November 2013: The Big Data Issue

W27

VOLUME 46 | ISSUE 3 | NOVEMBER 2013

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The Big Data Issue

NOVEMBER 2013

MASTHEAD Fernanda DeSouza Editor-in-Chief

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FIT

Letter from the Editor

Dianna Mazzone Miriam Lustig Deputy Editors Megan Venere Executive Editor Richard Gilmartin Hermina Sobhraj Senior Editors Dara Kenigsberg Managing Editor Amanda Baldwin Copy Editor Hermina Sobhraj Treasurer

W27Newspaper.com Molly Yarsike Community Manager

Art Kevin Braine Art Director Kelly Millington Junior Designer Courtney Wall Junior Designer Jessica Farkas Alexander Papakonstantinou Photographers Faye Asido Chloe Dewberry Fashion Editors Sara Rabin Illustrations

Contributors Yesica Balderrama Rachel Basel Britt Bivens Francesca Beltran Kyle Dunigan Sarah Fielding Dana Heyward Alexis Katsafanas Christina Macaluso Sarah Malmgren Marissa Mule Desiree Perez Daniela Rios Zach Rosenbaum Aaron Valentic Venus Wong

2000: my father brings home the most expensive materialistic object we had ever owned up to that point in our lives: a Hewlett Packard computer that took the manual labor of two men to unload from a car.

The modem alone was the size of my nine-month-old sister. But how shiny and exciting that $400 hunk of plastic, glass and computer chips looked in my eyes. I quickly created my first e-mail address, Fefex2000@aol.com and became an explorer of the World Wide Web (making sure to make stops along Disney and CartoonNetwork.com to play the Little Mermaid and Powerpuff Girls games). I ran home from school to play on Paint, partake in Harry Potter themed chat rooms (yes, I was one of those) and to read the various encyclopedias copied onto CDs and colorful, see-through floppy discs.

Then I discovered Google and well...we know what happens next. I became an information junkie at a tender age of nine. I couldn’t help devouring information. I figured it replaced extra afterschool activities anyways, plus it was educational (or an addiction, whichever way you see it).

My first encounter with a mobile device came late in my life. I was 15-years-old and was sick of asking my friends to borrow their phones to call my mother for a ride home.

I was rewarded with a pain-in-the-ass pay-as-yougo-phone. I was annoyed I didn’t get the Bob Dylan record I specifically asked for and it wasn’t a Sidekick, but nonetheless,

John Simone Editorial Faculty Advisor

I felt like one of the cool kids.

I could communicate with the outside world: my mom and dad, aunt and uncle, a few friends and of course, 911 (if I had even had enough money left on the phone to call during an emergency).

It’s 2013 and I’m sadly, along with almost every human being in the world today, attached to my phone. As old school as I am (I feel like I’m the only person keeping the post office alive with all the letters I write to friends all over the world), I can’t say I saw it coming. I scoffed at people who glued their eyes to their Blackberries (before Apple ate them up, pun intended). Now I’m one of those people, except a little behind the times what with my iPhone 3 (four more months until that upgrade!).

As humans living in the Information Age, which began in 1975 but did not take off until the 1990s with the introduction of equivalent modern day Internet that we know today, we don’t realize how far we’ve come from

Albert Romano Advertising Faculty Advisor

A FIT STUDENT ASSOCIATION PUBLICATION

ON THE COVER: W27 is PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER. PLEASE RECYCLE YOUR COPY AFTER READING.

Alexander Papakonstadinou, Faye Asido and Chloe Dewberry teamed together to create a design of binary proportions to showcase a technological fashion interpretation for W27’s Big Data Issue.

the speed dial up we grew accustomed to close to two decades ago.

And now all we hear is BIG DATA. There are now rooms housing colossal computers whose jobs are to collect, aggregate and analyze terabytes of data to detect patterns and fuel research conducted by researchers and institutions. The amount of information out there is almost unfathomable.

This theme challenged writers to dig in to the core significances of big data and what it actually is and how it impacts us in all aspects of our lives. Maybe you’ll think twice before posting that selfie of your drunk ass on Instagram next Friday night. Because you never know who’s watching. Big Brother, out!

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Legacy Week FIT’s Night Out Future Mode Faculty Spotlight: Calvin Williamson FIT Writing Studio Takes Tampa What the Health?

FIT Wins the RFC in Paris Fashion À La Kors: Dishing Out Secrets of Fashion Success

Dear Industry 12 13 14 15 16

Alicia Koo-TIPILLY It’s Your Data, Deal With It Career ‘N’ Coffee: the 88 Fashion Datatude Fashion Spread

Feature 18 19

The Rise of the Information Age The Year 15 A.G. (After Google)

Haute Culture 20 22 24 24 25 25 26 26 27 28

Chasing Northern Lights Month in Review The Banksy Take Over: Tagging NYC Clickable Love-Searching Light Up Your Menurky!

“Two Boys:” An Opera in Real Time “The Mystery of the Ordinary” Book Review: “Twitterature” Movie Review: “The Fifth Estate” Emojis: Express Yourself Through Text and Fashion

lETTER FROM THE art Director

CONTENTS

On The Block 4 4 5 6 8 9 9 10

NOVEMBER 2013

FIT Speaks 29 30

FIT Speaks OYB: Red Hook

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Style on 27

EN 121/EN 362 ESSAY COMPETITION Students may submit any essay written for class credit in EN 121 Spring or Fall 2013, or EN 362 Fall 2013

Deadline for submission: December 12th, 20013 Submissions must include: – Orginal Essay Prompt – Works Cited – Student’s full name and FIT e-mail address – Instructor’s name

Prizes: First Prize: $100 gift certificate to the FIT bookstore Second Prize: $50 gift certificate to the FIT bookstore *Winners will be notified via e-mail at the start of the Spring 2014 Semester Winning writers will be asked to participate in a student reading in Spring 2013 where they will get the opportunity to share their writing and talk about their writing process with other students.

Please deliver submissions to the English and Speech Department, B602 mailbox of Professor Michael Hyde or Professor Carole Deletiner, or email submissions to: Michael_ hyde@fitnyc.edu or carole_deletiner@fitnyc.edu Please make sure to include your instructor’s name, the course and section of your class, and a copy of the assignment that inspired your essay.

Big data and the influx of information is a huge part of today’s world. Like many people, I find myself conflicted by the mass of technology around us.

I’d like to pretend I live a detached life where I get to live creatively and make art all the time.

In reality, I spend hours a day on my laptop and watching TV. I feel that big data is unavoidable so I try my best to embrace it.

I embrace big data for its efficiency. W27 could not be completed in one weekend without a mass of emails and quick communication. I try to take advantage of how easy it is to gain inspiration and information. With a quick search, I can be immersed in the work of Glaser, Bass, Rand and countless other design greats. If the technology is there, I want to try and use it to its full potential.

However, I also find myself victim to information overload.

Nothing stresses me out quite like having a ton of things to do at one time.

Sometimes we’re hit with so much information at once it’s impossible to take it all in. These are

the times I remember why print is not dead. The personal interaction with a physical piece cannot be replicated digitally. While there are many amazing features of digital publication to explore, the act of curling up with your favorite book is hard to replicate. I encourage our readers to think about how flipping through this newspaper makes them feel. Next time you get stressed out by big data remember that W27 has compiled a great deal of information for you to browse at your convenience in one physical place.

Hopefully someday I’ll be able to find the perfect balance between technology and quiet comfort. For now I will continue the process of going online, getting stressed out, detaching myself from technology, getting bored and going back online to start all over again.

ON THE BLOCK

FIT

Legacy Week

by Sarah Fielding

It was a week where, not only athletes, but student body, staff and alumni alike were supported and encouraged. Each day of the week represented a select group of people on campus and beyond. From Tuesday’s Alumni Day, geared toward past students and featuring events such as a panel discussion with FIT graduates to cheering on the athletes with a pep rally and more on Thursday’s Tiger Day. As Vice President of Athletic and Wellness, Dyon Tran stated, “The point of this week was to decide where we want to leave our legacy.” Although we may not be known for our athletics programs, Tran explained how important it was to him that the sports teams FIT didn’t go unrecognized.

In fact our volleyball team is currently undefeated and our tennis team placed second in Nationals at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center.

The end of the week saw a Gatsby-themed traditional homecoming dance that took place in the Great Hall. No matter why you came to FIT, Legacy Week gave students and members of the FIT community alike a chance to embrace FIT and enjoy such an amazing time in our lives. Today there are no future generations coming in to take our beds or eat our cereal, only us. This is when our legacy is defined.

Photos courtesy of Katie Snyder

There will come a time where our occupation is no longer “student.” One day, the Fashion Institute of Technology will no longer be our home. College is not forever, but destined to be only a memory. Future generations will come in, take our past addresses, find their way to our prior classrooms and eat from the same Lucky Charms dispenser we now do. However, today it is still our time and our chance to define the legacy we leave behind. If the Fashion Institute of Technology was “normal,” we would have a week of Homecoming. All the students would funnel into a giant stadium and we would watch our team (hopefully!) win.

Instead, the college held its first Legacy Week, launched as a rebranding, so to speak, of what used to be Homecoming,

FIT’s Night Out

by Sarah Malmgren

Fashion’s Night Out in New York City may have been on hiatus this year, but here at FIT, the party didn’t miss a beat. Students and faculty and even a big, furry tiger were in attendance for the much-anticipated FIT’s Night Out..

of-the-moment beats and vibes. Right on par with the background music was the selection of food. A buffet table stocked with warm appetizers kept guests’ stomachs full, and a cupcake lounge complete with a selection of candy had attendees mouths watering throughout the night.

The event, held Wednesday, Oct. 30, marked the midway point for Legacy Week: FIT’s Homecoming. The night of fun was chaired by FIT Student Association President David Hamilton.

It was a light- hearted occasion to bring members of the campus together to truly celebrate the spirit we share here as a college and community.

The various organizations represented maintained the fun feel of the event by making their booths interactive.

Giveaways were awarded raffle-style and prizes were as covetable as a pair of Skullcandy headphones and an FIT athletics sweatshirt. Student Shannon Fyffe exclaimed, “I’m glad I came!”

Live music by the PitchBlak Brass Band rocked the entire room with an unexpected mix of traditional jazz instruments and

Erik Kneubuehl, dean of students, was thrilled with Legacy Week, remarking that this year, the operation had been

“taken to the next level.” When asked what he thought about FIT’s Night Out, he enthusiastically remarked, “I am so proud to watch as students, faculty, staff, administration, alumni and community members (all present at FIT’s Night Out) celebrate FIT’s legacy: past, present and future!”

By the end of the evening, everyone in attendance was smiling. Our friendly, furry and striped mascot dipped and danced alongside our student body president, and the dean of students laughed heartily with students. It was a party atmosphere which Jay Gatsby himself would have approved; there was no denying the pride this campus shares for FIT.

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NOVEMBER 2013

Future Mode: Caramia Sitompul

by Marissa Mule

The attempt to create designs that function in ways to help women increase self- confidence may seem like a pretty tough task – but not for Fashion Design major Caramia Sitompul. Born in Indonesia, and inspired by humanity, Caramia is nothing short of an inspiration herself. While she creates innovative, fabulously crafted designs, she also finds the time to intern for Calvin Klein and play golf. Raised in two different parts of the world, this artist is working toward being the best she can be, while also challenging herself to help others through the art of fashion. different sides of the world, [the East and West], and I would like to think I could help others through whatever my Godgiven talent may be.

MM: What are your strengths/ weaknesses?

