1) If you’ve been ignoring your inbox lately, you probably haven’t heard that Columbia will be graced with the presence of the MIT linguistics expert, sometimes-anarchist, and general wise old man, Noam Chomsky. First, Chomsky will speak about Renaissance man Harold Pinter (weird, no?) for five dollars at Miller Theatre.  But if you’d rather hear him talk about the topic that made him famous, he’ll be at the Italian House on the night of February 5th.  Get tickets for the Miller event here.

2)  The website of New York Magazine recently launched an interactive version of its approval matrix online.  Now web-crawlers can vote on what’s high-brow, low-brow, despicable and brilliant, rather than being indoctrinated by the editors of the magazine.  Example: Marcel’s performance in last night’s Top Chef = low-brow + despicable.

3) El Presidente Bush. In an interview with USA Today’s David Jackson, 43 responds to Columbia historian Eric Foner’s accusation that he’s the worst President ever.  When he is asked to share the lessons he learned from LBJ’s war in Vietnam, Bush replies: “Win.”

– JDC