Cosmology on the Rocks

Graduation: A ‘Last Column’

Jeremy Siegman — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

This could be my last column. (!) I don’t really know if it will be. I might write one next week. And I’m not graduating — just heading to Egypt for a semester. But an air of finality is in … the air, as we near the last week of classes, charging forward to our sloppy, Slopey, memorable yet strangely un-memorable pinnacle of the academic year, Slope Day. And then, graduation.

Blimps over Beijing, Bombs over Baghdad and Athletic Directors on Crack

Jeremy Siegman — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Just how does one achieve the glorious position in which China now finds itself? That spectacular, burdensome, and thoroughly modern honor of hosting the Olympic Games? The International Olympic Committee shares ...

First, it’s the dog fight to become the glorious host city. And how do you achieve such a pinnacle? The International Olympic Committee shares the following criteria: “government support, public opinion, general infrastructure, security, venues, accommodation and transport.” That is, you have to be a real city! One that the mass media and corporations can descend upon and show off to the globe as properly global. The world wants to see its reflection in you, so clean up, and look nice for the world! Alright, China?

Yo, Bars?

Jeremy Siegman — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Our intrepid correspondent turns 21 this Monday. In the last moments before the weekend, the last moments before drinking loses the rush of illicit excitment to which he has become so accustomed, the last moments before all hell breaks loose, our Guy pauses to think, to reflect, to enter a strange and very different world, a world in which a Guy, a Guy, well ... a Guy walks into a bar ...

So a Guy walks into a bar. He looks, you know, 19. “ID please,” says the Big Bouncer. Human identity? Well, yes and no. They don’t ask for your “identity.” They ask for your “ID” which is an entirely different thing

Bringing The Noise (Down)

Jeremy Siegman — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Boom. Kah. Boom. Kah. Boom. Kah. Boom-boom Kah. Hey. Man. I. Can. Hear. The beat. From your cool new ear-bud headphones that mold into the inside of your ears.

We’re in the library, and it’s very quiet here on this side of the headphones, except for … it.

Smiling Down on Democracy

Jeremy Siegman — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Dan grinned at me as he banged out 10 … 11 … 12 on the wooden keys connected to the big booming bells of McGraw Tower. The clumsy, powerful decree of noon sounded for miles, and he and I knew it was noon. But the silly ants marching below had no idea that this was a singular, grinning noon. That was our secret.

Dan, a close friend from home, was visiting the sun-bathed mini-Enlightenment they call “summer in Ithaca” before he headed off to Navy flight school. For a moment up there, as the campus lay nearly empty below us, I couldn’t help but feel … powerful. And I grinned too.

A Letter to the Senator

Jeremy Siegman — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

It was becoming a rather stressful Saturday evening. Classes had not even begun, and that graciously nihilistic utopia of Keystone Lightland was just a few hours away, but things were a mess in the apartment. Not that multi-tasking is a bad thing, but attempting to cook minute rice, while compulsively checking one’s e-mail, while getting dressed … it all adds up. And to top it off, I was attempting to shrink the plastic insulation onto my leaky Collegetown windows with a hairdryer.

You see, upon returning to Ithaca, I had greeted my windows the only way one can greet windows, I guess, which is to say, “Oh my God, guys, how was your break?”

Cold Toes and Other Woes: Toward a Collegetown Class Consciousness

Jeremy Siegman — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0500

I’m staring my thermostat in the face. He says it’s 65 degrees in the apartment. My extremities say otherwise. We chat.

“Dear sir,” I begin politely, “have you been serviced lately?”

No response.

“Do you know it’s not really 65 in my room? I know because my nose is cold and I’m burrowed under my three blankets and I’m still cold. Why do you only see the hallway, sir, when the world is so much wider than that? The temperature is lower out there in the peripheries.”

He suspects my diction for its mild hints of universalist preaching, which offends his provincial — or plastic — sensibilities.

Regarding Holy Mary, Mother of the Other

Jeremy Siegman — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Forgive me, Cornellians, for you might think that I’ve sinned real bad. Yes, dear friends, “father” and anyone else who cares, my confession is this: my favorite song is the Ave Maria. That is, the Christian prayer calling for the intercession of Mary, mother of Jesus.

But I’m Jewish.

And although this paradox might strike you as weird, it sits just fine with me. Bobby McFerrin once advised an audience, “If you’re Jewish, and you have a problem singing the ‘Ave Maria,’ you can sing the ‘Oy-vey Maria.’” He then laughed at himself, and the audience laughed, and that’s how you know singers are corny.

But, Bobby, I tell you no thanks on the “oy-vey.” The Ave Maria is far too beautiful for that.

Turkey and Iran, So Far Away: A Broadcast

Jeremy Siegman — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Good evening, Cornell, and welcome to the news. I’m your well-dressed anchor, Jeremy, and I’ll be manufacturing truth for you tonight. But folks, I’m not the only one! We’ve got all kinds of actors on the world stage in the past week who have been hard at work shaping truths, shaping opinions and shaping reality with the words they choose to use.

Please Excuse Me: An Interview with President Bollinger

Jeremy Siegman — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Back in the utter confusion of grade school, they taught us this wonderfully polite acronym for the order of mathematical operations: Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. I loved calling it PEMDAS, which sounds like some kind of indigestion medicine, although it really stands for Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction. A polite acronym for a sometimes ruthless belief in the order and ideality of math.

And it is with firm politeness that I beg you, gracious audience: Please Excuse The Following Column About Politics. PETFCAP. And Please Excuse This Horrible Acronym. Because I didn’t plan it out.