As you sink into the post-finals lethargy of winter break, wrapping the presents you lovingly swiped at the bookstore (”Nana would want a deck of Dartmouth playing cards, right?”), we’re right there with you. You may have noticed that we’ve been edging into hibernation mode for about a week now, with one or two posts a day as our version of metabolic depression.

Now all goes dark until January. Not sure about you all, but we plan to spend our holiday rediscovering the joys of going to sleep sober. May your chestnuts roast evenly, may your ironically intended gifts be received as such, and may you return with eggnog-soaked tales with which to stuff our inbox.

See you in the new year!

In the third installment of Blog Man on Campus, our occasional Ivy bloviation spotlight, our correspondent cries “Cornell!” and hears an echo …

Elliott Back’s Cornell blog is the definitive source for stuff that happens at Cornell. (When stuff happens, that is.) Elliott is an alum with an entire network of blogs to his name — this one is more concerned with what comes out of Cornell, rather than its daily life. You might not have known, for example, that Cornell researchers have produced a self-healing robot. And let’s give Cornellians their due for advancing a groundbreaking study on why teenagers do stupid things even though, it turns out, they spend 170 more milliseconds than adults weighing the pros and cons of whether to, say, have unprotected sex, ride with a drunk driver, or apply to Cornell.

Handy! Oh, and occasionally ugly, twisted and morally depraved. In June there was Elliott’s sick fascination with a student’s death; in multiple updates, he wondered aloud whether “he committed suicide because of academic pressure from his parents … Without a Cornell degree, there’s no way he could have gone to medical school and fulfilled their family’s desires.” He also parsed the student’s personal web pages for clues, morbidly highlighting passages like a lit major and asking “If anyone would like to leave an anonymous tip as to why [redacted] killed himself, send me an email.” His breathless coverage of another student’s disappearance in May 2005 betrays the same lack of tact. If Natalee Holloway had gone to Cornell, Back may have hyperventilated to death himself.

So. Cornell Blog. Fun tidbits, gruesome rubbernecking. Have at it.

In our third installment of ivyTunes, we witness an epic battle of the bands that, shockingly, interests some people outside the Ivies. Our critic has the mic:

In case you don’t know, Bishop Allen is a Brooklyn-based indie band beloved by the MP3 blogosphere for its polite, quirky pop and gimmicky plan to release one EP per month for all of 2006. (They’re two short with 11 days to go. Cram, guys, cram!) To be honest, Bishop Allen’s stuff doesn’t bother me — it’s well-crafted and charmingly off-kilter, if completely inoffensive and somewhat samey-sounding (listen here). Which was a pleasant surprise considering that BA cofounders Justin Rice (of Andrew Bujalski fame) and Christian Rudder graduated from, um, some school up in Boston. Well, in Cambridge actually. No, not MIT. The other one. I mean, look at these people. –>

… and hello The Main Drag, the new “Song Search” victors. Not that a whole lot has changed. In a surprise turn of events worthy of M. Night Shyamalan (I mean that pejoratively) the Main Drag is — spoiler alert! — also heavy on the Harvard. The winning song, “Jagged Gorgeous Winter,” was written by John Drake (recent alum), Matt Boch (senior) and Adam Arrigo (who just graduated from some school called “Tufts”). Although the group cites pretty much every cool indie band as an influence — Arcade Fire, The Books, Animal Collective, Broken Social Scene — they’re clearly obsessed (to the point of shameless imitation) with the uncoolest indie band of all: Death Cab for Cutie. Arrigo, the singer, was either born with the same thin, sweet, desperate voice as Ben Gibbard or has labored mightily to perfect his impersonation. Really, it’s a little eerie. On the plus side, the songwriting is accomplished, the arrangements dynamic and the production packed with smartly skewed electronic elements. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Whenever we traffic in Ivy stereotypes, it’s mostly in jest. The Brown blazers, the Princeton tweedies, the Yale omnisexuals. We’re just having fun — it’s not like these horrific caricatures actually exist.