Photos courtesy of Caramia Sitompul

Marissa Mule: Where are you from?

Caramia Sitompul: I am originally from Jakarta, Indonesia and graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in Art & Design. I was also a scholarship student-athlete for golf while I was there, and have been playing golf since I was twelve years old. I even played a little bit on my national golf team. I love sports in general, working out, reading and baking.

MM: Who/what are your inspirations when you’re designing?

CS: A lot of the time, people in general are my inspiration. I love creating clothes that marry functionality and aesthetics.

My mom also plays a large role as my inspiration. She has always been an active woman and she always, always travels.

Both my parents do their best to support my siblings and I while we are studying in the US. We often joke that she is like the motion of an ironing board – back and forth – back and forth.

MM: Who/what is your motivation?

CS: Honestly, my motivation is just to be the best that I can be. I was fortunate enough to be raised within two very

CS:I would say my biggest strength is my perseverance and work ethic. I never really back down from a challenge – whether it’d be from my teacher or myself.

If I don’t push myself to the limit on a regular basis, I wouldn’t know what I am capable of. As far as weaknesses go, I’d say patience – especially when I sew a seam five times or more. The other weakness would be over thinking tasks. My overthinking usually comes out when my perfectionist mode kicks in – I tend to make an easy task harder than what it should be.

MM: At what age did you begin designing?

CS: I started sketching clothing around eight years old, but didn’t start sewing until my college years.

MM: Was it always your goal to major in fashion design?

When did you first become interested in design?

CS: I actually never thought about majoring in fashion design. Choosing fashion design as a major is a funny story.

Michigan didn’t offer fashion design, but I knew I loved fashion. So, my counselor in Michigan recommended that I take a Parsons summer course – which I did.

Needless to say, I absolutely loved it. Right then and there I made it a goal to graduate from Michigan in 3 years and save enough

money to go to fashion school. When I was accepted into FIT, I decided to study one year in Florence and finish up my AAS degree here in New York. So, here I am (finally) majoring in fashion design.

MM: What material do you work best in?

What’s your palette like?

CS: I love ponte and knits! Draping III has made me obsessed with knits! As far as my palette, I love bright colors mixed with neutrals. But, it really depends on the subject or my mood. I’ve had experiences where all I wanted to use were neutrals, and other times where it was neon pink or rose red.

MM: What is your concentration?

CS: Women’s Sportswear.

MM: How do you come up with the idea for a design?

CS: I don’t really have one set way on how I come up with an idea for design. It could be as random as watching a squirrel cross the sidewalk or talking to a friend. But, it usually starts with a lot of research – images, articles, interviews, video, etc.

I feel like I spend just as much money printing from the computer lab as I do on my own food. It begins with research, then preliminary silhouette ideas and then the thumbnails.

MM: How do you develop your designs?

Classify your aesthetic.

CS: Like I said earlier, after an extensive amount of research, I make thumbnails and then edit it down to a couple of ideas. Then, I make a page to see the merchandising aspect of the line. Then from there, I adjust my ideas to fill in whatever gaps are missing.

MM: What is your favorite thing about FIT?

MM: What is your dream job?

CS: I would love to be the CEO of an apparel company or my own lifestyle brand.

MM: Where are you interning? Tell me a little about your experience.

CS: I am currently interning at Calvin Klein. I absolutely love it there! The designers are really nice and I am definitely learning a lot just by watching them do research, sketch, present, edit and discuss ideas. I assist women’s woven, women’s knits, menswear, product development and graphics. And, it’s a lot – I know. It gets pretty crazy to have so many different designers to answer to, but it’s a lot of fun for me to get to know each and everyone of them.

CS: The Database! I love going on the fashion forecast database – they have great pictures to use for mood boards.

MM: Where do you see yourself in the future?

CS: Definitely in a large apparel company, though I am not sure which market (luxury, bridge or mass.) I can also see myself working in athletic apparel.

MM: How would you describe your “brand?”

CS: On a whim, I would say functional meets aesthetics with a focus on innovation. The woman I dress is sporty, sexy and exudes confidence. At the same time she is a woman of knowledge and depth – she never stops improving in all aspects of her life, and she looks fabulous doing it!

ON THE BLOCK

FIT

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Faculty Spotlight:

Mathematics Without Limitations

by Zach Rosenbaum

photos courtesy of Zach Rosenbaum

It takes a kind of genius to speak the language of big data and analytics. Luckily, FIT has Calvin Williamson as chair of its Math and Science Department. Not only is he a seasoned professor and technically a doctor, but he's also a computer programmer and has forayed many a time into the computer graphics industry. All the while, he is a free spirit and a real family man. I had the chance to sit down with him and talk data–BIG data, that is (and ask some personal questions, too).

Zach Rosenbaum: What sparked you to pursue mathematics?

Calvin Williamson: It was almost a total accident, really. I thought I was going to major in History at first, when I was at the University of South Florida in Tampa. I was taking all of these history classes, but I also really liked science and math, so I was taking math courses as well. They were pretty easy, so I always took the next course.

I ended up in these graduate courses when I was an undergraduate. Finally, a professor pulled me aside and advised me to just get my degree in math. I switched my major from history to math and got into it that way. Then I went to University of Michigan and got into the math department there.

I’ve been interested in doing math related stuff since. I never lost interest in teaching—I taught for a while (got a PhD), and then went to software programming and computer graphics.

“Get ready to have your mind bent. Conditions overall will improve for some things, but some countries, some entities, some people will use those techniques to destroy others.”

ZR: How did you end up at FIT? CW: My wife and I moved to New York so that she could go to graduate school. I was working for an animation company here in New York (just a few blocks from FIT), and that company imploded and everybody got laid off, which was not uncommon at that time in the 90s. There were a lot of companies doing small programming jobs, and most of the time you didn’t even know what you were building. But when that company that I was working for folded, I looked around, and a professor who I knew from Baruch recommended teaching at FIT. There’s a lot of pattern-related stuff that requires software, and we do a lot of interesting mathematical things here. I never

thought I could be at a place where I could teach the software stuff that I love to do.

ZR: How does big data work? How can we extract understandable knowledge from such huge data sets?

CW: Well, the fundamental thing that’s different about big data is that it transcends being able to look at it or analyze it on one machine. It’s got huge volume; you can’t open it like you can open an Excel file. You need some big tool that can look at the data, collate it, aggregate it and bring it back to something comprehensible. It’s the first time in the history of the computer age that we’re able to do this at such speeds.

What’s new is how fast we can get data

processed. Data started to flow in the 90s when Google started its search engine (which is a form of every-day use of big data). They were the first to sort of “search everything.” A lot of the techniques for working with big data, such as indexing schemes, came from Google search. They came up with this idea to be able to search every single word on every single web page, using ranks to determine which is most important. All in all, big data is about the on-the-fly analytics of really big data sets.

ZR: With so much data, we need special resources that go above and beyond the software that we’re used to. What’s out there, and what have you worked with?

CW: Basically, if you’re going to analyze big data, you’re not going to do it on your own machine. You need a family of machines, like a network, or a supercomputer, because it’s distributed processing. There are data centers, with racks and racks of equipment. Typically, when you’re working with big data, you need a way to dole out tasks—you have to rearrange your data so that each computer can be assigned to collate a certain factor and bring it back in to be analyzed. The software will put it all together and spit out the results you’re looking for. Big data involves big, distributed processing systems. Also, a lot of those algorithms are new. You can find analytics as

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a service online. A typical person’s interaction with big data won’t so much be with number crunching, but will be interpreting the results. If you’re in business and are into analytics, you can find out which of your customers are the most likely to leave or respond to a certain marketing campaign. You’re talking about all of your customers—that’s big data. The job doesn’t belong just to the analytics team, but to whoever’s interpreting. In the past, we had population sizes that were simply too big to be processed. An example of this is all of the voters in the United States. The only time you ever got that was an election. Now in the ages of big data, we can analyze huge-scale population numbers. Statistics is very powerful—you take a sample, and if it’s representative of an entire population, you can do a lot of analysis. Now things are changing, because you can literally go and pull info from an entire population, or say, everybody who’s online.

ZR: What’s the difference between structured and unstructured data?

movie wins it’s a celebration for everybody at the studio. Everyone is involved one way or another. My favorite movieexperience was working and being around some of those people.

ZR: Do computer graphics have anything to do with big data?

CW: Computer graphics is an example of big data in some ways. For Pixar to be able to make digital films, they needed huge distributed processing systems.

They were one of the first companies to break these data size barriers. It takes terabytes of data to produce 90 minutes of totally digital footage. Things at first were very prohibitive—in the 90s we used to say that 1-minute of special effects was a million dollars.

NOVEMBER 2013

what the customer is going to do, say at the cash register, or what you could offer them that they’d say yes to.

ZR: What’s the parallel between big data and business management?

CW: Every business wants to predict what’s going to happen in the next quarter, or the next year. It’s mostly about predictive modeling. If you can find a leg up that will tell you where to focus your energies and resources, it’s all about money then. It can give you a real insight that you didn’t have before. Twitter sentiment stuff (unstructured data) is a really good example too. If people are saying negative stuff about your product, what’s the context?

ZR: What are the fundamentals of machine learning?

“No matter what field you’re in, if you’re savvy with this numerical stuff, you’re way ahead of the game.

All of a sudden, statistics became sexy.”

CW: The difference is the organization and substance of the data, whether that’s quantitative or textual, in thread form or in chart form. Structured data is more defined and can be queried using a table in a relational database. But when data comes in different formats, as in posts or comments, it’s unstructured and is processed using different tools.

In these cases, you would need storage systems that index things using data keys. If you’re looking for the occurrence of the word “happy,” it will look through all of these forms of unstructured data, find the occurrences of the word “happy” and pull them. For example, Twitter is a huge database. If you want to know what people think about your product, you can turn to Twitter and extract very useful information. This is an example of unstructured data—it doesn’t come in columns and rows like an Excel document. It continues sequentially, as posts or comments are added on. In order to get this data, you need a way to extract it and then contextualize it so you can tell if it’s negative or positive sentiment.

ZR: You were involved with the movie Babe, which won an Oscar. What was your role in that?

CW: Yes. I worked at Rhythm and Hues Studios, who most recently won an Oscar for The Life of Pi. It’s maybe their third Oscar for visual effects, but Babe was the first one that that studio won. I wrote paint programs for them. At the time, you couldn’t really use a program like Photoshop for film, so I wrote custom software for them. Digital special effects and computer graphics is a great business to work in—you work with artists, as well as technical types too. I was fortunate to be working there when that happened.

For these independent studios, when a

ZR: Has the process of digital animation become more simplified and less costly?

CW: I think so. In the 90s we had a lot of specialized software because not a lot existed at the time. People wrote their own versions of these tools, and over time they’d get polished and easier to use. We hired some pretty technical people (like physics guys) to do the animation because they were good at math and geometry and things like that, and you could teach them to animate. The other way around is harder; teaching artists to be technical is much more difficult. When tools evolved in graphics, it allowed people to do more artistic digital work and things that had never been done before. It’s a really interesting business because it’s such a mix of artistic and technical forces.

ZR: How can the analysis of big data help us? What are some real-life scenarios? How will it affect medical care, engineering and industry?

CW: Well, its application in medical care is obviously for predictive medicine. The customer interaction can benefit from big data situations as well. You can tell when your customer is on the verge of leaving, or going to another product. If their data crunches in a way that says they’re a “flight risk,” then you can target them for ad campaigns and things like that. Big data helps with being able to be predict

CW: What happens with big data a lot is that algorithms learn kind of what’s important, and what questions to ask about the data, which is different from centuries up until now for statistics. In the past, humans looked at data and determined what’s important, but now there’s machine learning where the algorithms learn what’s important and fundamental as they go along.

