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5:00 PM — Everywhere

Brian Wilson, after pitching the winning game of the 2010 World Series, expresses all your emotions perfectly in a single sentence.

Congrats guys, another Dean’s Date managed. Now please, for the sake of your sanity, either go to bed or start having fun.

– WAS

4:47 PM — Underneath the invisibility cloak

Did you see us make it disappear? We thought we’d do Princeton a solid and rid it of one more procrastination tool during the final stretch, so we put the invisibility cloak over the Dean’s Date post. Some may call this a “technical glitch.” Semantics…

If you missed it, keep clicking the refresh button to see if the magic happens again…

SJP

4:42 PM — McCosh Courtyard

pant

There is currently an insanely long line for these sweatpants stretching from the mouth of the cathedral to (last I checked) to around Murray-Dodge. Good luck if you’re planning on getting a pair. I just did. They are silky smooth.

WAS

4:34 p.m. – Carl A. Fields Center

Ready, and…SUBMIT!!!

See you all at McCosh in 30!

-SG

4:26 PM — Mile 26

As we head into the final painful stages of sleep deprivation and prolonged mental activity, we can use some tips from others trained to push their bodies to the breaking point—marathon runners. While DCW may insist on a divide between the cool sporty kids and the dorks who wear their allnighter badges like Olympic Gold medals, I maintain that we share some common ground with our athlete friends.

Here’s what Mary Wittenberg, president and chief executive of the New York Road Runners, the group that puts on the ING New York City Marathon, has to say about competitive marathon runners:

“Mental tenacity — and the ability to manage and even thrive on and push through pain — is a key segregator between the mortals and immortals in running,” Ms. Wittenberg said.

You can see it in the saliva-coated faces of the top runners in the New York marathon, Ms. Wittenberg added.

“We have towels at marathon finish to wipe away the spit on the winners’ faces,” she said. “Our creative team sometimes has to airbrush it off race photos that we want to use for ad campaigns.”

If you’re covered in slobber and waiting for your towel at the end of this finish line, you’ve done us proud. Keep kicking.

SJP

3:19 PM — Cafe Viv

So I was looking for a little inspiration (for this blog post, not for my actual Dean’s Date papers, mind you – I am an upstanding follower of the honor code, and let’s face it, if you’re still looking for inspiration at this point you have no business being on a blog site.  Just kidding, we want you here anyway.)  A little poking around the dark recesses of the Internet brought out this gem: EssayGenerator.

Type in any phrase, and it gives you a more or less grammatically correct, albeit very short, essay on the subject of your choice.  Fun!  Let’s see what it has to say about Dean’s Date…

The beginning is shockingly good – as in, start worrying about the artificial intelligence revolution because this thing reads minds.

Some highlights:

“Underestimate dean’s date at your peril.”

“As soon as a child meets dean’s date they are changed.”

“Though I would rather be in bed I will now examine the primary causes of dean’s date.”

Don’t let me get your hopes up, though.  It goes downhill pretty fast:

Let us consider the words of that silver tongued orator, that most brilliant mind Elijah Bootlegger ‘A man must have his cake and eat it in order to justify his actions.’ [2] I argue that his insight into dean’s date provided the inspiration for these great words. To paraphrase, the quote is saying ‘dean’s date wins votes.’ Simple as that.

The question which we must each ask ourselves is, will we allow dean’s date to win our vote?”

It sure doesn’t have my vote…and neither does this essay machine, for that matter.

Two hours – it’s go time.

-LEZ

3:10 PM– Second Floor Frist

As the final hour draws ever closer…

  • Still have a bajillion words/pages to write?
  • All the nearby print stations are broken?
  • Operating on less than .5 hours of sleep?
Embrace it.
Embrace it.

–VC

3:03 pm – Delirium is a funky place

If you’re like me, you’re anal about saving your work. You ‘save as’ your essays multiple times, hoping that the extra copies will ensure that the labor of your love/desperation won’t suddenly get up and disappear.

