Last Sunday's New York Times Magazine featured an interview with Columbia religion professor, Dalai Lama friend, and famous person spawner Robert Thurman. Thurman, who was the first American ordained as a Tibetan monk (and a Harvard man himself), is on university leave this year but normally teaches classes on Buddhism.

At first, the interview seems to be standard fare -- thank you, New York Times, for hard-hitting journalism along the lines of:

As a Buddhist, how do you reconcile your pacifism with the roles your daughter Uma has played in films like Quentin Tarantino’s bloody “Kill Bill”?

But then something really fascinating and bizarre emerges. Follow the jump for an image that will sear itself into your brain.

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"The true story of two best friends- geeky outsiders at a prestigious Ivy League University- who wanted nothing more than to get into one of the elite fraternities on campus, so they'd have an easier time getting laid."

Thus poetically begins Ben Mezrich's proposal about creating Facebook with Mark "I Just Want to Help" Zuckerberg as "dorky," fencing-loving, Adidas shower shoes-wearing Harvard undergrads.

Gawker warns,

The book may not be the most rigorously factual account, as Mezrich's Bringing Down The House... was debunked by the Boston Globe as "not a work of 'nonfiction' in any meaningful sense of the word."

Rolling Stone's recent profile of Zuckerberg is a bit more specific about his motivations. Facebook began as so many other brilliant ideas do, with drinking alone on a Tuesday night (ah, college). Recently dumped and feeling bitter, Zuckerberg wrote on his blog, "Jessica A— is a bitch." (Does anyone know who Jessica A. is?) That night, he created Face Mash, a site for students to compare their classmates' pictures with those of farm animals and rank them in terms of attractiveness. Charming! Read the rest of this entry »

Speaking of exorbitant “independent college admissions counseling," Sarah Jessica Parker's next venture is The Ivy Chronicles, based on a book by Karen Quinn. Parker will play Ivy, a woman who loses her job, gets divorced, moves from the Upper East Side to the Lower East Side (which is apparently still affordably bohemian in Movieland) and "starts a business to help upper-middle-class women get their children into elite kindergartens," or "Baby Ivies." To summarize another way: "Marking a huge departure from [Parker's] previous acting gig, Ivy is about a single gal in New York City who lives in a series of wildly unrealistic apartments."

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• Columbia: 5000 students' social security numbers were Google-able. Whoops.
• Dartmouth: Students realize that gas is expensive, drive less.
• Harvard: Stereotype confirmation alert! A quarter of Harvard students don't have sex, and those with more sex partners have lower GPAs.
• Yale: "Ivy League Egg Donor Wanted."
• Yale: Professor's sexual abuse victim sues the university.

You know how the world is sort of going to pieces, what with expensive gas and rice, and related famines and genocides? As it so happens, even Manhattanites living the kind of charmed existence familiar to fans of Gossip Girl are not immune to tragedy. There's a terrible affliction plaguing prep schools far and wide (from the Upper East Side to, um, the Upper West Side): “Harvard drought." This year -- for the first time ever -- not a single student from the elite Dalton School was admitted to Harvard.

It's no Darfur, but you wouldn't know it by the way some of these parents are acting. They are unhappy indeed.

At Dalton’s graduation earlier this month, one mom was heard muttering, "I won’t send my grandchildren here, that’s for sure."

Oh, snap.

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A particularly detail-oriented tipster noticed that, during a bit about forms of identification on last Thursday's Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert brandished a PennCard.

John T. Lowey, are you out there sans ID?

Perhaps Colbert brought it back as a souvenir from filming on campus when the show relocated to Philly during the Democratic primaries. Refresher video after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

So you're a few hundred grand in debt and fresh-faced in the big city -- or, if you're a Columbia grad, just happy to get out of Morningside Heights -- with a B.A. in Comp Lit and, I don't know, hopes and dreams. Even if your semesters reading Baudrillard don't have any practical application, you figure that your degree must at least carry some weight, right? Right?

Erroneous, my friends.

Doree Shafrir's Observer article, "Ivy League Slaves of New York," is pretty self-explanatory by its subtitle: "America’s best and brightest are unpacking their gilded diplomas and getting to work as assistants in New York’s media dens, pinching themselves at their good fortune. Suckers!"

It appears that many graduates are coming to New York with visions of a swift ascent in a shiny media universe, but are quickly shot down. In fact, a certain brand of diploma might actually work against you:

Ms. Marcus explained that her former place of employment had a policy about not hiring anyone who had gone to an Ivy League school, because 'they didn’t want people whom they could perceive as a threat.' (The evidence bears this out somewhat: Ivy League grads do seem partial to cashing in via book deals; Lauren Weisberger, the author of The Devil Wears Prada, graduated from Cornell, and [Bridie] Clark is a Harvard alumna...)"

Well, if your Ivy League credentials are holding you back, you know our favorite fallback option: nepotism! Kidding(ish). Read the rest of this entry »

Aliza Shvarts, she of the miscarriage art that caused such a stir at Yale a few months back, has been hiding out since April, even declining to come to graduation. But for everyone who hoped that her fifteen minutes were up, bad news.

Shvarts is back on the art scene, and not at any old two-bit gallery. No, she will present a piece at London's Tate Modern this weekend. Considering that the Tate is also home to skull-encrusting, shark-pickling Damien Hirst's cow and calf carcasses, it sounds like a great match!

Shvarts was invited by Seth Kim-Cohen, a Yale art history professor and curator of the event. The Tate is calling it "an unmissable opportunity to examine the relationship between culture and technology with a range of leading thinkers and practitioners," but a spokesperson was quick to emphasize that Shvarts' piece is "not going to be in the Tate gallery. Nothing is on display." (Translation: "No abortion art, please. We're British.") Read the rest of this entry »

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Apparently, someone who goes to Penn actually knows how to talk to Girls. And he's willing to teach! Steve "Danger" Dingley, Penn '08, has been labeled "Philly's Own Love Guru," but I sincerely hope his services are better than that awful movie.

Steve charges $40 a session to coach hapless Penn students who are awkward with women and turn them into hapless Penn students who are less awkward with women. This is a good idea!

From what I know about him (nothing) he doesn't seem all that sleazy, so there's really no downside here. In fact, more people should be doing their part to protect the world from socially inept nerds.

A preemptive note to his haters: you're just mad because he's making money! Stop hating!

After the jump, a more revealing photo of the love guru and a testimonial from one of his clients that shows he can help with even the "smallest" problems.

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