Columns

SCHULMAN | Botanic Gardens: a Plain, Simple Name

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There’s a spot unique to this campus where I go when Cornell is being especially cruel. It spans about two or three square miles between CALS and North Campus and houses an arboretum, wildflower garden, trails and more. For the past three years I’ve made this place part of my daily routine, running and hiking there most mornings. I still feel rewarded when I climb its hills to see its views. I still get a sense of exploration even though I have already explored most of its twists and turns.

Columns

SCHULMAN | Confessions of a Pokemon Master

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Happy Monday Cornell! If the semester’s first Monday has got you down, you can always think about your summer. Everyone has fun stories about their summer! I know I do; this summer I became a Pokemon master — a “Pokemon Go” master. If you haven’t heard of Pokemon Go, chances are you don’t have cell service under that rock you can’t play the game under.

Columns

SCHULMAN | “When a Wave Comes, Go Deep”

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The future of journalism is murkier than Beebe lake this time of year. As a writer for the college paper, I’ve been thinking about this a lot (along with the rest of the folks here). I’ve also been considering this because journalism’s future hinges on two subjects I think about often: economics and computer science. My thoughts on the issue encapsulate two ideas I’ve been writing about all semester. First, scarcity motivates so many of our daily decisions.

Columns

SCHULMAN | Sexism in Computer Science is Never Okay

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What I have to say isn’t novel or unique, but it is incredibly important: we need need to stop tolerating sexism in computer science and technology related fields. Like I said before, other people have written this (and have done a better job), but it’s time I stepped off the sidelines about something I see everyday that I find unequivocally wrong. Computer science is unapologetically misogynistic. Some 70 to 80 percent of the field is men. That number has gone up over time, not down.

Columns

SCHULMAN | The Best Things in Life are Free

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Imagine if New York bagels weren’t scarce in Ithaca — no one would settle for powdered eggs on a mediocre CTB bagel ever again. Imagine if classes had more seats — that would certainly make this week’s course enroll easier. We imagine a world with less scarcity all the time. Other things, like the laws of physics, affect our lives. But we don’t usually imagine a world where the atomic weight of hydrogen were different — or at least, I’m not smart enough to imagine it.

Columns

SCHULMAN | Saving Lives — No Chemistry Required

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Do you feel like you have a disproportionate number of friends aspiring to be doctors? I do and hanging out with them is a struggle because I am really jealous. Doctors are paid well and get to save lives. Obviously not all doctors — but generally, being a doctor is about healing people and doctors are generally in demand. Not to say I wish I were a doctor.

apple

SCHULMAN | Emotion is Simple, Technology Isn’t

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It’s rare for technology to make front-page news. But this week, Apple has been making headlines. No, Apple’s quarterly earnings report isn’t being released. And no, the new iPhone isn’t coming out either. On the surface, the issue at hand is simple.

technology

SCHULMAN | Early Adopters vs. Luddites: Who’s Right in Hindsight?

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There is a word for people who oppose new technology: “Luddite.” Isn’t English amazing? There’s an even better story behind the word. Luddites were originally industrial workers who burned factories and assassinated factory owners to stop — or at least slow — industrialization in Northern England. Obviously, the odds were stacked against them, but I can’t help but imagine how different things would be if they’d succeeded Northern England’s textile mills arguably laid the groundwork for modern manufacturing. Manufacturing is pretty nice.

Columns

SCHULMAN | The New Way to Invent Things

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I wanted to start the semester with a crazy observation: Science is only like 300 to 350 years old. People have been investigating literature, math, philosophy and government since the bronze age. Isn’t science as important as any of these subjects? I could see why someone might think my observation isn’t a big deal. To be fair, people have been curious about the physical world for more than 300 years.