Via “Public University Snapshots”,  NY Times:

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES

LESS 165 courses and 428 staff positions cut, 162 hiring searches canceled, salaries reduced by $37 million.

MORE Almost 56,000 applicants for this fall, an increase of 9 percent — half with grade-point averages of 4.0 or above.

[Ed. Note: What’s the role of the public university? Is it not, to educate the local population, minus a gatekeeper system? Because as it stands, due to the financial crisis and the sky-rocketing amount of qualified applicants, most of the UC’s — but Berkeley and UCLA, in particular — haven’t been so public. (“Public” applies to not only funding, but also a university’s expressed mission to educate the community it resides in.) The increasingly higher number of applicants means that less kids from middle class and lower middle class backgrounds are accepted, no matter their qualification, because an increase in applicants also means that there are more students who are from the upper social tier, who are also over qualified, and can pay without financial assistance or are even able to pay more — if from out of state — making them more desirable to a university in this economic climate. Not to mention, the “rich kids” are generally better prepared. This leaves out the young and promising, who didn’t have the same access to preparatory curriculums, SAT courses, and such. This financial crisis may end up hurting more people than we can count.]

Via “Top Ten Covers of the ’00s”, The Book Archive Blog:

Top Ten of Covers of the ’00s

To summarize a decade’s worth of brilliant design with 20 covers is little more than an exercise in futility. We can all agree, however, that the best part of passing into a new digit bracket is the lists that come with it. This collection is little more than a representation of my own tastes, but I tried to choose works which were representative of their respective years.

I beat myself up quite a bit when putting this together, but there are still a handful of notables worth mentioning:

- Any of gray318’s covers for Safran Foer.
- Any of Kidd or Gall’s covers for Murakami
- Anything from Henry Sene Yee
- Anything from Paul Buckley or Darren Haggar over at Penguin US.

Full List.

Via ilovehotdogs:

Remember the end of high school? Everyone’s all “Sign my yearbook!”, stiff “ass out” hugs, Kodak moments and “Keep in touch!”. You and your besties go your separate ways hoping to reconnect, catch up over a few lines and reminisce about the good ole days. You go to college for a while and it’s alright: more girls and more drugs, but something’s missing. You decide to go home for a visit only to find out that a few things have changed. Your high school girlfriend is now boning your best friend who is now a “man sandal” wearing junkie. You’re bummed and confused, so what do you do next?

P-A-R-T-Y! And when I say party, I’m talking full-blown eighties party: walls of televisions, crazy lighting, fake ice, tons of coke and fake penguins?! Is there any other kind of party? Umm, NO. You go on with your days, stoned, a zombie dragging from one scene to the next…You wonder, what the hell happened? Is this my future? Suddenly, reality check! You realize that you are rich and nothing bad can ever happen to you. Ever.

I’ve seen Less Than Zero a million times and it never gets old. It’s like a long form music video where everyone has these awkward drug induced interactions and confrontations but it works. Clay (Andrew McCarthy) is perfectly pouty, his baby face is so adorable that it’s painful. Blair (Jami Gertz) is dim, beautiful and perfectly styled. Julian is Robert Downey Jr. playing a more strung out version of himself; And James Spader (Ace of Spades!) is all Dep® hair gel, sweaters, and slick talk. They make you want to be a part of their world, but you wake up and realize you could never afford to.

And Rick Rubin produced the soundtrack. Nuff said.