Featured, National - Friday, November 13, 2009 11:23 - 6 Comments
Purdue’s Librarian Should Be Fired. Period.
Purdue University in Indiana has recently been the site of a war over free speech and gay rights. It’s burnin’ up the blogosphere! What’s been going down? Basically, one of the school’s librarians wrote a blog post (on a personal site unaffiliated with the university) opposing “the homosexual lifestyle.” His arguments are, as you might expect, stupid and hateful; for instance, he argues that “money invested on AIDS research could be returned to taxpayers or transferred to more worthwhile areas of public health research.” Also, he conflates prison rape to any homosexual sexual activity. Ditto sex crimes. Wonderful.
Featured, On Campus - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 11:07 - 9 Comments
NC-17-Rated “Journey” Features Condom Curtains, Smell-o-vision
Journey, the traveling art installation currently installed right outside of Silver on Waverly, is an experience, to say the least. Some are moved to tears, others chuckle covertly. All cover their noses to block the simulated brothel stench of vomit and cheap perfume while tiptoeing around used condom wrappers. Oh, and there’s a vibrating bed. Photo gallery after the jump.
City, Featured - Tuesday, November 10, 2009 15:53 - 4 Comments
You’ll Be Fined If Your Citibank Balance Dips Below $1,500
If your checking account with Citibank averages a monthly balance less than $1,500, you’ll be charged $7.50 for –and I’m paraphrasing here– sucking so much at life. The new policy starts in February and could mean fines up to $90 per year for the bank’s most cash-poor customers, which seems a little shitty to us. Citi, however, sees it as a reward for customers who have enough money not to drop below $1,500 at any given time.
Last we checked, not doing something obnoxious to your customers isn’t much of a reward. Whatever happened to free key chains?
Featured, On Campus - Tuesday, November 10, 2009 6:30 - 0 Comments
James Franco Wants A Ph.D, and Maybe A Little Compassion
I’m sorry women (and men, really) of NYU, but it appears that James Franco has little interest in furthering his storied education beyond master status at our glorious institution of higher learning. Instead, having dozed off in all the lectures he cares to nap through in New York, he has set his Ph.D sights on Yale, where the female population doesn’t have to pretend to be blasé about his awesomeness.
After what must have been a rousing talk last Thursday at one of Yale’s Berkeley College Master’s Teas, Franco told The Yale Daily News that he’ll be applying to Ph.D programs next year and he’s interested in Yale. We know that NYU’s only real celebrity student is a fan of Yale heavyweight Prof. Harold Bloom, having sat in on one of the author’s lectures last year. But while some might argue that being BFFLs with Bloom and the prestige of Yale make it a logical choice for Franco, we fear that his fleeing New York may be due to causes far more sinister. He was, after all, offended at Columbia’s Butler Library last week, practically forcing him to study all alone elsewhere. Continue…
Entertainment, Featured - Monday, November 9, 2009 15:08 - 1 Comment
NYU Alumna’s Documentary Contender for Academy Award Short List
Think that plastic bottle of Poland Spring water you get at Kimmel is just another beverage? Journalism alumna Stephanie Soechtig wants you to think again. Soechtig (B.A. ‘98) is a contender for the 2010 Academy Award for her documentary Tapped. The film, produced by some of the same people who helped create other socially-conscious docs like “Who Killed the Electric Car” and “I.O.U.S.A.,” is a multi-faceted examination of the bottled water industry. Soechtig and her fellow filmmakers cover everything from bottling practices at plants to the production of plastic bottles to the scare tactics used by large corporations to turn people away from tap water.
“You can’t watch this movie and still think it’s o.k. to drink bottled water,” Soechtig told me by phone last week.
It’s already a well-publicized fact that many brands of bottled water (most notably Dasani and Aquafina) are simply selling bottled municipal tap water back to consumers who have already paid for it with their taxes. Tapped calls bottled water the “greatest advertising and marketing trick of all time.”
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Featured, National - Monday, November 9, 2009 13:10 - 8 Comments
It’s Time to Impeach Lieberman
Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, no stranger to a fear-mongering, again showed his disrespect for the lives of American soldiers on Fox News Sunday, labeling the Fort Hood shooting “the most destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11.”
Note that an investigation is ongoing and second the tentative conclusion of investigators is that the shooter, Nidal Malik Hassan, was not part of a terrorist plot, but that’s apparently not good enough for Connecticut’s own Jack Bauer. He appeared on Fox News Sunday to announce his support for a separate Senate investigation into the shooting.
