Professors in the Ivy League apparently are somewhat aware of the problems facing academia. You usually don't see them doing anything about it other than whining at conferences and writing editorial columns in the New York Times. Tenure is a great thing, sort of like being emperor of Rome while it burns down. No one's gonna stop your fiddling (or publishing).
Francis McLellan, a Brown Ph.D. and Princeton's former head Russian language instructor, evidently had a different experience as a senior lecturer than the professors did. Lecturers are to Princeton what migrant laborers are to, well, Princeton. And it seems as if four years of teaching elementary language made giving up women, possessions, and meat an attractive option for McLellan. In January he was tonsured Iosaf, a hieromonk in the Russian Orthodox Church. Now he's archimandrite of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, a city just slightly less dangerous than Cambridge. Sexy monk results after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
The recent shooting on Harvard's campus stinks like a drug deal gone bad, and there are text messages to prove it. A recent article in the Crimson, who have actually been kind of awesome in covering the scoop, details how text messages recovered from victim Justin Cosby's phone threw up some High Times red (green?) flags. A Harvard student, likely the asshole who landed Justin at the scene of the crime confirmed the suspicions.
The May 5 message appears to be directed specifically to students. “Happy cinco de mayo too all my peoples &congrats on another skool year behind,” it begins. “got some crazy jak herrer bud n some caliMIST best of the best and still those 50s.”
Yes, you non-Brown students. "jak herrer bud" and "caliMIST" refer to strains of marijuana. The text from April 20 provides more hints:
“This text goes too all my peoples happy 420,” it reads. “Im gud allday today just hit me up asap stuffs gunna b goin fast.”
An IvyGate executive meeting hours before these findings speculated that the shooting was clearly a drug deal gone bad. Justin Cosby was not a Harvard student and had no apparent connections with the Harvard community. The Kirkland House basement—read "ask no questions land"—also makes for a perfect swap spot. And the shooting? No brainer.
It should be noted that Justin Cosby, a graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, succumbed to his injuries after the shooting Monday. His death is not funny. In fact, it's fairly terrifying.
So how 'bout those budget cuts for security, Harvard? After the jump, Harvard's response to IvyGate's pinpointing the effing irony.
Attention Elis: You may have already won the Swine Flu Clearinghouse! According to the Yale University Health Services, at least four patients are currently being treated for influenza A and awaiting test results from the Connecticut Department of Health, AKA Swine Flu Central.
While other schools seem to be sticking to the Cover Your Cough handbook, Yale looks like they might actually be taking this shit seriously. Because kids are dying. In Mexico. Accordingly, the Yale administration has put a stop on all funding to go to Mexico based on a campus-wide email that made it into our tip box. (Don't worry, students are going to go anyways. Chiapas is crazy this time of year.)
In an unexpectedly extreme move, Dartmouth is actually pulling kids out of Mexico. It looks like the 11 study abroaders at the Dartmouth Language School Abroad program in Cholula might not learn the subjunctive case after all. Hopefully they got in on the hot sauce manufactured there. You know, the one with the wooden top. IvyGate favorite, that is.
After the jump, a school-by-school report of the biggest health scare in the United States that doesn't really seem all that scary. But it's always fun seeing surgical masks in the street.
The List, a Scottish arts and entertainment magazine, has reported that Emma Watson is a "University nerd" headed for Yale come September rather than Brown, as originally reported. Confused? Watson probably is too.
Maybe the bleary-eyed author accidentally clicked on a faux-Twitter posting where a pseudo-Watson said she had accepted Yale's offer. I mean, New Haven? Really? Who would fall for that?
People Magazine has failed to confirm the story. A recent piece on Hermione's recent grown-up Interview led with "It's no secret Emma Watson – a.k.a. Hermione Granger in Harry Potter's world – wants a degree from an American college, preferably an Ivy League school like Brown." (Emphasis added.) Smooth, very smooth, People.
Our inside sources say that barring a drastic change of plans, the prize prefrosh is "assumed" to be coming, fulfilling every Brunonian dream of finally meeting their bookish childhood idol.