They become more accurate, and because of the size of the data, it has to be that way— humans aren’t going to look at all of that. To me, smart machines are exciting.

ZR: Is it possible to have data that’s too massive to be comprehended?

CW: That’s what we thought. This proves that wrong. When Google started, people didn’t know how they were going to process data steps the size that we actually have. The amount of data out there grows exponentially, as well. Sure, there’s going to be a huge amount of data, but as long as the algorithms change and become smarter, the ability to analyze that will improve. Too much data—probably never going to happen.

ZR: What do you predict for the future?

CW: It’s headed in both directions. It’s going to be a lot of beneficial stuff, which we’ll take for granted in 20 years, but there’ll be a lot of pain in some of the ethical questions we’re going to have to answer. Get ready to have your mind bent.

Conditions overall will improve for some things, but some countries, some entities, some people will use those techniques to destroy others. One thing we do need is a lot of courses, curriculum and people in education interested in understanding and teaching big data.

ZR: Big data has proven to be lucrative.

Do you recommend young professionals to look into it?

CW: Absolutely—at all levels. Even at non-technical levels. If you can speak the language, and you can understand what the issues are, you can communicate with an analytics team or others with business domain knowledge. I would advise everyone to have an understanding of what big data issues are, what analytics is about, which kinds of problems could be solved by looking at big data and why you’d want to even look at data science.

No matter what field you’re in, if you’re savvy with this numerical stuff, you’re way ahead of the game. All of a sudden, statistics became sexy. Because it’s moving and because we’re extracting stuff that is very dynamic, all of a sudden it feels like a whole new world.

ZR: Will there ever be a course on big data at FIT? CW: We’re working on a class that’s going to be like a second stats class. It’ll be a survey of analytics and big data, and some statistics or data collection techniques.

Then, also some analysis tools that are prominent in the big data area now, too.

Everybody needs a course that addresses some of these topics in their majors and just generally. Data science is the “new thing” really.

ZR: What do you in your free time? Do you have any hobbies?

CW: These days, I mostly hang out with my kids (ed. note: he gestures to his seven-year-old daughter, who is coloring a few feet away). I also just love to program—I write software of all kinds, whenever I can. I’m happy programming all night. I have my day-job, but I also have my night job. I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to rake the leaves out of the yard—my neighbors probably think I’m some kind of hippie, out there in the yard with my manual rake and a mower that doesn’t have a motor. I still have an odd hobby—I collect [hair] combs. One day I started picking them up off the ground, I don’t know why. After a while I had accumulated hundreds, then thousands and have been collecting them ever since. They’ve been in art galleries and some other shows. They’ve been in some newspapers, but right now they’re all at my sister’s home in Alabama. There’s something really intriguing about found objects—especially things that are kind of personal. People used to be buried with their combs. It’s a personal object—when it gets lost, nobody else wants it. It seemed eminently collectable. After I started collecting them, people started giving them to me, and writing stories about how and where they were found.

ON THE BLOCK

FIT

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New FIT Student Association Logo

by Rachel Basel

With all the changes the FIT Student Association has made this year, perhaps the most pronounced is the reinvention of its logo. Our Student Association members have taken it upon themselves to revamp “FITSA” in order to more accurately portray the student body and show just how supportive they are of the students. With that said, the former, somewhat cartoonish logo seemed to be a bit too juvenile for the Association’s new concerns and ambitions.

Signifying the “unity and strength” of FIT’s student body, the new logo, unveiled at FIT’s Night Out, is a symbol of the connection among all of us. “We wanted something that everyone would be proud to wear and represent,” said FIT Student Association President David Hamilton.

So how did the logo come about? Since last May, a committee of five students from different clubs and majors came together to form the FIT Student Association Logo Design Committee with David Hamilton as the Chair. The advisor of the committee, C.J. Yeh, emphasized the importance of bringing diversity to the team. “Designers spend four years talking to other designers instead of communicating and working with business students. This is completely unrealistic and different from what real working environment is like,” he said.

Throughout the entire summer, they brainstormed, deliberated and began sending their ideas out to several other student committees. Committee member Alaric Baez said, “I spent every Monday of my summer designing a logo I hoped

would be used far into the future.” The final design made its way into the hands of Dean Erik Kneubuehl, who helped a great deal in passing it along before it finally met the approval of Dr. Joyce Brown in mid-September. Veronica Ettman, also a committee member said, “I am very proud of the outcome and hope the students are also!”

Special Thanks to all FIT Student Association Logo Design Committee Members:

Now that the logo has made its debut, it serves as another badge of the newly revamped FIT Student Association. “We wanted to make it clear that students have a student government working for them, not just an exclusive club. I want them to know there’s a group of hard-working managers and VPs working on their behalf,” explained Hamilton.

And also:

Alaric Baez Veronica Ettman Jonathan Halpern Kelly McCabe Clarissa Vu

Carol Levin of External Relations Dean Erik Kneubuehl Advisor C. J. Yeh

FIT Writing Studio Takes Tampa

by Miriam Lustig

This year’s National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing (NCPTW), held in Tampa, FL from Nov. 1 to Nov. 3., featured nearly 150 presentations from over 70 educational institutions. FIT students gave 1.3% of these presentations, or a total of two presentations (the best two, FYI) for those of you disinclined to do the math. In between enjoying the mostly nice weather and eating a lot (more on this later), FIT representatives picked up a couple of tips and best practices from NCPTW weekend to bring back home to FIT’s Writing Studio. Here are a few of the conference’s more general take-aways that may be of interest to any student (and not just the writing nerds):

1. English is weird, but it’s also kind of awesome.

Despite the English language’s inherent illogic (to wit, an example given by keynote speaker Marty Baron, Executive Editor of the Washington Post: to dust can refer to the removal of dust or it can refer to a light covering of a fine, powdery substance; also, “oversight” can mean to carefully oversee or it can refer to an

omission...weird), language is often the best framework people have for defining the parameters of their world and communicating with others. “How you frame what you do in this world is at least as important as what you actually do,” said opening ceremony speaker Kristin Gilliss.

Ergo, the need for effective written and verbal communication.

2. It’s “standards of English,” not “standard English,” hello?!

The need for effective written and verbal communication mentioned just earlier (like, literally two sentences ago) doesn’t refer to one specific academic or professional standard. In fact, those in academic and professional settings would do better to recognize increasing linguistic diversity, a direct result of increasing racial diversity in the U.S., argued FIT panelist Michelle Carl (Illustration) in collaboration with Neisha-Anne Green (Master’s Candidate, Lehman College – CUNY), who discussed “The New Racism: Discussions of Culture and Identity in Our Writing Centers.”

Another FIT presentation entitled “Transitions, Multiliteracies, and Writing Center Relationships,” given by Claudia Arisso (Packaging Design), Georgeanne Dwiggins (Art History), Marlena McLemore (FMM) and Writing Studio Director Brian Fallon, further advocated the challenging of status quos. At a nontraditional, crazy-talented school like FIT, breaking the rules every now and again can yield some pretty fantastic results (but you didn’t hear it from us when your professors ask ;).

description of this phenomenon. It’s no hyperbole to declare these sandwiches that sort of good. And if this symphony of carbs weren’t enough on its own, there was a variation of this already remarkable sandwich that had short-ribs tucked inside (for those really strong of heart, or who simply have really good health insurance). The point is, conference host Berkeley Preparatory School truly went above and beyond in arranging a truly first-rate experience for this year’s NCPTW.

3. So, this exists: the macand-cheese-grilledcheese sandwich!

It was with heavy hearts that FIT’s Writing Studio crew left Tampa at the end of their three day stay. They did so, however, armed with many tips and best practices that they will use to develop their own tutoring styles going forward.

That said, they welcome you to make an appointment or drop by [Feldman Center, C-612] for any writing and language related assistance you might need. See you soon!

Have you ever wondered what poetry would look like if it assumed sandwich form? Well, dear readers, let me tell you about the mac-and-cheese-grilled-cheese sandwich. If you can’t guess, this sandwich is literally mac-and-cheese stuffed inside of grilled cheese and toasted to perfection. Even after attending a three day writing conference, this author is still hard-pressed to find language worthy enough of crafting even an adequate

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What the Health?

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I once had a teacher in high school who would constantly tell those students who snuck electronic devices under their desks, that they wouldn’t be able to have children in the future. He meant the effects of the radioactivity emitted from their devices. During that time, tablets weren’t even on the market, unlike now, what with our society loaded with all kinds of electronic devices. But radioactivity isn’t the only concern. Artificial lights, the motion of typing, and the way in which we hold our devices also affects our health. These factors can lead to a host of problems, especially now, that we keep our phones and tablets close to our bodies even when we’re asleep. But it’s vital to know that sleep disorders, diseases and bad posture may all arise from these habits.

by Desiree Perez

Sleep disorders It’s been known for years that it’s unhealthy to watch T.V. before going to bed, or so your mom would always tell you. Turns out it’s great advice. In the United States, 95% of the people admitted to using an electronic device (T.V.’s, phones, tablets, etc.) right before bed.

What they should know is that artificial light actually prevents you from sleeping right and can even trigger sleep disorders like insomnia. The artificial light stops melatonin production, a chemical our bodies need to induce sleep. Being surrounded by these lights is called “light noise.” The safer lights are the ones that have a red tone. Remember the poster for The Poltergeist with Carol Anne sitting in front of the T.V., and the whole picture was blue? Be wary of those blue-toned lights (iPads, phones, and televisions). A good alternative is to read traditional books before you go to bed or to get a Kindle as it doesn’t have a backlight. Dimming the light on an iPad may force you to strain your eyes to make out the words and it will still have a backlight. Or just set a time limit between you and your device.

Radioactivity

Bad posture So, let’s look at how tablets affect the body physically. The good news with tablets is that people who use tablets move around more than someone sitting at a desktop computer. But the bad news is that a desktop computer encourages good posture while a tablet discourages it. And while it may not be a problem for some, it can be for others since it causes a strain on your neck, shoulders and back. Slouching can also decrease your oxygen by 30%. The lungs can’t move as freely in a slouched position as in a straight one. It may not seem like a problem at the moment but it can have long term effects. It’s best to place the device on a table facing you so you can look straight at it, not down at it or up at it.

Photo courtesy of i2imedia

There was a woman who always carried her phone in her bra. During a

regular checkup, she was notified that she had breast cancer. The place where her tumor was growing was on the same spot she had always placed her phone.

My mom did the same until I told her the story. It definitely made me want to keep mobile devices away from me for a while.

Radiation can be shielded by clothes but it doesn’t prevent it from being absorbed.

The best solution would be to keep your devices in another room than the one you sleep in; it will give you a little break from the energies emanating from the devices.

Block the tech without throwing it away So how do you detox from technology without actually throwing your devices away or being an outcast in a technology driven society? Being without a phone is no longer “normal.” I’ve been there, done that and never again. Here are some quick tips on keeping your devices as well as your health. ΩΩ Download a program like f.lux (justgetflux.com) which automatically changes your device’s light settings based on the room you’re in and the time of day. ΩΩ Wear amber lensed goggles, at night, which not only blocks you from your device’s light but also from any other light. You can get those and other filter products at lowbluelights.com. ΩΩ Wear a quartz necklace. The mineral quartz has been known to block negative energy as well as UV rays. It’s a great remedy for that radiation. ΩΩ Or if you think quartz is too good to be true, try a device case by Pong (Pongcase.com). They are known to make cases that reduce exposure to radiation while improving reception.