Sounds good and all, but the problem with this approach is that you get a folder full of papers titled:

‘Yoga in Prisons’
‘Yoga in Prisons, second draft’
‘Yoga in Prisons, updated for reals this time’
‘Deans Date copy’
‘FINAL JRN paper!!!’
‘NO PICK THIS ONE. FINAL FINAL COPY’
‘JRN story HERE LOOK HERE’

Don’t ask me why I don’t use the streamlined system of titling them ‘Draft 1,’ ‘Draft 2,’ and so on. I assume my mind doesn’t think in such ordered terms early Tuesday morning. I like my titles to have Punch. Energy. Pizzazz!

So anyways, here’s what happens. I open ‘FINAL JRN paper!!!’ ready to edit and submit. Shocked to find gaping holes (read: at least 5/18 pages) in essay. Wonder, “OMG, did I fall asleep and not finish the paper like I thought I did? Did I really not finish it? I DELUDED MYSELF into thinking I finished?!?” Panic ensues as I frantically start writing, anything- anything really, to fill up the space.

Twenty minutes later, for some reason, I go through my notes, and revisit my alternate drafts. Realize that ‘FINAL JRN paper!!!’ is not, in fact, the final one. ‘Deans Date copy’ is. Everything is there.

All is well.

-SG

2:33 PM — Firestone Trustee Room

Guys, you’re so close! But, I know the last stretch can be grueling. Are you lacking motivation? Let this guy rev you up.

If HE can do it, YOU CAN TOO.

– WAS

2:30 pm –Back to the hallway with the Turkish Alphabet poster.

So, when professors say that we must include our signature of the Honor code with the electronic copies of our papers, they mean that we can sign in Paint, right?

Right.

Here are some of my greater samples.

signatures2

–LRW

2:17 PM — The Internet

Like us on Facebook. Don’t pretend like we’re not friends by this point, we’ve been up all night together.

– UPC

1:33 pm — In my room (uh, still…)

The only workouts I ever manage to squeeze in on Dean’s Date are a few chairside jumping jacks to break up the blood clots in my legs.

Thankfully, a tipster sent in this video from the Princeton Crew Team.  It’s a first-person view of some strenuous-looking speed gauntlet, and it’s pretty (vicariously) invigorating.

Sayeth our tipster: “You feel like you’re actually getting dizzy with him in the beginning, and if you go to 1:18, the guy FALLS and skins his hands. I feel like I just exercised.

– DCW

1:21 p.m. – The minds of LMNT

It was the A-Teens last night, LMNT today. I fear that I will forever be known as the girl-who’s-obsessed-with-teeny-bopper music, but please, this is as good a day as any for flashbacks to my junior high glory days.

I couldn’t find the official music video, but this is so much better. How old are these kids, anyways?

*TRIVIA: LMNT, pronounced “element,” was chosen as a band name because the musicians liked the symbolic meaning. The four basic substances that make up the universe – earth, wind, fire, and water – are completely different, yet coexist in harmony…wait for it…just like the band members themselves!

Gotta love diversity.

-SG

1:00 PM — Cafe Viv

Time’s getting pretty tight, but can you spare three seconds? You’re here, so I’m guessing yes.

For extra giggles: Open the video in YouTube and keep pressing ‘2.’ Repeat ad nauseam.

Try not to fail as hard this Dean’s Date.

– WAS

12:55 — Still in bed, still working, still living, still blogging

According to Brian No ‘10, while the liveblog post may have 1,250 views, the homepage here at www.universitypressclub.com has over 2,100.

“So, like, wouldn’t it be accurate to say that something along the lines of half the school has read the liveblog?”

I guess so, Brian.

AW

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Bearded genius

"... his impish, abstractedly cerebral face and full, free-wheeling beard giving him something of a jolly professor manner."

Biophysics seems like a feel-good field … it’s always telling us how well-made we are. A recent piece in the Times Science section served up a crash course on that discipline, alluding to the work of William Bialek, who is a professor of physics, an architect of the Integrated Science curriculum, and apparently the happy owner of an “impish, abstractedly cerebral face and full, free-wheeling beard.”

