After years of wowing audiences with her breath-taking beauty, adept acting, and tumultuous love life, Elizabeth Taylor died of congestive heart failure today, Wednesday March 23, at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

On-screen since the age of 9, Taylor has long been in the Hollywood limelight. The actress is most famous for her roles in the movies Cleopatra, Father of the Bride, Butterfield 8, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. She received two Oscars among five total Academy Award nominations, and was named a Dame Commander of the Order by the British Empire.

For more information on Taylor’s life, love, and film career, read this New York Times article released by the Associated Press this afternoon.

After having served for 41 years in the Memorial Church of Harvard University, and 37 years as Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church, Reverend Peter J. Gomes passed away  yesterday, February 28, 2010, due to a brain aneurysm and heart attack.

Having battled health issues since a stroke in December 2010, he was planning on retiring from Harvard in 2012. Not only considered one of America’s most prestigious preachers, Gomes was also a staunch advocate in hopes of improving Americans’ acceptance of homosexuals. Well-known for his open-houses and afternoon teas, he was loved and revered by those who knew him and will be missed.

What I really hate
the time that is very near
Midterms, they are here.

The parties mock me
as I sit and study hard
all fucking weekend.

Do I study some more
or accept my fate and
join the fiesta!?

Oink oink oink. Cough.

Remember the days when swine flu used to be a big deal, and the mere mention of it was enough to make your little toes tremble in your socks? The way it was knocking people out in faraway lands made it seem dreadfully unknown and terrifying — like ebola, or Martians.

Nowadays, that’s not quite the case anymore. With Purell dispensers popping up everywhere and HUDS offering bagged meals to the swine flu afflicted — instead of just the academically overcommitted — the virus has lost most of its aura.

At Harvard, we now hear about swine flu taking students down left and right. So-and-so’s quarantined in her room, swinexiling her roommates to multifarious futons. So-and-so needs to borrow lecture notes because he had swine flu. So-and-so went home with the swine flu.

It’s scary stuff, but given that the vaccine for H1N1 isn’t set to arrive at UHS til October, we can pretty much predict that in a few more weeks, swine flu will tear its way through Harvard like a bear tears through a picnic basket. No amount of Purell is going to save you.

To get you pumped for what’s to come, here’s a true story of my own survival. Be prepared, it’s not for the faint of heart.

Read the rest of this entry »