Everyone has those moments where your mom gets a screen name or your high school frenemy pokes you and you think, Man, technology is the worst. Along those lines, did you know that the terrorists use social networking sites too? True story! It appears that Al Qaeda has been distributing training manuals with instructions for would-be terrorists on how to use digital platforms to accomplish their, erm, goals.

Columbia will use any excuse to throw a capital-S Summit, so in a few weeks the Law School will host Facebook, Google, YouTube, MTV, Howcast, Access 360 Media and the U.S. State Department to discuss the "best ways to use digital media to promote freedom and justice, counter violence, extremism, and oppression":

These young leaders will form a new group, the Alliance of Youth Movements, which will produce a field manual for youth empowerment. The field manual will stand in stark contrast to the Al Qaeda manual on the basics of terrorism, found by Coalition Forces in Iraq... [It] will form the cornerstone of a much larger online “hub,” where emerging youth organizations can access and share “how-to” guides and tips on using social-networking and other technologies to further their causes.

The Howcast press release doesn't provide details on what exactly in the terrorism manual requires an in-kind response, but the forum was specifically inspired by an anti-FARC Facebook group that helped organize millions of Colombians to demonstrate against the guerrilla organization. Whoopi Goldberg, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and MSNBC's Luke Russert are scheduled to speak. Read the rest of this entry »

IvyGate paid close attention to the Columbia Class of 2011 this summer. Some claimed to party hard, others waxed robotic and one was *allegedly* a Kazakhstani target of a consultant's mindfucking. None, we assume, had actually met each other until the last week. As the Columbia Spectator's Josh Hirschland reports from in the field, our high expectations for this bunch were unwarranted. The Columbia Class of 2011 is neither chic, nerdy or nerdy-chic. They're just freshmen.

Hirschland oversaw a group of freshmen during Columbia's New Student Orientation Program (NSOP). He dreaded that they'd live up to their Facebook rep--"as annoyingly too-cool as past years' classes, but their collective haughtiness would be better organized." IvyGate salivated at the the possibility.

The "annoying" manifested itself all too quickly:

On Tuesday, students neglected to forfeit their seats on a crosstown bus to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to elderly New Yorkers who were trying to get home. And yes, they walked five abreast on the sidewalk, blocking anybody on their path.

Take that, you old fucks. But after solidifying the Ivy League freshman's reputation as the worst thing to happen to a community, the '11s suckified and spent the week eating ice cream:

At the big party on Ellis Island, people not only showed up but kept grousing to a minimum despite long lines and being stranded in New York Harbor. Even at CU: Take One-neé The BlaZe and formerly CUnity-orientation leaders had to restrain their groups-afterwards, my group ate ice cream on Low Steps. ...More people attended a free ice cream event put on by Hillel than the biggest party of the week held in a first-year residence hall.

Harumph. What about sex? Did anyone have sex? People must have hooked up after the first-year mixer:

At the last formal event of the week, students dressed to the nines in suits, dresses, and fedoras--

"Fedoras" means a) no one reached second base all week b) it's time we never read another word about the Columbia '11s. What a disappointing batch of potential fuckwiths. Could someone please destroy Facebook groups now?