(DP)

Editor’s Note: This post may look familiar. Camille’s piece was first posted on March 13 — it has since disappeared (probably the fault of yours truly). Anyway, here it is again. Enjoy!



The smell of excitement overtook the remnants of the sunscreen aroma — the first Monday back was abuzz with long-lost hugs and repeated utterances of “How was your break?” Cancun, Miami, the Dominican. No time for details in the quick chat and run,, but I’m sure most of my classmates’ breaks included some moments fit for MTV’s Spring Break. And, I’m willing to bet, most of these moments included some kind of unnaturally colored cocktail, umbrella optional.

But the unquestioned tradition of binging is not universal at Penn. The Vision, Penn’s black-interest newsletter, published a provocative column by Jaryn Fields last fall entitled “I Thought Drinking Was Their Problem” discussing the differences between the drinking culture among black students from that of white students. The statistics he cites are provocative — 23% of black students reported binge drinking in a two week period compared to 44% of white college students in a study performed by the Department of Health and Human Services . These national statistics hold true at Penn as well. According to Dr. Stephanie Ives, Penn Director of
Alcohol Policy Initiatives , black Penn students tend to “fall somewhere between the lower and moderate risk groups”. Across all measures of binge drinking, black students in particular tend to be making a habit out of healthy drinking.

More categorical answers for this phenomenon surface : The bar and keg scenes aren’t culturally popular among black students, the gender imbalance leans towards women who drink less overall, or the deep religiosity of black culture. Generalizations, sure. But potentially accurate reasons for the behavioral differences that distinguish a good chunk of the black student population from the general American collegiate population? Sure again.

Black students tend to have more responsible drinking habits largely because of cultural factors, but there is a larger story here. All over campus, students are choosing to space out their drinks, watch themselves, and
look out for their friends across all ethnicities. Really, there’s a gamut of ways to live out the quintessential college experience. Who knows, maybe in the future our expectations when we ask that friend about break will change as well!

Move over Bunny, there’s a new Penn-produced hit YouTube video.

Exploding onto the YouTube scene is Penn’s very own Indian a capella group, Penn Masala

According to Masala Business Manager and Wharton sophomore Ricky Sharma, the idea first came up when the group was returning to the United States from a trip to India.

“YouTube has become so popular we figured we’ve give it a shot,” he said in an interview.

But even Sharma admitted he was taken aback at the response the video has received. “We had no idea it would catch on as fast and as widely as it has,” he said.

It’s definitely caught on. The piece was a “featured video” on YouTube.com’s homepage for more than a day, lending enormous visibility and traffic to the video. The short’s accompanying Facebook group has nearly 1,000 members as well, from schools around the country and Canada.

And Masala’s video struck a chord by combining one media darling (YouTube) with another (Facebook).

“There’s been this emergence of Facebook and YouTube as places to establish niches,” Sharma said.

Its popularity can also be attributed to the topic itself — the somewhat-creepy level to which some people look at and keep tabs on their friends’ hobbies, photos and messages to each other. The song, sung of course, by Masala, begins with,

Would you poke, if i sent you a poke? Or would you run and never poke back? Is it weird, that i know your hobbies? Would you be my friend tonight?

It may have been their first video, but Sharma and Co. obviously knew what they were doing. YouTube parody videos–now being labeled “virals”–have become a sensation, from the Box in a Box music video by Penn’s own Melissa Lamb, to the much-talked-about Hilary/1984 ad.

Well, with the video being “favorited” 4559 times, it would seem Penn Masala has done more than just established a niche; the group has staked out a loyal cadre of fans (if there weren’t enough Masala fans already. They regularly pack Irvine, which is more than Sonic Youth can say

So, will there be more Masala-tinged parodies on the way?

“It’s definitely something we’re going to look toward in the future,” Sharma concluded, adding that those who enjoyed the video may want to head to Irvine tomorrow at 7 p.m., because while YouTube videos are great, nothing can replace live a capella.

The other day at Cosi (Ticker: COSI), my stomach began to rumble after one of their $7 sandwiches failed to satisfy my mid-day hunger. With such high prices for so little food, I figured they must make a killing in profits. But, from their financials, it turns out their investors have been feeling a similar emptiness in their pockets. The company has not been profitable since they came public in 2002.

