Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article on Goldman Sachs mentions Arthur Levitt ‘52 and includes this fun section.

The bank [Goldman Sachs] might be taking all these hideous, completely irresponsible mortgages from beneath-gangster-status firms like Countrywide and selling them off to municipalities and pensioners – old people, for God’s sake – pretending the whole time that it wasn’t grade-D horseshit. But even as it was doing so, it was taking short positions in the same market, in essence betting against the same crap it was selling. Even worse, Goldman bragged about it in public. “The mortgage sector continues to be challenged,” David Viniar, the bank’s chief financial officer, boasted in 2007. “As a result, we took significant markdowns on our long inventory positions …. However, our risk bias in that market was to be short, and that net short position was profitable.” In other words, the mortgages it was selling were for chumps. The real money was in betting against those same mortgages.

“That’s how audacious these assholes are,” says one hedge-fund manager. “At least with other banks, you could say that they were just dumb – they believed what they were selling, and it blew them up. Goldman knew what it was doing.” I ask the manager how it could be that selling something to customers that you’re actually betting against – particularly when you know more about the weaknesses of those products than the customer – doesn’t amount to securities fraud.

“It’s exactly securities fraud,” he says. “It’s the heart of securities fraud.”

Who was the Goldman Sachers in charge of those short positions? Michael Swenson ‘89. You go, Swenny!

Taibbi, although a good writer, is fundamentally clueless on this topic. In any large institution, there will be different departments doing/selling different products, often with no knowledge of each other. My local supermarket sells both low-fat yogurt and Ben & Jerry’s Brownie Batter Ice Cream. The former makes health claims that the latter implicitly denies. Yet, there is no “fraud.”

The same applies to Goldman. The Goldman folks selling ABS securities to idiots pension funds and municipalities probably believed (more or less) in what they were selling. It is hard to be a good salesman if you can’t even convince yourself. And — Look at history! — housing prices had never fallen nationwide. Isn’t part of a liberal arts education learning from history?

Swensen, and the other proprietary traders at Goldman, probably had little if any interaction with the people selling to ABS securities. They drew their own conclusions and made their own bets. They did what they were supposed to do: forecast future prices more accurately than the market and position their capital accordingly. No fraud here.

Step right up, ladies and gents, and see those amazing, incredible, sartorial splendors, the brainiac Eph women’s tennis and rowing squads on CBS at 2PM Eastern Standard Time (check local listings) Sat., July 4th.
More here.

Karl Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal.

A Family’s Valor, a Nation’s Freedom
Why would a 61-year-old civilian surgeon volunteer for Iraq?

At a dinner last week in California, I was reminded of the debt we owe to those who have, for 233 years, sustained our freedom and independence. One remarkable family in particular exemplifies the best in the American spirit of courage and sacrifice.

Sitting at my table was a friend, Christine Krissoff, wife of Dr. Bill Krissoff and mother of Nathan and Austin Krissoff. One of her sons, Marine First Lt. Nathan Krissoff, was killed in Al Anbar Province in December 2006. A Williams College grad, athlete and musician, he’d left for Iraq on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He was 25.

Initial report of Krissoff’s death here. Update here. I cry almost every time I read about Krissoff. Do you?

I met his parents and brother in Nevada in August 2007 while accompanying President George W. Bush to Reno, Nev. The president was there to address the American Legion before meeting with local families who’d lost a loved one in Iraq or Afghanistan. Mr. Bush has met with about 550 families in private visits like this.

Say what you will about Bush, but he deserves credit for these meetings. I can’t even begin to imagine how emotionally draining it must be. Does President Obama do the same? I hope so.

Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Times. The caption:

Dr. Bill Krissoff, far right, is seen in a family photo with, from left, his son Austin, who is a Marine Corps officer; his wife, Christine; and his son Nathan, a Marine who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2006. To honor Nathan, Krissoff closed up his orthopedic practice in Truckee, Calif., and, at age 60, joined the Navy medical corps in hopes of being assigned to Iraq to treat wounded troops. It took presidential intervention to get Krissoff a waiver from the military’s age limits on enlistees, but now he is on the verge of deploying to Iraq with a Marine unit.