As of April 14th, Watson, who recently turned 19, blogged that she still hadn't decided where to go. But it looks like she will be pursuing higher education in the fall, unlike her co-star Daniel Radcliffe (he who famously overexposed himself, with a horse) who set eating clubbers' panties aflame with rumors that he would be attending Princeton. Only that never happened.
We have one last question: did she get rejected from Harvard? Because she definitely visited.
The British tabloids leaked early this morning that Emma Watson has decided to matriculate at Brown this fall. Although she was spotted touring campuses in New Haven and Cambridge, it should be no surprise that the tweenie who plays Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series would avoid the gothic arches and Georgian bricks in favor the legendary Providence shopping mall. (Fuck yeah, America.) Yale and his Harkness Tower and Harvard and her Annenberg are notably more Potter than Brown. And notably more difficult to get into.
According to the secret tipsters to News of the World, Emma just fell in love with Rhode Island. Or something:
She looked at universities over here [in the UK] but fell in love with Brown. She has a lot of friends there."
If any of the sweet blogosphere rumors are true, Emma is going to be majoring in Greenpeace and hopes to become the captain of the inaugural Brown Quidditch team. She's going for a minor in looking good and making me feel like a creep for watching this video.
Embedded video and action figure photos after the jump. Oh and you "friends" of Emma at Brown. We know you read IvyGate, so just start shoveling the dirt this way, please.
This specific quiz application, now over 51,000 users strong, exists alongside those soothsaying exercises like "Which Disney princess are u?" and "ARE YOU GOOD IN BED?" but we're sure this is the real deal. Written by a graduate of both Harvard and Columbia (and NYU), the questions might as well ask what your favorite brand of socks is or which Golden Girls character have you thought about during sex.
But really. What are the criteria? One wall poster from India also wants to know "How reliable is it?" So being the mad scientists we are, we devised a rigorous experiment, put on lab coats, and got out our electric orb that makes your hair stand up.
After tooling around with this for about 5 minutes, we think we've got it solved. Answer "Money" to question 8, "Clubbing" to question 5, and "I'm flawless" to number 10. You'll be a Harvardian every time.
Check out a few screen shots after the jump. And to answer those hanging questions: Thorlo and Blanche.
The ruinous state of our economy has done little to deter this year's batch of Ivy aspirants; for the class of 2013, acceptances rates fell at six of the eight Ivy League schools.
Harvard and Yale solidified their positions as the toughest schools to get into, at 7% and 7.5%, respectively, though the school formerly known as the College of New Jersey - while maintaining its third place position - slid, much to the dismay of some prestige-hungry Princetonians, precipitously close to its proletarian New York City peer.
If we had to hazard a guess, we'd say the general rise in applications to the Ivy League may be owed in part to its constituents' sizable endowments and commitment to need-blind financial aid; in marked contrast, several other selective colleges and universities - including Colby and Oberlin - are, according to the New York Times, looking more favorably on wealthier applicants as they make admissions decisions this year."
Perhaps the decrease in selectivity at both Princeton and Penn is due to the fact that they are, or rather have been, traditional feeders into Wall Street - a Wall Street that is no longer as glamorous as it was a few years before. If that yawn-inducing class on financial derivatives or corporate valuation isn't going to net you that super sweet 100-hour a week gig at Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns you might as well learn hot boxing 101 and take creative writing classes pass/fail at Brown.
A few days ago, Brown Robotics made headlines around the world for announcing their achieving the long fantasized goal of creating robots that could interact with humans. It's not what you think. The robot, based off of iRobot's PackBot model, can respond to basic gestures that signal for the robot to "follow", "halt", "wait", and "door breach". Throw out your Ridley Scott fantasies and Wall-E dreams because as the video confirms, the manifestation of this scientific breakthrough is more boring than it sounds.
