confessions of an NYU philosophy student

"Eclectic" is the right word...

Not only do we have students who live in libraries, but we also have drug dealers! I first saw the first post on the bust at Gothamist here. That links to a NY Daily News article, but there's a more detailed account on the NYTimes Metro Briefing. $650 worth of coke to a cop? Ouch.

Someone made a Meadow Soprano joke, and I think the analogy could work. NYU instead of Columbia, or something like that.

Regardless, any publicity is good publicity, right?

I am not, in fact, the boy in the basement.

Perusing the logs of the hits that I get from search engines, I seem to be getting turned up in results when people search for the NYU student who lived at Bobst for the last 8 months. So let me make this explicit, I am not Stephen Stanzak.

That said, I do find the whole situation quite amusing. The media frenzy alone is entertainment enough. The Washington Square News was the first to break the story. Then the New York Times was next. Then it really go out of hand. Click here for a a google news search of all the recent stories. Gawker anticipates a book deal. There's a lengthy discussion on Fark.com here. And it looks like there was some live TV coverage today too. Here's a cell phone shot of the library today, where it looks like channel 7 was setting up :

Stanzak is a NYU's poster boy, and as Beckman called him in the NYTimes article, an example of our smart and eclectic student body. But he still gets only a semester's worth of housing? NYU couldn't ask for better advertising, and as far as I am concerned, a story like Stanzak's does more good to NYU's reputation than substantiated rumors about certain prefrosh. Though the Olsen twins are probably not going to have to worry about paying their tuition, much less their housing.

Deloreans

This post on slashdot points to a real time machine being sold on ebay. The discussion on /. has generated some interesting debate over the nature of Deloreans, and time travel in general. When I was a kid there was a guy who owned one of these (not sure if it was the time machine model or not) who lived in the town next to me. We'd go to the movies, and it'd always be in the parking lot. I guess I never really got over how cool I think they are. A particular /. comment links to the Delorean sales page, where it seems like you can still get the m built, or "refurbished" or something. Needless to say, I'm thinking about it. Starting at only 35k, plus or minus some upgrades (I want one with GPS, because, hey, they don't make time machines like they used to), it's not the worst idea I've had.

Digital Disobedience and NYU Apathy

Last october a couple of Swarthmore students got in trouble participating in the digital equivalent of civial disobedience. Now there's an international movement originating from their campus. Introducing FreeCulture.org.
Named after a Lawrence Lessig book (free download available, audio books too!) the student organization hopes to "fight coercive copyright practices and other threats to the free flow of information." With the apparent majoirty of nyu being quite politically apathetic perhaps it is time for a change. Swarthmore did it, why can't we?

Google Newsisms

Despite having a primary news source that seems to touch on most news that is relevant, I still like to check out Google News occasionally. But since its news generated by a robot there tend to be some funny anomalies that occur. My favorites are when news stories get linked with barely relevant thumbnail photos. I've been meaning to start keeping track of these, for no other purpose than their entertainment value. So here's a recent one:

Free pitas?

Anyone else notice the (apparently mexican?) guys standing on the corner of St. Mark's and 3rd with a tray of pita bread? I think one of them offered a pita to me, but I don't take food from strangers... or something. Maybe it has to do with this? Or maybe its some thinly veiled reference to Christ...who knows.

Stow aways...

Gothamist has a note about the guy who shipped himself in a crate across the country. Yahoo has some more information. Apparently he pleaded "guilty to stowing away on an aircraft." Is this illegal? It seems like an incredibly absurd law. But I guess you can get arrested for not paying a train ticket, so why not a plane? Weird.

TCN yields MTVU?