FIT Wins the WRC in Paris

by Alexis Katsafanas

A team of four students from the Jay and Patty Baker School of Business and Technology, won the Retail Futures Challenge, an international competition that takes place at the World Retail Congress, held this year in Paris. Eleanor Ayre, a seventh-semester Advertising and Marketing Communications major; Jaime Duncan, an eighth-semester Fashion Merchandising Management major; Alexis Katsafanas, a seventh-semester Fashion Merchandising Management major; and Wen (Jenny) Zhao, a fifthsemester Textile Development and Marketing major comprised the winning team.

The FIT team, sponsored by PVH Corporation, competed with students from Hong Kong, Tokyo, London and Milan. Before leaving for Paris, the teams were required to select a retailer from their home city that is poised for long-term growth in the omni-channel and international market. The FIT team selected New York City-based retailer Story (www.ThisIsStory.com) due to the innovative business model and captivating in-store experience.

Upon their arrival in Paris, the students were presented with the second portion of the brief and had only 48-hours to complete the task, which included the

selection of the location for their store in Paris. The girls slept a total of 20 hours over their six-day journey.

“I know I speak for all of us when I say that it was the most challenging yet rewarding experience of our lives. The memories will last forever,” notes Zhao.

The winner was selected by the votes of the audience of 1,300 industry executives and a panel of judges including Bernie Brookes, CEO, Meyer; Paul Delaoutre, former CEO, Galleries Lafayette; Conceta Lancieaux, CEO, Luxadvisory, and former special advisor to Bernard Arnault, Chairman, LVMH.

It was announced that the college had won by an overwhelming consensus when the students were awarded their trophy at the World Retail Awards Gala, celebrated at the historical Salle Wagram.

“Bringing home the first win for FIT felt amazing,” says Ayre. “The real prize was witnessing the power of effective teamwork.”

Students should keep an eye out for emails from the college regarding next year’s competition.

ON THE BLOCK

FIT

10

Fashion à la Kors: Dishing Out Secrets of Fashion Success

by Fernanda DeSouza

I first met Michael Kors while sitting in front of the television one summer day. A Project Runway marathon was on, and I, an unemployed 10th-grader living in Long Island, was trapped in the world of fashion designer wanna-be’s trying to make it to the tents. It was my personal excuse to avoid the summer heat. Yes, Nina, Heidi and Tim were there but it was Michael who intrigued me the most, the camera catching his exuberant face, the lights emphasizing his twinkling blue eyes.

At the time, I was taking a fashion

illustration class at my high school and albeit never having the desire to partake in Project Runway (as my sewing skills consisted of one attempt at a poorly sewn hem), all the designs I created were with Michael in mind. Would Michael deliver a sassy comment about my aviator bomber jacket? Would he praise the contours of a Balenciaga 2008 RTW-inspired dress?

The next time I saw Michael, five years later, I was a business student at FIT with no intention of setting foot in the fashion industry. I sat a few rows behind him at

Intern Michael stressed the importance of internships and how, when it comes to choosing one, to really think about what you’re good at and what you really want to do. Michael ran through a list of people who interned with him in the past who are now successful designers, such as Peter Som. Even his husband, Lance LePere interned at MK. “Always be available, don’t question the mundane tasks, make sure to listen and it doesn’t hurt to look stylish while doing all these things!” he added.

Work in a Retail Store It’s assumed that many of the FIT student body has worked in a retail some had bad experiences while others fell in love with the whole process of selling clothes.

Michael himself thought he would work at Halston (he never did), “Being able to see people trying on clothes is an amazing entrée for anyone in fashion.” He said to pay attention to the way certain fabrics and cuts fit the wearer and how they interacted with the clothes and that, as a fashion designer, it wasn’t a bad thing knowing how to be a good salesman.

History of Fashion Is Important “How do you know where you’re going to go next if you don’t know what came before?” mused the designer. “No one’s telling anyone to recreate the past, that’s a big bore. But you have to know about it.” Michael urged students to explore the world and if they couldn’t do it literally, to pull from books, movies and the Internet as the options are endless.

the Broadway production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I didn’t have to see his face. I detected the famous American sportswear designer just by his voice as he walked up and down the aisle, ushering a friend.

So when Dr. Joyce Brown introduced the “serious, thoughtful and fiercely ambitious man” to Haft Auditorium’s stage on the evening of Monday Oct. 26, it was as if I was seeing an old friend. The night began with a well-produced video that unveiled Michael’s world, from his first

Think About Who You Want To Dress The problem with many aspiring designers is they don’t know who their ideal customer really is. “What customer inspires you?” Michael asked. “Be aware whether or not they are already being satisfied.

Don’t start your own company if someone else is satisfying those customers.”

Have Curiosity!

It’s your job to know–-everything, the designer insists. Yes FIT, you must know who Anna Wintour is, that Cara Delevigne and Karlie Kloss are two of the top 50 models in the world and that Michael Gould is the CEO of Bloomingdale’s. Michael shared a small anecdote about his Studio 54 days dancing alongside Oscar de la Renta at the famous nightclub one night with his friends. They made sure to speak with the designer. A few days later, Oscar came to speak at FIT and Michael and his gang came to the presentation and sat up front, wearing their disco outfits from the night at the discotheque. At the end, Michael came up to say hello to Oscar and his then wife, and Oscar, turning to her, said, “It’s our friends from the club!” “Know everybody on the scene,” he said as the audience laughed.

collection to Michelle Obama wearing his dress in the official White House portrait, his appearances at trunk shows and his philanthropic work with Watch Hunger Stop.

Michael Kors returned to his alma mater to share what he considers his seven secrets to fashion success but first apologized for being late, “I was in a men’s bag meeting. They kept asking me if we should use nylon or leather.” The crowd found it in themselves to forgive him with a laugh and he began his presentation.

Patience and Impatience Here, Michael joked about having very little patience, “I mean, I dropped out of FIT [after nine months]!” But the biggest problem he faced while producing his first collection in 1981 was his lack of knowledge in manufacturing clothes. For his first collection, he rented machines and rolled them to his apartment for he and his seamstresses to sew and later asked his aunt to drive him from Long Island to Bergdorf Goodman to deliver the designs.

“You never stop learning, it’s fashion, it’s always changing,” he observed. “Take your time, he says, and don’t rush into things. Success doesn’t have to happen overnight,” he added.

Manners Manners, Michael explained, meant a person who presents themselves well-dressed in a stylish way, a person who is willing to listen, a person with the sophistication of someone older but with the curiosity of a youth. And most importantly, a person who sends “Thank You” notes. If you’re ever in contact with Michael, whether it be an internship, an award from the designer or merely a note thanking him for speaking on campus, he appreciates those more than anything.

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Michael rounded up his talk with a Q&A with the audience and concluded with his mission statement that reflects the man behind the brand to a tee: “You can have it all.”

I got to sit with Michael one-on-one after his presentation for an exclusive interview about his major fashion influences, what he would’ve done differently if he were at FIT today and how he establishes himself within his brand.

Fernanda DeSouza: Your mother was a former model so I’m guessing she was the biggest influencer in your life in introducing you into the fashion world.

Was she the primary person or was there another person or entity that really inspired you?

Michael Kors: I have to say in my childhood, it was an entire family of fashion people. I had an uncle who was a manufacturer, all the women were fashion obsessed, my mother had modeled, my grandmother was a junior high school principal but she went shopping daily for new outfits–it was kind of her hobby. And it was just really growing up, I think, exposed to a love of fashion, from all of these different people and women with different kinds of style.

My mother versus my grandmother versus my aunts versus my cousins. They all had a different points of view so I think I saw early on that there were lots of different kinds of ways to express yourself with fashion.

FD: I’m sure a lot of the fashion design students here are concerned about what they’re going to do once they graduate.

What are some of the challenges young designers see today that you didn’t face when you were starting out?

MK: Well, I think that the big thing, quite frankly, is twofold. Number one, I think in today’s world there’re a lot of pressures put on a designer that you are supposed to want to start your own thing immediately and you’re supposed to know everything at the age of 22, and in today’s

world, it’s hard to fly into the radar. I didn’t even have a fashion show for the first three years in business, whereas in today’s world, if you didn’t have a show for three years you’d be gone. So I think the pressure to perform early is terrible today. So maybe don’t be in such a rush and know that you’re not getting the design job as I said when I was speaking.

Maybe you’re going to get a job working at Barneys or Bergdorf and maybe you’re going to get a job at a magazine. Leave yourself open, the connections will help you so if you’re a fashion design student, don’t think it’s only a design job. Might be production, if the company is a great company, get a job in production. Maybe you can work your way into design.

FD: You were a young entrepreneur, selling your designs from your parents’ basement in Long Island. You got discovered by the fashion director of Bergdorf who saw your designs at a boutique across the street from the department store. Do you feel like you were at the right place at the right time and how much of luck plays into this industry, if at all?

MK: I made my luck. I think I always knew that I was going to be designing clothes for someone who was affluent, someone who traveled, probably someone who had a very sophisticated point of view. So the chances of them shopping on Avenue C were limited. The chances of them shopping on 57th Street and 5th Avenue were far greater. So even when I got my job as a salesperson at Lothar’s, I got the job partially –I was looking for

Photos courtesy of Jerry Speier.

a job while I was in school but I wanted to work there because I knew it would be a certain kind of clientele. Then I ended up designing there, then I ended up unfolding and I got to meet Dawn Mello.

Was I shopping personally at 18 on 57th Street and 5th Avenue often? No. But again, if I would’ve been on Avenue C and 7th Street, I don’t know if it would’ve been the same. So you have to make your luck.

FD: Is there one mistake that led you to be more successful in your business?

MK: I think in fashion you can’t regret anything you do. Every collection you do sometimes is better received than others, sometimes the customers love it and the press doesn’t, sometimes the press loves it and the customers don’t. But you have to kind of keep moving along and trying new things. I’m sorry–I can’t consider any of it a mistake. I think the only mistake you could ever make is to do things because you think it’s what people expect you to do. You have to do what is right for your gut and what’s right for what you do.

FD: If you were student at FIT today, what would you have done differently than what you had done back when you attended?

What is the value of an FIT education today in the industry?

MK: I’ll go backwards–the value of an FIT education is that it’s well rounded in fashion. So that you’re frankly, not strictly floating in the clouds...we won’t mention other schools. But there are schools where you might be making something that could make a remarkable costume moment but will it actually work in the real world? I think that FIT has always had this balance between what works in reality-based situations and creativity. The two things together, I think that’s what FIT brings you. And then what the school brings you, I had talked about it before, it’s the community. It’s your first place you’re going to learn how to network and

where you’re going to get to know who you know and how to do it and who to meet.

And the simple truth is, you find other people like yourself and you’re going to see your lives evolve. If I had been here today...I do think that it’s really difficult today to kind of learn quietly and under the radar. I probably would slap myself and finish school and not be so anxious to start because quite frankly, you couldn’t wait three years to have a fashion show, if you did they’d think you’re over already.

FD: It can be very difficult for consumers to relate to the designers because they don’t really know the man/woman behind the brand. But luckily, some of us got to know you through Project Runway.

How difficult is it to establish and then maintain a personal image conjoined and also separate from that of your company?

MK: I think there’s two things. We talked about trunk shows before and they’re happening less and less but I still think they’re important. But the Internet...when I’m on Facebook, we’re on Instagram, anything we do, is like a conversation, a global conversation with the customer.

