Today is President’s Day, the federal holiday honoring the February birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln — our two finest presidents. (Bush comes in a close third.) During their presidencies, both Washington and Lincoln fought hard for American freedoms; neither one, evidently, fought hard enough to get us a day off.

But I’m not going to spend the day being bitter. Instead, I’ve decided to honor the presidents who have graduated from this prestigious university in hopes that Penn sends more men and women into the oval office in the future. (And not as interns.)

After all, Penn has to have an illustrious list of White House alumni, right? Our Ivy peers have long lists of presidential grads: Harvard has sent seven men to the West Wing, among them JFK and FDR; Yale clocks in at five, including Clinton; even Columbia has sent three men to head the executive branch over the years. So it only makes sense that Penn has… one alumnus-turned-president? Really? Just one?

Now to add injury to insult: it’s William Henry Harrison.

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All the hullabaloo about Philly being the sixth borough has mostly died down, but apparently there are still New Yorkers relocating to Philly in droves (including Pressler herself).

According to a recent article in The New York Observer, 8,334 New Yorkers have moved to Philly since 2001. Not including me, that’s still 8,333 southbound souls.

While that’s only about 0.1% of New York’s population overall, 8000+ transplants are more than enough to keep the “Chinese bus” in business and the demand for Tacconelli’s strong.

And to think, I fancied myself unique.

Why the mass migration? And — more importantly, for those of us who favor a little competition: which city wins?

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Maybe it won’t be today. Or tomorrow, or next week.

But that Wharton kid in your Spanish class — the one in a polo shirt, with vague I-bank connections and a slightly funny smell — will get better-looking.

It may take five or ten years. Maybe it’s just a smidge better.

But it might be enough — for wedding bells.

Look, you’re probably more worried about Valentine’s Day 2008 than 2018. And who can blame you? Have a lovely day and avoid Rx.

Still, as an alum blogging from the future, here’s a different view of gold-digging than Kanye or Simeon.

Originally, I’d focused on the Ivy alumna’s plight. Entering my late 20s, many thriving female friends can’t find the ambitious, well-off partners they want. Take Miranda, dumped for being too successful…wait, I’m confusing reality with Sex and the City. Again.

Whatever. My Valentine’s Day post — “Wharton women: Prepare to be alone” — practically wrote itself.

… until I read about “boy toy” and “sugar mama” meet-and-greets. Or heard of a man getting divorced when grad school ended, after wifey paid his tuition.

As women increasingly take high-paying jobs, is gold-digging back — with men now chasing security?

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So, click on this link, and see how the month is spelt. Yes, Febuary. On the Penn Ice Rink calendar. Sad thing is, this is almost certainly not a typo. Somebody thinks this is how it is spelt. The mispronunciation of FebRuary has long been a pet peeve of mine. You may gather from this that I have many pet peeves of the rather odd variety. You would be correct.

But seriously, what does it show about the education system? Not very much, I guess. I mean, Americans can’t spell anyway, and spelling is at the centre of a lot of stuff. But still, this is ridiculous. I usually have a sense of humour about these things. Laughing brings colour to my cheeks (which, if you look at my picture, you will realise is rather hard to do), yet I cannot stomach this.

And see where this lack of spelling, this adoption of American “English”, as got you? Now you can’t spell February. What’s next, the University of Pencilvania? The Younited States of America? Defense? Plow?

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It’s no secret that humans are getting older. Medical reports have identified dozens of reasons for this trend, among them healthy eating and exercise. And one professor — University of California’s Michael Rose — predicts rather drastic life expectancies for the near future.

“In 400 years, people will live to be 1,000,” Rose told the Orange County Register a few years ago. “We’ll be playing golf in our 900s.” (”Fore!” “What?” “FORE!!” “What?!?”)

By Rose’s estimates, some humans alive today will go on to be 200 years old. Just imagine how crowded Denny’s will be.

By my count, a 200-year lifespan means a few things. First, Larry King might live another 30 years. Second, somebody somewhere is working on new Viagra that could raise the dead. (As opposed to the near-dead.) And third, people will soon get a lot uglier. And smaller. And more out of touch with today’s youth.

So is older really better? Apparently, Penn answers this question with a resounding “yes.”

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Okay, so tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. I always saw the holiday as an opportunity for women to bitch at men for not knowing what they really like (what girl wouldn’t love the DVD box set of “24″?). Where did this wretched holiday originate?

With the Christians. The name, obviously, comes from a guy named St. Valentine. The problem, however, is that the Catholic Church has records of three Christian martyrs named Valentine. Conveniently, according to legend, they all happened to die on February 14th. The more widely-adopted explanation for the mid-February date is that the Church wanted to overshadow the pagan holiday of Lupercalla.

This is a true shame, because Lupercalla was pretty much the shit. After a goat was sacrificed, the boys of the ‘hood would cut it into strips, marinate them with blood, and then run around the neighborhood, slapping women with the pieces of goat flesh. Unlike unappreciative modern women, the Roman ladies wanted nothing more than to be struck by a former goat thigh, as it made them more fertile for the upcoming year.

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To quote an American Hero, I called it!

A while back I proclaimed my love of Scrabulous, and described that it was “basically an un-investigated copyright infringement on Scrabble.” Well, make that investigated. A few weeks ago Hasbro slapped a cease & desist on Scrabulous, citing, duh, copyright infringement.

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I’ve always pondered the lives of journalists. Most of the time, I’m envious of their world travels, their intimacy with countless subjects and their dogged spirit. Other times… well, not so much.

Case in point: I just read a story about a prank at a Philly high school involving dozens of chickens and even more chicken feces. Over the weekend, apparently, a crafty student sneaked countless hens and roosters into the school’s halls and abandoned them until their discovery early yesterday morning. The result? Hilarity, school cancellation and one big steaming pile of soft news. (Among other big steaming piles.)

But I feel bad for any journalist who had to cover the prank. This is the kind of story where some up-and-coming AP reporter gets a call around 6 a.m. about “school crime in Philly.” In his mind, this could be the story that makes his career. He gets excited, puts on his best I-make-less-than-you-but-know-a-lot-more clothes, runs outside to hail a taxi and tells the cabbie to “make it there before those Reuters bastards.”

Then he gets to the scene and almost immediately steps in chicken shit.

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People always said Hill College House was like getting the clap — no one wanted it, but at best would always be an indisputable stamp of sociability.

Personally, I saw Hill differently. I called it the house of nurture. Its first-class brunch made me strong: as a weak freshman, I quickly developed the guts needed to survive at Penn. Brunch was also a time to relax, to unwind. It was a time to exchange ideas over gourmet omelets and cappuccino. And last weekend, after some weird Rocky Horror shit, I did the Time Warp, and there I was, in Hill.

But instead of hunger, I felt sharp pangs of guilt. 

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The Archbishop of Canterbury is the operational head of the Church of England and de facto spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, known here as the Episcopalian Church. Invented purely because Henry VIII was horny. Never come between a man and his new booty when he is also head of a nation. Just ask Nicolas Sarkozy, president of those randy French.

The present Archbishop, Dr. Rowan Williams, recently commented that aspects of Sharia (basically Islamic law) should be given legal standing with English law. This subsequently managed to piss off, well, everyone. Condemnation has poured in from across the entire political spectrum. From crazy knee-jerk xenophobes who railed against accommodating Islam in Britain’s Christian heritage to those frightened about the limiting of women’s rights, no-one seems to be happy with the Archbishop’s thinking. There have been calls for him to resign.

I, too, disagree. But not because of the vicious reasons that people have been, rather disconcertingly, espousing over the last week.

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