02.14.13 VOL. XLIV, NO. 14

The Indy is falling quickly in and out of love.Cover Design by ANNA PAPP

President Editor-in-Chief

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CONTENTSFORUM

3 Watch Out, Cary Grant4 Modern Meaninglessness5 E-Love

NEWS6 Three's Not a Crowd7 Speed Dating Scientists

ARTS8 And the Award Should Go To9 Portraits of Love

10 Love You Like a Love Song

SPORTS11 Hot Bods

Angela Song '14Christine Wolfe '14Sayantan Deb '14Miranda Shugars '14

Whitney Gao '16 Curtis Lahaie '15 Sean Frazzette '16Alex Chen '16Milly Wang '16Kalyn Saulsberry '14Sarah Rosenthal '15Travis Hallett '14

Anna Papp '16John McCallum '16Maria Barragan-Santana '14Tarik Moon '15

Albert Murzakhanov '16

Michael Altman '14Meghan Brooks '14 Whitney Lee '14

Claire Atwood '16Xanni Brown '14Clare Duncan '14 Gary Gerbrandt '14 Travis Hallett '14 Yuqi Hou '15Cindy Hsu '14 Chloe Li '16Orlea Miller '16Albert Murzhakanov '16 Carlos Schmidt '15 Frank Tamberino '16

As Harvard College's weekly undergraduate newsmagazine, the Harvard Independent provides in-depth, critical coverage of issues and events of interest to the Harvard College community. The Independent has no political affiliation, instead offering diverse commentary on news, arts, sports, and student life.

For publication information and general inquiries, contact President Angela Song (president@harvardindependent.com) or Managing Editor Sayantan Deb (managingeditor@harvardindependent.com). Letters to the Editor and comments regarding the content of the publication should be addressed to Editor-in-Chief Christine Wolfe (editorinchief@harvardindependent.com).

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The Harvard Independent is published weekly during the academic year, except during vacations, by The Harvard Independent, Inc., Student Organization Center at Hilles, Box 201, 59 Shepard Street, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Copyright © 2013 by The Harvard Independent. All rights reserved.

harvardindependent.com 3The Harvard Independent • 2.14.13

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This Thing Called

LoveMy grandfather controls my love life from the beyond.

By FRANK TAMBERINO

Love is like football. You summon the courage to jump on the field only to get the crap kicked

out of you. And also, everyone has superstitions as to how the game works, some of which are stranger than others…

My grandfather passed away three years ago. A few months later, I met both my best friend and my first love. Since then, I have secretly believed that my grandfather introduces me to the right people at the right time. If a girl turns out to be just another girl, then the meeting was not his handiwork. As an instrument of fate, Poppy holds the reins on my sorry excuse for a love life.

Poppy met my grandmother when he was seventeen. In my mind, his life was a fuzzy, romanticized quest for love and passion. Throughout high school, I followed his lead by essentially living in the forties. My romantic exploits were so old school that I confused people more than I charmed them. I would walk up to girls I barely knew and ask them out to dinner and a movie. I would then get my mother and aunt to drive us downtown. As an Italian, I saw nothing wrong with my paesan being present.

Nowadays, the social landscape has changed significantly. It’s all about networking, parties, and meeting people through friends of friends of friends. It’s hard to hear the voice of fate over so much damn noise.

The best part of believing in fate is that when I do meet a nice girl, not only do I feel closer to my grandfather, but I get to be the lead in my own movie. Hopefully you’ve watched

the scene from 500 Days of Summer when Joseph Gordon-Levitt celebrates his newfound romance by dancing through the streets to ‘You Make My Dreams Come True.’ It’s exactly like that.

However, this world is mostly unforgiving to those of us who wear our hearts on our sleeves, looking for signs in the stars. Once we think something is meant to be, it’s hard to convince ourselves otherwise. A few years ago I was infatuated with this girl who I believed was a blonde package from heaven. After I bought her a movie ticket and dinner, she had me walk her home instead of meeting mia famiglia as was arranged. So it’s midnight, I’m halfway across Baltimore (yeah, as in The Wire), I have no idea where I am, and she leaves me on the street in front of her house. The least my grandfather could have done was call me a cab.

Now, for a normal, rational human being, this would have been a disastrous yet funny-in-hindsight sort of experience. For me, it was mostly just disastrous. If you’re not like me, try to remember when you discovered the truth about Santa Claus and you get the idea.