If only. Thanks to the combined power of YouTube and the public servants at Inside Higher Ed, we will never have to apologize for another object-in-Harvardian-rectal-cavity remark again. Because somewhere in the bowels of Harvard’s economics department, someone thought it would be a good idea to make a welcome video for incoming students. And who do they choose as the department’s public face? The respected Harvey Mansfield Amartya Sen? The beloved Greg Mankiw? Nope. They choose John Y. Campbell and Edward L. Glaeser, two professors who undoubtedly mean well, but whose screen presence rates somewhere between that of Al Gore and a modest pile of cucumber salad.

The results, below, are tremendous. Just don’t forget to pinch yourself every ten seconds as a reminder that these people are real — and utterly oblivious to their own absurdity. (Not for long: a repentant Ed Glaeser called the video “an act of folly” in an e-mail to Inside Higher Ed.) Also, is it just us or is Glaeser doing a spot-on Steve Carrell?: 

Then came the inevitable spoofs. Neither is as funny as the original, but they both have their moments:

We’re sure juggling is hard and all, and this clip, from the Yale Anti-Gravity Society, is certainly impressive. We’d probably kill ourselves just by attempting three of the bowling pins, whereas the YAGS guys use flaming torches and what appear to be scimitars. Honestly, though, we’re pretty sure our grandmother could have edited a better promo video with nothing but a spool of 8mm filmstock, Scotch tape, and her teeth. And setting the whole thing to the Transiberian Orchestra’s goofy “Appalachian Snowfall” and using up every last video transition in Final Cut Pro does little to dispel juggling’s reputation as a refuge for well-coordinated outcasts.

Unless, of course, it’s one big joke — which it clearly is. After all, these are the guys who put on a show last semester entitled “The Iliad - with juggling.” The group’s leadership positions include “Minister of Armaments” and “Minister of Fresh Blood.” So good luck, guys: if keeping ten fiery sticks aloft at once doesn’t translate into social and romantic success … well, then there’s something very wrong with this world.

When it comes to fixing public education, ideas abound. Standardized testing. Charter schools. KIPP-like behavioral reform. But these supposed solutions pale when set against the latest pedagogical theory to hit America’s public schools: “Impossible is Nothing.”

We know, we know, it’s dead. Which is probably why one first-year Teach for America corps member thought it safe to turn would-be i-banker Aleksey Vayner’s ubiquitous maxim (well, technically Adidas had it first) into classroom philosophy. A poster in a New York TFA office reads as follows, according to a tipster:

NYC Corps Members are Building the Movement

Sean Reidy, TFA ‘06, 7th grade math, Bronx

Sean is building the movement by investing his students in his class motto, “Impossible is nothing.” Students believe they can and will succeed in math class. They dress up on test days and have learned what it means to dress for success. Almost two thirds of Seans’ seventh grade students joined the Mathletes, an after school club where students can compete against each other in challenging math questions.

For the record: Anything remotely connected to Vayner that also involves “dress up” is highly suspect. But who knows, maybe Vayner will get the last laugh after patching up our nation’s troubled education system. Whether that happens before or after the inevitable daytime talk show “Aleksey!”, we can’t say.

You know those useless but entertaining online translation programs? We’re starting to think the WB is like one of those, except for life. With the right combination of jump cuts, reverse video, Jimmy Eat World, and splashy cut-out freeze frames, they could make a Senate confirmation hearing look like an episode of Room Raiders.

So you can guess what happens when the WB decides to start producing hosting college tour videos. Behold theU, the cinematic lovechild that would emerge if Mischa Barton had relations with a Princeton Review handbook. TheU’s founder, 25-year-old Columbia pseudo-alum Doug Imbruce, says he got the got the idea while watching “MTV Cribs.” It shows. Here’s theU’s narrator on Brown University: “Brown is like the token cool mom of the Ivy Leagues.” Or her thoughts on the World’s Greatest University: “Harvard won’t reveal its selection criteria, but it’s clear that talent, ambition, and genius are key.” They even have the lovable Penn frat boy, caught on camera in his natural habitat: “I don’t remember Spring Fling. I’ve been told I had a really good time. I had relations with a tree. It might have been an elm, might have been a cedar. I don’t really know.”