So they do get to know me in addition to Project Runway. But then you have to say to yourself, ‘Okay, the nicest thing is to let people know who you are as a person but really ultimately how that pertains to what you think about fashion.’ I mean, we’re not talking about what I eat for dinner; we might talk about what influences me or what’s going in my life at a certain point in regards to fashion. So I think that in today’s world there’s a little over-sharing in some instances. You have to figure out why do people want to know you. They want to know you because they want to understand why you do what you do and how you do it.

But then at the end of the day, the product has to stand on its own, even without knowing you. It’s a balance between the person and the product but again, at the end of the day, it’s the product.

dear industry Alicia Koo: TIPILLY

by Britt Bivens Photo courtesy of Tipilly

When Alicia Koo decided that she wanted to start a fashion company, she did what many of us take for granted– she went to Google. A Singapore native, Koo wasn’t finding things that she felt should be there: Cute, easy and inexpensive pieces. Sparked by the idea that she could fill that gap, she set about designing pieces that she would want to wear. Only problem? She knew nothing about fashion.

The founding of Koo’s online store Tipilly, began in her Singapore apartment and has since expanded to the New York region. Her Google search uncovered the first factory contacts and from them, the rest was history. Slowly growing and expanding her supplier base as needed, Koo has developed a network of resources that enable her to operate a nimble business that can turn around small orders in extremely short time frames. Not bad for a company that has barely been around for fourteen months!

While online is the main focus right now, Tippily has started to branch into wholesale and sells to small boutiques globally.

There’s much more to come from this budding brand. We sat down with Koo to get the scoop.

Brit Bivens: This is the data issue of W27– how do you use data within your company?

Alicia Koo: Currently, as we’re a small company, we’re not really using data in the true sense of the word. We know that we can capture a lot of customer info but we’re not up to that yet. In saying that, though, we look very carefully at the analytics of the back end of our website and they tell us quite a bit. For example, one of the most important things we found out is that we get a significant amount of traffic to the website from Instagram. The other thing that surprised us was where our customers were based.

I had built a solid base in Singapore before I left and have since had sales build significantly in the US (about 60%).

Surprising was places like the Dominican

Republic, El Salvador and Argentina, but it makes sense– our designs are girly, fun and perfect for sunnier climates.

BB: Being an online-only store, do you find social media helps boost your business?

AK: YES! We are really active on Instagram. I joined it when it was still gaining ground as a platform and had a lot of my images become trending pictures, which built up my personal following really quickly (@aliciatipilly).

I then started the Instagram account for the brand, which has 187,000 followers.

It’s funny, we’ve tried various things on Instagram that have had varied levels of success. For example, I hired a model and we did a beautiful photo shoot but we get a lot more of a reaction to me wearing our clothes, so we just do that now. If we post a dress that some people don’t like, they’ll unfollow us and then a few days or weeks later begin to follow us again. It’s strange but really interesting.

BB: What about other platforms?

AK: Absolutely. We’re also on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. We’re a new company so we’re still working out how to approach each one differently but I’m conscious of the fact that people get tired of one and move onto another. We do a lot of ‘listening’– reading about what people are saying about us, and that is really useful as well. We actually use it to create new styles, like our jumpsuits. I noticed that every time I posted a picture of me wearing one of our jumpsuits, the traffic count rose and we sold a lot of them. Of

course, that’s great information to have, so we extended the amount of styles we offer in jumpsuits and with our quick reaction factories, could deliver them right away.

BB: What about advertising? As an online only company do you worry about not getting your word out enough?

AK: Sure, you have to continue to grow– that’s why we pay so much attention to what’s being said about us and react to it.

Recently we thought we would be more proactive, rather than reactive and tried Facebook ads. It didn’t work for us. It cost a lot of money and although we had good placement and got clicks, we realized that those people were browsers versus those who had seen us one of the other platforms (that are free!) and went right over to the website to buy.

BB: So what’s next for Tippily? Any plans for a brick and mortar store?

AK: We are definitely looking into opening a physical store, though our main focus right now is still online, making our products accessible to everyone and anyone in the world. The physical store will be more of a place to host Tipilly events and for me to personally interact with my customers. I love how Tipilly is a very relatable brand.

I’ve always envisioned Tipilly to eventually be the platform for a community of women to support and empower one another. Hosting such events in a physical store would be so awesome! I view every customer as a friend, and appreciate from the bottom of my heart, every purchase they make with us.

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It’s Your Data, Deal With It

by Aaron Ventic

Picture it: you are perusing your favorite online shop for your latest expenditure for something absolutely fabulous, of course. You are gazing through the website, clicking through countless pairs of shoes, an inconceivable amount of clothing and endless accessories, when you decide to turn your attention to another website.

After a few volleys of purchases, you begin to make your rounds over your social media, as well as other sites. You then begin to realize that the items you had just been previously browsing are now appearing as advertisements on your newsfeed. Even though you fawned over these items just a few moments before, you suddenly become a little concerned as to why these advertisements are following you. This is all thanks to a little thing called “Big Data.”

In order for retailers and major companies to figure out what is on trend among consumers, many companies are beginning to tap into the realm of consumer insight. Within this department, companies are essentially tracking our online presence to see what we are purchasing, how we are purchasing and what we are attracted to once we first take a glance at the website.

websites, creating a real-time analysis on strategies as well as merchandising, buying and trading, all from collecting data on consumers who shop through affiliated websites using Editd.

With all of this information out there, it makes it seem as though figuring out the consumer would be easier, right? Think again. Bridget Lavery, a retail strategy consultant, says, “There is so much information from our end, you do not even know what to do with their info, so much of it goes unused.”

to consumers across a wide spectrum.

Yet, consumers are the ones that drive the irrational part, since no product can survive in the market for long without the willingness of the public to purchase it.

Essentially, companies are collecting all of this data that drives at times our irrational behavior when purchasing items we don’t need, a core component of Advertising 101.

In the contemporary world of retail, the thought of having big data running behind many of the important operating decisions seems to coincide perfectly well.

Yes, the thought of having our personal information tracked and sorted through to help companies better understand their customers seems a bit terrifying. But when it all comes down to having companies selling products that we actually care to purchase, it doesn’t seem so bad after all.

There is so much information from our end, you do not even know what to do with their info, so much of it goes unused.

Britt Bivens, a trend forecaster, explained this change in attitude from the business side, explaining, “Companies are collecting information about you to buy more.

And even with all of the information that is being collected, they are still working out how to use it.”

Whether it may be browsing through your favorite online website, or by the cookies detected on your computer, once data has been collected, companies then try to project how consumers will respond to items in the future. “Lifestyle generates products, “ said Bivens, “Companies want to create a path and show an evolution, otherwise it does not make sense.”

This growing industry has become increasingly important within the fashion industry, with companies like Editd.

Based out of London, Editd is one of the world’s largest apparel data storage

The problem does arise when companies face the issue of when not to cross the line into the personal and the private. Even though we put ourselves out in various social media, we still have the preconceived notion that “even though I put up major privacy barriers, no one can access my information.” Au contraire. Sadly, our computers grab everything that we scroll through, making it easier for companies to target personal advertisements to each and everyone of us.

As a majority of us are all budding fashionistas wanting to wear the latest and greatest clothing, a question arises: does big data drive us all to make irrational expenditures? The answer remains divided, because companies working with big data ,of course, want to sell products

Major companies are routinely tracking consumers putting their privacy at high risk. Take note, major social media outlets (especially Facebook), frequently re-do their privacy settings, which actually weakens our protection barriers from personal information access being leaked to the world.

As an irrational shopper, at times I appreciate big data being there to help me purchase items I (occasionally) need, even though I find its intrusions unsettling.

It scares me because of how much is out there for companies to retrieve and use to market items towards me. Nonetheless, I prefer looking at an ad for a pair of thousand dollar shoes I can’t afford than some cheap attempt at selling me car insurance.

And who wouldn’t?

DEAR INDUSTRY

FIT

14

Career ‘N’ Coffee: Harry Bee, Founder & Creative Director of The 88

by Venus Wong

It takes only one look at the decor of The 88’s downtown offices to realize you’re in a creative agency: the Woody Allen posters, vinyl collections and vintage furniture bring a fun and refreshing spin to your run-of-the-mill cubicle environment. But don’t let that fool you, they sure know how to get work done. With an impressive roster of clients including HTC, Bobbi Brown and HUGO BOSS and collaborations with the likes of The Man Repeller and Bryanboy, The 88 consistently produces the most buzzed-about and widelyshared creative content in town. Over a hot brew of illy coffee (one of their clients), Founder and Creative director Harry ‘Bee’ Bernstein shared his vision on social media influencers, his business sensibilities and why this is the most exciting time to be in advertising.

I initially approached advertising from a designer’s point of view. When I was studying at SVA, much of my time was spent on interning at (publishing giant) Little, Brown and Company. I think having a combination and balance of school and internship is so important–school teaches you discipline, but real life experiences are unmatched. Interning puts you at a place where there are many avenues to take for your future career. I moved all my classes to the weekend so I could work during the week.

When I graduated, a mentor introduced me to work at Ogilvy, which was doing a lot of newspaper work with IBM at the time. They needed someone who understood typography. I worked a lot with typography before, so I became their guy.

After Ogilvy, I moved onto Berlin Cameron, a smaller boutique agency. I went from working with very big brands like AMEX to up-and-coming brands like boost mobile, Vitamin Water and Belvedere. That made me realized how much I liked doing creative

work for smaller and hipper companies.

During my year of working with Rockstar Video Games in their marketing department, I saw how marketing, PR and digital came together under one roof and realized the potential all of this has.

I’m very fortunate to have seen both sides of the business, with the clash of the old and new guard: traditional advertising is all about creating an idea, paying for media and having them push it into the world. It’s basically like propaganda, where you repeat a simple idea as many times as you can for people to remember it. With the growth of social media, it’s more about pull marketing. You need to build a culture of the brand for people will feel attracted to and get involved in, on their own initiative.

When I turned 33, I decided it was time to start my own agency. True creative people possess an entrepreneurial instinct: they are building up their brand portfolios all the time, even when they are working for an agency. You’re essentially also working for yourself. We did our first business with a Swedish organic vodka company.

With the world we are in right now, everyone is basically required to be a jack-ofall-trades: You are a writer because you tweet, you are a photographer because you Instagram, you are a director because you Vine. That is what’s expected of people who want to be in creative now. You have to have an expressive point of view on your life, and be consistently doing something in the game. It’s invaluable to understand who you are, the culture of the time and how those two connect.

At The 88, we do a lot of influencer collaborations, which are essentially endorsement campaigns. This concept has been

Photo courtesy of Venus Wong

around ever since the beginning of advertising, but social media helped bring it to the next level, because now you’re actually reaching followers who are already fans of the person. It’s more than just looking up a bunch of top Instagrammers and paying them to work with us. Our added value is the deep understanding we have for these influencers and the relationships we’ve built with them over the years. We understand what these bloggers are comfortable with, what their audience appreciates and create authentic insight into their world.

We measure the social media success of a campaign by three pillars: awareness— how far it has reached; engagement—how many people shared, commented and liked; and growth—whether the brand has gained more followers. The audience will appreciate the brand sponsors, because they made the sharing of insight possible. You’re getting the most sincere connection between customer and brand.