So what’s the diagnosis for this punishing condition? Well, if you can, get your hands on a eunuch or a time machine (preferably both). I read that in ancient Greece eunuchs were commissioned to interpret signs from the gods because their judgment was considered clear and unbiased (obviously). As for the time machine, it will take you back to the twenties when all of this was less of a headache and the traditional dating scene to

which you belong was just taking shape. Otherwise, you’re going to have to develop quite a thick hide, not only to take rejection and disappointment, but also to protect your insane ideas about destiny because—at the risk of sounding obscenely schmaltzy—there are others like you who would love to meet a fellow believer.

And finally, if you’re alone this Valentine’s Day, don’t listen to Someone Like You by Adele. For the love of God…

Frank Tamberino ’16 (franktamberino@college) wants to remind you that sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead.

ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN MCCALLUM

4 harvardindependent.com 2.14.13 • The Harvard Independent

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What Would Darcy Do?The case for romance (and muttonchops).

By CHRISTINE WOLFE

We joke about never finding anyone. We know from years of watching our families

fracture and our friends break up that, even when we do find someone, it often doesn’t work out. We’ve all watched enough gruesomely depressing indie movies — Blue Valentine, Brokeback Mountain, The Hours, An Education, etc. — to know how awful love can be. The culture of the past ten years or so has shocked us into reality, and there’s certainly some benefit to that. It’s better to know that life is a long onset of bitter disappointments and empty days than to pretend that something nice could possibly happen and be let down later — right?

With a beaten-down Michelle Williams and desperate Ryan Gosling at the back of our minds, we all just gave up. That’s what I’d call this inane scheme we’ve come up with to replace real relationships — giving up. It’s just too hard to be genuine, to let someone else into your life. The thought of having to go out on an actual date is so exquisitely embarrassing that we avoid it altogether. We have to get sickeningly drunk just to be brave enough to walk into a room with other people who might anonymously grind us. So we pretend that having sex with strangers and insignificant others is satisfying. That is never, ever going to be as satisfying as being in love.

The New York Times’ Alex Williams recently wrote an article called “The End of Courtship?”. It chronicles the modern dating scene, in which “hanging out has replaced dating.” Meeting through the Internet or through apps only facilitates the casual atmosphere of the “dating” scene for twenty-somethings. While hanging out is fun, what it really means is that these two people have

set a precedent of not taking each other seriously. What this means to many people is that they’re not worth being an exclusive partner, they’re not worth cancelling one night with friends, and they’re not worth a real, live phone call. So, with the very secret hope that something stable will appear, we move from person to person, trying our luck.

Perhaps this is only relevant to women — my chosen perspective only because I know it best. If all guys really want is sex, this new system works really well for them, because that’s all that will ever come out of it. And it’s not that the sex won’t be good, but it won’t be special. And it’s hard to believe that no one cares about that. Why else would our most popular entertainment value romance? After the end of Jim and Pam’s saga, everyone stopped watching The Office. The Twilight franchise has so far made $5.7 billion. There are countless entertainment societies dedicated to Pride and Prejudice—two hundred years after its publication. Yet women still have to remain objective about the whole thing. Watching romantic comedies is considered the lowest form of entertainment. Smart women, cool women, and women worth admiring aren’t sentimental.

In a society in which people have been degraded to deciphering text messages and getting dressed up for nothing, the people who often fare the best are people with so-called “traditional values.” Religious people our age have been taught to follow a structured pattern of courtship. It is a very important part of their life plan to get married. The majority of my religious friends are in the kinds of relationships the rest of us refuse to believe exist outside of mass media.

I’m certainly not suggesting that everyone revert back to religious values, but there is something to their desire to be in a relationship. They’re not embarrassed to want a companion, and they’re willing to try hard to make it work.

The rest of us aren’t trying to make a relationship work for the sake of going to Heaven or whatnot, but we try for the sake of giving a part of ourselves over to someone else’s care. It might be the most difficult thing we ever do, but what is difficult can also be the most rewarding. In having lost the worst — the potential for shame and sorrow — we have also lost the best — genuine companionship.

In November, I saw — God forbid I should say this in public — Breaking Dawn Part Two. It’s the last installment in the Twilight series, which I have read and seen in full. I received the first book for my thirteenth birthday, and I was enthralled by its dark romance. Stephanie Meyer is no great writer, but to imagine a life where men were dapper, protective, and obscenely passionate was all I and the millions of other readers needed out of her books. I had forgotten about the series over the years, though I did see the movies, which had little of the sensual intrigue of the books. So, when I dragged one of my friends from home to see the last movie, it was really out of habit more than interest.

