Listen up, prospective Art History PhDs: if you’re not out of here by mid-century, you could be in for a disaster of near-Biblical proporations. From the Voice’s doomsaying coverstory, re: the Manhattanville “bathtub:”

Imagine this scenario, based on Jacob’s research: It’s the year 2065, and Columbia University’s 17-acre West Harlem expansion is abuzz with activity. Students hurry through rainfall along a tree-lined promenade overlooking the Hudson. In a biotechnology lab nearby, scientists are engineering lethal pathogens to respond to the next generation of infectious diseases and bioterrorist threats. Deep down below, engineering majors use the future version of Facebook to instant-message their friends.

Warnings, meanwhile, are steadily being broadcast about an oncoming storm. A Category 2 hurricane with 110-mile-an-hour winds is barreling down on the city—a more frequent occurrence than in decades past. New Yorkers have become familiar with the drill: They evacuate to local shelters set up by the city’s Office of Emergency Management. Over several hours, the Hudson rises 10 feet, flooding the waterfront promenade and the rest of the campus. Many, but perhaps not all, have heeded warnings to leave the deep basement. Damage will be extensive and exorbitantly expensive. And some of the sprawling labs that contain biohazardous material may become another kind of floating threat to the city.

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[Noah Baron looks at consumer culture's rather problematic relationship with happiness. And on a possibly-related note, this is an excellent chance to link to one of the most weirdly interesting pages on all of WikiCu. And yes, that is a picture of Emile Durkheim at the top of this post.]

According to this article, rates of extreme depression have risen in each generation since 1915. The Centers for Disease Control and Protection have released a report which states that suicide rates amongst young girls (ages 10-14) have risen 76%. The report goes on to state that between 2003 and 2004, suicide rates for all youth (people aged 10-24) had risen 8%, the largest single increase in almost two decades.

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I’m not so optimistic about Associate Vice President of Public Safety James McShane’s blockbuster plan to add “an additional patrol vehicle to expand our presence further within Morningside Heights” in response to the mugging and resulting death of Minghui Yu. How about better lighting, neighborhood watch programs, and training programs for student self-defense? But now that we’ve gone so far past the crime itself, we may have lost track of what its motive may have really been.

After a discussion with a South-Bronx-raised Asian Columbia student, I think there may be more than meets the eye. In the Bronx, small Asian businesses are occassionally subject to hate crimes. It may be tempting to disregard it as a symptom of low-income, high-crime areas of the city, but a race-related crime is simply just that. And it would be an injustice to try and wiggle out of an issue the city nor the media has really thought about.

The problem itself is magnified by both sides–the city and the media often neglects further enquiry into an Asian race-related crime. There are a few potential reasons for this. For one, there is no real outspoken advocate for Asian rights. Nor is it culturally “comfortable” for Asians (or really, for any threatened group) to report crimes as well, out of fear of the authorities or further attacks.

Now, I write this not because I believe Minghui Yu’s death was the result of a racially motivated crime. I raise this issue because I believe it should be given due consideration and notice as both a possibility for a motive and as a general need for Asian rights advocates in Morningside Heights and beyond.  

I guess the House of Representatives is banking on the fact Al-Qaeda doesn’t get cable because we wouldn’t want the terrorists to get a hold of this fascinating tidbit…

Nancy Pelosi is an idiot.

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Tyra Banks–

First of all, I think the most obvious question is if they are all throwing out their bras, why aren’t they doing this topless? The second question is, Tyra—learn more about feminism before you open your cave-like trap! Wait, that’s not a question. That’s because Tyra is an idiot and is just perpetuating the inaccurate myth that a group of women protesting the 1968 Miss America competition burned their bras when in reality, they symbolically threw a bunch bras and other constricting underwear in trashcans. So way to go, Tyra! This just makes me violently dislike you even more than I did before! See, I originally hated you because of your terrible Oprah-wannabe, fake-hair-slinging attempts at interviews. A sample Tyra interview would go like this:

Tyra: So, you lost both your parents in a brutal murder scandal when you were just eleven years old, right? Didn’t that make you feel awful and lost and vulnerable? (bats fake eyelashes at camera)

Orphan girl: (tears welling) Yes, I did. And yes, I felt aw—

Tyra: –I am right there with you, girl. This reminds me of when I was 16 and I was just starting out my hugely successful modeling career. My agency sent me to Paris for six months and I had to live on my own and didn’t have my mommy with me and it was really hard. But you know what, I perservered and here I am today, a giant supermodel and I LOVE MY BODY! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! (does an uncoordinated booty shaking dance)

And that, my dear friends, is why I hated Tyra yesterday. But today I have a whole new slew of awesome reasons to hate her. But I also love her because she gave me something to write about…

On a final note, on last night’s premiere of America’s Next Top J.C. Penny Model, Tyra crowned herself Homecoming Queen and cried fake mascara tears while maniacally waving and doing this high-pitched screaming thing only other dogs could hear.  Recreating an empty childhood much, Tyra? God she really scares me.