Can anyone place the photo? My guess would be either a graduation ceremony at Quantico or a pre-deployment good-bye from Camp Lejeune. Back to Rove:

At those meetings, he would have a senior staff member close by in case there was something that needed to be followed up on, such as getting a flag to a family member.

We entered a small room in the back of the convention center to find the Krissoffs waiting — the father in a black suit with his arms crossed and the mother in a plain dark outfit. Their dress contrasted with their son Austin’s Marine dress uniform. Like his older brother, Austin had volunteered for service after college. He was to be deployed to Iraq in March 2008.

During my White House years, I saw few people with the quiet power, intelligence and poise of Chris Krissoff. She talked about her sons, the pain of her loss, her concern for her youngest when he went into harm’s way, and the stakes in the War on Terror. The entire time, her husband was quiet.

The bravery of Christine Krissoff humbles me. To lose a son and then watch another son and husband go off to war is more than any woman should have to bare. Kipling’s The Female of the Species includes these stanzas:

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells—
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Christine Krissoff will never have the chance to face death in the place of the father and son that she loves, but her war is no less real for that distance.

Back to Rove:

When stories had been told, tears wept, and grief expressed, Mr. Bush asked if he could do anything. At that, Bill Krissoff spoke.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m a pretty good orthopedic surgeon. When my younger son is deployed to Iraq next March, I would like to be working as a Navy medical officer, but they won’t let me because I am 61 years old. Will you give me an age waiver, Mr. President?” Mr. Bush pointed to me. Dr. Krissoff and I exchanged business cards and he promised to fax me his application.

Krissoff received his waiver and is now serving in Iraq. Here is a photo from his training at Camp Pendleton.

Rove, after wasting some time telling us about his dove hunting schedule, concludes with:

Bill emailed me this April about his duties as a combat surgeon in Iraq. He sent photos of himself with Austin, who is now on his second tour there. This is how father, mother and brother are honoring the sacrifice of Nathan. While sharing this story with the audience last week, I found myself unable to look at Christine until I finished and the crowd rose to applaud her.

Watching the smoke rise from the Battle of Bunker Hill, Abigail Adams wrote her husband John, who was away at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. While she and others lived “in continual Expectation of Hostility,” Abigail wrote, “like good Nehemiah, having made our prayer with God, and set the people with their Swords, their Spears, and their bows, we will say unto them, Be not affraid of them.”

Christine Krissoff’s husband and sons, wrapped in prayers and armed with swords and scalpels, have served our nation with valor. So has she. So long as our nation produces families like the Krissoffs, America will remain not only the greatest nation on earth, but also the most noble in history.

Indeed.

(photo credit iBerkshires.com)

Looking for inexpensive, basic food in North Adams? Try Big Shirl’s Kitchen on Massachusetts Avenue, which has just opened in the old bus company building.

If you go, let us know how it is. It sounds like a great place to take a car filled with current Ephs. More here.

Congratulations to Dr. Hans Giesecke ‘78, the new President-Select of Greece’s Anatolia College. He begins his term in the fall.

Anatolia, founded in the Ottoman Empire by Boston Congregationalist missionaries in 1886 and uprooted in 1924 to Greece, today comprises the U.S. and European-accredited American College of Thessaloniki (ACT) and its graduate school of business, the Anatolia College preparatory school (an International Baccalaureate World School), and Anatolia Elementary. Almost 2500 students pursue their studies on its 45-acre campus overlooking the northern port city of Thessaloniki and the lofty peaks of Mt. Olympus.

 More here.

There are two other Williams connections in this story. 

Like Anatolia’s first President, Charles Tracy, Giesecke is a graduate of Williams College….

“For me it is no small coincidence that Anatolia still treasures its founding connection to the Haystack Movement, which was begun at Williams College in the early 19th Century. I hope to continue building on that special spirit of connectivity between North America and Greece during my service as Anatolia’s President,” says Giesecke.