However, on leaving the movie, I was overtaken by the strangest sensation. It was actually rather frightening: I felt my pulse suddenly skyrocket, my chest lapsing. I felt both like laughing and crying right in the middle of the AMC Loews Boston Common women’s bathroom. As I shuffled over to the paper towels, I

realized what had come over me: emotion. Full-blown, breathtaking emotion. It’s something I rarely remember in the numb onslaught of Harvard life. Not to say I am never happy or sad; that would be blatantly untrue. But having engrossed myself in a culture that values as little emotional effort as is necessary to get things done — not just at Harvard but throughout our generation — I have very few reasons to be gut-wrenched. I needed something as trite as Twilight to remind me how good it feels to feel.

It’s not just our own hearts that need a better system. What kind of art can come out of a society that cares about nothing? Masterpieces aren’t built on frames of nonchalance and distance, but obsession, passion, and loss. Even Hemingway, our most disillusioned writer, could not have made removal so profound without the clear desire for connectivity. Art is the expression of a people in time, and unresolved dissatisfaction is not what I want us to be remembered for.

It ’s not just my single-gir l complaints that real dating would fix, as I’d still have many of them even if we all got our act together. It’s our legacy as a living, breathing species that — more than any other living thing on earth — profoundly empathizes and desires. I wrote an essentially identical article for this issue last year. I’ll write it again and again until we fix things. Because I, and I imagine many of my peers, would rather be happy for a few months than feel nothing for the rest of our lives.

Christine Wolfe ’14 (crwolfe@college) would like to save face by pointing out that she has a profoundly meaningful appreciation of real literature.

How many cats make a cat lady? How can Honey Boo Boo’s mom have someone and I don’t? (Cause she’s America’s Sweetheart, that’s why).

#foreveralone

harvardindependent.com 5The Harvard Independent • 2.14.13

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I Found ‘Love’ in an HTML Place

Why I started online dating.By yUQI HOU

Did you know that you can tell if you’re attracted to someone within four minutes

of meeting them?” I asked my friend Jake as we headed towards the Yard. I was running late to a meeting, and I had run into Jake on the shuttle. Jake and I always had good conversations, but tonight we had started off discussing theories of attraction. When we reached the building where I would have my meeting, and I was about to go in, Jake paused and blurted, “You remember that fact you told me earlier? About the four minute rule? Well you’ve met me for more than four minutes now...”

This was the first time a guy at Harvard had asked me directly if I was interested in him. I felt like I was in elementary school again, handed one of those slips of paper that said, “Check if you like me, check if you don’t.” Only this was college, and attraction meant something different than a checked box.

I was so taken aback that he had broken the cardinal rule of indirect confessions that I balked. “Why don’t you just ask me on a date?” I demanded. To be honest, I freaked out a little, so I rushed inside the building with the lame excuse, “I’m late for a meeting.”

We’ve seen each other since, but I don’t see him trying to ask me on a date again.

Ironically, I had been complaining for much of the semester about how

I wish people at Harvard were more forward with their intentions and asked people they were interested in out on dates more often. When actually confronted with the very thing I asked for, however, I found that I would prefer a different approach instead: one that didn’t involve an immediate answer.

Perhaps his question threw me off because I wasn’t expecting it, but the gaps in our conversation had alerted me to something long before he actually mentioned anything. I’m just used to a different approach: I’m used to getting asked out in a setting where dating is the sole intent of interaction. Namely, I’m used to online dating.

Online dating makes the intentions clear at the beginning. If I don’t want to see you again, it’s because I’m not interested in you romantically. I don’t have to worry so much about ruining a friendship. I’m not necessarily declaring, “Hey, I like you” when I ask someone on a date or when I accept an invitation for a date, but “I’m interested, and I’d like to see how far that interest goes.”

When it comes to online dating, my first thought is something like, “Your profile seems interesting, and your pictures aren’t so bad. Maybe I’ll message you to see if we get along.” If the first few messages go well — and you don’t reveal anything crazy about yourself — I’ll ask you out for coffee. Maybe I’ll get a message back, saying yes, or maybe I never hear from you

again. If we end up meeting for a date and have a great time, I’ll agree to see you again. Most of my recent relationships have started through online dating.

Luckily, the stigma against online dating is on the decline as more people have either tried online dating or know someone who has used it. Just last year, Time reported that as many as 25 million people per month use an online dating site. Many of us will probably meet someone who has made an online dating account at some point in his or her life. In fact, I created an account on OkCupid last summer with the encouragement of Sarah, one of my closest friends at Harvard and a fellow sophomore.