Young people sometimes come up to me and ask for career advice, and I tell them that in the advertising world, experience always outweighs talent. You need to have executed your ideas, launched campaigns and have gotten your work out into the real world to be able to sell to a client. It’s a process that requires years of perseverance. Some kids think they’re ready to become creative directors right out of college, just because they were top of the class, but they have no grasp of this concept. If a client wants to change your idea, to not give up and give them what they want. At the core, we are a service industry, but we can’t just serve up our ideas with a smile. We have to get them to order what WE think is best on the menu.

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Beauty Buzz: Bookmark This: Amazon’s New Luxury Beauty Store

by Dianna Mazzone

If you feel like Amazon.com knows you better than you know yourself, you’re not alone: The e-commerce giant knows its way around big data, employing complex algorithms to generate product recommendations that cater to the needs and desires of its millions of users. Likewise, Amazon relied upon user habits to gauge the potential for a niche, prestige beauty “store within a store” on their pre-existing website. The result of their data-driven efforts? The Amazon Luxury Beauty Store, which debuted last month.

“We have luxury shoppers,” said Chance Wales, director of beauty and health at Amazon, told WWD. “What we have been lacking is luxury brands, and we hope this is the first step to marry our customers’ needs with what brands expect in terms of displaying and selling their luxury [products].” As such, the Luxury Beauty Store platformed was programmed to have a different feel than the rest of Amazon. com: products are arranged in a visually pleasing, easily navigable manner. After clicking the Luxury Beauty Store tab on the site’s main menu, shoppers may search by content, brand or category.

Thus far, 24 prestige beauty brands have signed on, including industry and consumer favorites of the likes of NARS, L’Occitane and Burberry fragrances.

Though prices will be comparable to that of other luxury beauty retailers, Amazon offers consumers the added benefit of their famed customer service and free shipping – perhaps the most attractive feature for those shoppers already subscribed to Amazon Prime.

But the site doesn’t intend to rest on its laurels. In the weeks and months ahead,

Amazon hopes to expand its efforts by making the luxury beauty more accessible and interactive, going beyond the physical item itself to create editorials and imagery that brings the product to “life.” In order to do so, Amazon has brought on 12 editors to trend forecast and develop content.

With a fresh approach to luxury and an eye on changing the way consumers shop for beauty, Amazon is certainly worth watching – looks like we’ll be renewing our Prime membership after all.

Photos courtesy of Amazon.com

Our Picks From Amazon Beauty We’ve taken the guesswork out of shopping Amazon’s new Luxury Beauty Store by curating a selection of our top picks for the winter months. Here, four products that had us clicking “Add to Cart.”

Deborah Lippmann Crème Nail Lacquer in Just Walk Away Renee, $16, available at Amazon.

Stila Kitten Glitter Eye Liner, $16, available at Amazon.

Consider this rose gold liner your winter beauty hero — one swipe and you’ll be New Year’s Eve-ready in a flash.

Nothing says holiday like a warm, rich red. Plus, we’re big fans of Deborah Lippmann’s creamy, long wearing formulas.

L’Occitane Almond Shower Oil, $24, available at Amazon.

This is luxury in a bottle if we’ve ever seen it: This almond-scented body oil lathers into foam to gently cleanse and nourish skin.

NARS Semi-Matte Lipstick in Heat Wave, $26, available at Amazon.

There’s nothing like a bright lipstick to cure the winter blues: This universally flattering shade is worth the investment.

Fashion Datatude

by Hermina Sobhraj

The fashion industry is a dynamic playground, experiencing swift changes every day. On the surface, these changes are easy to see. As summer turns the corner, shades of green replace shades of neon yellow and coral. Woven plaid skirts replace denim shorts as the next ultimate season essential. But look past the latest trends and short-lived fads and you’ll uncover a multitude of data- numbers, statistics, charts and graphs all documenting the daily workings of the fashion industry. From dollar values to production outputs, data illustrates dynamism in an entirely new way.

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statistics found at statisticbrain.com & attirebrain.org

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TECHNICALLY SPEAKING If fashion allows us the ability to speak without uttering a word, so too does technology. In a datadriven world, we voice our opinions with every click– thanks to the code and chips that makes it possible.

ON THE COVER TOP: JACK BURNS MODELS: SHYMEL HARDY & MAURISA MINK SAAB

JACKET: STY DRESS: STYL

JACKET: OPENING CEREMONY TOP: STYLE FEEN SKIRT: OPENING CEREMONY

sunglasses sweater: openin jacket: fro

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lasses: style feen opening ceremony om buffalo exhange

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JACKET: OPENING CEREMONy NAIL RING: STYLE FEEN DRESS & MALE JACKET: MIN KYUNG JUNG MALE SHOES: OPENING CEREMONY

FEATURE

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The Rise of the Information Age

by Christina Macaluso

Information age n: a period beginning about 1975 and characterized by the gathering and almost instantaneous transmission of vast amounts of information and by the rise of information-based industries Information is readily available at our fingertips, providing access to almost anything you can think of. The Information Age, and where we find ourselves in 2013, has dramatically changed the way we socialize, work, interact and most importantly communicate with others. With the endless communication possibilities,

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” people can correspond anytime from anywhere in the world, thus transforming the world into a global nation connected by a culture of technology. Technologies, especially mobile devices, serve as a library of information and an instant form of communication. But does having countless information readily available make us smarter or information more effective?

Is there such thing as having too much information? Do we need to remember or know anything on our own? Or do we just rely on the quick touch of a screen to find all the answers? Take something as simple as phone numbers stored in a mobile device- how many of those numbers would a person remember if they were to lose their cell phone?

Information overload has been an increasing problem with the rise and power of the Information Age. Having this overabundance of information may pose a threat to actually finding the appropriate information we need and more

importantly retaining it. Focusing proves to be a difficult task for many to compete with so much knowledge available.

Think for instance when you Google something as simple as the name of a restaurant, hundreds if not thousands of search results appear from pictures to contact information and customer reviews to news articles. Having to salvage through all the results can be quite frustrating and cause a lack of focus and attention. According to wellrespected psychologist Herbert Simon, “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

Another problem we face in the age of information is the loss of privacy.

Protecting the intimate details not meant to be shared with the rest of the world becomes a problem. With the growing trend of social media sites such as Facebook and Foursquare, people are publishing information for the world to see from where they work to whom their friends are and where they are at a given point in time. CEO Pete Cashmore of Mashable, a British American news website, stated that “privacy is dead and social media hold the smoking gun.”

However, taking a step back and understanding that the world has changed and that we can’t think the same way we used to, the Information Age can be an epic shift in history from “we will one day” to “we can and we do.” For instance, books, print newspapers and other forms of communication established prior to the Information Age are transforming to digital versions available instantly from anywhere. With technologies such as smart phones and tablets utilizing the

World Wide Web, we now have access to anything we want giving people the opportunity to go that much further with information. With everyone having access to the same materials and knowledge, it allows generations of this information age to take and use it more creatively to set them apart from the rest. Before, having the knowledge was essential; today, what you do with the knowledge is what’s important. In today’s world, creativity is deemed more valuable than information.

With an increasing demand for creative minds among the plethora of information in the world, the economy and job market are powered by such minds. According to the Elance Global Online Employment Report, creative jobs increased by 60% in 2011 and are expected to continue to increase in years to come.

“privacy is dead and social media hold the smoking gun.”

Ultimately with all this information at hand, it is up to each individual to use it most effectively. We must now decide which information is most important and why, then expand upon this knowledge with ideas of our own. We must choose what information we want to share with the world and always remember that anyone can access anything. We must use the Information Age as fuel for our minds and push ourselves creatively to do something with all this information we have at hand, otherwise the information we have access to is just as useless as a car without gas.

Photo courtesy of Digitaltrends.com

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The Year 15 A.G. (After Google)

by Kyle Dunigan

The relentless quest for information: an old financial report, a new recipe, the perfect vacation, the best doctor, what to name your baby, how to find true love, or how to mend a broken heart. The search for information is a daunting task that seems never-ending. However, one company begs to differ. For the last two decades, the Internet search engine giant Google has been changing the way we access information and find exactly what we are looking for, sometimes before we even know what that information might be.

One might like to imagine that Google’s Co-Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are direct descendants of Melvil Dewey, creator of the original “search engine,” the Dewey Decimal System. The two Stanford University Ph.D. students are responsible for moving us into the “Age of Google,” where the information of the world is more fluid, useful and accessible than ever before. With a resumé that already includes an Internet browser, email service, mobile devices, advertising entrepreneurship, mapping the world and social

networking, Google is changing more than just the way we surf the web.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. With a technologically and business savvy team of 30,000 Googlers (or as we would call them, employees), they seek to accomplish this goal within the next 300 years.

These days, the company is regularly trading publicly at over $1,000 a share and has earned a spot as a verb in the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

This might be looked at as clear signs of Google’s progress towards their end game. Yet just 15 years into the “Age of Google,” the world has become witness to the difficulties, controversies and unexpected consequences that come with wielding and distributing such vast quantities of information.

One of the first adventures outside the search engine business was a logical one given Google’s mission. Methodically and carefully Google set out to collect, scan, digitize and index all the books of the world. Google Books, originally called Google Print, quickly found multiple lawsuits filed against it claiming that the practice was infringing on copyrights by making authors’ published works searchable for free on the Internet. While numbers of authors, publishers, universities and literary archives continue to work alongside Google to grow their digital library, many still want to point out that Google is ultimately a business who has

shareholders to please. To date, Google has no intentions of ceasing its project, and even claims that by having this incopyright material searchable it will help the owner profit more than ever imaginable. Yet, in an attempt to follow the mantra of “Do No Evil,” Google’s unofficial motto, the option for authors of incopyright materials to be excluded from the database is only a few clicks away. As Google’s treasure chests of data and information exponentially grow, their motto of “Do No Evil” seems to be inadvertently harder to avoid.

One of Google’s most ambitious projects of data collection was Street View, launched in 2007.

While it would be hard to argue the practicality of being able to see pictures of a travel destination prior to your journey, Google’s collection methods led to consequences that ranged from comical, to scary, to all around intriguing. The most obvious issues began when people started to find themselves

in the infinite electronic archives of Google. One of the most intriguing Street View moments captured is the birth of a child on a sidewalk of a Berlin suburb.

Google has since developed methods to blur the faces and license plates within its Street View. Google has recently taken its Street View concept off the road and by way of backpack mounted cameras began documenting places such as the Galapagos Islands and the Grand Canyon.

Individuals can contribute to mapping out the world as well through digital

media such as pictures, and with Google’s latest project has made doing so much easier but not without again raising brows.

No Google product has appeared to have generated as much hype or controversy

“So the next time you are feeling under the weather and searching for information that might indicate flu-like activity, Google will take that data and aggregate it with other queries worldwide to help find trends and predict flu outbreaks before they happen.” in compromising pictures via the Google Street View program. These 360 degree, all-seeing-eye, car-mounted cameras captured lewd public sex acts, criminal behaviors being committed, injuries in the making, embarrassing moments and many oddities that are now stored forever

in anticipation of the release of the famed Google Glass. Google’s attempt to create smartphone technology within a wearable and unobtrusive pair of glasses has occasioned widespread anxiety. Glass has already been banned at many locations including certain casinos, strip clubs,

universities, movie theaters, prisons, military installations and new locations almost every day, and keep in mind the product hasn’t been even publicly released yet. The first ticket ever has already been issued in California for the violation of “driving with monitor visible to driver Google Glass, but that was a secondary offense in addition to speeding by 15mph.

Fears of facial recognition technology have led to the creation of anti-Google Glass glasses that skew one’s face from being recognized. Google makes a strong effort to remain transparent as a company and to maintain its trust with the public.