There are some inspired moments, like when a narrator points out that “Princeton definitely isn’t a crazy hookup scene” as we watch boys and girls juggling pins on a lawn. We know TheU means well. Of course, it also means to do well, by making shit-tons of money off terrified, TV-happy high-schoolers for whom an endorsement from “Everwood”s Chris Pratt seals Brown as their first choice.

Brown tour:

Harvard tour:

Penn tour:

The glitz, the glamour, the gift bags …

We flew a little too close to the sun.

We apologize: We handled the 2006 Weblog Awards all wrong. Encouraging you guys to vote for us, then asking again, then undoing another button and leaning forward to ask yet again — we tainted this blog, a well-tended quad of pristine sarcasm, with the stench of earnestness.

And frankly, we’re ashamed. It’s a little like waking up after a bender to realize what you’ve wrought. (Suffice it to say that we once got up and sleep-peed in our sock drawer at like 8 in the morning, in full view of two stunned friends visiting from high school — and this post-Bloggies nausea feels even worse.)

To quote a role model: I was wack. Today we leave those posts behind as The Sincerity That Shall Not Be Named, and fully endorse Prof. Michael Berube for Best Educational Blog 2006. He’s neck-and-neck with SpunkyHomeSchool — a blog that’s actually defunct but has rabid acolytes with adept at getting out the vote. Berube seems like a funny guy (and half of us are alums of the same hockey team), but mainly we just want to see the tension play out between the academy and the homeschooling army.

In the second installment of Blog Man on Campus, our occasional Ivy bloviation spotlight, our correspondent finds yet more worthwhile scrawlings somewhere outside Boston …

Kameron Collins ‘09 is a Harvard student, and black, and his blog I am not my Hair deals in part with those issues. But his blog isn’t about what it’s like to be black and at Harvard — it’s about what it’s like to be lots of things. What it’s like to be anybody at Harvard. What it’s like to miss dating but be scared of it. What it’s like to smile when you see a white person get pulled over and wonder if it makes you a bad person.

So, yes, he’s just another self-aware, sexually frustrated denizen of Cambridge. So why is his standard this-is-my-life-and-these-are-my-frustrations format so addictive?

Maybe because it’s so quotable: “Of course ugly people are bitter. Ugly people at Harvard are, I think, even worse - because not only are they bitter, they’re passionate about it.” To which the only thing I can think to add is: Seriously!

This is not to say that Harvardhair is all Kameron all the time. The blog is particularly strong where it deals with race, especially since it’s so difficult for anybody to talk about it on campus. Kameron avoids abstractions and delves right into uncomfortable particulars. Why, he wonders, does the stereotype of the “average nice white guy” have no hispanic or African counterpart? The closest one he can identify is the Upstanding Black Gentleman, who isn’t average at all. Also, you gotta hand it to anyone ballsy enough to post poetry on his blog.

Kameron, may the ladies boys swarm to your blog. And if not that, to your inevitable book deal.

UPDATE 1:55 p.m.:  Whoops! A friend of Kameron’s emails us to correct that last line.

With all but three newspapers shut down for finals, RagTime, our daily dailies roundup, goes dark till January as well. We’d like to sloppily thank the RT crew (You know who you are! So cute how you don’t want your names associated with this!) for filing it each day at the crack of lunch; you were funny, comprehensive, and became informed about the Ivy League, and for that we apologize.

Given even a taste of freedom, we assume several if not all of them will flee for the gorges. Interested in taking up the yoke and becoming a RagTime correspondent next semester? Email us, preferably in bullet points, with an inappropriate headline.