19 CommentsFormer Bwog energy explorer, Armin Rosen, and The Curent‘s Editor Emeritus, Jordan Hirsch, report for the New Republic on Columbia’s new Center for Palestine Studies. “Unaccompanied by a dedication to real expertise,” the pair writes, “the CPS will be little more than a clique of like-minded academics whose defining commonality is a hostility toward Israel.” Responding to Joy Resmovits’s article in the Forward, they argue, “in its current form it’s likely that the first Palestine Center at an American university will lead the way not in ‘a new era of civility,’ but, rather, in politicizing Middle East studies further than ever before.” (New Republic)
NYTimes profiles Caltech’s loveable losers on the basketball team. An adorable Alaskan b-baller once argued a foul call by explaining conservation of momentum principles to the ref. The team, defying all laws of probability, maintains a 297-game conference losing streak. Maybe we’re not so bad after all. (NYTimes)
George Castro, the Bronx native busted for rerouting $5.7 mil from Columbia into his own pocket, pleaded not guilty yesterday. Remember when this was big news? (NYPost)
Columbia announces a three-year JD/MBA program, so now you can sell your soul and defend yourself from the haters. If that falls through, get a master’s in real estate development. Apparently, we have one of those too. (NYTimes)
Google launches a new search filter on its “advanced search page” that allows you to sort results based on reading levels: basic, intermediate or advanced. How dumb is your fave site? Before you try, we pitted our humble blog against columbiaspectator.com, and proved our inferior “intermediacy.” Blerg. Hope you keep reading anyway. (Google)
It’s easy to forget amid the finals frenzy, but some of your classmates did pretty cool things before coming here. Part of the Scholarship Incentive Awards Program dedicated to cultural enrichment for teens, Samantha Medina, CC ’14, helped put together a massive cookbook featuring Barack Obama’s chili recipe. (NYPost)
Something to make you count your blessings—a really interesting piece on “the lingering scars” of the Park Slope plane crash. (CityRoom)
The latest installment of NYTimes’s never–ending coverage on attention disorders. ADHD, this doc argues, is a real thing, not a metaphor for the distracted masses. (NYTimes)
Finally, here’s something festive and clever: a disgruntled elf leaks surprising facts about Santa. (New Yorker)
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19 Comments
@thisthisthis “By lopping off the beginnings of the URL — all that http://www garbage — and just sticking with the [name].edu template, you prompt Google to search for all the domains with stuff coming before the school name. For example, using our methodology, your Google literacy search would scan everything from theater.harvard.edu to smokingcloves.brown.edu to selfmedicating.dartmouth.edu. This way, your search doesn’t miss stuff like Yale’s Mouse Research Pathology program or the web page dedicated to Columbia’s growing, world-class collection of closet skeletons.”
@Anonymous I like the part where they write “Massad’s body of work is a postmodern mash-up of high-minded critical theory and base innuendo” and then immediately launch into several paragraphs of throwing base innuendo at Massad.
@but how many blogs had over 300,000 hits last week????
@Anonymous With all due respect, how many colleges could boast the bust of five college druglords and an incestuous professor fiddling with the offspring of his own fiddling?
@basic bwog is also more basic than collegeacb :(
http://www.ivygateblog.com/2010/12/cornell-undisputed-king-of-ivy-league-literacy-says-nebulous-google-algorithm/
@wait “there is a new center for palestine studies. many people ‘associated with’ this center did things we don’t approve of in their individual academic work way before this center existed. the center states that its purpose is specifically to advance scholarship, not political activism (Khalidi quote in article). therefore, the center itself – not its associates – will likely make things worse than ever before.”
…?????
setting aside whether the center will actually manage to avoid just being political, and setting aside, you know, the actual controversial issue – that’s just some weeeeeird logic.
@wait indeed, by the same logic: one associate of the columbia political science department had sex with his daughter. does this mean the entire columbia political science department is likely to incorporate the practice of incest into the discipline more thoroughly than ever before?
just because barack obama smokes, doesn’t mean he can’t also recognize that health is a good thing, and act, qua president and not qua smoker, to give schools money for anti smoking campaigns. similarly, just because joseph massad wrote whatever book was cited in the article, doesn’t mean he can’t also act, in a separate capacity, to foster apolitical dialogue about the palistinian people.
and the fact that barack obama smokes (does he still? i guess i’m not even sure) certainly doesn’t mean the office of the presidency, as an institution, likes smoking. Nor does Massad’s past say anything about the new center.
@Anonymous Rosen + Hirsch are just pissed that the other side has a legitimate, academic institution dedicated to their work. But don’t worry, once the Center gets going, what you’re going to see next from these two fellows is their typical inability to differentiate between anti-zionism and anti-Semitism. Stay tuned, folks!
@guilt by association Isn’t that just a hallmark of conservative logic, though?
The moderate Muslim building the community center downtown once had lunch with a guy who has a friend in charity that is associated with a group in Saudi Arabia that might be linked to terrorists…therefore HE’S A FUCKING TERRORIST!
Obama knew a guy in Chicago who was once involved in the Weathermen, a domestic terrorist organization…therefore OBAMA IS A TERRORIST!
@Erm...Google reading level? Bwog, my search said you were “basic,” not “intermediate.” To be honest though, with the 9:00 a.m. test I just took…”basic” is kind of what I need right now. Thanks. :)
@bad wording Their “intermediacy” is inferior because they’re less intermediate (and more basic) than Spec.
@Carolyn It’s a joke, friends!
@Dear Everyone, YOU CAN – and WILL – DO THIS. I believe in you.
@Anonymous Can Armin Rosen just… disappear? Please?
@Anonymous Joy Resmovits graduated less than a year ago and we’ve already forgotten how to spell her name?
@Carolyn oy! it’s fixed now.
@?? what about harrison david?
@he is still in jail. i have confirmed this information. unbelieveable.
@curiouser not to “beat a dead horse”, but this is just wayyyy too sad and crazy! does anyone know what the f**k kind of drama is being played out here??? i check the official site and stuff, and i have been following the story closely, but despite having extremely mixed feelings about the guy he should not be in there!
please don’t flame me… i just want to know what is going on and if he needs any help from us