It’s in their best interest too, provided Google’s entire business model depends on the user trusting all your personal data in their growing cloud of data.

Even with all the controversy surrounding Google, the quest to make the world’s data accessible and useful has clearly made its positive mark in society.

Creative as usual, Google has continually found ways to turn our simple queries into data that has potentially lifesaving impacts.

So the next time you are feeling under the weather and searching for information that might indicate flu-like activity, Google will take that data and aggregate it with other queries worldwide to help find trends and predict flu outbreaks before they happen. In a similar fashion, Google Public Alerts aims to distributing early warnings and assistance information during crisis such as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and other public safety issues by using Google Search, Google Maps and other Google properties. Google Person Finder is another Google.org project that aims to helps people and organizations find missing individuals after a crisis or natural disaster by analyzing records and data collected through Google resources.

Living in the “Age of Google” is proving to be a morally and socially complicated era.

Stories about hackers stealing supposedly protected data, Big Brother gaining access to personal information, or corporations selling your data without your consent are becoming increasingly common in the news today. Freedom of speech and other rights are constantly being tested in ways that our founding fathers likely never envisioned, while at the same time, this information age has enabled new revolutions to gain footing and was the case in Egypt and increasingly more locations. As to what is the future of Google?

Well, the answer is probably just a simple Google search away.

Illustration by Sara Rabin

HAUTE CULTURE Chasing Northern Lights

by Francesca Beltran

Photography by Francesca Beltran

When I was 12-years-old I made a list of things I wanted to do before I die.

Number one was, and always remained: “To see the Northern Lights.” On Saturday Nov. 2, they covered the sky and danced around us for three whole hours as my friends and I drove along the coast of Iceland in the middle of the night.

It was over a couple of drinks at a bar here in New York that Ady and I decided to join

some friends on their trip to Reykjavik. We woke up the following day and without giving it a second thought, booked our round trip flights, rented a car for the week we‘d be there, and purchased a pass to attend the music festival, Iceland Airwaves.

On Oct. 30, we landed in Keflavik International Airport (it’s a six-hour flight and a four-hour time difference) and immediately picked up our car, which we baptized under the name Tristan.

Since Daniel and Armen had been there before, we let them be our tour guides for the day.

Reykjavik is very small, but incredibly charming; we spent the morning driving around and visiting touristy spots like Harpa’s concert hall, the old

port where whale hunting ships dock, and Hallgrímskirkja –Iceland’s largest (and the planet’s least adorned) church.

After taking a nap at our rented apartment, we went on the much-anticipated tour to see the Northern Lights.

According to our charismatic guide, chances of seeing them depended on how cloudy the night was, and on the collision of energetically charged particles originated in the solar wind and attracted by the Earth’s magnetic field. Or something along those lines.

After about an hour’s drive, a fickle green light appeared in the sky, much to everyone’s thrill, and the bus immediately stopped so we could all get out and see it.

Truth is, it took us a while to figure out what was it that we were supposed to be looking at, and after a couple minutes the dim light began to fade.

Someone once told me that Northern Lights were children’s spirits who only came out to hear stories, and so I forced everyone in our group to come up with one to share. After a couple of pathetic attempts (turns out we have zero imagination), Armen’s quite terrible tale about an Egyptian pharaoh finally did the trick and the lights reappeared big and bright on the black horizon. That was the first time any of us had seen the Aurora Borealis, and the overwhelming joy and privilege lasted us for about fifteen minutes before they disappeared again.

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gone by, countless videos had been shot and our brains were just ready to implode.

The astounding lake was the cherry on top and luckily we arrived just in time to witness a spectacular sunset.

On Thursday we stayed in the city all day and I had the pleasure to interview and befriend one of my favorite Icelandic musicians, Bardi Johannsson. That night we went to a couple of music shows around town and had our first delicious Icelandic hot dogs. I must add I was pleasantly surprised by the Icelanders’ energy and enthusiasm for live music. And the guys are really cute, in case you were wondering.

The following day, Ady and I went to explore the southern coast. Immediately after we left the city, the scenery was transformed into majestic landscapes that varied from snow-covered mountains, to grasslands and black-sand beaches. En route, we stopped to visit the waterfall Seljalandsfoss, which you can navigate by foot, and explored the area to take some pictures.

From there, we followed our directions to some natural hot springs hidden in the middle of the mountains near Raufarfellsvegur (I’m not making these names up). Instructions led us to take Route 242 “until the road ends,” and then park the car and “walk along the river” for

NOVEMBER 2013

On our way back we were accompanied by purple pink skies, followed by the starriest night I’ve ever seen and a mindblowing spectacle of Northern Lights that surrounded and accompanied us for three hours straight (this time for free).

about twenty minutes. Word of advice, do not travel with Uggs. Ever. First, it’s really difficult to hike with them, and second, you look like a fool.

However, our struggle was rewarded with a deserted pool of warm water in which we swam for a while, enjoying the breathtaking view. Our last stops of the day were Vik, the black sand beach at Reynisdrangar, and the peninsula of Dyrhólaey. Hands down, two of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in my life. Back in the city, that night we went out with Bardi and his friends to see the show of the French musician

Lescop, and to a bar where we got some exposure to the local nightlife and our first taste of the famous Icelandic vodka.

After only three hours of sleep, we woke up the following day and headed for the journey that soon became one of the most beautiful days of our lives. The destination was the glacial lake Jökulsárlón, which according to Google maps was about five hours away from the city. Of course, it took us eight to get there as we stopped on innumerable occasions to – you guessed it – take pictures.

Truth is, no amount of adjectives can do justice to the mesmerizing beauty of the land and so I’ll be content to say that we saw approximately ten completely different landscapes, including glaciers, volcanoes and fields of some green puffy mossy terrain that I didn’t know existed. By the time we reached the lake, rolls of film had

For our last day, we did the famous route of the Golden Circle. We began at the geothermal valley of Haukadalur, where we saw the geyser Strokkur erupt a couple of times –wow. Then we went to the waterfall Gullfoss (“golden falls”), which due to our unsuited footwear it took us half an hour to reach, and could only do so by holding a rope and slowly sliding down the slippery road backwards. We must’ve looked gorgeous. We spent the afternoon driving around the majestic national park Pingvellir, and ended our journey at the volcanic crater lake, Kerio.

Sadly, Monday came much too soon.

We took off around 5pm and flew away invaded by the nostalgia of knowing we’ll probably never see something like this again. We went there not knowing what to expect from a land we never thought we would visit and all I can manage to say is, Iceland is doubtlessly one of the most spectacular places on Earth. On the other hand, watching the Northern Lights, and with that fulfilling the single biggest dream of my life, reminded me that there’s nothing in life that’s unattainable.

I feel invincible.

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MONTH IN REVIEW

by Dara Kenigsberg

Autistic Child Missing for Over a Month It has now been over a month since Avonte Oquendo was last seen walking out of his special needs school in Long Island City on Oct 4. The 14-year old is autistic and, according to his family, he does not even know how to ask for food.

Personal injury lawyer David Perecman is representing the family in a suit against the city “that lost her son” according to BusinessInsider.com. Perecman told the site, “When administrators make a decision on a higher level not to call the police...There's a lot of words for that…

They could have found him within those 45 minutes.”

In the month that has gone by, police and volunteers have scoured the streets of New York looking for Avonte but to no avail. There have been posters, announcements made on loudspeakers, prayer vigils and rescue crews that have looked everywhere from trashcans to buildings.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly recently told WABC-TV, “Unfortunately, we are not hopeful that we’re going to find this young man alive, but we are continuing our search,” a statement that enraged the Oquendo family.

Illustration by Sara Rabin

A little less than a week ago, the family was given some false hope when a photo emerged of a boy resembling Avonte. The picture was of a young boy wearing a khaki jacket riding the subway. According to the NYDAILYNEWS.com, even Avonte’s

father believed that there was a “close likeness.” Unfortunately for the Oquendo family, police located the boy in the photo and confirmed that it was not Avonte.

As the search continues, Senator Charles Schumer has proposed that voluntary tracking devices be made for children that are autistic or have other developmental disorders. The devices could be worn on the wrist, attached to a belt buckle, or worn in the shoe. According to CBSLOCAL.com, Schumer said, “A parent interested in such a device could simply go to their local police precinct and apply. No parent who doesn’t want to participate has to.” Kpana Kpoto, a Bronx mother of a 6-year-old autistic child, told the site that the first thing she did when she heard about Oquendo’s disappearance was go online and look for a tracking device for her son. There is already a similar program in place for Alzheimer’s patients that this would be modeled after.

The Oquendo family’s Facebook page “Bring Avonte Home” has had hundreds of thousands of hits, but it was Avonte’s brother Danny’s recent post that has been the most heartbreaking. Exactly one month from the day his brother disappeared, he wrote, “Each day that passes without Avonte being found is more devastating than the previous. I still feel your energy Avonte, I know you are out there somewhere.”

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Bill de Blasio Wins NYC Mayoral Race At around 10 p.m. on Nov. 5, Republican Joe Lhota conceded the New York City Mayoral race to Democrat Bill de Blasio.

This is the first time in two decades that a Democrat will be the mayor of this city. According to Bloomberg.com, “De Blasio, 52, New York’s elected public advocate, beat Republican Joseph Lhota 73 percent to 24 percent, with 99 percent of the precincts reporting. The 49-point margin is the most for a non-incumbent in city history and the widest since Mayor Edward Koch won a third term in 1985 by 68 points.”

Mall Shooting Ends in Suicide

For the last four years, de Blasio has served as the Public Advocate, a sort of “watchdog,” for the residents of New York. He began his work in New York City government as an aide to Mayor David Dinkins. Later, during the Clinton administration, he was made the Regional Director for the U.S. Department of Housing and Development. De Blasio also managed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s successful senate campaign in 2000. A year later, he joined the New York City Council, representing District 39 in Brooklyn over the following eight years.

During his time there, he helped raise over $100 million for early education programs and wrote legislation that protected affordable housing and ended landlord discrimination. In November of 2009, de Blasio became New York City’s third Public Advocate, where he worked hard to give New Yorkers a voice.

De Blasio ran a strong campaign in order to win NYC’s mayoral seat. He made his mixed race family, particularly his children, the face of his campaign. The first ad featured his son Dante who lauded his father’s position on the stop-and-frisk policy and affordable housing, while sporting a massive afro. It is only at the end of the ad that the public finds out that he is de Blasio’s son, after he says, “Bill de Blasio will be a Mayor for every New Yorker, no matter where they live or what they look like. And I’d say that even if he weren’t my dad.” It was the emotional connection that this ad brought forth that boosted him from fourth place to first of the Democratic primary within a matter of weeks. As part of his successful campaign strategy, de Blasio crafted “a tale of two cities” narrative that spoke to many New

Yorkers. “The moneyed Manhattan elite have had their mayor, he argued, and now the 46 percent of New Yorkers living at or near the poverty level need one of their own,” quoted WashingtonPost.com.

With his truly progressive ideas, according to CBSNEWS.com, de Blasio said that, “This election is a very stark contrast between two very different candidates.

Mr. Lhota clearly wants to maintain the status quo in the city. I’m calling for fundamental change.” He also promised his voters that his election would mean a departure from the Bloomberg era. Some of his positions include putting an end to the controversial stop-and-frisk policy, raising taxes on those who make over $500,000 to help pay for a universal prekindergarten and after school programs.

