Carl L Becker House: An architectural mistake?
This is the exterior south-facing side of the new Carl L Becker dorm on Cornell University’s West Campus:
To me, it seems completely out of character with the rich architecture of the rest of west campus. The main faces of the building are flat with random outjuttings of rock. Everything is planar, and there is no detail or etching into the surface! To put it bluntly, the new Becker house appears quite ugly.
Collegetown Accident
There was a terrible accident in Collegetown just before 9 PM, Sunday, leaving a half-dozen police vehicles, several fire trucks, and an ambulance closing off Dryden from College Avenue to Eddy street. According to an unconfirmed bystander report, a tow-truck driver attempted to load a large vehicle onto his truck, but the jack slipped and the truck stuck him in the chest. The tow-truck driver then fell backwards onto the ground, striking his head.
When I arrived at the scene, the injured and unconscious man was being patched up and loaded onto a stretcher. An Ithaca police officer photographing the scene refused comment, “unless it’s an emergency.” These photographs should give you some idea of the severity of the situation:
The scene after the victim was transported away, with blood spatter on the ground and the vehicles in question
Loading the victim onto a stretcher and transporting to the ambulance
Additional rescue unit blocking the street
This is the first such accident I’ve witnessed while at Cornell–I sincerely hope that man wakes up tomorrow with only a really bad headache.
Cornell Rankings Rise
Cornell is now 13th for “Best American College” on the US News and World Reports list, tying with Johns Hopkins, as well as 8th in the list for best engineering scools with a PhD program. From the Daily Sun:
“There will be a bigger jump next year because the admissions rate has tightened,” he said. “The most significant thing is that these rankings don’t really reflect recent changes of the University’s image,” said Danny Cohen grad, alumni co-chair of the Image Committee.
Of course, the idea of college rankings is silly. Instead of focusing on numeric rank, college rankings need to create equivalence tiers of schools, grouping the best, the good, the fair, and the poor together…
