Read it on the homepage of the New York Times – “Know What You’re Protesting.”

In bullet points:

- “I applaud the protesters for thinking beyond their own parochial concerns and trying to make society a better place for everyone.”

- “[M]y second reaction was sadness at how poorly informed the Harvard protesters seemed to be. [...] Their complaints seemed to me to be a grab bag of anti-establishment platitudes without much hard-headed analysis or clear policy prescriptions.”

- “Economics 10 is a broad, generalized survey of mainstream economics. You’d get basically the same material at most other universities. I don’t view the study of economics as laden with ideology.”

The best part: “I have been told that at least one of the students who walked out sneaked back in later: he wanted to support the protest but didn’t want to miss the lecture.”

Well, this is still Harvard.

Look out for our profile of N. Gregory Mankiw, the Harvard Professor of Economics, later this month!

The most awesome ticket ever created. Courtesy of Collin Jones ’12 and Pete Davis ’12.

Mark Zuckerberg, Harvard drop-out and founder of Facebook, is returning to campus on Monday to recruit for his multi-billion dollar social networking behemoth (source: The Boston Globe). That noise you hear is all the Computer Science geeks on campus erupting in tears of joy.

In eager anticipation of what will surely turn out to be a scene of Zucks getting mobbed, Noice has compiled a list of things you can do in order to impress him within your allocated time of a minute-and-a-half. Be sure to thank us when you’re employed!

1. Come decked out in blue. Blue shirts, blue boxers, blue shorts, blue beanies (it will be cold, like it is for ten months in a year), blue nails, what have you. Paint your face blue and scribble “Facebook” in white across your forehead. It’s only fitting that the t-shirt for Kirkland House, Zucks’ former residence, is blue. Steal one of those. Nothing says commitment like being a walking banner of Facebook.

2. Bring an Asian girl along as your (real or fake) girlfriend. Zucks’ engaged to one, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

3. Every time Zucks utters a complete sentence, scream “LIKE.” After five times, ask out loud: “IS THERE A LOVE BUTTON FOR THIS?”

4. Come with a 50,000-word thesis binder on “How to Improve Facebook,” introducing functions like keeping out the fatties and uglies. You don’t want Facebook to follow Myspace’s downward spiral into ghetto obscurity.

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Inspired by Matthew Kaiser’s “Literature and Sexuality” lecture on the same topic. 

As someone with a fairly accurate gaydar (since I have a gay roommate, various Gay Best Friends sprinkled across the globe, and have frequently been described as “a gay man in a female body”, I don’t think this is a compliment), I feel obliged to help prevent fellow heterosexual girls from the tragic mistake of falling for, dating, marrying, or reproducing with a gay guy. I would, however, turn a blind eye to drunken exchanges of saliva with attractive members of the opposite but homosexually-oriented sex (did I just invent that term? Anyway…). Every girl has those moments.

THE QUIZ: Add one point if your boyfriend/crush has one of these characteristics. (BE HONEST!)

- He has more than two pairs of skinny jeans.

- He fits into your skinny jeans. (And you know this because he’s tried them on.)

- He notices when you wear the same outfit for two days in a row.

- He never wears the same outfit for two days in a row.

- He notices when you haven’t straightened your hair.

- He straightens his hair.

- He notices when one of his arm hairs is longer than the rest.

- He is genuinely and visibly distressed by said hair.

- You frequently catch him checking himself out and fixing his hair in the mirror, on the side windows of CVS, on the front screen of his Blackberry, or on the back of his iPhone.

- He uses Wet Wipes for the toilet seat in his bathroom.

- He uses terms like “totes whatever floats your boat,” “whatevs,” “ewwww,” “ughh.” Note the prolonged pronunciation of syllables. In fact, if he whines those words long enough that you start to notice time elapsing, add one more point.