Now, to imagine what the robot could someday do. The paradox of robot invasions at Brown has been a long time coming. (Does the hippie Brown image and the robot warrior thing seem more like paradox or perfection?) Since this particular project received funding from the military and exhibits apparently military-like actions—note the same "halt" gesture seen in Saving Private Ryan—it's not long before it gets cannon arms. This prediction is definitely supported by the fact that the robot does not yet have arms, and it's creepy that way.
"We want to foster natural human-robot collaboration in the long term and the kind of interactions that you can get between people," said Loper, who was responsible for creating the gesture-recognition component. "That a person could interact with a robot in the same way that a person can interact with a person."
Yes, you do sir. And ladies, if you're not busy this weekend, Mr. Loper is an idea man. See some pictures of our favorite robots that are much cooler than Brown's after the jump.
Now that we're officially in a recession and everyone's throwing around words like "death of the middle class," "what job market?" and "SPAM for every meal", perhaps you're having trouble keeping track of all the bad news. We're here to give you the rundown, Ivy-style. In this afternoon's installment of Recession Watch '08: Harvard is out $8 billion! Brown makes like Dartmouth and Cornell and imposes a hiring freeze! And Columbia looks to sell its private equity holdings (maybe)!
This morning, the New York Times reported that Harvard's endowment has lost $8 billion, or 22 percent of its value, in the last four months. In a letter to the deans, University President Drew Faust and Executive Vice President Edward C. Forst '82 said that the total loss in value will likely be closer to 30 percent by June, the end of the current fiscal year. Harvard's endowment is the largest in the country, and the $8 billion loss alone is larger than the endowment value of all but four other American universities (Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT). Read the rest of this entry »
Over 600 students attended the Brown Queer Alliance's annual wild sex party, Sex Power God. How wild was it, you ask? Not as wild as in 2005, when Bill "Falafel" O'Reilly sent a undercover cameraman and "24 students required EMS attention." This year, only 3 party-goers required EMS services (though 6 others who may or may not have attended the party also required attention). Decrease in alcohol poisoning aside, Sex Power God was probably still a lot of fun. Below, Aida Manduley, '11, event coordinator, answers a few of my questions.
What was the hottest thing you saw at Sex Power God?
AM: Hottest things I've seen on the dance floor? Personally, just seeing couples dancing really well, sort of "performing" for each other and raving with the glow-sticks, then smiling at each other and dancing together really sensually. That's the hottest thing--seeing the progression of attraction and how people perform for each other--because you can just FEEL the chemistry. It's hot, it's consensual, it's super sexy, and it's fun--a mix of lightheartedness that can beautifully segue into something very sexual and arousing. Seeing two people dancing, then slowly closing the distance between each other and closing their eyes as they kiss and move as a unit? It's a wonderful thing. The sort of anticipation and degree of restraint as people negotiate boundaries and possibly hold off on sex until the dance is over is excellent, because the hottest thing for me is not just seeing people having sex on the dance floor. It happens, sure, but there are more layers of erotic complexity and tension when sex is NOT directly had at SPG.
"It happens?" "Sure?"
I come from a land (Columbia, unpopular subsection of) where sex on the dance floor is all but unthinkable. I am stunned and jealous. After the jump, Aida talks about bondage gear and calls me on my heteronormative assumptions. Read the rest of this entry »
Professors in the Ivy League apparently are somewhat aware of the problems facing academia. You usually don't see them doing anything about it other than whining at conferences and writing editorial columns in the New York Times. Tenure is a great thing, sort of like being emperor of Rome while it burns down. No one's gonna stop your fiddling (or publishing).
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Read more: alumni, Brown, grad students, Princeton, professors, Sex
Attention Elis: You may have already won the Swine Flu Clearinghouse! According to the 
The List, a Scottish arts and entertainment magazine, has reported that Emma Watson is a "University nerd" 
The British tabloids leaked early this morning that Emma Watson has decided to matriculate at Brown this fall. Although 
Do you ever feel like the admissions committee just got it wrong? That you really are more of a 
The ruinous state of our economy has done little to deter this year's batch of Ivy aspirants; for the class of 2013, acceptances rates fell at six of the eight Ivy League schools.
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