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Featured, National - Monday, November 9, 2009 11:05 - 30 Comments
Health Care Reform Bill Passes in the House, But at What Cost?
What were you doing at 11pm on Saturday night? Were you bar hopping around the East Village, or waiting an absurdly long time for the L train? Well apparently while you were out, the US House of Representatives was making history. History is rarely made on Saturday nights, unless you count getting laid or puking in a cab as doing so, but two nights ago something a little more serious happened: the House passed H R 3962, better known colloquially as the Health Care Reform Bill, with a vote of 220 to 215.
In terms of universal health care–something I definitely champion–this is no doubt a tremendous step forward. The Public Option returned from what seemed to be inevitable extinction and, should it be signed into law, will provide 96% of Americans with affordable health insurance. Unfortunately, this health insurance is not nearly as comprehensive as it should be, most notably for a major section of the American population: in terms of women’s rights, the bill passed on Saturday night was a depressingly giant step backwards.
City, Featured - Monday, November 9, 2009 10:15 - 3 Comments
Bars to Watch “Soccer” Games
Some devote their Sunday mornings to church as a means of securing a spot in heaven, while others undaunted by the prospect of hell spend that time in bed, indulging in sloth or some other sin. But if you are a soccer fan in this city, Sunday mornings are themselves heaven or hell depending on how well your favorite team plays. An unfavorable time difference makes an afternoon kickoff in England often an early morning start in New York, but that is no obstacle to dedicated followers of the real football.
Drinking before noon is another story. Short of owning a TV with cable (and sometimes pay-per-view, too), watching a good footie match is nigh on impossible unless you drag yourself to certain bars at 9am. If you are already a soccer fan, or want to reminisce about your time on study abroad in whichever football-loving European city, then it is definitely worth stopping by one of these New York pubs on a weekend morning.
Nevada Smith’s 3rd Avenue between 11th and 12th Street
A Manchester United fan visiting New York, who said he frequently attended live matches in England, likened the atmosphere at Nevada Smith’s to being in the stadium itself. Nevada’s not only attracts people in droves to watch games, but a chorus of fans can always be heard singing chants that insult opposition teams and players. The gritty East Village bar is packed for every game, and on days that the best teams meet head-to-head it is wise to get there an hour early to avoid the line that often forms outside the door. The walls are decorated with memorabilia: signed shirts, team flags, old newspaper clippings and photos. Nevada’s does not have a kitchen, so fans must earn their keep by always having a drink in hand. You can get overpriced orange juice or a soda if you want to stay off the alcohol. However, ‘accidentally’ spilling your pint over a rival fan is integral to the true experience of celebrating your team scoring.*
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Featured, National - Monday, November 9, 2009 9:25 - 1 Comment
How the Conservative Inability to Pick Their Battles Helped Health Care
Above is a pretty curious sight: Republicans using every parliamentary trick they’ve got to try and delay the passage of the health care bill. Of course, it didn’t work, and the whole incident seems an awful lot like an ineffective temper tantrum.
Which, as of late, has more or less been the right-wing modus operandi. Take, for example, the minor Tea Party freakout in DC the day before. Complete with out-there Holocaust comparisons that are almost too self-evidently ridiculous to be offensive.
The thing is, all of this nonsense produced a better bill. After all, imagine if the Republicans had taken on the role of the Blue Dogs–vowing to cooperate with the Democrats in crafting the language, and then gradually weakening it into an unrecognizable lump. Instead, they paid lip service to bipartisan cooperation, and then promptly made it as obvious as possible that the only acceptable bill to them was none at all.
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Featured, National - Wednesday, November 4, 2009 16:19 - 0 Comments
NYU Is Really, Really Liberal
In light of last night’s off-year elections, it seems an appropriate time to zoom back to the Halcyon days of the 2008 election cycle. Remember all that excitement during the campaign? All the hope? All the classic Sarah Palin videos? When John McCain said, “The fundamentals of the economy are sound?”
Ah, good times.
Anyway, I got to feeling curious about which of our fine professors and administrators decided to put their money where their mouth was and donated money to the Presidential candidates in the 2008 cycle. The results are pretty epic.
Using the Huffington Post’s FundRace tool, which aggregates the Federal Election Committee’s list of $200+ donations to single Presidential candidates, I searched for those people listing either “New York University” or “NYU” as their employer.
Of 312 donors (giving at least $200), 306 of them gave to Democratic candidates. That means that only 1.9% of the donors gave to Republicans. Donor list after the jump.
