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About ArmaVirumque ( AHR-mah wih-ROOM-kweh) In the Aeneid, the Roman poet Virgil sang of "arms and a man" (Arma virumque cano). Month in and month out, The New Criterion expounds with great clarity and wit on the art, culture, and political controversies of our times. With postings of reviews, essays, links, recs, and news, Armavirumque seeks to continue this mission in accordance with the timetable of the digital age. Recent posts
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Dec 24, 2005 03:49 PM Happy Festivus from Columbia University by James Panero
Sacrifice a goat and praise be to Mithras--it’s holiday season at Columbia University. It was almost two years ago that we reported on Columbia’s anti-Christian iconoclasm: gone, suddenly, were the crosses from the crown of the university symbol. So if there’s a war on Christmas this year, you can be sure that Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger and his wife Jean Magano Bollinger want in. Religiously inclined Columbia students and alumni were treated to just such an affront last week with the arrival in their mailboxes of the Bollinger holiday card. Well, even "holiday card" would be giving this bit of Yule tide dreariness a little too much credit--the image on the card looked more like an invitation to an out-there Chelsea galley than a bit of Christmas cheer: on the front image of the card, a cobweb-like arrangement of blue strands weave themselves among four rectangular objects. Just what is it, anyway? It takes an explanation on the back of the card to make sense of it all (a holiday card with a wall label--how pomo). It reads: Alternating current electrical signals are used to move and align single-walled carbon nanotubes, with diameters 100,000 times smaller than a human hair, into networks between metal electrodes. These networks represent tiny functional transistor device prototypes. Courtesy of Professor Irving Herman and Dr. Sarbajit Banerjee as part of Columbia’s Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center funded by the National Science Foundation and New York State Office of Science, Technology, and Academic Research.The miracle of Christmas explained! Bollinger’s card belongs on the mantelpiece as the latest specimen of Christmas humbug. Jacob Marley, where art thou?
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