Speaking of asinine signs, check out the one on the side of Copa Banana:

Come to Copa for Philly’s “best” margaritas, burgers, and fries. It’s brilliant. To the casual observer, they promise top-notch food and drinks, but if you try to pin them down they’re not actually claiming anything.

More people should try this tactic. Forget U.S. News & World Report, let’s just tell people we go to the “best” school in the country. Philadelphia is the “safest” city around. The Eagles are “first place” in the NFC East.

Mom, if you’re reading, I’m getting a “4.0″ this term, and I’m going to be “employed” next year.

Apparently my semi-weekly web scavenger hunts for sex-related news failed me last month. Focused on promoting kinky sex, I missed an msnbc article about a major scientific breakthrough: hormonal birth control for men.

The good news: It’s feasible. Drugs in the trial phase are already working well. No fun side effects so far; now you don’t even have to get high to lower your sperm count!

The bad news:

“It is time for men to have some control. I think it would empower men and deter some women out there from their nefarious plans,” says [a trial participant]. “Some women are out there to use men to get pregnant. This could deter women from doing this.”

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Apparently not at Dartmouth. But could Penn students find her?

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CollegeHumor recently released their power rankings. The index lists which schools are best “for having the maximum amount of fun while putting forth the least amount of effort.”

Not only did Penn not make the list, we were beaten by both Penn State (#1) and Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I barely knew Indiana was a state, let alone that they had their own University of Pennsylvania. (Is it Indiana University of Pennsylvania or The Indiana University of Pennsylvania? - either way it makes no sense and I don’t care.)

Schools were ranked on things like percentage female, bar closing time, and percentage Greek. Penn would do very well in these areas and dominate categories such as closest Taco Bell, freshmen retention rate, and stadium size (so what if it never has people in it?).

The biggest problems Penn has are average SAT scores, concert quality, and number of male vocal groups. We can’t help it that we’re smart, and SPEC has been improving their concert selection. The only way we can climb up this ranking is to ditch the Male Vocal Groups. We have at least six by my count, giving us twice as many as the “lowest scorer” in the Top 50.

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CNN and YouTube hosted a debate for the Democratic presidential candidates in July (the Republicans get their turn tomorrow). Then MySpace and MTV collaborated for presidential dialogues at universities. Now, yesterday, Facebook announced a joining of forces with ABC News to sponsor upcoming presidential debates.

If you watched the CNN-YouTube and were dismayed by the lack of quality questions chosen, you weren’t alone. That’s because the audience that loiters and fools around with YouTube isn’t that quality either. And then the MySpace-MTV forums featured even more watered down questions that barely grasped the surface of politics. We’re talking about MTV — synonymous with style over substance. So the basket is set low for Facebook to slam dunk.

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And you thought the Water Buffalo incident was ridiculous.

Apparently, Philadelphia Weekly published a cute-animal-themed-holiday guide a few weeks ago. The merits of such an idea are questionable, but not relevant here. What’s relevant is the front cover of that magazine, which you can see here.

If you’re not a hyperlink-clicker, I’ll just explain it to you. It’s a hamster with those little curly sideburns, wearing a yarmulke, pawing a dreidel. Get it? It’s a Jewish hamster.

Which is, obviously, heinously anti-Semitic.

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Kudos to IvyGate for finding this clip of The Spin’s favorite Penn alum. John Fitzgerald Page is back with a message! Heed his warning!

“If this could happen to an Ivy League grad, and someone, you know, who has an IQ like mine this could happen to anybody.”

You too could suffer the incredible backlash of having people removing you from their friends page!

On another note, I can’t figure out his stance on whether or not the emails were his own personal, private, personal, business or not. He really needs to clarify that more.

While we’re away with family and friends giving thanks, keep in mind the great people working our dining halls every day to make sure we’re well fed.

I’m on the full meal plan, so I eat all the time at Hill. I pretty much know most the people workin’ there.

Bernard (a.k.a “Bernie”) has worked the grill at the dining hall in Hill College House for 12 years and loves doing it. You’ve probably seen him before. He works most days and I always chit chat with him for a few minutes. He gives good advice to “hang in there” when some days are tough to get through. He’s here for us (Penn students) and told me so: “What they may not know is that I’m here to please them.” He’s proud to fuel the future, and that’s why we should give thanks to some of the excellent dining staff we have.

Thanksgiving means different things to all of us. For most Americans, it means a tryptophan-induced coma topped off with pumpkin pie. For Penn professors, it’s an excuse to give an extra paper assignment, 300 pages of reading, and a midterm on Monday. For international students, it means attending lectures on the “history” of Thanksgiving.

Here are a few things about Penn that I’m thankful for:

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Apparently, those kids offering free Red Bull and other products outside Huntsmen aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their heart. I’m sure this isn’t earth shattering news (though I wonder if it might be more effective to peddle Red Bull outside of DRL — just a thought). I found these two quotes in the article pretty interesting though.

Red Bull is one of a handful of companies that hires students to promote their products at college campuses, and, at Penn, students represent companies ranging from Apple to American Airlines to Playboy.

As a rep for Apple, College senior John Kneeland, a former DP blogger, sets up a booth at Computer Connection to promote Apple products.

Or, as he describes the job: “sit around, look good, use a Mac.”

So if the Mac guy sits around, looking good, using the product, what do you think the Playboy rep does?