The final edition of 02138 came out yesterday wrapped in cyber-cellophane only. The digital magazine format, once regarded as the way of the future, looks like the still-bleeding scars of the failed elitist revolution. Now, pretentious readers across the world must once again retreat to the “Class Notes and Obituaries” section of that other alumni magazine for updates on the cronies.

As promised, the third and penultimate edition of the Harvard 100 List occupies the cover spot. Though we’ve been (very) quick to hate this list in the past, this year’s 100 gleams with an appropriately oak-paneled, vintage facelift from the art department. And actually, it looks pretty suave. If there’s anything better than old men’s magazine ads for polyester pants, it’s a classic rendering of Mark Zuckerberg as Narfle the Garthok.

For any 02138 faithfuls who feared that the editors might go rogue and deviate from the generic self-congratulatory tone of years past by actually getting creative with the list, don’t worry. They didn’t. Barack Obama is number one—up three spots. Bill Gates is number eight—down three spots. 02138 did manage to thank Hulu founder Jason Killar for destroying students’ finals period productivity for the foreseeable future—he’s number 100. Don’t forget to gape at the pretty ironic and frankly tasteless sidebar gawking at former listers who’ve died (pg. 54, after the jump).

[Ed: The flowchart on page 64, demonstrating how a shadowy cabal of Harvard Men brokered and perpetuate the Iraq War is of note, too. —Maureen]

Join the 02138 staff for some good old-fashioned Ivy League self-pity after the jump.

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Dunster House was the drunkest house at Harvard this weekend, where Halloween went terribly awry for one delightfully impaired student who shall be known only by the first initial of his last name: U. In the wee hours of morning on November 1, an email shot through cyberspace:

From: [redacted]@harvard.edu
Date: Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 4:18 AM
Subject: Mr. U.'s exciting Halloween in Dunster
To: [redacted]@harvard.edu

Dear Mr. U.:

I hope your Halloween 2008 was eventful, since you probably don't remember much of it. A few events in my room during this night is quite regrettable. Since you were blacked out, I think a summary is in order. Best of all, there are two exciting parts to your adventure in my room :

Part I.
1. You puked everywhere outside the hallway, making it almost too nauseous to even enter my own room
2. You puked onto the futon
3. You puked all over my hallway right outside my bedroom
4. You puked in my bedroom onto my computer chair, where I found you with your pants to your ankles in your underwear sitting on top of your puke
5. You puked all over a bunch of my sweaters and jackets

Part II. [I leave my room, leaving you asleep with the trash can next to you and return in 2 hours to find that:]
1. You puked all over the table I had put across my bedroom door to make sure you don't make your way there again
2. You puked all over the floor of my hallway
3. You took multiple shits in the hallway in front of my bedroom door, then proceeded to step in the shit and smear it all over my bathroom floor.
4. You smeared shit onto my sink, but I wiped this off out of necessity.

I found you sitting on top of the toilet, with your jeans at your ankles. Hey, at least you made it to the toilet?

The embattled puked-upon emailer (henceforth Mr. PU) delivers the "good news" after the jump. Also: Photographic evidence from the scene of the stench (SFW, but NSF-lunch-break)

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Do you ever have great ideas for future businesses? Me too! But while I'm trying to settle on a name for my 2.0 erotic literature site, guys like Jordan Goldman are actually starting real companies. Goldman, Wesleyan '04, just launched Unigo, a site that's kind of like CollegeHumor without the boobs or jokes. The website, which Goldman considers more a "national grassroots movement" than a website, is essentially an online student guidebook: it contains brief staff-generated descriptions of the colleges and a growing amount of student commentary. That's right: students are logging onto this site and reviewing their colleges (and posting pictures and videos). Let's see what they're saying:

Alli at Columbia:

Columbia social life is what you make of it. At a glance it is incredibly lame, but if you meet the right people and can make your own fun it is a great time. The Greek life seems to be run but neonazi's as there is basically no such thing as a frat party anymore. There seems to be a war on fun at our school and I hear people complaining all the time. There are ways around it and as I said if you know the right people and put yourself out there, a good time can be had.

War? Nazis? Frat parties? Columbia exactly.

After the jump, Lamonster laments the exodus of Harvard grads into i-banking (I think this was posted before September).
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I guess we can close down our website, now, because #1 source of all things ridiculous in the Ivy League, that gloriously self-congratulatory glossy 02138, is folding! Mere months ago Manhattan Media acquired the Crimsonphilic alumni rag, heralding it as the foundation of their new "Ivy League Media" division. And now they're killing it. Daily Intel has Manhattan's fold-nouncement memo, which explains that, though everyone at 02138 was doing an A+ job,

...the current economic environment has made it too difficult to proceed at this time. While Manhattan Media, and its financial backer Isis Venture Partners, are committed to long-term growth capital, the funds needed to execute AMN's strategic vision would by necessity have grown significantly and beyond the company's risk/return profile.

The latest issue will lurk around 02138's website for a while, the ghost of Media Past. Happily (delusionally?) the website shows no signs of distress, with its usual assortment of Aaron Sorkin puff pieces floating around the homepage.

They're smart, they're talented, they look good in skinny jeans. They marry teen celebutantes, Pharrell thinks they're hot, female fans want to have their babies, and they're playing The Studio at Webster Hall tonight. Harvard rock duo Chester French is a perfect storm of "next big thing," and gave us an interview before launching their firstworldwide tour. With Harvard correspondent Adam Estes asking the questions, D.A. Wallach and Max Drummey talk music, fashion, and spooge:

Max: We just look up to [Vampire Weekend] so much. I mean, those guys are our idols and to be mentioned in the same breath as them is just fucking—it feels so good. But slightly wrong. Like the first time you jerk off. Yeah, I guess being compared to Vampire Weekend feels like the first time jerking off.

