L'Shana Tova

Mom is responsible for this one:

"Just in time for the new fall TV Season CBS is
releasing a new reality series called JEWISH SURVIVOR.

16 Jews are put in a two-bedroom co-op on the Upper West Side of New
York. Each week they vote out one member until there is a final
survivor who gets $1 million (but placed into a trust that does not
vest until age 59).

The Rules:
1. No maid service.
2. No use of ATMs or credit cards.
3. No food from take-out or delivery which includes
Chinese food.
4. All purchases must be at retail prices.
5. No calls to mother for women, office for men.
6. Outside trips must be by foot, bus or subway. NO
limos or cabs.
7. All workouts/exercise must be done in regular
sweats -- no designer labels.
8. Zabars is off limits.
9. No Jewish geography.
10. No NY Times. Only NY Post or NY Daily News.
11 No Pottery Barn, J. Crew, Lands End or William
Sonoma catalogs
12. Only one phoneline for all 16 Tribe members. No
call can last more than 3 minutes. No cell phones.
13. Maintenance problems must be resolved by the
Tribe, without help from any gentile or super.
14. All therapy sessions suspended.
15. No consulting with attorneys.
16. No whitefish, lox, or bagels.
17. No antacids of any kind.

There have been no applicants yet."

MIA

There has been a shameful lack of posts lately, due to real life, working for the establishment, and other various factors. But there are two new campus blogs to highlight:

The Agenda Gap, written by Mike Herman '07 and Adam Shpeen '07, provides thoughtful, witty commentary on a variety of subjects.

Vox in Sox, written by Andrew Seal '07 (of LTBH) expands upon his posts there and adds some valuable campus media coverage.

New York State of Mind

In today's political themed NYT Magazine, John Tierney and Chris Buckley (whose famous father is profiled in the same issue), report on a random poll of New Yorkers that examines everything from what Bill Clinton should do now to good topics of dinner table conversation.

Best statistics: " Still, most New Yorkers don't let politics interfere with love. More than half of Democrats polled said they would date and even marry a Republican. A whopping two-thirds of Republicans said they would date a Democrat, though this may be evidence less of open-mindedness than of desperation."

Warning: Self-Promotion

Perks of working for The D: Publishing yourself whenever you want

Observance without Consequence

Race in America - and At Dartmouth

David Brook's "The Way We Live Now" series is the NYT's latest examination of race in America.
What is interesting is the discussion of Dartmouth blitz patterns in the second article.

"Bruce Sacerdote and David Marmaros recently did a study for the National Bureau of Economic Research trying to figure out how powerful these clusterings really are, and how friendships form.

They tracked the e-mail exchanges of a group of Dartmouth student to see who was e-mailing whom, and took that as a proxy for social contact. Not surprisingly, they found race matters. Black students send 44 percent of their e-mails to other black students, even though blacks make up only seven percent of the student body.

On the other hand, race is no more powerful than other interests. Athletes exchanged 52 percent of their e-mails with other athletes. Football players exchanged 30 percent of their e-mails with other football players, even though only 2 percent of the students fall into that category.

Students with similar SAT scores e-mail each other more frequently than students with dissimilar SAT scores, but the difference is modest."

Dartmouth Undergoing Maintainance?

Error Message on Facebook this morning:

"Your school is temporarily down for maintenance. It should be available again within a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience."

Crazy Brits

While I'm not actively posting, this story is too outrageous to ignore.
Ha'aretz reports that

"Advisers appointed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair are proposing that Britain get rid of Holocaust Memorial Day because Muslims find it offensive, the British Sunday Times has reported.

The proposals - which provoked a backlash from British Jewish leaders - aim to replace Holocaust Memorial Day with a Genocide Day that would include recognition of Muslim deaths in the West Bank and Gaza, Chechnya and Bosnia, the Times said.".

While the idea of a day that remembers all genocide is a good one, it should not come at the expense of Holocaust remembrance efforts. Also, the arguments that Muslims find such a day offensive and that the events in the West Bank and Gaza are akin to the Holocaust are upsetting, to say the least.

For more discussion, see the Volokh Conspiracy.