Anyone have news on changes in the board of Trustees? I see 4 Trustees with terms that expired this June: Austell ‘75, Harty ‘73, Scott ‘68 and Smith ‘87. My guesses (and much of the below is pure speculation):

1) Smith ‘87 will be leaving the Board. I think that his three year term was as a replacement for Mike Reed ‘75, who was a Trustee when he joined Williams, but who left that position once he became an employee of the College. (I think that Smith got the job because either a) He is a good guy who lives in the area and has been heavily involved in various Williams activities or b) Because he came in second in the voting behind Reed in the Alumni Trustee election in 2004. (Is there some easy place to look up the history of Trustee elections?)

2) Joey Horn ‘87 will be replacing Smith. She won the Alumni Trustee election. (Full disclosure: I voted for Horn.) Her victory was announced at reunion but I can’t find an official news release from the College.

3) Scott ‘68 will stay on the Board. His term will be extended out to 2014. Scott has been a generous donor to Williams for many years. and has generated some classic EphBlog posts — who can forget Scott being called “limp-wristed” by Senator Orrin Hatch? Although Scott’s wealth may have been significantly impacted by the financial crisis, he was still placed in the picture (pdf) with all the key donors during the recent dedication of Schapiro Hall.

Donors and friends gathered on April 17 to celebrate the naming of the new south academic building in honor of President Morty Schapiro. Pictured are (left to right): Ray Henze ’74, Bob ’60 and Martha Lipp, Jack ’61 and Susy Wadsworth, Greg Avis ’80 and Anne Ricketson Avis ’81, Morty and Mimi Schapiro, Karen and Bob Scott ’68, Paul Neely ’68, Franci Rice, Richard Hollander P’10, and Joe Rice ’54.

I think that every Trustee in this photo served on the Board for longer than five years. Indeed, Henze, Lipp, Avis and Rice all served as chairs of the executive committee. If Scott is still giving enough money that he gets in this photo and/or invited to this event, then he probably has more time on the Board.

4) Austell and Harty will not be re-appointed. Again, I could be totally wrong about this, but neither seem to be major players on the Williams scene nor to provide the sort of specialized knowledge (unlike, say, Keating and Spencer) that the Board values. I have also heard rumors that Greg Avis ‘80 (chair of the executive committee) wants to get more people involved in the board, and the only way to do that is to have more people serve just five year terms. (That seems like a good idea to me, and Avis is certainly in a better position than I to make these sorts of judgments.)

Does anyone have better information than my guesses?

Also, does anyone have better information about the exact structure of the Board, say in terms of governance, committee assignments and so on. I tried to provide an overview here, but that seems quite dated.

Request: The College should update the Trustee web page with a) Trustee designations, at least which ones are the Alumni Trustees and b) Committee assignments. If I have a concern about, say, admissions policies, I should be able to figure out which trustees serve on the relevant committee.

What was the value of the Williams endowment at 4:00 PM on June 30, 2009? Good question. That valuation will have all sorts of important consequences for budget planning in the year to come. Initial thoughts:

1) Morty told us at reunion that the endowment was worth $1.4 billion. Given that the S&P 500 was at 946 at that point and then fell 2.4% to finish the (fiscal year) at 923, we might adjust Morty’s estimate of a down 17%-18% result for the year to around 20%. So, if the endowment started the year at $1.8 billion and we lost 20%, then we should now be at $1.44 billion. But the College also spent $90 million from the endowment. (Most current gifts would have gone directly into spending as well.) It matters a bit whether or not you subtract that $90 million from the start of the year or the end of the year value, but, round numbers, the value of the endowment for Jun 30, 2009, when the final report reaches us next fall, will be somewhere around $1.35 billion. You read it here first.

2) At some point, I hope to do a much more formal analysis, like last year’s. Perhaps someone will save me the trouble and do it now.

3) The big unknown is the valuation of the hundreds of millions that the College has invested in private equity and venture capital. If the College had invested $50 million in a private equity fund in June, 2008, what is that money worth now? Hint: It is much less than $50 million? But, in some respects, the “true” valuation is beside the point. What valuation with the managers of the fund report to the College? I don’t know but I am highly suspicious. And the fact that these amounts are “audited” by auditors paid for by the private equity manager gives me about as much comfort as a AAA rating from Moody’s.

