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(01/31/16 6:28pm)
If you haven’t seen "The Big Short" yet, see it. The movie is based on Michael Lewis’s 2010 book, “The Big Short,” about a handful of players who foresaw the 2007 housing bubble and subsequent crisis (a topic covered extensively in a slew of courses on campus and likely familiar to a decent portion of the student body here). The great mix of emotional storytelling and meaningful questions makes it one of my favorite movies of the past few years. If this were a work of pure fiction, I’d still love it - and that scares me. The fact that I was so riled up without knowing the factual accuracy is a recipe for misinformation. We have to understand that this is a movie first and an analysis of the financial crisis second. My opinion of the financial crisis already aligned with the narrative of the movie. It’s easy to watch a great story that simply confirms everything you already believe to be true. But that sort of blind acceptance just makes me uncomfortable, so I did a lot of thinking and a little research. In the name of making a good story, the movie makers and Lewis himself had to make heroes and villians arbitrarily.
(10/27/15 7:10pm)
Let me state this outright so that there is no confusion. No, I don’t think Mexicans are rapists. No, I don’t support misogyny. No, I don’t think a large concrete wall along the U.S.-Mexico border is a sound appropriation of federal funds. And yes, I believe Obama is a legal U.S. citizen. Yet, for some reason, I find it hard to hate Donald Trump. In fact, I find his success fascinating, and a recent piece in The New York Times gave me a newfound appreciation for the man behind the persona.
(10/06/15 6:59pm)
This past weekend, I opened up a copy of the Nassau Weekly to find an intriguing piece by Elliott Eglash about the nature of music streaming and its implications on our listening experience. Given that I had just recently fallen in love with Spotify’s innovative new music suggestion feature, Discover Weekly, this seemed too bizarrely relevant to pass up. Typical of the Nass, the piece was an interestingly personal and enjoyable read that I highly recommend.
(09/21/15 3:16pm)
Ah, New York City. The city of lights, the city that never sleeps, the city of… homelessness. This past summer, I returned to work in NYC, and again I was reminded of the struggles of so many homeless on a daily basis. It's next to impossible to avoid seeing homelessness if you live in the city. Shockingly, despite New York's population rising only about 6 percent since 2000, the number of homeless people in shelters has nearly tripled to the highest rate since the Great Depression. Walking down the street, I find it hard to avoid a profound sense of guilt for enjoying such a lavish lifestyle while so many suffer around me. I often reflect on how lucky I am to have such a strong upbringing with capable parents and a bright future through Princeton. Perhaps these people could change the world, if only people like you or me could give them a leg to stand on.
(04/16/15 6:20pm)
Initially, I did not understand the rage in response to Urban Congo. I was indifferent to the performance and found it nothing more than slightly amusing. This reactionarguablyoccurred for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that I am not a minority. However, once the extent of the backlash became apparent, I was very interested in learning exactly what the issue was and, more importantly, why it warranted such extreme action against the offending parties. So naturally, I tried engaging the offended parties seeking clarification on the issue. The response I received was perhaps the least productive and least convincing discourse I have ever encountered.
(02/18/15 6:45pm)
I’ve been following Anonymous — a loosely connected group of internet hackers — for a few months now. I first heard about them this past November when they infamously launched a cyber-attack on the Ku Klux Klan, hacking its websites and Twitter accounts and releasing personal information about its members. At its best, the actions of Anonymous constitute a muddled attempt at bullying an equally unfriendly group through annoying cyber harassment. At its worst, this event was a deliberate and coordinated attack against civil liberties and the right to free speech. A quick browse of Anonymous’s Facebook page reveals a hodgepodge of images and posts supporting a wide variety of issues with very little in common save a serious mistrust of authority or organizational structure. It reads more like a desperate call to anarchy than a coherent message or value system. Of course, the KKK hack was not a standalone incident. Past targets of Anonymous in the past have varied widely, including the U.S. government, corporations such as Sony and Visaand religious groups like the Church of Scientology. Their recent campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, however, is a different story entirely.
(02/04/15 8:10am)
Something has been brewing inside my head for the past few months, and recently it’s come to a boil. Perhaps during my first few years on campus I was too oblivious to pick up on the pervasive disapproval of our school paper. Perhaps it is truly a new issue on campus. Indisputably, however, it has come to the forefront in recent months after coverage of recent issues regarding student arrests, sexual assault allegations and defensive editorials. I personally have nothing to do with the news section, or much at all to do with the ‘Prince’ itself for that matter. I simply write my modest opinions and hope somebody cares enough to comment or email. Still, having endured many similar attacks myself as well as witnessing the tireless work of my peers to make this paper, I found myself often siding with the Daily Princetonian on major disputes.
(12/03/14 7:41pm)
I’m going to take a huge risk here and attempt to discuss an issue that could arguably end in my mutilation. In the wake of Title IX, Shirtgate, catcalling videos and the newly renamed “Rape Haven” formerly known as the Tiger Inn, there has recently been a lot of discussion both on and off campus about the issue of gender equality. As a heterosexual, cis, white male from an upper middle class household, I’m pretty much the authority on discrimination and adversity, right? Perhaps not, but I do try to sympathize and understand the situation as best I can. Obviously, this is an extremely volatile topic, and the anger and outrage underlying these kinds of issues is ineffectual and ultimately counterproductive to resolving these conflicts.