"The Caffeine Machine" has showed up on West 4th street. Its a big doodle-decorated van that gives out "coffee" (requisite quotation marks courtesy of a friend who wishes to remain anonymous) in an effort to promote "MTV-U". This is the station that has taken up The College Network's spot on NYU Cable. I found a quick article about the take over here. I've watched a bit of it, and aside from the occasional over-played video (Now I not only know all of the lyrics to Hey Ya but also all of the dialogue that occurs before the actual song in the video) mtvU appears to be playing some pretty good stuff. It reminds me of the old days of MTV-- weird little cartoons between videos, not too many commercials (perhaps none?), sincere VJs, and most importantly, a great variety of music. I remember when there were actually rare videos that would show up on MTV, and when you caught them its was like spotting some rare LP at Good Will; a pleasant reminder of obscure talent that you knew existed, but just had to look (watch) hard enough for. But now it is all but cliche to complain about how sold out and boring vanilla-MTV is. Even MTV2 is hard to tolerate at this point -- I'm not even sure what they're supposed to be playing anymore. I think its just become a dumping grounds for old Road Rules Challenge epsiodes. Anyway, for the last couple of years, I've had no problem swearing off the evils of MTV, and I've all but boycotted the channel except for the occasional Real World episode, because hey -- I always need some more prettystupid people drama. As far as I was concerned, MTV wasn't really turning out anything interesting related to music -- but this didn't have to be the case. TechTV gets the technology thing right as I'm not constantly annoyed and at the same time underwhelmed by their blithering staff. I don't really mind that some percentage of my check to NYU goes to paying for my access to that channel because I actually enjoy watching their programming.

As for MTV, now I'm a little more reserved about judging the company, as I see a subtle kind of evolution occuring; MTV is specializing itself. Its making subtle adaptations to the complex topology of cable television, it needs the variety that MTVu (or is it mtvU?) and its other sister channels provide in order to survive. mtvU represents a new mutation, another organ to keep the giant from collapsing under its own weight. The weight is the cult of pop culture and homoginzation bred by shows like TRL and Cribs. Its obvious that MTV had lost its edge for a couple of years after grunge died, and instead of waiting around for a new genre to show up (so long Nuuue metal), it itself changed and subsequently created a (wait for it) non-economically valuable venture. Obviously mtvU represents an attempt at conquering a new demographic, but this alone doesn't necessarily exclude the existence of a decent music channel. mtvU's success should prove to MTV that there is still value in creating a catalyst not interested in forcing culture into the kinds of easily swallowable pieces that shows like TRL eat up.

Legos and NYU Alumn

Lego, a childhood obsession of mine, has been interviewing for new "master builders". I think I saw this on slashdot a while ago, but my mom showed me this article of an NYU Alumn applying for the job. Unfortunately, the article is only avaible via Google's Cache, but check it out anyway. Anyway, his name is Nathan Sawaya, and he apparently practiced his art in the dorms. He's now a corporate lawyer, but intends to quit his job in favor of the LEGO one if he wins the competition. Thats dedication.

Lego has just announced that it will be hiring three new master builders, and Nathan is one of them. So, from one lego obsessed NYU student to another: Congratulations Nathan!

On Renting and Preference

So I am signing up for Netflix, and during part of the process they make you rate movies that they think you've seen. More movies pop up and you are supposed to rate those, and so on and so forth. After a couple of rounds, they start reccomending movies that they think you might like. At some point I had rated over 90 movies, only giving 5/5 stars to Memento and The Royal Tenebaums (Objectively, these may not be actually 5/5 star movies, but relative to the stuff they were shoveling me, they certainly are). I rated most of the other movies a measely 1 out 5, or clicked the "Not Interested" button which is supposed to indicate that I am not interested in this movie, and hopefully the genre. So, after 90 or so clicks, Netflix apparently reccomends BOOTY Call and House Party. Unless the Netflix reccomender has some profound (and I mean unquestionably fundamental) grip on my personality and is reccomending movies that I would outright deny interest in but yet still subconsciously (perhaps unconsciously) covet, I think something is up.

Page after page of Hollywood action movies came up, until I started rating everything as "Not Interested". Now, after 230 movie ratings, it seems to have a better grip on my film preferences and is reccomending Fear and Loathing and The Naked Gun.

Another interesting thing I've noticed about Netflix... the classification of films can sometimes be interesting. Digging around in the "independent" genre, I found the sub genre of "experimental". Not realizing that the highest rated experimental film is Army of Darkness with a 3.5, I clicked on Sort by Rating. But then it sorted from lowest to highest. Much to my surprise, I found that a film I already own, Cabin Boy, was rated as the worst idependent experimental film offered by Netflix. I am not sure what is worse, the fact that it has a rating of 1 star (the Netflix community clearly has issues with cult classics) or that it is classified as an independent experimental film. In fact, I can't really even imagine a worse insult to a movie than to classify it as independent experimental when it is quite far from the genre. I remember seeing it in a LOEWS theater years ago, and then seeing the Mighty Ducks II the next week at the same theater. Trust me, it's neither independent nor experimental.