4) But, I suspect that Morty might have already have had some early information about these valuations, so I suspect that his $1.4 billion number is “accurate,” or at least consistent with what the College will report in the fall. A smart Record reporter, however, would check to see if this claim is consistent with Morty’s talk in October 2008 and the market movements since then. Another item on the to-do list.

UPDATE: Thanks to eyetoldyouso for noting this July 1 letter from President Bill Wagner.

As you know, the June 30 endowment figure plays an important role in the College’s financial planning. While it will be months before we have a final audited figure, it is likely that our investment return will be better than the -35% that we conservatively used in our planning model. If that proves to be true and if our return for the next two years comes close to the zero that we have been modeling, that would reduce to some degree the extreme pressure that we had projected the College facing a couple of years from now. We still, however, continue to face significant challenges and will need to follow through on the cost-saving measures we have put in place.

Well, -20% would be “better” than -35%, but I don’t see many clues beyond that. I find it vaguely annoying that Wagner would throw around such an absurd estimate when he knows (he was there) that Morty provided the -18% estimate two weeks ago. Thoughts:

1) Perhaps Wagner is just low-balling the numbers — like any good corporate CEO — so that the the College can provide an upside surprise in the fall.

2) Perhaps I misunderstood Morty and the -18% number was just for the College’s liquid securities (those that Chilton would have good estimates for), without factoring in the performance of things like private equity and venture capital. I really don’t think that this is what Morty meant.

3) Perhaps further news as come out in between Morty’s talk at reunion and this letter. It could be that Chilton thought on June 1 — either guessed for herself or was told by her managers — that the losses on illiquid securities were X. Then, around June 30, she figured out that the losses were Y, with Y being much greater than X. So, the College might actually report a loss between 25% and 30% in the fall. This seems unlikely but not impossible.

Sean Crotty ‘84 writes:

I was a pilot in the USAF and now fly internationally for World Airways – carrying troops mostly too and from the sand box. Some of the spots I’ve visited and written about are:

Hiroshima – met the pilot of the Enola Gay at a hunting lodge – then flew over Hiroshima on the 50th anniversary – and happened to be there for the 63rd anniversary – where by I took a picture of a ‘crane’ on top of the gratings of the old industrial building – the only building left standing after the blast – The crane is the symbol of peace in some Asian cultures.

American Cemetery at Normandy – drove all night from Ramstein AB in Germany where I was flying C-141’s to pay tribute to our troops on the first day of 2000 – figured of all the places I’d like to be to ring in that particular New Year it was that cemetery. Without really planning on it I became the first visitor for the next 1000 years when a Marine Major tapped on my window to wake me up as I was sleeping in my rental car in the parking lot. Once he found out I was an American Service member he ushered me in as the first visitor so I’d be number one in the book. I played my penny whistle in the fog and as I walked out of one of the tombs a hundred or so p eople had gathered all around me without me knowing until I came out – I had been playing amazing grace and some old celtic sad songs – they were all crying which made me start to cry – a very personal and powerful day.

Visited the first “church” in Christendom – the cave church of St. Peter in the old Turkish city of Antioch – past the area where Alexander the Great had chased the Persians back over the mountains – walked a Templer Fort – and then visited the cave on Christmas night – The place was totally locked up and I sat on the cold limestone looking out at the smoky night sky of a very old city – while listening to the Muslim call to prayer – alone – at a place where Saint Peter had preached a few years after the death of Christ. Even as an agnostic it was a very powerful night.

Spelunking in a Saudi Cave while deployed after the first Gulf War in Riyad – almost getting my big ex full back butt stuck about two miles down – finding some old prehistoric sharks teeth and gypsum crystals – and then getting stopped by Saudi Security guards because my navigator of all things had turned the wrong way on the freeway while heading back to our hootch. We had gotten to close to the Holy cities of Mecca and Medina as non-believers – not a good thing.

Anyway just thought it might be fun for people to read not only about where I’ve been but how those places have impacted my thoughts on the world as a whole and our place in it as Americans.

Agreed. We are always interested to read about the experiences and thoughts of our fellow Ephs. Many paths lead from the Purple Valley. Tell us about the one you are walking.

