Noice shout out to the Zuckster for letting his alma mater slip into his network’s highest-rated comedy for the past two seasons. Tonight’s episode of 30 Rock not only gave Keith Powell some well-deserved lines but also included a truly gratuitous Cambridge reference. But we don’t want to commend Tina Fey’s oeuvre for merely dropping the H-bomb. Instead, we want to revel in the fact that the writers got the usually collar-popping, sometimes random, and always hilarious loftiness of Ivy pompousness dead on. During the episode, Liz (Fey) mentions that the show is going to Boston, Toofer (Powell), wearing a red Veritas tie and a tennis sweater, pipes up about his academic roots in the ‘burbs, only to be pwned by Jenna (Jane Krakowski)… sort of.

Toofer: “You know, I went to school in Boston. Well, not in Boston, but nearby. No, not Tufts–”
Jenna: “Oh, shut up. It’s 14 degrees there.”
Toofer: “… Harvard.”

Yeah, it's really that cold here.

Conan just peaced, Toofs. The pressure’s all on you.

Miss you, Coco!

Ted Kaczynski before...

What is the “typical” Harvard alum? Smoking jacket, riding whip, and trophy wife on his arm. WASP extraordinaire. Money-grubbing power-hungry CEO. Hopeless academic. The list goes on as long as the line outside Heaven and Hell (that is before they shut it down).

But, in the spirit of Halloween, it’s important to be reminded that some graduates leave Harv to go on to lives spent not on filling their wallets or on aggrandizing their already-inflated egos, but rather on lengthening their rap sheet.

In which we discuss not-so-nice Harvard alums:

• Ted Kaczynski: Probably the most notorious of criminal crimson alums, Kaczynski unleashed terror and gained infamy by sending pipe bombs, segregating himself from humanity by living off-the-grid in Montana and writing his manifesto.
• Dr John White Webster: When George Parkman didn’t have the money he owed Webster, Webster killed him and hacked his body up in a laboratory at Harvard Medical. Police found portions of the body hidden all through the medical building, but some organs were never found. Read the rest of this entry »

When deciding where to apply to college, millions of students from around the world read countless brochures, meet with guidance counselors, and attend college fairs to help them narrow down the decision. Thousands, lured by a historic campus and vast academic offerings—or perhaps by the lore of Primal Scream—apply to Harvard. But many of these students (maybe even you!) still don’t know some of the finer points of the university. Which is why we bring to you yet another Noice Original:

Read the rest of this entry »

NOICE IRONIC RAP SKILLZ!

Presenting: A handful of good songs that happen to have a Harvard shout-out in them. Why? Because we love lists and we love us.

Tapes N Tapes – Insistor
Bob Dylan – Baby Let Me Follow You Down
Jay-Z - What More Can I say?
Pavement – Gangsters and Pranksters
The Lonely Island - Natalie’s Rap
Estelle – Magnificent
and more!

Check them all out after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »

In addition to immersing ourselves in obscure texts, complicated p-sets, and generally tough shtuff, sometimes a Harvard gal (or guy) just has to pick up a copy of Glamour. We could spiel about how such magazines  reinforce gender stereotypes, lack racial diversity, support self-image problems, play into the maddening aspects of celebrity culture, etc. etc…. but we probably don’t need to. And as we say, here at Noice we don’t hate, we appreciate – or at least as much as possible.

All of that in consideration, the November Glamour issue made a small Harvard shout-out that we felt we absolutely must share. Kate Dillon fans rejoice, they’ve done a whole spread on plus size women and she’s in it!
Read more after the jump

Donating to Harvard could get you 1.) your name stamped on a building, 2.) called unethical by NYT's Randy Cohen.

NYT’s Randy Cohen thinks not. In fact, he thinks it’s downright morally reprehensible:

Do not donate to Harvard. To do so is to offer more pie to a portly fellow while the gaunt and hungry press their faces to the window (at some sort of metaphoric college cafeteria, anyway).

Noice would like to point out that to give to Harvard might, at this point, be to offer some piping hot breakfast pie to students who don’t have it. But anyways. Cohen’s evidence why Harvard isn’t worthy of your charity? Our endowment, while down 27 percent, still exceeds the GDP of Estonia. Our alumni are still money-mongers, with 40 percent of the class of 2008 going into banking. And the median base salary for the B-school’s class of 2009 is $115,000.

Under the current circumstances, the more honorable course is to write that check to a community college or a historically black college or a small Catholic college or other modest institution that genuinely and profoundly transforms the lives of its graduates.

Anyways, argue what side you will. The jewel of the piece is the hilarious comments that ensued:

Someone named Park called it a “very obnoxious, polemical article by someone who obviously has an anti-Harvard bias” and then went on to slap Cohen around some more:

Obviously, this writer is trying to draw a crowd to his article by name-dropping Harvard. Perhaps it is time to get over how you didn’t get in when you applied, eh?

Eek, that was perhaps a bit uncalled for. But for most of us, our reaction is probably this:

I give to Harvard. It’s called “tuition”. I give til it hurts.

Wise, wise words.

2010 Senior Class Marshals are mostly male, humble, trustworthy, and confused

OCS and OIP…unite! And when our powers combine…

Harvard Film Archive to gain 800,000 more film stills, doesn’t know what to do with them all

So Harvard: Immediate gratification… in books

So Original: Yet another SAT prep company started by Harvard alumni

Photo courtesy of Phil Gillen