Sarah met her current boyfriend through OkCupid. He was the only person with whom she had a match percentage of 99 percent. The match percentage is OkCupid’s way of determining how compatible you are with someone, which they generate based on a series of questions you answer about yourself. Sarah and her boyfriend have been together for almost three years now. I actually lived with both of them this summer in LA and found that he was nothing like the kind of guy I would expect to use an online dating site.

While I wasn’t looking for a long-term boyfriend when I moved out to LA, given Sarah’s success, I decided to try out OkCupid for myself. After all, I was in a new city where I didn’t

know many people, and going on dates certainly seemed like a good way to have fun and meet new people. I ended up going on several dates over the summer with people I had messaged on OkCupid, and my experiences basically taught me how to date. Though I met one or two guys who turned out to be duds, I also met guys who treated me really well.

Even if you make an online dating account and never meet anyone in person, getting multiple messages a day from strangers complimenting you — even if the compliments are mildly inappropriate — is still an ego-boost. My favorite message is one I never responded to: some guy messaged me to be his dominatrix because he had always wanted to learn to be submissive. I’ve sent a few failed messages myself, but I quickly forget which people have chosen not to respond to me. After all, I can always move on to another date. Perhaps I’m the stereotype of a person too shy to ask people out in real life, or maybe I’m just taking advantage of technology to make my dating life easier to deal with. Either way, online dating is on the rise, and whether or not we change our attitudes towards it is really up to the culture around us.

Yuqi Hou ‘15 (hou@college.harvard.edu) has walked away from most dates with a least one or two good stories to tell.

''

OkCupidEros, may you flit into my rear an arrow of your sweet love.If you’re into that.OkCupid, debatably the least controversial of dating sites/apps out there. You can see who’s viewed your profile and mutually mark each other as favorites. Messages range from “Hi, your pretty” to “Booty Caaaaaalllll.” While most of the users are either 17 or 45, this might just be your best bet for not getting murdered on your first date.

CraigslistIf you’re into sociopaths and chainsaws down your

abdomen, this is the place for you! Also, a good place to find cheap furniture.

WEB OF LOVE

"If he doesn’t joke about murdering you in the first hour of the date, he’s probably going to murder you. Run."

6 harvardindependent.com 2.14.13 • Th e Harvard Independent

NEWS

Traditionally, Valentine’s Day has been a holiday for couples. Although its history is largely shrouded in

mystery, the holiday — at least for the last few centuries — has consistently centered on the romance shared between two individuals. From the exchange of handwritten notes to printed and electronic cards, lovers have used this holiday to express their affection for one another.

It is diffi cult to imagine Valentine’s Day as anything other than a holiday for couples, although, supposedly, it’s also a day for singles — as it’s also appropriately, though not offi cially, named “Singles Awareness Day” (SAD). Despite the traditional purpose of Valentine’s Day as a celebration of couples’ love (or a reminder that you might be alone forever), others might view the holiday differently. What is Valentine’s Day to a triad, a group of three? A quad? Those in open relationships? Friends with benefi ts?

On February 6, in the Harvard College Women’s Center in Canaday basement, Joy Brooke Fairfi eld ’03, a PhD student at Stanford, delivered a talk on ethical non-monogamy — that is, on consensual relationships that deviate from the traditional form that consists of one man and one woman (and even from the less traditional yet increasingly tolerated formations of two men or two women). According to Fairfi eld, these relationships, sometimes called polygamous or polyamorous relationships, are a viable option for some people and could actually be benefi cial, both as a personal learning tool and as a tool for cultural resistance.

Fairfi eld argued that jealousy is a learned repertoire of human behavior; it is not a basic emotion, but rather a complex sentimental structure affected by culture and upbringing. In fact, the complexity of jealousy is diffi cult to represent in a single

word: Fairfi eld called it a “spectrum,” encompassing a vast array of emotions, such as envy, overprotectiveness, possessiveness, and fear of abandonment. Yet jealousy — in all of its guises — is something that our society doesn’t actively combat. “There are pills for depression and classes for anger management,” Fairfi eld said, “but nothing for jealousy.”

In our neoliberal society (i.e., one that views everything in terms of market exchange), jealousy ultimately converts relationships into mere commodities and instruments. Jealous emotions make us think of people as objects that we own, or as things that can bring us profi t. Jealousy makes us competitive, causing us to view relationships as a game, one whose end goal is to pop out babies and in which failure is reason for deep embarrassment.

But as a learned set of emotions shaped by the environment, jealousy is not destiny. And Fairfi eld argued that non-monogamous relationships could be a learning tool to overcome jealous emotions. According to Fairfi eld, the decision to participate in a non-monogamous relationship is a decision to commit to intense communication. It is a decision to work towards synthesizing your ideas with not just those of a partner, but perhaps with those of two, three, or more individuals. As a result, participants in non-monogamous relationships challenge the notion that people are commodities and instruments. By learning how to overcome jealousy, which is required in a non-monogamous relationship, participants “resist the grip of capitalist ideology.” They become less competitive and view their lovers not as baby-makers but as humans in their own right.