From a reader:

Amidst your daily take on all things Williams I’m hoping you might be willing to insert a reference to a summer event nearby. Southshire Community School in nearby North Bennington, VT is hosting a benefit concert by Grace Potter who leads the Vermont based band “Grace Potter and the Nocturnals”. I’ve included the mini-blurb below as well as the event press release and show poster.

I’d be grateful if you would consider running a quick story on the event. The Williams connection? A few professors every year choose to send their students to Southshire. Last year the school population had two students who were the children of current professors and two who were the children of a former professor – that was 10% of the total student body in our very small 40 child school.

A stretch? Maybe – but for any Williams folks in town this summer this will be a fantastic event.

Indeed. More details below:
(more…)

Today is Morty’s last day as president of Williams. Have you thanked him yet? You should! (I just did.) Although you will get a misleading bounce-back message, e-mail sent to Morton.Owen.Schapiro at williams.edu still reaches him as he unpacks his boxes in Evanston. So, send him a thank-you note — and tell him that EphBlog sent you!

If I had to single out the most important aspect of Morty’s presidency for me, it would be the way that he was always so open, honest and thoughtful in his public discussions of Williams policies. (Great collection of examples here and here.) I am unaware of any elite college/university president who has maintained such high standards of transparency. Say what you will about the substance of his decisions, but Morty always called them like he saw them. For that, and many other accomplishments, I will always be a fan.

What Morty accomplishment is your favorite? (Only good things today, please! Criticisms come tomorrow).

Here’s an article from Valley News highlighting Ben Grass ‘07, a (former and future) Dartmouth Medical School student who is undertaking a century ride to raise funds for a cancer research center, after recently having cancer surgery there himself.

Grass …  said he’s received “incredible support” from the Williams College cycling team, many of whose members will join Grass for his Prouty trek. (Look for the folks in the purple, cow-spotted uniforms.)

Go Ephs!

[h/t Williams Cycling]

photo credit Jekyll Island Museum

A Jekyll Island website gives a glimpse into the life of Charles Steward Maurice, Class of 1861, who went on to become an engineer. He trained at RPI, accelerating his studies and joining the U.S. Navy in 1862. After the war, he went into private practice, building a number of impressive bridges. For many years, Maurice summered in Georgia with his very large family, and he seems to have been actively involved in the life on Jekyll Island despite being a Yankee.

When I saw the blurb for the link, I thought of the powerful changes Maurice’s generation, both North and South, lived through.  The books are about to close on the fiscal year for the endowment, the belt will have to be tightened further, and things will still be very difficult for many Ephs, but Williams survives and her sons (and daughters) continue to excel. I pause for a moment and am grateful to all who have made that possible.

A few athletics-related tidbits from the past week:

• great article on new Eph tennis coach Dan Greenberg ‘08
• recently-promoted Boston College men’s basketball associate head coach Pat Duquette ‘93 is a candidate for the Holy Cross head coach job (which would instantly create a fun Patriot League rivalry with Dave Paulsen’s Bucknell squad, although Duquette seems like a bit of a long shot; still, the more his name is out there, the better his chances of landing a D-I head coaching gig during the next cycle of openings)
• there is a bit of an SID war going on at Williams and Amherst — Amherst updated its web page to prominently feature the high points from its historically successful year, while Williams, in turn, features a decidedly different spin, highlighting its own impressive athletics results.

Class Historian Kevin Waite ‘09 kindly provided a copy of his remarks from the Ivy Exercises on June 6, 2009.

At the end of freshman year, the world came crashing down around our ears – or so we thought. In our eyes, the administration had taken away everything that was good and sweet by implementing the cluster system and depriving us of our time-honored sophomore right: Mission. We were outraged that we couldn’t all live together in a building that looks more like a juvenile correctional facility than any college dorm I’ve ever seen. We longed to congregate in its riot-proof corridors and nestle into those cold, sterile cells we called rooms. We even made some pretty clever T-shirts to memorialize our class’ great loss. They read Class of 2009 Mission: Impossible.