Let me put that in perspective.

Back in 2002, I still had braces, the current senior class was applying to Penn, and the freshman class was … well, still freshman. It is hard to fathom how someone could lose money from selling marshmallow S’mores and overpriced sandwiches for four years.

Perhaps a better indication of their woes can be found in the pages of our beloved Daily Pennsylvanian.All this week, the only things more ubiquitous than the names Baker and Finkelstein were $3 off coupons from Cosi–essentially 50 percent discounts on an entree.

These are not the makings of a stock I want to be in.

A better way to play Penn student’s love for over-priced salads is through Chiquita Brands International, Inc. (Ticker: CQB) Best known for their banana and fresh produce business, Chiquita owns the Fresh Express salads brand. Acquired a year ago, this line has maintained its leadership and should pay dividends in the future.

.A slew of bad news in the past weeks caused the market to overreact, sending prices of CQB stock plummeting from $16.84 to $12.50. Profits were hurt by regulations in the banana industry and a packaged produce category still reeling from the E.coli scare. Throw in a fine from the Department of Justice for paying off “terrorist” organizations in Colombia, and investors exited this stock faster than a late-night fire drill at Hill college house.

While I firmly believe in separating investing from politics, the activist within each of us can take comfort in knowing Chiquita was not funding terrorism, but rather protecting their business interests; arguably a disturbing yet necessary move when doing business in Latin America. The employees and products were threatened by the terrorists.

With all the bad news already incorporated into the price of the stock, look for shares to trade higher in the coming months as the investigation wraps up and the bagged-produce category recovers its strength.

Pick up some CQB shares and start clipping away those Cosi coupons. Unfortunately, the sales on both these items are for a limited time only.

The contrast of the blue tile and the dark statue really bring out the fully aesthetic g’oh. Who am I kidding? (Dan Brickley/DP)

I usually sprint into DRL, in an attempt to get to class only 5 minutes late. But in the rare case I’m on time, I walk slowly and admire Mr. Rittenhouse’s lab for the architectural beauty it is (cough SARCASM cough).

But last Tuesday, something caught my eye as I passed through the beautiful turquoise-”mosaic-ed” foyer. Sitting next to the stack of DPs is a bust of Nicola Tesla.

The bust is rather small, with a short description honoring Tesla for his pioneering work in mechanical and electrical engineering. Jackie Jacovini, curator of the University Art Collection, has no record of this statue in her database. Mark Lloyd, the director of the University Archives and Records Center, is unaware of any connections between Penn and Tesla. In short, the statue is a mystery (dun dun dun!).

However, Tesla’s contributions to society are no mystery. A contemporary (and nemesis) of Thomas Edison, Tesla led research in fields like x-rays, electric motors, and electric currents. Whenever he spoke in public, he demanded that his giant “Tesla coil” shoot bolts of electricity through the air in the background. In short, he was an engineering bad-ass.

Despite being regarded as a “Mad Scientist” at his death, Tesla’s influence lives on, especially with a group of California entrepreneurs headed by Martin Eberhard. Mr. Eberhard and company named their business after Tesla since he created the key component of their cars.

“The motor that we use was outright invented by Nicola Tesla,” said Martin Eberhard in an interview with the Oakland Business Review. “Now, we’ve optimized it a bit since his day. But he was the inventor and in our opinion Nicola Tesla has been a bit overlooked amongst the inventors of this country.”

Tesla Motors cannot be overlooked. Unlike other automobile makers that work solely on electric cars (Sparrow or REVA), Tesla prioritized looks in its first car — it had a solid cruising range and went fast. Based on the high performance Lotus Elise, it appears Tesla Motors seeks to groom “high-performance DNA” before getting into mainstream automobiles.

And it looks like Telsa’s succeeding at that too. With a new engineering center in Michigan and a factory in New Mexico, project “White Star” is fully underway. A reliable, long-range, electrically powered sedan should be on the market by 2009 and cost under $50,000.

