OIT reporting wireless problems again today. Check their homepage or follow the Help Desk @puoitsoc for updates. #2012/02/07
RT @Princeton If you are having trouble connecting to the web via PUWireless, OIT is working on the issue. http://t.co/zTZAWiQr#2012/02/06
RT @tigermagazine: @UnivPressClub Maybe they were all screaming because they suddenly realized they lived in Wilson. #2012/01/21
Yes, screaming Wilson freshmen, it's snowing. It's also 3:45 am and people have been yelling out their windows for you to shut up for 20min. #2012/01/21
Comic Sans gets a lot of crap. But hard-to-read fonts like Comic Sans and Bodoni may help students learn more, according to a new study in Cognition.
By “a new study in Cognition,” we mean Connor Diemand-Yauman’s senior thesis.
He may have been eliminated from the Amazing Race, but his senior thesis is starting to attract media attention. The psychology thesis involved testing the ability of students to memorize facts about “aliens.” Some students were given information in 16-pt. black Arial, which is generally considered easy to read. Other students were given information in 12-pt. Comic Sans or 12-pt. Bodoni in 75 percent greyscale. They were then distracted for 15 minutes and tested on what they could remember.
Researchers found that, on average, those given the harder-to-read fonts actually recalled 14% more.
They believe that presenting information in a way that is hard to digest means a person has to concentrate more, and this leads to “deeper processing” and then “better retrieval” afterwards.
Well, that’s happening. Yes, ScwhartzDY™ (don’t try stealing that CBS) will be one of 11 teams throwing themselves into challenges around the world for the chance to win one million dollars. How’s that for your first paycheck outta college?
CBS today started promoting the event, and here are the guys introducing themselves on the Race website.
Look at that! Witty, tricky, and they got the whole “we’re best friends!” thing going on to boot. Everyone’s gonna be rooting for these tigers. (Not to mention “Relationship: Ivy League A Cappella Singers” — that’s one for the scrapbook.)
The two also answered some questions for CBS. Schwartz’s answers are particularly hilarious:
If I could switch places with someone: Yanni
Role model/hero: My parents, Mother Theresa and Kenny G (not necessarily in that order).
What are you passionate about? Tweezin’ the old unibrow
What would you do if you won the million dollars? If I were to win the million dollars I would buy a pony, but just one.
People would be surprised to learn: That my name, “Jonathan,” is translated to mean “gift from God.” Coincidence? I think not.
Even with the outcome potentially spoiled, CDY on the Amazing Race is just so fascinating to me.
In my pre-Princeton life I followed The Amazing Race as fanatically as some people follow football or baseball or the Academy Awards. I would flip out at the announcement of a new destination (“We’ve never been to Ethiopia before!” I’d exclaim, as if I were actually along for the ride instead of bouncing on a beanbag chair in my basement), bawl at the elimination of my favorite teams, and spend hours poring over game analysis on Reality TV message boards.
It was weird, I know. But when you’re a high schooler looking to use pop culture as the means of escape from your so-called teenage life, you really have to commit to your obsessions. Polite interest in a show or team or band doesn’t really get you anywhere – and me, I wanted to go everywhere, skip out of Delaware and cross the whole world three times over, preferably with a CBS camera crew in tow.
What I’m saying is, given this past obsession, the prospect of any old Princeton student on the show would be compelling to me. But what makes CDY on the Amazing Race especially compelling – like I said, out-and-out fascinating – is that CDY wasn’t just any old student during his time at Princeton. He was one of our private college’s public figures – politically, at least, our big man on campus.
Since it’s summer and we know you’re busy at your super-important [insert bank here]/[insert NGO here]/[insert research institution here] internship or backpacking across Europe or voraciously watching back episodes of Gossip Girl, we here at The Ink round up the week’s news so you don’t have to. Today we’ve got some graduations stuff, some art crime stuff, some reality TV show stuff, some fratty stuff, and generally, stuff.