If only we had been so fortunate to remain the Mission Impossible class. But no, now our class shirts, if we were to make them, would read something very different: Class of 2009: Gainful Employment Impossible. Yes, thank you once-flourishing economy for hitting one of the worst tailspins of the century right when we finally need jobs. Fantastic. But in our monumentally bad timing, there is a silver lining. For starters, it gives us bragging rights over some of our parents who had to contend with the job market of the 70s. But more importantly it has provided some much-needed perspective. All of a sudden, it doesn’t seem so bad that the administration wouldn’t let us live in the collegiate equivalent of Sing Sing. And all the hiccups of the last four years, which once seemed catastrophic, now seem somewhat inconsequential, or even kind of funny. After all, when in your junior year, your college becomes the butt of a national poop joke, what can you do but laugh?

For the first eight or so months, freshman year went swimmingly – adjusting to College life, hanging out the Frosh and Odd Quads, discovering Queer Bash… and then boom: the campus turned into a B-rate horror flick. It was the attack of the caterpillars in Billsville. You probably could have crossed the entire campus without setting foot on pavement or grass – that’s how thick the blanket of caterpillars was that spring.

Then the surreal, got surreal-er when Swedish pop sensation and self-styled Pleasureman, Gunther invaded the Purple Valley. I have no idea how we convinced such a complete hedonist to visit our small liberal arts college in the frigid valley of Boondocksville, Mass. but we did. Expecting to find “the sexiest College ever,” Gunther instead got about 200 sleep-deprived type A students, eager to let off a little steam in Goodrich. Maybe he thought we meant ASU when we said Williams College. But we did not disappoint. As if to justify ourselves and prove to Gunther that even small colleges can bring the noise, we broke a church.

The breaking of the Goodrich floor came on the heels of a Spring Street fire that destroyed the beloved Purple Pub, and suddenly it seemed as if Williamstown was as destructible as Richmond in 1865. (And now I’ve hit my College-mandated limit of one awful Civil War joke.) Then, it took over two years to convert the charred building into a massive cement crater, conveniently timed to coincide with graduation. Now all the parents can see how the bottom of the Village Beautiful became the Village Chernobyl. But limited to one bar, we made do like the resourceful Williams students we are, and even made some new friends in the process – like 28-year old townies.

But these four years have been marked by far more than breaking and burning buildings. When racist graffiti appeared on a Willy E white board, the campus responded with the Stand With Us Movement. And this year, members of our class led the school in Claiming Williams, a highly successful day of talks, panels and performances centered on issues of discrimination and intolerance. Athletically our class was dominant. We brought home a number of national titles, while our football seniors never lost a game to Amherst in their careers. And no graduating senior has seen us lose a Homecoming game while enrolled as a student.

Now we have the privilege of graduating with Morty. And what took him 20 years, most of us have managed to do in only four.

Those four years have been challenging, funny, exciting, sad, fulfilling, and even incendiary. But at the end of it all, Class of 2009, I think we can agree, we’ve made some great history together.

It would be fun to collect these from past years. Does anyone have a copy that we can post?

Tui Sutherland ‘98 won Friday’s episode of Jeopardy with an impressive total of $23,600.  You can see her video greeting on this page.  I assume she will be on again Monday to defend her title … good luck!  Something must have been in the water at Williams in the late 1990’s, because Peter Rubin ‘97 also fared well on Jeopardy a few years back.  Then again, certain Ephblog posters from that era may fall into a slightly less knowledgable category (although, I am confident I could have cleaned up Cliff Claven’s Jeopardy board).

Special thanks to “Nuts” for finding this beautiful photo by Akemi Ueda ‘11. On the link, Akemi says:

After moving into my room for the summer, I got to see this amazing double rainbow from the fourth floor of Morgan. Awesome end to the day.

And an awesome photo, Akemi. Hope you are having a great summer!

I was unhappily surprised to learn that one of the leaders of the fight against gay marriage in Washington, D.C. is Williams alum Harry R. Jackson, Jr., Senior Pastor at the (apparently irony-impaired) Hope Christian Church, among other honorifics.  It is hard to pick just one from the many stupid things attributed to Jackson in this article, but I’ll start with: “Mr. Jackson’s opposition to same-sex marriage stems from a firmly held belief that same-sex marriage will hurt the institution of marriage, which he said is already suffering in the black community.”

