Shots in the Dark

The Princeton University, ex-Harvard philosopher is becoming a professor of philosophy and Christian practices at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

The Times’ Laurie Goodstein reports:

“I don’t have that much time, and I want to be able to do precisely what I’m called to do,” Dr. West, 58, said. It will also be nice, he said, to be within walking distance of the Apollo Theater.

West will be taking a significant pay to go there.

Unlike his departure from Harvard in 2002 after a dispute with the then-president Lawrence H. Summers, Dr. West’s departure from Princeton is on good terms. He will remain an emeritus professor there.

One can’t help but juxtapose the professional choices the two men have since made: Summers went to work at a hedge fund and give speeches at investment banks, then went to Washington, then returned to Cambridge and started joining the boards of high-tech companies.

West went to Princeton, and now Union Theological Seminary.

And remember, it was Larry Summers who told West, in that infamous meeting in Mass Hall, that West wasn’t teaching enough….

Stories like this make me wish the Winklevoss twins would go away for a while. (In all fairness, not so much because of the text, but because of the photo. Can they just stop?)

But then, stories like this make me think that the Winklevosses actually are hugely important, mocked though they may be for their WASPy-ness.

The Times reports that Salman Rushdie had to fight Facebook simply in order to use his own name—when he started a “Salman Rushdie” page , Facebook automatically and without asking/telling Rushdie changed it to his born name, Ahmed, as part of a practice to make people use their real names so Facebook pages have more value to marketers.

Facebook…had deactivated his account, demanded proof of identity and then turned him into Ahmed Rushdie, which is how he is identified on his passport.

…the company would not explain how it happened….

That is extremely creepy.

If Google’s motto (now somewhat shaky) is “do no evil,” Facebook’s motto is “do whatever you can until you get caught. Then wait a while and do it again.”

That philosophy stems from Mark Zuckerburg, and you can trace it backto his Harvard days, and the Winklevosses have been (and to some extent still are) responsible for reminding people that Mark Zuckerberg is not ethical.

And because he runs perhaps the first or second most powerful information-gathering company in the world, it’s not a bad thing to remind people of that fact, as hundreds of millions of people happily hand over more and more personal information to him….

“Yea i’m going to fuck them,” the undergraduate Zuckerberg had I.M.’d a friend while ostensibly working with the Winklevosses, explaining his intention to delay their planned social network and so benefit his own pre-natal Facebook. “Probably in the ear.”

I know: He’s on the cover of lots of magazines, he gives away money (he has so much, what does it mean to him?), he has a huge PR apparatus behind him, Sheryl Sandberg to humanize him.

But I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg has changed a bit. Except that he has a lot more power now.

Ooops—they’re already here.

Herman Cain, as the Washington Post puts it, had his own “oops” moment yesterday, when asked what he thought of the president’s handling of Libya.

The Post reports:

When asked the question by the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Cain leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling, closed his eyes and said, “Okay, Libya.” He then searched his thoughts for 11 seconds before asking whether Obama supported the removal of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, who was captured and killed in October, seven months after Obama made the decision to try to oust him.

Cain fidgeted in his chair, searched the ceiling again and adjusted his suit jacket before allowing, “I gotta go back, see, got all this stuff twirling around in my head.”

I have all this stuff twirling around in my head too, but I know what President Obama’s role in the Libyan revolution was, and I’m not running for president. You?

I think that what most bothers me about these incidents—Perry’s failure to name three government agencies, Cain’s total ignorance about foreign affairs—is the arrogance of it all, the idea that it’s acceptable to run for president and be an idiot. (Okay, uninformed.) What if they actually won?

Cain’s eventual answer?

Cain concluded that he “would have done a better job of assessing the situation relative to the opposition first, before I made decisions about what we would do”….

Is it too much to ask of these Republican candidates that, on some matters, they give the president some credit? Or is it now an imperative of the Republican Party that they disagree with everything?

Kind of a rhetorical question.

Anyway, here’s the video.

Sharon Bialek’s ex-boyfriend—her boyfriend at the time Herman Cain offered to trade her a job for sex—backs up her story.

Admidst the controversy about Occupy Harvard, Yale senior Marina Keegan blogs in Dealbook (on NYT.com) about how investment banks recruit on campus—and why so many students are seduced by their siren song.

Each fall, our country’s top-tier banks and consulting firms cram New Haven’s best hotels with the best and brightest to lure them with a series of superlatives: the greatest job, the most money, the easiest application, the fanciest popcorn.

They’re good at it. They’re unbelievably, remarkably, terrifyingly good at it. Every year around 25 percent of employed Yale graduates enter the consulting and finance industries. At Harvard and Stanford, the numbers are even higher.…

Keegan’s argument? There’s no innate love for i-banking on the part of young people. It’s just that they don’t really have a clue how to find work—and the i-banking recruiters make it sooooo easy……

(I myself think that this is slightly more true in New Haven than in Cambridge, where the popularity of economics concentrators suggests that more students come to Harvard already thinking about how to cash in on their $60k a year education.)

…that such a large percentage of students at top-tier schools enter an industry that isn’t contributing, creating or improving much of anything saddens me.

Twenty-five percent is not a joke. That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of talent and energy and potential that could be used somewhere other than crunching numbers to generate wealth. Perhaps there won’t be fancy popcorn at some other job – but it’s about time we started popping it for ourselves.

Yup.

After last night’s game, a Pats fan yells to Jets coach Rex Ryan that “Belichik is better than you.”

Ryan’s answer: “Shut the fuck up.”

When will the Jets do the right thing and fire Ryan?

Saw the Foo Fighters last night at the Garden. One thing you have to say: They work hard for their money. Fantastic show.

Here’s Arlandria.

Who says I never support anything Boston? Any team that beats the Jets is a team I can get behind….

How many years in a row now has Rex Ryan predicted a Super Bowl win for the Jets?

Sunset over Brooklyn (The view from 1 Hanson)

Everything is always so serious on this blog! What’s with the guy who writes it, anyway?

Here’s a pretty song from a band I’m going to see tonight. Kinda great.