So cherish your hike to DRL. When Tesla Motors reinvents the American car industry, you can look back and say you saw it all coming . . . every time you walked past the mystery bust.

Morse in motion. (Philip Ng/DP)

Voltaire once famously remarked, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” If that’s so, Stephen Morse, 34th Street Food and Drink Editor, might paraphrase Voltaire to say, “I disapprove of what you say. You’re a holocaust denier.”

I’m speaking of course of the now notorious visit to our campus by DePaul University assistant professor of political science Norman Finkelstein, author of several books including The Holocaust Industry and Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.

During his speech Finkelstein essentially laid out his arguments: 1) The state of Israel egregiously abuses Palestinian rights and must end its occupation of the West Bank and 2) All criticism of Israel has been deflected by various organizations with blanket accusations of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

So, what was Stephen Morse thinking when during the question and answer session, according to sources at the event, he demonstrated Finkelstein’s point by yelling that the “Furer would be proud” of Finkelstein and calling him an anti-Semite as he marched toward the speaker with his arm outstretch in a “Heil Hitler” salute.

The questions of whether Finkelstein should be welcome on campus at all or whether the Political Science department should have sponsored his visit have been debated ad nauseum by everyone from Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz to our very own Spinstress Julie Siegel. Morse’s behavior raises the question of how to properly confront someone whose views you find not only disagreeable, but also vile and despicable.

I can understand the passion affecting Morse and the many readers who have commented on the DP’s web site. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t known for eliciting passive responses. Still, the accusations being hurled by both sides whether they be of Nazi-style atrocities on the part of Israeli soldiers or Holocaust denial by Israel’s detractors feed into a cycle of hopelessness that begins with simple rhetoric and ends with the dehumanization of one’s opponents.

If people are so disgusted by Finkelstein’s words, they should think carefully about their own before they speak out against his.

The plastics sit together at lunch. (Movie Gazette)

They say friends are everything during the rollercoaster adolescent years. That’s why teenage relationships are one of sociologists’ favorite phenomena to study. Penn associate professor of sociology Grace Kao, who was featured in the March 15 issue of Penn Current, chose to study this age group in her latest work on friendship, entitled “Do You Like Me as Much as I Like You? Friendship Reciprocity and Its Effects on School Outcomes among Adolescents.”

Hoping for some profound insights into the nature of friendship, I was disappointed to find that the study primarily focused on friendship trends along race lines and how these trends reflected on the kids’ grades. Just like every other work on the sociology of friendship, Kao’s study played the race card. Not that race is irrelevant — everyone knows that race has everything to do with our relationships. But that’s the point. We already know that all the black kids sit together at the lunch table, all the Asian kids sit together, etc.

What’s more interesting about Kao’s study is how she defines friendship. She specifically uses the term “reciprocal friendship,” defined as a mutual agreement between two children that they are indeed friends. In other words, friendship can only be determined by a personal evaluation on the part of the subject. Now, I don’t know about you, but as a kid, I had a new best friend every week. My friendships were about as stable as Webmail.

And in college, it seems that the title of “friend” becomes even more tenuous and arbitrary. There are the mere acquaintances, with whom you cross paths occasionally, be it one wild night, one semester, or even a couple of years. Fellow classmates, floormates, co-workers, and organization members usually fall into this category.

Then there are the old high school friendships, separated by distance and maintained by regular Facebook messages that go something like, “I miss you!!! <3 <3 <3.” You’re reluctant to let go of these friends, but honestly, you’ve grown apart. And you can continue on down the spectrum until you get to the lifelong friends, the “bosom friends,” if you will — those precious few who will make up your wedding party, become the godparents of your children, and perhaps attend your funeral.

Friendships, sometimes unlike friends themselves, come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. As such, the term “friendship” is utterly subjective.

I guess there are some things that the sociology professors just can’t teach us. But you know what they say — most of the lessons learned in college are taught outside of the classroom.