Yeah, the REAL cause of the enormous proliferation of single moms and totally uninvolved dads in D.C., in particular in the D.C. black community, is the fact that gays in the District have aspirations towards getting married.  Riiigghhhhtttt …. I guess “Logic” must not have been offered as a course during Jackson’ s tenure at Williams (or HBS).  Were only Jackson to devote some of his obvious energy and talent to addressing the ACTUAL causes of the large volume of births to young, unwed mothers in D.C., rather than trying to distract attention from the problem by attacking something wholly unrelated, he might do his Williams degree proud.  I live in a D.C. neighborhood that has suffered from a recent surge in gun violence, resulting in numerous deaths, and in every case both the intended victims (a few random bystanders have also been hurt) and the perpetrators have been young black males.  I guarantee none of them were the product of gay marriages.  I would bet, on the other hand, that almost none of them, victims and perpetrators alike, had two actively engaged parents with no involvement in the criminal justice system.  I just wish someone with such an influential voice would try to use it to help steer some of these kids who are crying out for support in the right direction, rather than demonizing people he undoubtedly has little-to-no contact with, and who in all events are in no way, shape, or form responsible for the massive problems in D.C.  You can read more of Jackson’s thoughts, the vast majority of which seem to focus on his antipathy towards gay marriage, here (if you want to spend your time more wisely, I can provide the Cliff’s Notes version right now: “gay people suck, but really, I have nothing against gay people.”)  Many of his almost entirely specious arguments sound disturbingly similar to the racist whites who opposed civil rights for blacks on the grounds that they were just trying to protect against the spread of values they found problematic, but who were in fact using the centuries-old tactic of scapegoating the “other” to distract from wholly unrelated social ills.  You could certainly go back to 1960 and replace “interracial marriage” with “gay marriage” in virtually any argument Jackson puts forth, and it would carry just as much water.

A recent revision to the Williams College page on Wikipedia mentions “The Telos, a journal of Christian thought.” I see no mention of such a publication at Williams. Can anyone enlighten us? We would love to link to and/or publish some of this work.

Brother Smartness contends that cell phones killed the Williams party scene:

The advent of communication technology has drastically, and negatively, altered the manner in which we socially interact.[...]

Think, for a second, about how natural the phrase “running late” has become.  I can’t even front, because I myself have pulled this card on a number of occasions in the past.  The problem lies in trying to be at too many places at once; trying to accomplish more than possible in 24 hours.

Communicating on blackberries or texting on phones at dinner and/or clubs (a pet peeve of mine) make it impossible to live in the moment.  I’ve always contended that cell phones killed the party scene in college. Prior to cell phones every party had potential.  After cell phones, if a party was bad and that information became available through the wire, it was a straight wrap.  Mull that one over if you happened to be in the purple bubble circa 2002.

We risk losing, in the hustle and bustle of trying to be more productive, our sense of respect for one another, which I would argue is important in a world where human interaction is becoming increasingly unnecessary.

The game plan this summer and beyond is put the phone away and arrive on time, never fashionably late.  For the sake of maintaining the sanctity of humanity, I encourage you to do the same.

Can anyone else who was at Williams at the same time comment on this? By the time I got there in 2003, Verizon was quite well established on campus.

On the other hand, cell phones did bring some advantages when they came to Williams. As JG notes:

We graduated in 2001 not only in the rain, but during a thunderstorm. Graduation was paused partway through due to lightning and everyone went running for the science quad buildings during the 45-60 minute delay. Since it was a million years ago before everyone and their mother (and 5 year old) had a cell phone – and Williamstown had little to no reception – nobody could find their families.

On the other other hand, there are times when I would be fine with people not being able to find me. In the age of the cell phone, it is almost impossible to be unfindable. If I leave my phone off, or fail to pick up or return a call relatively quickly, I expect that the person trying to reach me is liable to get a little annoyed. For the sake of  maintaining amicable social relations, I feel obligated to keep the phone/email/messaging device on at all times. And of course, these devices are powerful and addictive in and of themselves, regardless of their social utility. As Stephen O’Grady writes in a love letter to his iPhone 3GS, “I seriously feel like I’m living in the future.”

