All posts in BATMAN!

What we’re reading

By: / October 27, 2014 / No Comments /

The New York Times‘ “Where College Graduates Are Choosing to Live” looks at the flipside of the normal post-Brown narrative: move to New York or San Fran, instead focusing on unexpected cities drawing a high percentage of college graduates.

“The Blood Harvest” from The Atlantic is the fascinating account of exactly what it sounds like–the harvesting of horseshoe crabs for their blue blood that, due to ameobocytes, can detect even extremely low bacterial contamination. Horseshoe crab blood is used in the LAL test, which every drug certified by the FDA must pass.

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“The Stradivarius Affair,” from Vanity Fair, explores a low-level street criminal’s bizarre theft of a rare $6 million violin known as the Lipinski from the Milwaukee Symphony.

“Is the Affordable Care Act Working?” from The New York Times is a refreshingly apolitical and statistical look at one of the most politically charged debate of the 21st century–Obamacare.

Christian Bale vs. Michael Keaton isn’t the only Batman debate to be had. “The Evolution of The Batman Logo, From 1940 To Today” is an infographic that brings up another important Batman talking point: which iteration of the logo is the best?

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An open letter to Christina Paxson

By: / May 3, 2013 / 4 Comments /
Onward, to arrogance and elitism!

Onward, to arrogance and elitism!

Dear President Paxson,

With our campus recently filled with dialogues of divestment, sexual assault, and same-sex marriage, I can imagine that you are looking for a respite from the demanding life of a university president, a job that requires you to curate a safe, empowering environment for thousands of brilliant students, taking into account our needs and social awareness.

Unfortunately, I cannot give you that respite.

You see, I’ve kept another pressing issue locked up inside me. It started as a joke, then suddenly became real, in a cataclysm of fiery, uncouth emotions: confusion, anger, astonishment. You have left me reeling, Christina.

I speak, of course, of your Batman endorsement.

I can sense a shocked denial approaching. Nay, you are on record. Last winter, during a UCS “Fireside Chat” — Ah! what pleasant names we give the propagation of evil! — you offended a nation.

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Maybe she'll end up becoming the governor of a major US state

How we should spend the $44 million engineering grant

By: / April 10, 2013 / 3 Comments /

It's a Transformer, not because it can change between car and mecha form, but because it has a fluid sense of gender identityIn case you missed the news, the Engineering Department got a generous donation of $44 million. The University is probably going to be spending it on boring practical things, like infrastructure, but Blog would like to remind the Corporation that this is Brown—incubator of crazy, innovative, and not-necessarily-feasible ideas. Thus, we present a list of suggestions of what we’d do with $44 million and faculty doing awesome research.

1. Martian Housing

I mean, we already have professors who send robots to Mars. How hard could building a new dorm on the Red Planet be? This could be for the students who really, really want to study abroad. Besides, it couldn’t be a worse trip than going to Perkins.

2. Weather Machine

Of course, there are the practical applications, such as global climate change, and professors here are doing really cool work on that. But really, that’s missing the bigger picture: Never a rainy Spring Weekend ever again. Spontaneous snowball fights in spring. No more freak Halloween snowstorms.

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