In the article, Bialek explains why the photoreceptors in our eyes are so ideally constructed: they are designed to respond to even single photons, which are the smallest discrete units of light. “Light is quantized, and you can’t count half a photon,” he says. “This is as far as it goes.” So, at the risk of inane analogy, it’s kind of like a perfect gumball machine that would accept even pennies, accommodating the smallest extreme of currency.

That’s the basic idea behind optimization. Evolution has made some biological systems really, really, unsurpassably good at what they do, as good as the laws of physics will allow. According to the article, biophysicists have spotted such systems throughout the living world — in bacteria, in fruit fly embryos, in sharks, in us. Also,”tenets of optimization may even help explain phenomena on a larger scale, like the rubberiness of our reflexes and the basic architecture of our brain.” (Personally, I would be interested in the basic architecture of Bialek’s beard — build some sophisticated mathematical models for that puppy. You’re welcome, Biophysics Student Still Looking For A Thesis.)

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Dr. Cornel West, in typical baller fashion, invited rapper Lupe Fiasco to his AAS 201 lecture today. According to Naomi Wood ‘13, Lupe “discusssed why he uses the n-word; social consciousness; parallels in his lyrics and Afro-American texts; censorship; and the relationship between his [Muslim] faith and his life as an artist.” Students remarked how articulate he was — also, at one point apparently Dr. West tried to lead him off the stage, but there was no staircase so Lupe had to jump off the stage, and it was awesome and crowd-pleasing, so everybody was like ohhhhhhhhhhh. No rapping though.

Brother West and Brother Fiasco

I wonder if he called him "Brother Fiasco."

For real though Lupe, please stop doing cool academic-type talks and release your new album already.

(photo courtesy of Allison Vise ‘13)

Until recently, there was in my mind no conceivable relationship between Hebrew stenography and funk. Then The Books came along and everything changed.

The Books are reading the books!

Hey check it out The Books are reading the books!

The Books are an experimental musical duo, and on Tuesday afternoon they delivered a hilarious and hyper-intellectual presentation as part of the Music Department’s Composition Colloquium Series. This is their second appearance at Princeton in the past year — they played a hypnotizing set at Terrace last fall — but this time around there was less “let’s play our music” and more “let’s talk about how we make our music.”

These guys are critical darlings of the indie world: unsurprisingly, they were greeted by a room chock full of flannel, stubble, and horn-rimmed glasses, largely of grad student origin. And when I refer to The Books as experimental I mean that very seriously. Together they gather bits of found sound and assemble minimalist “sound collages” — a process that cellist Paul de Jong called a “harvest, a social-cultural farming.” (Gotta love the hyphenated abstractions — no wonder so many grad students showed up for this talk.) His partner in crime, guitarist/vocalist Nick Zammuto, rattled off tons of vaguely scientific, consistently gorgeous metaphors for their composition process. But first you need to hear it to understand what he’s talking about. They write pop songs at heart, but they might challenge your standard definition of pop song, unless your standard definition of pop song includes “bits of old Black Panther recordings edited and manipulated beyond all recognition.” But they’re good, trust me! Give ‘em a listen after the jump.

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Another Lawnparties, another round of pastels, champagne, and cringe-worthy cover bands. To be fair, this fall’s cover band count is comfortably low (I spot only two), and in any case, no amount of tight pants and frizzed out wigs could rain on my parade once I heard that this guy was coming to town. And with that, I give the first inaugural Ink Stamp of Approval to…

Rjd2 will be performing at Terrace Club on Sunday. Née Ramble John Krohn — sometimes I wonder why a dude named “Ramble” ever needed a stage name — he is a master beatsmith who cobbles together some delicious instrumental hip-hop from the unlikeliest of samples. He’s nibbled on everything from Scooby-Doo theme songs to Elliott Smith to Steppenwolf and he’s weaved them into his own tunes. Oh, what’s that? You like Mad Men? You like that infectious Mad Men intro? That was his doing. Come out to Terrace at 2:00 and groove to the best Lawnparties act in recent memory.