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Parents of Kaavya Viswanathan, Class of 2006, were killed last Sunday when their airplane crashed into a cornfield in Columbus, Ohio. (Source: The New York Times)

Viswanathan, a member of Georgetown Law School Class of 2011, was (in)famous for her book deal gone awry with publishing house Little Brown and Co. in 2006. She was paid a reported $500,000 advance to write two young adult fiction books as a freshman, the first of which was published in March of 2006 under the title “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life.”

The book, which reflected on the college admission process through the eyes of an Ivy League-obsessed Indian American teenager, received rave reviews and quickly ascended the New York Times bestseller list, only to face a litany of plagiarism accusations about a month later, mostly from the author of the bestselling Jessica Darling series, Megan McCafferty. While Viswanathan insisted that any imitation and borrowing from other books was unconscious and unintentional, her contract soon went up in flames and so did the remaining of her unsold novels.

The plane crash occurred en route from Ohio to New Jersey, where the Viswanathans have been living in the past 12 years. It killed both passengers on board – her neurosurgeon father and obstetrician mother.

We offer our sincerest condolences to Viswanathan for her loss.

While some of you toil for major conglomerates at minimum wage and most others work the coffee machine for no wage at all, I’ve been devoting my summer evenings watching Roland Garros – one of the four major professional tennis tournaments of the year taking place in Paris, France. You can’t beat bright orange clay court and matching bright green towels glaring at you for five hours. And lots of athletes attired in even stranger combinations of colors. So read on for my Guide to the French Open 2011 - Men’s Singles (because one can only watch so much TV before being yelled at by one’s Tiger Mom).

The Trivalry

1. Rafael Nadal – The Pit Bull

- What he’s famous for:The 25-year old Spaniard is the defending champion and current world No. 1 tennis player. Nadal’s rise to the top was as meteoric as it was spectacular. He turned pro at 15, beat Federer, the then world No. 1, for the first time at 17, and never looked back. He’s won all four major tennis tournaments, a gold medal at the Summer Olympics, and at Roland Garros alone he’s been crowned five times. Watch Nadal roam the court like a pit bull on steroid, while his opponent breaks a bucket of sweat in exhaustion and exasperation. It’s fun.

- What he’s infamous for: the permanent wedgie, made very in-your-face by the constant close-up camera shots of his Capri pants which cannot be any tighter. It’s tempting to imagine that Nadal’s constant tugging of his pants behind his ass might be a tactic to distract the opponent. Nadal also has a particularly “flamboyant” dressing style. He’s almost always in sleeveless tops of super bright colors, such as orange, and then pair that with, say, green pants. You can practically see him from Mars. Or the nosebleed section of the stadium, which actually is helpful.

He’s so rich that he basically owns a Spanish soccer team, Mallorca. He’s an avid soccer fan and was one of only six non-staff people allowed into the locker room of Spain’s national soccer team after it won the World Cup in 2010. He’s also the new face of Armani underwear. (Hence the picture on the left.) I’ll give you a few moments to regroup. Methinks he should just ditch the hideously colored clothes and go the way nature intends it!

He might be going bald very soon though, so enjoy the pretty while it lasts.

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Coming to you from the CNN: always at the forefront of international reportage.

I’m just kidding. Follow the link for an interesting discussion on the modern “hookup culture” and its reliance on alcohol as a primer on college campuses.

The questions remain whether romance is dead, and casual sex on college campuses are getting out of hand. Voice your opinions in the comment section!

Choice quotes:

Dr. Drew: “Dating is something that Grandpa did.”

“[One of the options for college kids is to be] friends with benefits, which looks great on paper. But so did Communism.”

“The thing about college hookups is it’s always intoxicated. You’ve gotta be loaded because it’s such a cool thing.”

In response to the question of why alcohol had to go hand in hand with hooking up,

The Jock: “[Alcohol] gives you courage.” (Quite frankly, he doesn’t seem like he needed any.)

Pro-Hookup Gal: “[Alcohol] helps me say yes.”

The Verdict: Nothing really new here, but the short video is worth a viewing or two. Because what else are you going to do these days? The coffee machine in the office pantry is still in perfect working condition.

Dr. Drew, airing weeknights on HLN at 9pm ET/PT.

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