Max: We've got a lot of semen to clean up.
D.A.: It's everywhere.

Interview and more pictures after the jump.

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Congratulations, Columbia! Never again must you covet from afar Harvard's Matt DiPasquale and his low-budge porn magazine: it's only homegrown smut from now on. Editor-In-Chief Hoang Jessica Tang (C'09) introduces C-spot as "a new erotic review produced by Columbia University students."

C-spot's website looks way classier than some aforementioned attempts at Ivy erotica, but in the same vein as H-bomb or Boston University's boink: original b&w photography, a pleasantly streamlined site, and articles on the origins of the vibrator and YouPorn.com. Plus: poetry!

My nails are chipped; my cuticles,
overgrown; and the paint
worn...

NSFW portion after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

A Harvard professor of economics has just released the fifth edition of Principles of Economics, a bestselling introductory economics textbook, and all across the world trees and and students have been falling in equal measure: the former have been severed by chainsaw-wielding maniacs in stump-filled ravines; the latter have been collapsing in their dormitories for want of sustenance, an entire month's pittance diverted from the cafeteria to the campus bookstore, to fill the coffers of a grinning, bespectacled Bostonian.

On Greg Mankiw's blog, of course, there is no mention of the money the professor will reap from the newest iteration of his textbook, which is selling on Amazon for a whopping $178.89. In a post dated to Saturday, October 11, Mankiw writes:

Why a new edition? The fundamentals of economics are much the same: Supply curves still slope up, and demand curves still slope down. But a lot has changed over the past three years, and the new edition covers recent developments in economic research, events, and policy. In particular, it includes over 40 new applications, including Case Studies and In the News boxes, to remind students that economics is about the world in which they live.

Indeed, much has changed in the past three years. (For example, look at how all those economic theories helped the Fed prevent our economy from tanking). But really, Mankiw, the readers of your introductory economics textbook are not the same Ivory Tower academes that receive a dozen canary-colored working papers from NBER each month. They'll survive without 40 new applications, thank you very much.

When asked by email to detail the changes he made from the fourth edition to the fifth, Mankiw was not extremely helpful. He wrote: "contact brian joyner, who I mentioned on my blog post. he can give you some information." The fact that Mankiw directed me to someone at the publisher of his textbook leads me to wonder whether he knows what he changed at all.

After the jump: an approximation of Mankiw's rake on every textbook.

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The A.D., one of eight all-male final clubs restricted to Harvard students (but not formally recognized by the University), owes the City of Cambridge approximately $17,000 in unpaid property taxes. That may seem like a lot - and to normal plebeians it is - but not when you consider the value of the glorified fraternity's building and land, which is estimated at an astonishing $3.6 million.

As a social club the A.D. is exempt from taxes, but because the organization generates money from space it leases to Adidas - a whopping $320,000 in 2007 - it must pay taxes on that income.

Nevertheless, the entire affair seems to be somewhat of a touchy subject among A.D. members and alumni, since after The Crimson left a voicemail message for Michael Madden - a Harvard alum listed as the vice president of the A.D. - it received an angry phone call from a man identifying himself only as Madden's representative threatening to take legal action:

“You are blinded by your hatred of final clubs. The Harvard Crimson should have other news besides the tax matters of the A.D. Club,” he said. “We are going to have to go to our lawyers if this continues.”

Later, Madden called to inform The Crimson that the back taxes had been paid and that everything was fine - that it was negligence more than anything else - but somehow, in the back of our skeptical minds, we at Ivygate doubt. Does anyone know something we don't? Email us at tips@ivygateblog.com.

Barely legal hottie Emma Watson (aka Hermione Granger, aka Harry Potter's First Boner, in the movies about the kid whose penis is now available for public viewing on Broadway) toured Harvard yesterday and is now wandering the street of New Haven, according to students who spotted her this morning:

Saw her walking around with one of the head tour guides, and now she's in the admissions office having an interview. Once I muster the courage (read: creepyness), I'll take pictures from the bushes or save her from being run over by a bus or something.

In the absence of Miss Watson, Harvard has been entertaining a handful of other celebrities. An operative informs us:

Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore are currently at Harvard as well. Rumor has it that one of Demi's daughters is looking to apply. And also JoJo was here like two weekends ago I'm just learning. As opposed to Emma and Demi's daughter, she came just to party (allegedly) and was sighted at a couple final clubs.

Eh, who cares about Rumer or Bristol or whoeverthehell Ashton is awkwardly fathering these days. Let's obsess about Hermione Granger a little more. Since Emma's Grand College Tour appears to be heading south, we predict a Columbia appearance tomorrow (plus partying in NYC for the weekend?) and Princeton next week. Squeal!

Budding paparazzi, get your shutters ready. Next time, we want pictures.

We all know it's tough being an Ivy League conservative, what with elites and communists and feminists at every step, and tougher still to stand up tall and proud and confess your love for that be-lipsticked pitbull from the North, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (doncha know hahaha *wink* hahaha). Enter Harvard Men For Palin, who are not afraid to sing from every corner of campus, YES! I love this woman! with "A Summer Surprise," now on the YouTube.

(Harvard Men For Palin are actually the Harvard Democrats, but the concept and execution is pretty believable if you don't listen too closely -- after all, Obama Girl was real.)

Like all great power ballads, the chorus tugs at one's heartstrings:

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