Fatwa feminist + History hottie = <3

The Daily Mail reported Sunday that one of Harvard’s rock star faculty–History professor Niall Ferguson of The Ascent of Money fame–finally broke up with his wife of 16 years, Sue Douglas, to marry a Somalia-born bombshell, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I mean, dang. This lady is hot so we don’t really blame him. (Although Sue is not so bad herself.)

Here’s some obligatory commentary on the matter from Harvard FML:

“Niall Ferguson gets more action than most students on this campus. FML”

To which a commenter fitfully replies:

“well, he is more attractive than most students on this campus…”

Truth. Niall—call us.

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!

As the Vancouver Winter Olympics approach, I become distinctly aware of the fact that network television is conspiratorially trying to vault certain athletes onto a certain pedestal. I’m not referring to different earthly minerals here, but I’m thinking more along the lines of brainwashing the public to believe that certain dudes in sterilizing tights happen to be God’s gift to ice skating aficionados. After years of analyzing Bob “I Only Work Leap Years” Costa’s special reports on NBC about specific athletes, I think I’ve built a pretty comprehensive list of qualities that a gymnast, speed skater, and–Jesus help us all if this ever happens–curler must possess to make it big into the collective consciousness.

Have the name of a Greek god. This one’s pretty obvious. How many gold medalists do you know named Andy Stitzer? Partly the doing of NBC’s prescient obsession with him the year of the Salt Lake City Games, Apolo Ohno definitely benefited from his dad totally freeloading on a pompous and possibly super traumatic naming decision. It’s unsurprising that the Olympic Committee granted him the gold medal even though he finished one of his races second–the man can bend people at sheer will, especially with hair like that. And it doesn’t really matter that Ohno wasn’t named specifically after the god, because really, who can focus on that when your last name is an exclamation in itself? We can all only stop hating him for him winning the genetic lottery when we find out how many times he was beat up in grade school before he started working out for future retribution. (I hope it’s a lot.)

Be a super-dee-duper All-American do-gooder. Pie-eating nationalists will always be predictably easy to please–you give them a wholesome, hardworkin’ teenager from the midwest just hoping to bring some honor to the heartland and they’ll stop being pissed that “My Name is Earl” won’t be the regularly scheduled programming for two weeks. That’s why all of the blond, freckle-faced youngin’s from Texas get all the attention during these two weeks every single time. Shawn Johnson, Sasha Cohen, that one chick who was actually really crappy at diving and yet got more camera time than the non-American gold medalist–they all had one creepy thing in common, and that was America’s capitalization on their patriotic cuteness and absurdly happy-go-lucky cheeriness. With their scarily vehement “GO USA!” chants captured on film for eternity, they might as well have been wearing eagle-emblazoned letter jackets onto the podium. Can we please just lay it all out? Because basically, Paul and Morgan Hamm are just two short dudes in tights wearing some ugly-ass primary colors.

Double the trouble is too much to handle.

Read more qualifications (or maybe disqualifications) after the jump.

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Here at the Voice, it’s pretty obvious that we have a special place in our heart for internet memes, particularly those that take advantage of online anonymity. That’s why we fell in love with I Saw You (at Harvard), a CS50 project serving as the “source for posting and browsing missed connections,” according to its founder Tej Toor ‘10.

Browse through the first page to see if anyone is professing his/her love to your oblivious “Hunky Australian philosopher” blockmate. A more interesting aspect of the site is the posted stats, collected from the submission demographics. Of all four classes, seniors are submitting the most sightings, perhaps in attempts to take advantage of the last opportunities to get to know the Serena van der Woodsen lookalike or the guy stuffing his face with pita chips at brain break. But most surprisingly, sightings occur more frequently at the 12 Houses than anywhere else on campus. Looks like more than a few people are too shy to chat even in the dining hall.

Read Noice’s favorite declarations of unrequited love after the jump.

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What a sour puss. Get it? Aww.

Occasionally our inner nerds (aka “innerds“) get so excited over a class that we feel everyone must know about it. Presenting “A Slice of Class” in which we highlight a particularly revelatory/exciting/OMG/WTF class or section:

It’s not every science section at Harvard that has one class entirely dedicated to eating lemon wedges, Oreos, strawberries, goat’s cheese, and to drinking vinegar. However, this was exactly what this went on in section this afternoon for Science of Living Systems 11 “The Molecules of Life”. Read more about how after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello, world.

Sure, Harvard’s still working on picking its broke ass off the floor, but as a cutting-edge research university, some expectations that it’ll keep updating according to the internet’s modern standards remain despite a total endowment fail. But after browsing through some webpages affiliated with FAS, we… well, we really wish we hadn’t. Luckily, Noice did all the dirty work to save all the Harvard kiddies some cyber-aesthetic pain.

THE BEST

School of Engineering and Applied Sciences: This one’s a no-brainer, what with all the hackers that the SEAS has on demand. With an exhaustive menu on the homepage, the site lets any idiot find anything, anywhere from research opportunities for undergraduate research as well as a complete census of the school’s demographics (74% male–again, no surprise there). Take a peek at the course website of CS50, maybe the only undergraduate class that doesn’t use a crappy my.harvard iSite (and also the only course page that embedded an LOLcat applet last year).

Anthropology: Links to sweet interviews with awesome faculty! Cool header! Sans serif font! Very noice indeed.

Literature: Shocker, right? But entering the Lit site proves to be a candied orgasm for the eyes with rainbow books as the background (gay pride, anyone?). Not only that, the department proves it’s not just about lofty and obscure theory and academia, as shown by its extremely functional, minimalist menu on the bottom, linking visitors to the department’s degree requirements easily and its Ph.D. dissertations pompously. But after seeing the quality of the site, we’ll forgive them.

See the sites for sore eyes after the jump.

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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

Don’t be so crude! We’re Honoring Our Teachers.

What’s that you say? “Honor Our Teachers Profs” doesn’t make any sense? Stop trying to defy the logic and just play along. Here at Noice we don’t hate…we appreciate. And this week we really appreciate:

Enough to consider switching concentrations?

Professor Yukio Lippit
History of Art and Architecture

This prof, some may describe as an Asian Richard Gere, deserves some serious appreciation as a bright spot in Harvard’s faculty. This semester he’s teaching the Core Lit-Arts B class on Japanese Woodblock Prints (but you lucky History of Art and Architecture concentrators can look forward to HAA 188j or 287k in the Spring). When he’s not adding his face and wonderfully soothing lecture voice to an already attractive set of course materials, he’s busy researching and writing some stellar books. We like Yukio ’cause he’s notoriously accessible to his students and sincerely devoted to what he teaches. We also dig that he’s an alum too (class of ‘93!). Mad props, sir, mad props.

This song pretty much says it all. We love our profs!

Image courtesy of The East Asian Art History Program website