Food Week

FOOD WEEK | If Cornell Majors Were Halloween Candies

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Engineering = Warheads

For some reason, Mech-E’s and Chem-E’s think they’re at war with every other major at Cornell, and won’t go more than two minutes without reminding you that they’re engineers and that your major is inferior. They treat every project or interview like it’s a life-or-death situation and you think they might explode at any given moment. They’re also incredibly sour about everything, to the point where it’s not even worth asking them how their day went. Also, doesn’t that logo just look like an engineer? Applied Economics and Management = Gummy Worms

People always call AEM majors snakes and this is the closest thing we could think of to snakes.

Entertainment

AKABAS | What is the Nolan-iest Christopher Nolan Film?

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Across three Batman movies, five movies with cool-sounding one-word titles, and one movie you’ve probably never heard of, director Christopher Nolan has developed a distinctive style. So, with his latest film, Dunkirk, hitting theaters today, we’re going to answer a very important question. Instead of tackling the unanswerable question of which Nolan film is the best, we’re going to determine which Nolan film is the most typical of Nolan’s style. And we’re going to do it by running each of his movies through the following formula:

Overall Quality – 10 points: Nolan films are high in quality, so the higher quality a movie is, the more Nolany it is. Information Withheld – 20 points: One of the many reasons that Nolan’s films are so engaging is that he forces us to play detective along with the characters, putting us in their shoes.

Entertainment

AKABAS | 10 NBA Offseason Questions, Asked and Answered

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For how many more finals do you anticipate the two teams will be the Warriors and Cavs (i.e. the next 3,4,5 years?)
– Kyrollos B.

Basically the Warriors’ entire roster is entering free-agency this offseason. Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant are going to do what it takes to both re-sign, but what about the other guys? Andre Iguodala seems to be seriously considering offers from other teams. In the 2015 Finals, his insertion into the starting lineup swung a series in which the Cavaliers were underratedly close to going up 3-0. In this year’s Finals, the Warriors were +60 with Iguodala on the court and, drumroll please… -26 with him on the bench!!! It’s surprising, but not unexplainable.

Entertainment

AKABAS | 10 NBA Finals Questions, Asked and Answered

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When the NBA season came to a close on Monday night, I had too many thoughts to sort out, so I decided to let my friends do it for me by sending me questions. Below are my answers to 10 questions about the 2017 NBA Finals, ranging from most simple to most complex. Very Simple Questions

Is ball even life? – Brian R.

Yes. Ball is still life.

Office Hours

AKABAS | Podcast with Psychology Professor David Pizarro

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David Pizarro has taught Introduction to Psychology and a number of other seminars since becoming an associate professor in 2012, and his research on moral judgement and emotion has been published in countless places, including an article for The Guardian that he co-wrote last month. He was nice enough to be the guest for my first Cornell Daily Sun podcast, during which he discussed his research, shared his thoughts on robots, and answered ten “Speed Round” questions. Listen to the full podcast and check out the complete list of topics below. Moral Judgement
1:30 – “The Trolley Problem” and its relation to robots making moral judgements
10:55 – Why humans don’t trust others who make calculating moral decisions
15:00 – A fun variant of “The Trolley Problem”
19:10 – How close are robots to taking over decision-making roles in society? 23:10 – Robots replacing referees in sports
Disgust and Political Orientation
28:15 – The relationship between disgust sensitivity and political orientation
35:00 – Could political orientation be biological?

Entertainment

AKABAS | 6 Things the NBA Could Do with the Rookie of the Year Trophy

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This NBA season, not a single rookie who played more than half of his team’s games averaged at least nine points per game while shooting at least 46%. For context, those were the 2016-17 statistics of 35-year-old defensive-specialist Tony Allen. For further context, two years ago the Warriors came back from down 2-1 to defeat the Grizzlies in the Western Conference Semifinals by literally ignoring Tony Allen’s offensive presence.  

The Rookie of the Year trophy is typically given to the best rookie from a particular season (which seems obvious, but since the Academy almost never awards Best Picture to the best picture, you never know). This season, however, begs the question: is giving a trophy to a player less offensively adept than Tony Allen really the best use for it, or are there better options?

Entertainment

AKABAS | Bracketology: Who/What Is Winning 2017?

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There are many things that literally everyone on Earth hates, such as airplane seats without flaps to rest your head, Hayden Christensen’s performance in the Star Wars prequels and those stairs leading to the footbridge at Cornell that are the worst possible length – it’s uncomfortable to go one step per stair and it’s even more uncomfortable to go two steps per stair. There aren’t many things that literally everyone on Earth loves, but one of those things is March Madness, the NCAA basketball tournament. A single-elimination bracket – the concept that you need to win every single game to stay in it – is ingenious. Since March Madness ended earlier this week, let’s start a new bracket to determine who or what has had the best 2017 so far. The competitors were determined subjectively by me, and the seeds, listed below, were determined primarily by number of Twitter followers (credit to former Grantland-writer Rembert Browne for this idea).

Entertainment

AKABAS | 24 Moonlit Memes

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Last night, after discovering that his film had, in fact, not won the Oscar for Best Picture, La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz took the mic, reverse-Kanye’d, and immediately overtook Denzel Washington crying and Nicole Kidman clapping as the meme of the evening. In honor of Moonlight’s win for studio A24, and to thank the movie gods that Moonlight won after La La Land was announced and not the other way around, I created 24 memes to celebrate the occasion.  

There you have it: 24 memes. Let’s take a moment, though, to ruminate on Moonlight’s win. The storyline here isn’t The Academy finally choosing the best picture of the year to win Best Picture; I loved both La La Land and Moonlight, and I believe the former to be a near-perfect film, memorable and thought-provoking in its own right. The storyline isn’t The Academy choosing a movie about and made by African-Americans – 12 Years A Slave won just three years ago. 

The storyline is that The Academy selected a Best Picture that will actually have the most cultural significance and lasting impact decades from now.

Entertainment

AKABAS | John Wick Club Scene vs. Kingsman Church Scene: Which Is The Better Killing Spree?

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Every time I take a shower, I think about one of three questions:

If it weren’t for the Middle Ages, where nobody did s*** for 900 years, just how advanced would human civilization be right now? Does Anderson Varejao or Robin Lopez look more like Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons? Is the club scene from John Wick or the church scene from Kingsman: The Secret Service the better killing spree?  

What are we about to do? Determine whether the John Wick club scene or the Kingsman church scene is the better killing spree.

Entertainment

AKABAS | A Way Too In-Depth Analysis of Corinne’s Nanny Situation On The Bachelor

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Meet Corinne. She is a contestant on Season 21 (yup, that’s not a typo) of The Bachelor, she inherited her family’s million dollar business, she is 24 years old and she has a nanny. A personal, live-in nanny. On Monday’s episode of The Bachelor, the greatest competition ever invented by mankind other than SlamBall, when Corinne was interrogated by the other girls on the show about said nanny, she launched into an epic monologue about said nanny. There is easily accessible video evidence of this on YouTube, which gives me hope that we haven’t utterly failed as a society, but here’s the transcript:
Raquel keeps my life together, okay?