(10/16/14 6:45pm)
I am not the type of person who lives by a set of hard rules. I enjoy being spontaneous and exploring new things. That said, I have one very strict rule regarding social media. Simply put, I never post or share anything serious on social media. By serious, I mean anything pertaining to a controversial or potentially contentious issue. I never back down from commenting on a controversial Facebook post because I feel that it is necessary to challenge people’s need to share cursory and potentially sensitive information, but I am never the original poster. The topic ofinternet activism—orslacktivism—has been covered heremanytimesbefore, criticized for being lazy and ineffective, but that’s not what I’m doing. I made this rule for myself because of two key observations that I have made about the online world. The first is that social media, like many aspects of the internet, is rarely ever a medium for constructive discourse. Rather, it is an ideological vacuum where similar people congregate and feed off of one another’s opinions, pushing opinions to polarization. The second reason is that social media is, by nature, a medium cultivated by short attention spans and instant gratification. The effort required to read or share a post is so minimal that the meaningful research necessary to have informed opinions rarely happens. Instead, faulty information that catches the eye is immediately propagated to every man, woman and child with access to a computer screen.
(10/02/14 6:00pm)
Nobody is going to argue that Ivy League schools aren’t exclusive. We all feel a sense of pride being here, precisely because it’s such a challenge to get to this point. However, is there such a thing as too exclusive? On this point, I have seriously conflicting emotions. On one hand, exclusivity is what makes schools like Princeton so great. A small population of dedicated and qualified students matched with a small group of the best professors and scholars ensures the very best education. Yet, I look back to many of my friends from high school and think, am I really so much better than they are? Do I really deserve this education more than my peers? Now, I could go on and on about the feelings of inadequacy at this school, but that’s really not my point here. Rather, my point is that plenty of other equally qualified students are missing this opportunity. Assuming the Office of Admission was able to perfectly separate the top 2,000 students to accept –which is obviously impossible – there would still be thousands of students capable of finding success here who ultimately must be turned away. Unfortunately, these schools are only getting more exclusive.
(09/18/14 7:22pm)
This past summer, I had the pleasure of working for the New York City Police Department. Aside from the valuable career experience I received, I took away much more than just another notch on my resume. While the experience would have been eye-opening regardless of the circumstances, this happened to also be an extremely eventful and controversial summer for police and law enforcement in general. Sparked by the multiple incidents in Ferguson, Miss., as well as by a handful of other incidents across the United States, the police have come under tremendous scrutiny in the past months by both the media and the public. In particular, a good many of my closest friends and media personalities have spoken out and broadly criticized police officers in the wake of these incidents.
(04/03/14 5:10pm)
What makes us happy?Certainly, this is a question that has frustrated philosophers, psychologists, doctors and just about everyone else since the dawn of time. While finding what makes us happy may be difficult, finding what makes us unhappy is a much easier task. Kelly Hatfield wrote an excellent piece the other day highlighting the many mental health issues that pervade this campus. I was struck by the statistic that over 40 percent of students on this campus have reported experiencing depression while at this school. And here I thought it was just me.
(02/27/14 7:19pm)
Humans are odd creatures. We’ve excelled as a species because of our ability to communicate and work together. We’ve ridden our social cohesion straight to the top of the food chain. And yet, despite such a masterful grasp of communication and social interaction, much of the time, we are surprisingly terrible at actually saying anything at all.
(02/24/14 7:06pm)
It’s no secret that Princeton students like to be involved. Admittedly, the number of student groups on campus is impressive given the size of the student body. There are 38 varsity sports, 35 club sports and over 350 student-led groups for a student body of just over 5,000. This demonstrates great commitment from such a dedicated and goal-oriented student body. At least, that’s what I thought. It’s hard to believe that students can be so involved because in reality, they are not. In reality, looking deeper into many of the groups on campus reveals that many are poorly organized and have no real value beyond resume building.
(02/10/14 9:05pm)
Recently, I think I’ve finally come to terms with the exclusive nature of just about every part of this campus. I will always have reservations about the highly competitive, highly selective nature of the Princeton community. But I’ve convinced myself not to hate this quality so passionately anymore because I can’t hate this without hating Princeton itself. Princeton is filled with extremely talented people, so it is understandable that most people will be exceptional at something. However, nobody is exceptional at everything, and everybody learns that one way or another. Unfortunately, this difficult process is often exacerbated by the pervasive ritual of publicly announcing others' success through pick-ups.
(11/19/13 10:40pm)
Shout it in the streets. Spam the email inboxes. And, for god's sake, somebody put an article in the 'Prince.' Autumn is coming to an end, we are severely unprepared, and meningitis is coming. The fatalities are multiplying, and soon the dead will rise again as throngs of the ... six, you say? Only six students and a visitor have been diagnosed with meningitis? Well, the term “outbreak” is thrown around rather loosely nowadays, isn’t it?
(11/05/13 10:20pm)
Strangely enough, if you were to ask me right now what the most difficult part of Princeton has been for me thus far, my answer would not include workload, grade deflation or organic chemistry. Granted, these aspects have not been easy for me in any stretch of the imagination. I struggle with time management, grades and amine functional groups just as much as the next guy. But on a day-to-day basis, these are not the things I worry about most as a Princeton student. What I struggle with most is simply deciding what to study and where to focus my future after Princeton.
(09/30/13 8:00pm)
Entering my sophomore year, I began discussing with my friends the inevitable decision of which eating clubs to consider. This question seems so different now than when I pondered it only a few months earlier. As a freshman, the idea of “bickering” an eating club seemed exciting. It has all the right qualities to be more appealing to freshmen than any other class. As the new kids on the block, you don’t know many other students, and you desperately crave to find a new place to fit in and feel accepted. There’s even an added feeling of accomplishment if you successfully make it into an exclusive club like Cottage or, God willing, Ivy. An article written in the 'Prince' last year made an uncomfortably accurate observation: Princeton students are obsessed with exclusivity. Most important of all, as a freshman, you have nothing to lose by throwing your hat in the ring and getting into the club of your dreams. Hell, it might even feel like reading that acceptance letter from Princeton all over again.