The decision to pursue a non-monogamous relationship is not an easy one, and as Fairfi eld explained from personal experience, it’s accompanied

by some distress and confusion. While she argued that non-monogamous relationships could be benefi cial, she also acknowledged the diffi culty that comes with society’s intolerance. We live in a “hetero-repro-monogamo-normative” society — that is, in a society dominated by straight couples focused on having children. Aristotle once said, “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” And our society seems to agree: Participants in non-monogamous relationships have no legal recognition and are often not taken seriously. While generally not the victims of violence like other sexual minorities, participants in non-monogamous relationships suffer from invisibility, as many people believe that non-monogamy is practiced only by the intensely religious or promiscuous.

At this point, Fairfi eld is working to combat this intolerance by making her own non-monogamous relationship healthy and discussing her relationship with others. According to Fairfi eld, this type of open discourse is at the root of cultural change. While she won’t yet be marching in Non-Monogamy Pride parades (the group still needs to clearly defi ne its goals, she says), perhaps this February 14th she’ll be celebrating the holiday not with one but with both of her lovers .

Curtis Lahaie ’15 (clahaie@college) will be lucky to spend Valentine’s Day with even ONE person.

More Love, Better Love?A Harvard alum talks polyamory.

By CURTIS LAHAIE

harvardindependent.com 7The Harvard Independent • 2.14.13

indyNews

For any science concentrator — or anyone even remotely interested in science — one of Harvard’s

brightest attractions is its plethora of research laboratories and the opportunity to get involved in them, even as an undergraduate student. However, finding the right lab can be a little like trying to find your way out of a labyrinth. It’s a maze of paperwork and outdated websites.

At least that was the case up until Marshall Zhang ’16, part of the Undergraduate Research Association, created HarvardLabs, the searchable, centralized database of Harvard’s research laboratories and professors. HarvardLabs, found at www.labs.hcura.org, was launched in mid-January to eliminate the stress of wading through department websites. It is meant to make the search for the right research position more intuitive and facilitate more communication between students and faculty. Zhang, who was heavily

involved in research throughout high school, believed that finding a research position in university would be simpler than it had been in high school.

When he found “how decentralized and outdated the faculty directories were,” and realized that the process was still unnecessarily complicated, he decided to streamline and optimize it. According to Zhang, HarvardLabs features an “intuitive workflow of Search - Discover - Connect,” which allows users to “simply type in any phrase of interest to them to instantly find a range of labs from all over Harvard, displayed in a standardized, easy-to-digest format complete with direct links to their lab pages.” Currently, the database includes labs from the Physics, Economics, Psychology, Chemical and Physical Biology, Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology departments, as well as from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

The website, which started out as a

CS50 final project in December, was an instant hit — in less than a week after its debut, more than eight hundred visitors from thirty countries discovered it. One reviewer, also a Harvard freshman, called the site the “most helpful and useful app I’ve seen related to Harvard.” But Zhang won’t be stopping here. Future plans for HarvardLabs include adding a feature that will allow students to comment on labs after they have garnered experience. He hopes to widen the database’s scope to include faculty doing humanities research and faculty in Harvard’s many graduate schools.

Chloe Li ‘16 (chloeli@college) cannot wait to explore what the incredibly fascinating and interesting economics labs must contain.

Join us on Thursday, February 14th, 8:30-9:30pmTicknor Lounge

Boylston Hall

All undergrads welcome!Finale’s will be served!

Search For reSearchFear (finding a lab) no more…HarvardLabs is here!

By CHLOE LI

CARAT – The com-mon application that a bunch of different grants use

Harvard College Research Program – Provides funding for research in various areas, during term time and over the summer

PRISE, BLISS, and PRIMO – A residential program for students conducting research in the sciences, social sciences, and busi-ness that stresses community building.

Herchel Smith Harvard Undergraduate Research Science Research Pro-gram – Awards grants to students with a strong background in research who also plan to pursue re-search as a career.

Harvard Stem Cell Insti-tute Internship Program – This is a great op-portunity for students who are interested in stem cell research, even if they don’t have a background in the field, to be paired with dedicated faculty labs.