First up this week: Alumni swarmed Princeton this weekend, as you might have guessed, for Reunions. There wasdebauchery, there was dunko (as per the Wall Street Journal), and good times had by old people. God reportedly attempted to smite the revelers, but only knocked out a few trees. Fun!
A tree near Dillon Gym faced the wrath of nature
Also, graduation happened, which is weird to think because that means a quarter of the student body has moved on into the real world. At Baccalaureate on Sunday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos ‘86 told the Class of 2010 about his grandmother and to be kind.
The Class of 2010 marched on anyway, and 1,166 seniors passed through FitzRandolph Gates, with some special guests. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was given an honorary degree for a bunch of stuff, among them being a trailblazer for women’s rights and being pretty old.
Valedictorian David Karp (who had 29 A’s and A+’s!?) spoke, along with salutatorian Marguerite Colson, who gave her address in Latin to a bunch of people who couldn’t understand her:
Because few students today know Latin, the new graduates follow along using printed copies of the remarks. These include footnotes telling when to applaud (plaudite) and laugh (ridete). Guests and other audience members do not have the annotated copies, a practice dictated by tradition because the salute is directed to the members of the class.
Here’s a slick video Princeton made of the happenings. Money shot’s near the end, with the Class of 2010 on the steps of Blair Arch, doing the creepy Heil singing “Old Nassau.”
We’ll miss you guys!
And then, that huge sucking sound you heard on Wednesday? That was campus being evacuated for the summer. News grinded to a halt, but stuff still happened, apparently:
Filming began in the Boston area on the morning of the 26th. First came an introductory segment filmed in Gloucester Harbor (Connor and Jonathan are the “Green Team” — you can catch a glimpse of them at around 4:15 in this video). Then the teams made their way to Logan Airport, where they were photographed by bystanders not affiliated with the show. Here’s Connor and Jonathan at the airport en route to the first leg in England (more details after the jump):
Although modeled after a "Florentine palace," Brown Hall was probably last desirable as a dorm in the 1890s, when this picture was taken.
There are a couple universal truths about Brown Hall:
It is a fiery tragedy waiting to happen. (There is ONE means of egress for the ENTIRE building! Can Fire Safety fine itself?)
It is a miserable, decrepit building that provides shelter for the lower caste of draw times and non-existent people who revel in early-20th century heating technology.
“But we’re centrally located!” sad Brown residents say to console themselves, “It’s like urban living–Princeton’s south-central L.A., if you will. We like not having modern facilities and not having a laundry room in our building.”
While Brown residents decided against disposing their waste in the toilet, they fortunately did not substitute house pets in its stead.
But in addition to their daily plight (and blight) that is Brown, its residents also faced a serious, pressing problem last semester–one that affected their everyday lives: people were having trouble determining the proper venue in which to take their number two business.
It was a problem so grave and urgent that it required direct intervention by then-USG President Connor Diemand-Yauman ‘10 (who happens to be one of the dorm’s DAs). In a series of emails to the entire dorm, CDY laid down the law…
(And yes, we know the first email is from last semester, but who among us doesn’t enjoy toilet humor?):
————————————————————
From: Connor Diemand-Yauman
Date: Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 7:51 PM
Subject: READ THIS IF YOU LIVE IN BROWN!
Dear Brownites,
A few reminders about living in Brown:
Please don’t shit in the trashcans or pee in the hallway. It might feel good when you’re doing it but you and others will most likely pay for it down the line (which is, strangely enough, a lesson learned from the story of my conception). If you do pee or poop somewhere other than a toilet, just let us know or slip an anonymous note under our door–it’s pretty shitty just to leave it there (da dum cha!).
I mean, I know that if I ran the Daily Princetonian there’d be a policy requiring editors to occasionally insert delightfully nonsensical sentences into otherwise truthful articles. Just to see if people were paying attention, you know?
