quarter of the game as all breaths were held during Vinatieri's last minute, game-winning field goal.

"This Super Bowl was easily the pinnacle of my sports-viewing career," said Pete Cymrot '03. "No other city's fans could understand how good it feels after waiting this long."

Some students in the Freshman Quad were so overjoyed by the game's end that their respective dorms could no longer contain them. "In five to 10 minutes [after the game], we took a lap around the quad, screaming and yelling and four people took off their shirts," said Justin Sharaf '05.

Sunday's game marked the first time the New England Patriots have ever won the Super Bowl and the momentous occasion did not pass uncelebrated at Amherst. "[There was] eating, drinking, watching football, drinking beer, eating food, cheering," said Dan Ades '03. "People went to the bars, if they were 21, afterwards."

You couldn't walk past any dorm without hearing the shouts of a Super Bowl party. Mike Schlossman '04 held a Super Bowl/Double Birthday (for himself and friend Eric Osborne '04) get-together in Pratt Library. "Pretty much everyone gathered around the TV to watch the game, which proved to be exciting and surprising," said Schlossman.