Eve Herold of the Genetics Policy Institute discusses whether the U.S. should fund embryonic stem cell research.(Jeff Hammond/DP)

“The Great Stem Cell Debate” — an event that could make Biology majors salivate and campus politicos drop their books. Last Tuesday, almost eighty people came to hear a debate over funding for embryonic stem cells. These are the most controversial of the larger class of “progenitor” cells which can mature in to every other type of cell in the body. But the debate isn’t just about embryonic stem cell research, even though the discussion usually gets caught on the thorny political and ethical issues surrounding it.

Fortunately, scientific advancements may soon make the debate over embryonic stem cells obsolete. And we need look no further than the cutting-edge research occurring next door at the Penn Medical School.

Last June, Assistant Professor Dr. George Xu announced that his group had isolated a new form of progenitor cell, adding to the list of “adult” stem cells that can be procured without embryonic destruction. Adult stem cells are cells that can only create a specific family of cells in the body. Bone marrow, for instance, acts through stem cell differentiation to give rise to all blood cells. Dr Xu’s study in the American Journal of Pathology demonstrated that by using conditions typically used to grow embryonic stem cells, cells from hair follicles could become “multi-potent” – ie, turn into several types of cells in the body. By changing the molecular environment, the hair cells differentiated into nerve cells, smooth muscle cells, and skin pigmentation cells.

According to an e-mail interview with Dr. Xu, adult stem cells have unique features that are beneficial and distinguish them from embryonic stem cells. “Adult stem cells have not been shown, as embryonic stem cells have, to produce unwanted tumors”. Further, stem cells can be derived from the same patient, eliminating the “need for immunosuppressive therapy” to combat physiologic rejection. Adult stem cells have already seen clinical success through bone marrow transplants, which have “saved many lives already”. Through his work, Dr. Xu argues that adult stem cells are “a productive alternative to embryonic stem cells.”

The promise of adult stem cells relies on the ability to determine the ideal conditions for growing the specific types of cells demanded. Researchers are continuing to investigate these conditions, with work such as Dr. Xu’s adding to the legitimacy of this line of study. As Dr. Xu asserts, “Funding for adult stem cells is equally as important as for embryonic stem cells.” And as more research universities are funding adult stem cell trials, Penn will continue to compete in this promising area of investigation.

A cab driver is hauled away for disorderly conduct, after a confrontation with Parking Authority Officials over accepting credit card payments. (NBC10)

I am now a card-carrying member of the Blogsbe Nation.

It took a lot for me to admit that. But fellow blogger Ruben Brosbe has me enthralled, ever since I learned yesterday that NBC10 conducted a major investigation on a story he broke months ago.

It seems, in the shadow of Stephen Morse’s departure, we have another investigative journalist person in our midst. At least Brosbe hasn’t resorted to traffic lights and street lamps…yet.

More than a month ago, on Feb. 6, Brosbe reported that the much-advertised credit card machines in Philadelphia taxis were of little use — many drivers refused to accept plastic. This, despite vehement insistence from cab company representatives that credit cards are accepted by all cabbies.

It’s certainly understandable.

Cabbies must fork over 5 percent of their fare when customers pay by credit card, and unlike cash payments, the drivers don’t actually receive the money right away (not to mention many other feesupwards of $80,000 alone.

But the card machines have been installed, and companies advertise their use. So when cabbies started refusing to accept the cards, as Brosbe reported more than a month ago, we at the DP knew trouble was brewing.

Well, yesterday, the lid blew off. On Monday, NBC10 (known for its lack of covering anything substantive) conducted an undercover investigation, confirming Brosbe’s findings and showing cabbies refusing to accept the cards.

[Coming six week's after Brosbe's report, NBC10 must be a little behind in their Spin reading. On a side note, I have personally confirmed that 6ABC anchorman Jim Gardner is a regular reader.]

So yesterday, the Philadelphia Parking Authority, which controls the taxis, issued an executive order mandating that all cabs accept credit card payments and conducted a crackdown at the Philadelphia Airport. NBC10 was there, cameras rolling:

The Video

Some cabbies are claiming to be striking, but it seems as though the Parking Authority will win this round. With the authority to cut off a driver’s ability to legally drive a taxi in the city, they hold most of the cards in this deck.

Props to NBC10, but hopefully they’ll be a little faster in jacking our reporting next time. Or they’ll give us a shoutout.

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