But I always figured that Prince editor-in-chiefMatthews Westmoreland was a more responsible fellow than me. So I was very surprised to see the following pop up in what had been a straightforward, innocuous profile of outgoing USG president Connor Diemand-Yauman:
Diemand-Yauman said he “hopes to run” for Young Alumni Trustee and intends to volunteer next year with the Global Literacy Project in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. He said he then plans to write and act on his own show on Korean PBS through the same educational content provider that employed him two summers ago.
Unless… do you think this is actually true? Princeton’s own CDY is really going to become a Korean Kiddie Television star? If so, that’s awesome. Just awesome. Totally awesome. Basically as awesome as this video of the Teletubbies dancing to “Ring Ding Dong” by Korean Boy Band Shinee:
POST-SCRIPT! CDY writes in to let us know what’s up…
Yes, [this] is indeed true. A couple years ago, I spent the summer working for a content provider to Korean PBS. I started off doing some simple voice acting. After a while, I started pitching some concept ideas to the CEO of the business. She liked my ideas and my stuff was relatively popular so she started giving me more and more creative control until by the end of it I was writing and acting in my own sketches.
I have been communicating with the company since my return to the USA and my boss has told me that if I come back, she could get me my own show with the network.
In that case, might we suggest a collaboration with the Teletubbies and/or Shinee?
“Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
Or something like that.
In any case, remember how the University started fining students who painted their walls — even though in the past Housing had allowed students to avoid a penalty by painting rooms back at the end of the year?
Students protested, claiming that Housing ought to have notified them of the change in enforcement policies. And those protests? Seems like they worked! The USG will announce tomorrow that they have successfully negotiated with Facilities to waive the fees.
An upperclassman told me tonight (as I sat in her azure-painted abode) that after her roommate’s parents called to complain about the fine, Housing responded that while they planned to pursue strict enforcement in the future, they were waiving/refunding fines assessed this year. As long as students paint their room backs properly in the spring, they’ll be in the clear.
Housing’s reversal came after a group of about 50 affected students petitioned housing to waive the fees. The USG also fought against the fines, and USG President Connor Diemand-Yauman has now released a statement to The Ink on the matter (after the jump!):
It was just like this, but without all the people!
Tonight’s Budget Town Hall with Provost Chris Eisgruber and Executive Vice President Mark Burstein (who CDY described as the two highest ranking administrators in the University under President Tilghman, making us wonder about all sorts of questions about presidential succession at Princeton) reaffirmed two things we’ve been pretty much thinking all year:
1.) Even though the Princeton endowment is way down, we’re all pretty much going to be fine.
2.) No matter how high ranking the administrator, students are not going to voluntarily attend a budget town hall meeting (the thirty-something people who did show up were dwarfed by the venue, McCosh 10. Most were there because members of the USG were required to go.)
Item number one is actually pretty exciting, though. After the “horror stories” coming out of Harvard (no cookies at faculty meetings?!) it pretty much sounds like any cuts that were going to happen have already happened – the Forbes dining hall closed on Saturdays, and the new printing quota. It’s been a month at school (or more for some people), and it doesn’t seem like anyone’s world has been rocked too seriously.
Well, those were the Nassoons and they joined Folds on stage because they’re featured on his new compilation album, Ben Folds Presents: University A Cappella!, released on Tuesday. The album’s a collection of sixteen Ben Folds tracks re-recorded by university a cappella groups from across the country (with Princeton being the only Ivy featured on the album; yeah, that’s right, eat it Whiffenpoofs).
Paste Magazine recently interviewed some of the contributing acts, including our very own (and recently Ink-featured) Jonathan Schwartz ‘10. This guy’s on fire right now: off-broadway star, a cappella record release… What’s next? Lawnparties ‘10?
Excerpts from the interview and a kind of awkward submission video after the jump.
<3 The U-Store
Even with the outcome 
“Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