I don’t want to end up like my grandma, that’s all I know. She’s happy enough, living in an assisted living home, but she can barely remember anything from one moment to the next. Neil Young said that it’s better to burn out than to fade away, and I agree with the sentiment, but how young is too young to die? NPR’s This American Life featured a touching–and surely disturbing to some–story about an elderly woman who decided she would kill herself before she lost the ability to do so, and how her son helped her do it. You can stream it here.

The burden of young death, as with any death at all, falls mostly on the shoulders of the survivors. Last week we lost Heath Ledger, a death I can still hardly believe. Already, he is being transformed into a cultural icon, as Jenny Lyn Bader observed in her Week In Review article Sunday.

The more I anticipate my own death, the less scared I become. Can we forget the dark and frightening specter of death for a moment and think of it as an end, just a conclusion, a relief, even; and, from the perspective of those of us left behind, a transcendence? That’s all it is, really, whenever it comes. I want to still be conscious of who I am when I die.
I want to use this space to reflect upon people who have died early; specifically, John Lennon. I’ve thought perhaps too much of all the what-ifs and could-have-beens of John Lennon’s death at 40–his violent gunning down by an unbalanced man who took Holden Caulfield as an alter-ego.

In March, Chapter 27, a film which premiered at Sundance in 2007, will be released. The film stars Jared Leto as Mark David Chapman and Lindsey Lohan. It tracks the days leading up to John Lennon’s assassination, told mainly from the perspective of Chapman. I’ll be interested to see how the film treats Chapman, the man who took from the world of one of the most talented and inspiring musical figures it has ever seen. Still, I wonder whether it is time to forgive him.

I think John Lennon would have forgiven Chapman by now. (I’d love to hear what other people think about this, for it is, of course, pure speculation.) Young death is always tragic, whether it comes at 40, 28, 27, or 24. But it comes when it does, and the best way to be prepared is to be at peace with oneself. I believe that John Lennon was at peace with himself, and, after years of loathing Mark David Chapman, I think I’m ready to forgive him myself.

Mark David Chapman was certifiably disturbed; his lawyers originally entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, but Chapman changed his plea to guilty. In his statement to the police on December 9, 1980, Chapman said:

Then this morning I went to the bookstore and bought The Catcher in the Rye. I’m sure the large part of me is Holden Caulfield, who is the main person in the book. The small part of me must be the Devil.

His description of those events are chillingly objective. But reading his statement for the parole board of twenty years later makes me want to cry. He said:

This has nothing to do with being a Beatle or a celebrity or famous. He was breathing, and I knocked him right off his feet, and I don’t feel because of that I have any right to be standing on my feet here, you know, asking for anything. I don’t have a leg to stand on because I took his right out from under him, and he bled to death. And I’m sorry that ever occurred.

Yoko Ono hasn’t forgiven the man who killed her husband. Last year she took out a full page ad in the Times, urging us to celebrate December 8 as a day of peace. Yet she writes, “I don’t know yet whether I am ready to forgive the one who pulled the trigger.”

If we want to achieve peace, we need to have the capacity for forgiveness and for understanding. We need to be at peace with ourselves and with the rest of humankind.

Mark David Chapman comes up for parole again this year. Maybe this time we should rethink his case and put him in a mental hospital, where he belongs.

Not! Behold, an extra-special edition of CMMECotD:

“David Rothman, a professor at Columbia University who has led the movement to distance medical schools from pharma, as the drug industry is called, compared serving on speakers bureaus to commercial sex work.

‘You’re their boy,’ he said. ‘If you work for the drug companies, you’re not working for the school.’”

I seem to recall a fireside chat in which Bollinger was pressured on the school’s ties to big drug companies, and on whether the university was as committed to developing low-cost generics as it was to cashing in on potentially-lucrative drug patents. Bollinger intelligently dodged the question, as the pharma vs. generics debate becomes pretty complicated when major universities are factored in–there’s a reason Professor Delbanco marks the determination of a university’s legal right to profit off of its own technological breakthroughs as a turning point in the history of American higher ed.

So what kind of connections does Columbia have? It’s hard to say, and there seems to be very little media interest–searches for “generic drugs” in the Spec archives yields disappointingly few hits. But at least someone at Mailman is pushing for a vigorous and hopefully well-informed debate on generics and large drug companies. It’s one we should definitely be paying attention to…

Elsewhere, Suharto is dead. He was one of the most brutal and most successful dictators in modern history, and a man who had the very good luck of living in a time when the international rule of law typically didn’t extend to heads of state. It does now, and with an international community that’s increasingly oriented towards human rights, I doubt we’ll ever see the likes of him again. And good riddance to it.