Finally A CMC Professor-Endorsed Petition I Can Get Behind

While Professor Bassam Frangieh supports Hezbollah via petition, Dean of Faculty Greg Hess and Visiting Professor Charles Calomiris don't support the Fed's QE2 in the pages of the Wall Street Journal via petition.

Yes, I know they aren't equivalent. That's the point, really. But neither is Professor Miller's ballot testimony and Professor Hezbollah's support of Hezbollah and that sure didn't stop President Gann from comparing the two on the weaselly academic freedom argument. So how about it? Why is ballot policy singled out and not monetary policy?

I'm being facetious, but I'm dead serious about being against a deadly terrorist organization. (Oh, and the monetary policy stuff is bad, too.)

Nick Friedman PO '05 on Entrepreneurship and His Junk Removal Firm

Nick Friedman PO '05 discusses his startup "College Hunks Hauling Junk," which he started back at Pomona College. The firm now includes 33 franchises, a fleet of more than 50 trucks, 30 corporate employees and 100 employees system-wide.

Ath Speaker Andrew Sorkin, As Entrepreneurial Journalist

An early November Telegraph profile of Andrew Ross Sorkin is definitely worth reading if you are just who he is, what he has going on, and how he has been able to make serious amounts of money essentially filtering the financial news. Have a look at these interesting paragraphs, reproduced here. Note, by way of interest, how Michael Arrington CMC '1992 is mentioned and how his company, TechCrunch was acquired by AOL (whoever they are...) for some $25 million. Anyways, here's Sorkin musing on the fate of online journalism.

Sorkin may have failed to have brought about any lasting reformation in the financial world through his writing, but he is part of new breed of entrepreneurial journalists, blazing an unmatchable trail in their respective areas of expertise and using the power of technology to do so. Nick Denton, a British financial journalist, has made a fortune out of his Gawker Media empire, an American blog network. Mike Allen now ‘owns’ politics through Politico. And Michael Arrington, editor and founder of TechCrunch, recently bought by AOL for $25m (£15m), has created the ‘go-to’ website for technology.

Sadly for Sorkin, he doesn’t even own single a share of his creation, despite calling himself Dealbook’s father. The New York Times owns the lot, so if it were ever to sell it on, he wouldn’t see any return. But despite missing that opportunity, Sorkin is excited about what opportunities technology offers media.

“More and more smaller entities, such as Politico or TechCrunch have been able to come out of nowhere and own entities. Dealbook, like them, now has an even greater opportunity, through additional resources, to drill down and offer even more breaking news and deep analysis of the issues that matter to our audience,” he explains.

And that’s how Sorkin thinks technology has really affected journalism. “Before the web and these highly focused entities, journalists got to decide what was important to tell their audience and educated their readers,” he explains.

“Now journalists have to try and understand what their consumer actually wants to read and what angle they are looking for in order to keep audiences engaged in a highly competitive world.”

Lifestyles of the Printeratti

Whosoever tells you that print journalism is dead, have a look-see at the apartment that tomorrow's Ath speaker Andrew Ross Sorkin bought for $2.35 million. There must be some money in it. Or perhaps he did one of two things that I have always wanted to do 1) marry rich or 2) be born into it.

Jonathan Lethem, PO Prof, On the Novel, Misuses of Nostalgia, and Undiscovered New York City

Have a gander at this BigThink.com! 

As my college (and perhaps my academic) career winds down, oftentimes I say to myself I wish I had taken more literature courses. I'm certain that had I had the time I would have taken Jonathan Lethem's class at Pomona on creative writing or more courses from Robert Faggen, who, contrary to his reputation as a jerk, is a very brilliant man.

Ah, what a torture it is to wish something. I wonder (or is it wish?) that there are parallel universes where the other Charles C. Johnsons of the universe might be able to enjoy the things I wish I could follow in this life. I imagine getting to meet those other Charles C. Johnsons and learning from them.

Maybe that's what heaven is like, assuming, of course, that there is one. 

Anyways, I wish also that I had thousands of dollars in the bank, that I could spend my days leisurely, reading and writing to my heart's content, or traveling the world. Alas. Perhaps for my future children? Here's to wishing. But isn't that what the novel is all about? Wishing things were so?