SUMMER FUNDING VOCAB

8 harvardindependent.com 2.14.13 • The Harvard Independent

It’s almost that time of the year again — the Oscars. While I come up with a list of movies that should win every year, or

whine about the movies that should have won, this year I have come to terms with the fact that the Academy will almost never agree with my choices, or rather, I will never agree with theirs. That is because my brain is not composed of mostly middle-aged white straight men (I will rephrase that…on second thought, I won’t). In any case, this year — having come to terms with this sad reality — I have come up with a list of movies that should win and a list of ones that will. I will only focus on the four main categories, but I do have strong thoughts about the other categories (see side bar!)

Best ActressSHOULD WIN: Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook. She was, quite simply, the best. Portraying the character of a young widow with a rare sensitivity, Lawrence rises above the movie’s mediocre script and delivers a performance that could have easily played into melodrama. She is so mature that she even finds chemistry in her rather odd pairing with Bradley Cooper. WILL WIN: Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook. Again, quite simply because of Harvey Weinstein. When he campaigns for an actress, she usually wins. She also won the SAG award, and the Academy doesn’t usually like to vote against the Screen Actor Guild’s choice.

Best ActorSHOULD WIN: Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln. He portrays the most iconic president of the US, with aplomb. There is not one frame of the movie that you think he is not Lincoln. Lewis shows again that he can just about do it all. What is the most surprising aspect of his performance is that he touches the rare emotional chord of his legendary character, grounding him. WILL WIN: Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln. There is simply no competition.

Best DirectorSHOULD WIN: Ben Affleck for Argo. Right from the opening sequences of the movie, narrated in the fashion of a graphic novel, to the impeccable transition of a period

piece into the most riveting thriller to have come out in recent times, Argo is a directorial achievement unparalleled this year. The movie doesn’t have a “hero” as its protagonist. Rather, Argo’s hero is Affleck, the director. He handles every frame with deft maturity and subtle empathy. Unfortunately, the Academy didn’t even see it fit to grant the movie a nomination. Well, here’s what I have to say to them (Alan Arkin would agree) “Argo F*** yourself.”WILL WIN: Steven Spielberg for Lincoln. Perhaps the voters can never rise above the obvious choice to actually base their decision on merit. After all, how can even one consider an actor as a potential nominee in a category that has the likes of Spielberg? Or perhaps (and I strongly believe in this theory), the Academy was feeling guilty about nominating Spielberg a bunch of times but never giving him the award. In either case, with Affleck out of the running, there is no other contender. However, to Spielberg’s credit, he does make the politics behind closed doors of Washington seem riveting.

Best PictureSHOULD WIN: Argo. It is the best movie of the year, by a long shot. It is thrilling, an extremely difficult period piece, and brilliantly directed (yup, still not over it). Furthermore, it handles the rather difficult topic of the Iran Hostage Crisis with empathy and sensitivity, being careful to not hurt any party involved. It balances the public sphere of the crisis with the more intimate story of the six escapees with perfect precision. WILL WIN: Argo. The Academy will pretty much be shamed into this decision because of the Best Director debacle. The Golden Globes have already begun the shaming process, and the movie won Best Ensemble at the SAG awards, which has been a consistent predictor of the Best Picture win for the last few years.

Sayantan Deb ’14 (sayantandeb@college), although disillusioned, will still be watching the Oscars, because he cannot resist a glamorous shindig.

other oscAr PreDictions

Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, for Les Miserable. The Academy loves it when an actress shaves her head, loses a bunch of weight and tries really hard to look ugly for a role. It doesn’t hurt that Hathaway’s rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” is possibly the best version of the song ever performed.

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz for Django Unchained, because a Tarantino movie needs to be given an acting award.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Argo, because of the guilt factor – it’s easy to guilt Academy voters when they fail to nominate the most deserving director of the year (yup, still sulking!)

Best Original Screenplay: Django Unchained, because of its innovative reimagining of a cornerstone event in American history — slavery.

Best Original Song: “Skyfall,” because Adele has written the best Bond song to date, imbuing in the stereotypically macho and shallow franchise a unique emotional quotient that carries on right through the movie. The movie deserved a lot more nominations.

Best Animated Feature: Brave, because it’s Pixar, and it tells a heartwarming tale of the underdog. That said, Wreck-It Ralph was much more witty, and surprisingly innovative.

Best Documentary Short: How to Survive a Plague, because this story of how HIV/AIDS became a manageable condition through the efforts of a ragtag group of afflicted individuals and their supporters needed to be told, and it was told with compassion, rigor, and bravura.