DO YOU HAVE A TIP FOR US? LET US KNOW AT theinktips[at]gmail[dot]com

5:45 P.M. — My bed

After many hours of not-sleep, countless pages of top-form b.s., a sprightly walk to Robertson to hand in some papers, some McCosh kettle corn, and a sick Dean’s Date water bottle, it is time for sleep.

Wake me up when it’s time to get down.

– WAS

4:13 P.M. — Some advice from Alec Greven



May come in handy later. Like in 47 minutes or so. Or maybe not.

– ASG

4:00 P.M. — Princeton

There’s one hour left. Oh my god. Where did all those other hours go? The end is in sight…

– WAS

3:40 P.M. — The Edge

Read your papers once more through. One of my recurring nightmares is turning in a final paper that has all the profanity and gibberish that accompany first drafts.

“INSERT BULLS–T ABOUT GLOBALIZATION HERE”

My first draft calls.

– WAS

3:31 P.M. — So. Close.

But in case you were wondering, you haven’t quite hit this milestone yet (and if you have, contact the Guiness Book of World Records immediately).

– ASG

3:25 P.M. — On the Brink

Need some more Gaga for the final stretch? Mr. Christopher Walken gives you “Poker Face”:

–ECS

3:03 P.M. — It’s almost time.

No matter how hard
The task may seem
Dont give up our plans
Dont give up our dreams

No broken bridges
Can turn us around
Cause what were searchin’ for
Will soon be found

Cause we’re almost there

– AW

2:57 P.M. — My room

Just thought of one that the anagram generator didn’t come up with. (Yes, this is how I procrastinate.) This one goes out to all the freshmen (and young sophomores?) out there:

Dean’s Date = Da Sad Teen

:( <— teen

– GN

2:39 P.M. — I don’t even know anymore

It’s getting to be that time. Here’s some motivation.

Yes, you can do it. Let’s just all pray our professors don’t have this reaction:

–WAS

12:28 P.M. — My Nightmare on Elm Street.

4 hours and 30 minutes to go. Whatever you do, do not fall asleep.

Don’t fool yourself. Dean’s Date wants you as badly as Freddy Kruger does.

–SJP

11:37 A.M. — Hey. Stop it. Wake up.

–AW

10:00 A.M. — It’s five o’clock somewhere

In these places, more specifically: Amman, Helsinki, Istanbul, Athens, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Beirut, Kyiv, Cairo, and Minsk. I don’t think those are the places this dude had in mind when he wrote this song.

– WAS

(Keep reading below!)

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You could be the Chosen One.

You could be the Chosen One. Mod II.

There comes a point where every king must step down from the throne. Even our Glorious Mod.

Yes, all good things come to an end. However, as the late 90’s heartily affirmed, that means there’s also a new beginning! And this one could involve you! A tantalizing excerpt from a Mod interview:

You might think moderating during exams is therapeutic, but really, all it does is trick me into thinking I’ve accomplished something. Filing my taxes, updating my resume, and even folding my laundry all have similar effects. Assuming I make it to senior year, I’ll probably hold a “moderator bicker” during the fall semester so that PrincetonFML won’t be to blame for me being hopelessly behind on my thesis.

Um. In case you missed it:

“moderator bicker”

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[UPDATED BELOW] The Princeton Tiger, our resident humor rag, has been absolutely tearing up the internets lately. Their latest video, “Discussions in Contemporary Poetry: A conversation with Paul Muldoon,” features some erudite commentary from our beloved Professor of Creative Writing. The unlikely subject: Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok.” See the deep poetic genius in action:

Juxtaposition of high and low culture! (Especially enjoyed the Lear reference.) It’s funny! Apparently, it’s this funny. And this funny. And this funny. They throw up an adorable shoutout to their poetry editor: “Oh Paul, you totally make it pop.”

So, Tiger Mag, a tip of the hat — for making this video, for making waves. And for enriching the vocabulary of a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. (Notable additions: “crunk,” “junk.”)

UPDATE: These guys picked up on it too. Viral status is imminent.

UPDATE II: And also the Village Voice and the New York Times (!).