Twitter makes the pressure to always-be-connected even worse, as Jennifer Mattern discovered:

As one friend observed, “If the people in my life need to know what is happening in my life every 20 seconds, there is something very wrong, either with them, or with me.”[...]

Facebook gives you a fighting chance. If you’re not the brightest bulb, not the sharpest tack, you can still hang out and find your posse. Addictive as it is (Facecrack, Crackbook), one can skip a daily dose and still pick up pretty much where one left off. Yes, Andrea is still in a relationship, heart heart. Yes, Gayle’s pictures from her trip are online now. No, you have not been Superpoked by Etienne, but Tim wants you to join his mob.

Brain. Can. Process. Yes.

Twitter is Facebook as played by Lindsay Lohan on Red Bull minus her daily Ritalin. It’s Racebook, run by people who are tethered to their Blackberrys and iPhones, pithy, clever people who always have a good line. I watch them in amazement. They make bathroom stops hilarious. They multitask with a vengeance. Sparks fly out of my computer when I log into Twitter. [...]

I can be funny. I can’t be funny THAT FAST AND THAT REGULARLY. I have nothing to market. I have nothing to tweet. I am tweetless.

If, however, your brain can keep up with Twitter, you may want to follow us on Twitter and/or check out the many Eph Twitterers that we follow. You may find some people you recognize in there. Some of the more prolific Eph Twitterers include Stephen C. Rose ‘58, Steve Case ‘80, Kim Daboo ‘88, and Ethan Zuckerman ‘93 . There are many others.

And here are some more Williams-specific Twitter accounts, if you’re into that kind of thing:

• Williams College
• EphSports (Dick Quinn)
• Alumni Review
• The Williams Expedition

PS – A previous post that is kinda sorta related, at least in my mind.

Ethan Zuckerman ‘93:

It’s nice to be listened to. I guess. Maybe. Though I now find myself wondering whether I wouldn’t be better off shutting up.

Me too.

I saw the first reports of Michael Jackson’s death on Twitter around 6pm. I ran a little script I threw together some weeks ago called “twitcent” to see just how many tweets would share the news. Twitcent takes advantage of the fact that Twitter gives a unique, sequential ID to each tweet to estimate the intensity of posting around certain terms. It retrieves a page of 100 search results for a particular search term – say “Michael Jackson” – and looks at the ID numbers of the first and last tweets listed. Take the difference of those numbers, and you get how many tweets were posted between search result #1 and #100. Divide, and you’ve got a percentage of tweets on the system in a discrete, small interval mentioning the term.

Being able to use technology to perform this sort of analysis is not rocket science. Take a couple CS courses at Williams (134 and 136) and you could do it too. Making the computer do what you want it to do is an incredibly valuable skill. If you are a Williams undergraduate, you should get some.

Is it accurate? I dunno. If my assumptions are right, it should be – if Twitter’s not always numbering sequentially, or if some large percent of tweets on the system are unsearchable, less so. Anyway, I ran several search terms through the engine and saw something I’d never seen before – search terms registering in double digit percentages, and the term “Michael Jackson” appearing in 13 – 20% of the tweets.

So I tweeted the following: “My twitter search script sees roughly 15% of all posts on Twitter mentioning Michael Jackson. Never saw Iran or swine flu reach over 5%” And then I went to make dinner.

When I got back online this evening, the tweet had been quoted in Wired News, the New York Times Bits blog, Washington Post’s mocoNews, and in the San Jose Mercury News.

Geez, think these guys read each other much? I’m flattered, I think.

…

A proper quote from me would probably have been something like: “The search string ‘Michael Jackson’ is getting intense interest on Twitter at the moment, showing up in between 13-20% of tweets. It’s unlikely this level of intensity will continue through the night, but at the moment, it exceeds the intensity I’ve seen on Twitter during slower-breaking stories like #swineflu, #pman and #IranElection.” That, unfortunately, is 337 characters – far too long for anyone to read anymore. And a clarification in the form of a blogpost? That’s so 2006.

Indeed. Are you reading Ethan and the other interesting bloggers at Eph Planet? You should be.