‘Tis the Season of the PredictableWhere I come to terms with the Academy’s idiocy.By SAYANTAN DEB

harvardindependent.com 9The Harvard Independent • 2.14.13

In Harmony, the Sackler Museum’s exhibition of Norma Jean Calderwood’s personal

collection of Islamic art (January 31, 2013-June 1, 2013) hands its viewer a bouquet of art exuding the aroma of love. It features ceramics, Islamic lacquered objects, single-page paintings, and many manuscript folios from Islamic epic poetry. Thematically, the content of the works varies greatly, from regicide to blessings; stylistically, the objects are stunningly beautiful. The exhibition is so rich it begs the viewer to explore it for hours. This Valentines Day weekend, it will make a perfect date destination, if not for the art’s beauty alone, then for the romance depicted in many of the works.

The exhibition’s title, as explained by curator Mary McWilliams, originates in the notion that in the Islamic art presented, all elements, from text to color palette, unite to form a perfect harmony. This harmony comes through nowhere better than in works that directly address the topic of love. One object, Fragmentary Star Tile with Lovers, portrays love in its purest, most peaceful form, with two lovers shown lying still, their faces aligned in tranquil adoration. Nearly half the tile has broken off, and the inscription running along the border has a sketched, energetic quality, but with such a feeling of comfort and well-being embodied in these unified figures, no viewer is left asking for more. The piece was supposedly a favorite object of Norma Jean’s, kept during her lifetime on a stand in her library (see the exhibition catalogue for details), and is exceptional for its depiction of love in a state of contentment.

Of course, the theme of unrequited love — undoubtedly as vocalized an experience on Valentine’s Day as successful romance — is present in the exhibition as well. It most clearly appears in the collection’s lacquered objects, specifically in the poetically sorrowful motif of nightingale and rose. The tale that united these two figures regards the bird’s falling in love with the flower, which can never love it back. One of the pen boxes on which the infatuated and his passive lover appear even depicts vignettes showing the different stages of the flower’s life to remind that, like love, its beauty will eventually fade and die. Regardless, adoration of some type remains, especially in the form of the viewer’s love for such a work of art. Perhaps this spectatorial love, fundamentally unrequited or not, is the essence of the museum experience as much as our personal romantic experiences.

While walking through the exhibition, I found that much of the art — the manuscripts especially — was so detail-oriented and visually dense that the viewer needs to commit to the “wine and dine.” Art always requires close observation, but these small paintings require love. In many cases, the artist appears to have applied paint with close to a single strand of hair, and the pages are brimming with small decorative elements like identifiably

Islamic two-dimensional patterns, depictions of textiles, and representational features such as flowers or animals’ fur. The exhibition designers have geniously provided a shelf of magnifying glasses, inviting viewers to lose themselves in the minutiae of the pictures. Delving into a single image in this way can result in a genuine enchantment. A viewer falls deep in love with every inch of the image surface, exhausting herself to the point that even thinking about visiting the other objects surrounding her in the galleries will be an ordeal. That painting stays in her mind as she attempts to appreciate the rest of what’s there, convincing herself that more will likely have as much to offer. But even when she does see another painting with promising, attractive features, she cannot forget that one object that drew her in, and eventually goes back to it.

A return to that object is relieving, to say the least. The viewer once again pours over the saturated colors, the humor or tragedy of the story, the texture of the paper she merely imagines. Yet this distance made by the painting’s place behind the glass becomes a hindrance. Likewise, many of the pages contain text

in Arabic, which is accessible to only some. The stories are likewise unfamiliar to many Western viewers. Ultimately, without a great knowledge of Islamic art and culture, or the patience to read the wall-texts, one is left with a love of the surface and little access to the depths. It is not impossible to find more than aesthetic beauty or obvious thematic connections, but the viewer must be willing to work at this goal. And with the effort, one falls in love with the collection as a whole. The exhibition begs for its viewers to show it a great amount of attention, and in the end, it is a rewarding learning experience, or at least a tryst with inexplicable beauty. You just might have a hard time leaving.

Sarah Rosenthal ’15 (srosenthal@college) is infatuated with the Calderwood exhibition and is happy it’ll stick around for a few more months.

LOve in the SackLerA story of doomed love in the galleries of the Calderwood Exhibition.

By SArAh roSENThAl

10 independent1969@gmail.com 02.14.12 • The Harvard Independent

FOREVER ALONEAll the Single Ladies

Beyonce

We Are Never Ever Getting

Back Together Taylor Swift

Someone Like YouAdele

Somebody That I Used To Know

Gotye

Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

Green Day

Toxic Britney Spears

Stacy's Mom Fountains of Wayne

Build Me Up Buttercup

The Foundations

Bye Bye Bye N*Sync

OneRepublic Apologize

I Will Always Love You Whitney Houston

Sally's Song Amy Lee

Foundations Kate Nash

UnwellMatchbox

Twenty

Lonely Akon

Ridin' Solo Jason Derulo Solo

Iyaz

IrisThe Goo Goo Dolls

The ScientistColdplay

I’m Yours - Jason MrazWhat Makes You Beautiful – One Direction

Chasing Cars – Snow PatrolFirst Day of My Life - Bright Eyes

Unforgettable – Nat King ColeHey There Delilah – Plain White T’s

Hey Jude – The BeatlesI Want It That Way – Backstreet Boys

Come as You Are – NirvanaDon’t You Forget About Me – Simple Minds

Take on Me – Cover by A.C. NewmanABC – Jackson Five

Fly Me to the Moon – Frank SinatraFaster - Matt Nathanson

Paperweight - Joshua Radin & Schuyler FiskFast Car - Tracy Chapman Lego House - Ed Sheeran

She Will Be Loved - Maroon 5Soldier - Gavin Degraw

The Girl - City and Colour

I Was a FoolTegan and Sara

Poison & WineThe Civil Wars

Let's Get It On - Marvin GayeI Just Had Sex - The Lonely Island and Akon

Wild Ones - Flo Rida ft. SiaS&M - Rihanna

Let's Talk About Sex - Salt-N-PepaSexy and I Know It - LMFAO

Turn Me On - David Guetta and Nicki MinajTonight (I'm F**kin' You) - Enrique Iglesias

Yeah! - Usher, Lil Jon, LudacrisTeeth - Lady Gaga

Lay All Your Love On Me - ABBAI'll Make Love to You - Boyz II Men

Feels Like the First Time - Foreigner

Carry OnFun.

harvardindependent.com 11� e Harvard Independent • 2.14.13

indySPORTSSPORTSSPORTS

The idea of mega-attractive Harvard students almost seems like an oxymo-ron. When the outside world pictures

the average Harvard student, they think our campus is riddled with pasty, bespec-tacled geeks whose only form of exercise is scurrying across the yard from lecture to lecture. However, we privileged students know the truth; we know that a certain type of Harvard student breaks this ste-reotype. Harvard athletes strut their stuff and serve as eye candy for the rest of us. All 41 (soon to be 42 with the launch of the women’s rugby team) teams hit the weight room as hard as they hit the books.

With Valentine’s Day upon us, we hope to snag one of these cuties from the various fi elds, courts, rinks, and water in order to engage in a new type of physical therapy.

After much internal debate at the offi ces of The Harvard Independentover which of Harvard’s men’s and women’s sports teams are the most attractive, we looked to you, our loyal readers, to reach a con-sensus.

Friends debated with friends over which sports teams had the best qualities. From best smiles and most toned bodies to overall hotness, no physique was left unanalyzed. After such intense delibera-tions, one men’s and one women’s team prevailed.

For the most attractive Harvard men’s team, men’s crew was by far the overall favorite. With commanding heights, broad shoulders, and panty-dropping accents, the men’ crew team easily rowed love boats into our hearts.

The battle for Harvard’s most attrac-tive women’s team was brutal, with scores going back and forth. The women’s track and fi eld team edged women’s soccer for the honor. Will from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air says it best with the famous line: “Damn baby, you’ve been running through my mind all day.” (I would like to note, though, that the women’s soccer team does get credit for their excellent ball handling skills.)

Other men’s teams that received hon-

Sexy and SweatyWhich athlete do you want for the 14th?

By SHAQUILLA HARRIGAN

orable mentions include the men’s water polo team and men’s baseball team. How could we resist the men who live by the mantra, “SOGO; Sun’s Out, Guns Out,” and bring out the California sunshine with every toss of their wavy hair and fl ash of a brilliant smile. Also, we won’t ever forget the boys who score runs and hearts with their “Call Me Maybe” video.

On the women’s front, the volleyball team and the lacrosse teams both received a fair number of votes. The volleyball team’s Amazonian heights would make any model jealous, while the women’s la-crosse team is great at playing the fi eld.

Good luck to everyone who suddenly became interested in sports. Remember, all’s fair in love and sports, except when there’s a blackout.

Shaquilla Harrigan ‘16 (sharrigan01@college) is all about the time of possession.

HOTTEST MEN’S TEAM:

CREW

HOTTEST WOMEN’S TEAM:

TRACK& FIELD

HONORABLE MENTIONS, MEN:

WATER POLOBASEBALLHONORABLE MENTIONS, WOMEN:

SOCCERVOLLEYBALL

drawn & quarteredANNA PAPP