He also plans to help make the CUNY system affordable again by fighting in Albany to reverse state budget cuts and commit to NYC to fund the school system by 50% of $150 million annually. These are just some of the many changes Mayor Elect Bill de Blasio hopes to bring during his time as mayor.

Mass shootings have unfortunately become so familiar in this country that when Richard Shoop walked into the Garden State Plaza Mall in New Jersey carrying a weapon, those who saw him believed that they were about to “find themselves in the midst of another massacre,” according to The New York Times.

At around 9:20 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 4, 20-year old Shoop fired his first shot into the air as mall workers and shoppers looked on with terror. Luckily, this was not the mass shooting that it could have potentially become and nobody was injured aside from Shoop himself who eventually took his own life.

people, but rather shot directly into the air or at security cameras.

John L. Molinelli, the Bergen County prosecutor, said, “From the time he entered the mall around 9 p.m. until he shot and killed himself in a secluded part of the 2.1-million-square-foot complex, he had ‘ample opportunity’ to cause bloodshed, but he chose not to.” Witnesses to the event said that he never once aimed at

Courtney Coleman, a 25-year-old woman from the Bronx who works at a coffee shop in the mall told the Times that for more than two hours she, “had to sit by herself, surrounded by boxes in the dark while she waited for word on what was happening. I was extremely scared.” Ms. Coleman was just one of many in this position.

When Richard Shoop entered the mall on Monday night, it was about to close.

Upon realizing that he was armed, those inside either fled or took shelter in back rooms and closets. For the following three hours, hundreds of people began gushing out of the mall, many with their hands instinctively on their heads as they passed the heavily armed police officers that had made their way to the scene. Some had to wait hours before they could leave, too afraid to go beyond the confines of their hiding spots.

Shoop’s body was discovered at around 3:20 on Tuesday morning in an area law enforcement officials described to WashingtonPost.com as “in a back corridor of the mall, deep within a lower level, in an area that is not accessible to the public.” After hearing about the shooting, Richard’s brother Kevin found a suicide note, notified police and drove to the scene himself. He told reporters that his brother “intended to harm nobody else but himself. He just sadly decided to make an act of self-indulgence by taking his own life publicly. It’s a tragedy to us all.” It was in fact Kevin Shoop who called police in the first place and notified them that the gunman could be his brother. The gun that was used, which was modified to look like an AK-47, also legally belonged to Kevin.

“This was something none of us saw coming. We’re not sure what caused him to do this, and we’re devastated.”

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The Banksy Take Over: tagging nyc

by Sarah Fielding and Yesica Balder

In response to his popularity, Banksy is quoted as saying, “ We don’t need any more heroes; we just need someone to take out the recycling.” It might sound absurd that a street artist would ever be called anything close to hero. When one hears the term street artist an image of stealthy people violating property with cans of spray paint in the middle of the night comes to mind. Banksy has done a great deal to transform that image. He does not just write his name, mark his territory and leave. He leaves a statement of value, whether it is political, social, or a simple message about life.

Heroes are generally thought to have two main characteristics: anonymity and selflessness. Banksy has the anonymous part down; his identity is unknown but the selflessness part is debatable. Some would say that he’s a vandal who ruins property.

Some would say he leaves messages to bring attention to current issues thereby inspiring action or at least awareness.

When you think about what you want are “normal” and “plain” the words that come to mind? Banksy’s artwork reminds us a plain white wall on a building can be more than a plain white wall. This applies to us as people; we can be powerful and beautiful as opposed to ordinary and simple. Banksy’s residence in New York City this month has been an opportunity for him to make artwork in new locations.

Banksy is believed to have been born in Bristol, England in 1974. He rose to prominence in the 1990s with his stencil artwork and developed his signature look during his involvement with Bristol’s graffiti gang DryBreadZ Crew. He works with a wide range of all-inclusive media. His work is controversial as it primarily makes use of political themes.

Banksy wants the viewer to react to his art, whether it is positive or negative he doesn’t seem to care. In 2010 Banksy’s fame rocketed with the release of the documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Banksy wanted to experience New York this October and then draw on those memories.

Banksy made artwork in all of NYC’s five boroughs during his 31 day stay beginning Oct. 1, and ending on Oct. 31. The artwork varied from graffiti art, painting and performance art to sculpture. Banksy’s first work appeared in Manhattan and featured two boys spray painting on a sign saying, “Graffiti is a Crime.” On day 11 a truck driving in the Meatpacking district of Manhattan was adorned with stuffed animals poking out from its sides. On day 13 a man hired by Banksy sold spray painted canvases for 60 dollars each in Central Park. No one knew these artworks were

by Banksy—one customer managed to purchase two for the price of one, these are valued to be in the price range of $40,000.

Photo courtesy of NYPost.com

On day 15 a stenciled image of the WTC Twin Towers was spray painted on a wall of Tribeca and glass was placed over it for preservation. A Ronald McDonald fiberglass sculpture having his shoes polished by a man wearing dirty clothes made it’s way from borough to borough. Police threatened to arrest the shoe polisher in Manhattan but no further action was taken. A painting Banksy purchased, altered, and titled, “The Banality Of The Banality Of Evil” sold for $615,000 on day 21. The money was donated to Housing Works, an organization that raises money for homeless AIDs victims in Manhattan.

Fans and curious onlookers searched the streets eager to locate the next Banksy piece daily. No one except Banksy and his crew knew where the next artwork would appear. Shrewd New Yorkers tried to make a profit by charging tourists for seeing the artwork and men were arrested for trying to steal the last Banksy piece on day 31 in Queens. Banksy’s artwork

mainly focused on social criticism— issues of censorship, economic class, wealth, commercialism, the corporate system, terrorism, war and genocide, alongside philosophical ideas. In the end, most of the artwork was either destroyed or painted over, even the glass placed over the WTC twin tower stencil did not survive. Regardless social media will eternally preserve memories of Banksy’s stay in NYC. Banksy, like his predecessor Warhol, has proven once more garnering media attention is just as if not more important than the artwork itself. Banksy spoke to the people of New York and for that we will be forever grateful. Banksy might be gone, for now, but for the month of October he was our hero.

Clickable Love-Searching

by Sarah Malmgrem

These days, finding love is something to be squeezed in between grocery shopping and yoga class. For the busy, the lonely and the time-crunched, dating sites like eHarmony and Match.com are gateways to the world of romance. Though nothing new, they continue to attract thousands of hopeful singles every day.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s ever looked at dating sites skeptically. After all, they filter the concept of love, something complex and emotional, down to a system of numbers and algorithms. Described by The Boston Globe as “the Google of online dating,” OkCupid, for example, turns data into dates and is recognized by many as the go-to dating site for the young and “hip”. Essentially, match percentages are calculated using a patent-pending method that identifies three things- your answer, how you’d like someone else to answer and how important the question is to you.

In an attempt to better understand how this works, I- in spite of my better judgement- decided to create an account. I only was asked for the basics at first (name, gender, sexual orientation), but from there things got more personal. Once a certified OkCupid member, I was able to customize my profile by responding in essay-like form to prompts like “The six things I could never live without” and “The most private thing I’m willing to admit.”

Then came the questions. I was shocked

at the breadth of subjects covered within only the first ten. The questions ranged from laughable (“Which would you rather be, normal or weird?”) to awkward (“As far as you’re concerned, how long will it take before you have sex?”). The more questions answered, the more suggested matches pop up based on users who report similar opinions and values.

I’ll admit, when I checked my profile a day later, I was curious to see what sorts of results I would find. Considering I had only uploaded a simple shot of my face and answered a few questions, I was surprised to see I had 113 visitors to my page and 10 messages. Just as the shameful thrill was really starting to reel me in, I noticed minute-by-minute updates of who was checking me out. Now that’s data at work.

The appeal of a dating site like OkCupid is that it condenses hours of “Should I go talk to her?” thoughts in the bar and awkward first date conversations down to a few clicks. If you see someone who catches your eye, you can message him or her right

away without the pressure of a face-to-face interaction, and you already have an idea of how likely you are to hit it off.

questions asked) root of that number is taken. The higher the number, the more likely two people are to see the sparks fly.

Sure, it all sounds great: register yourself for another social networking site, create a quick sales pitch for yourself and watch the pursuers line up. And that’s exactly how dating sites want you to see it. In a TED Talk video narrated by OkCupid co-founder Christian Rudder, the math behind the site’s success is described as “just some addition, multiplication, a little bit of square roots.”

Sites like OkCupid are, for the members of today’s generation, what speed dating was for our parents. It’s trendy, it’s fun and puts finding a partner into your own hands. Some may argue that it’s nothing more than numbers; just because two people answer questions in similar ways, it doesn’t mean they will necessarily be compatible outside of cyberspace.

Data is cultivated through number values assigned to the different levels of importance as determined by users. “Irrelevant” is 0; “a little important” is 1; “somewhat important” is 10; “very important” is 50; and “mandatory” is 250. From there, a potential match is analyzed for his or her satisfaction with your answers, and you are analyzed for your satisfaction with his or hers. The percentages of satisfaction between two users are multiplied together, and the nth (“n” being the number of

Recently, I met a friend of mine’s new beau, and I couldn’t help but comment on how good they seemed together. He leaned in close with a smile on his face and whispered, “We met on OkCupid.” Clearly, for some people it works. So, can a few clicks find you love faster than Cupid’s arrow?

You’ll have to find out for yourself.

Photo courtesy of OKCupid.com

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Theatre Review:

Two Boys: An Opera in Real-Time

by Miriam Lustig

Composer Nico Muhly’s opera “Two Boys” in love. Soon after, Rebecca begins to share chilling stories with Brian about opens with one boy in a coma, another her mother’s friend Fiona, an MI5 spy. boy suspected of stabbing the first and a The series of events that Brian relates to reluctant detective charged with invesDetective Strawson becomes increasingly tigating the attempted murder. When complex and Detective unlikely, Inspector concluding Anne with Rebecca Strawson missing, pre(Alice Coote) sumably dead questions and Jake 16-year-old comatose Brian (Paul after being Appleby) stabbed in about the the heart. stabbing of 13-year-old Based on a Jake (Nicky Photo courtesy of Howard/Metropolitan Opera true story, Spence), this Metropolitan Opera commissioned Brian responds with a narrative so fantasproduction explores the role of the tic it could only be fiction, or so the detecInternet in contemporary culture, espetive assumes. It starts with the Internet: cially as it relates to identity and desire.

Brian meets Rebecca (Jennifer Zetlan) “Two Boys” positions the Internet as a on an online chatroom and the two fall masquerade, that which allows people

to disguise, dissemble and manipulate, renewing a traditional feature of opera and society by reinterpreting it through a contemporary lens. In the rise of the Internet it suddenly became possible for people to anonymously explore their fantasies and act on their darkest impulses.

In “Two Boys,” liberally sprinkled with familiar acronyms such as “n2m,” “a/s/l” and “omg,” the shadowy world of the Internet provides a mask. One contrast that was well articulated in the opera are the differences in opinion regarding the Internet: the leery adults who mistrust it versus the teenages who come alive only when online. Does the Internet kill tenderness or engender it, the opera explores?

What was truly fascinating was “Two Boys’” translation of the Internet into art, both musically and aesthetically.

Although this author can not critique with any serious depth the nuances of the music (a philistine if there ever was

one, unfortunately), she can say that she enjoyed it. The use of choral music to underscore thematic analogies of the innocence and naivety of youth and the Internet’s vibrant, ever-humming network was hauntingly beautiful. So were the subtle differences in tone that differentiated between moments of tenderness and antagonism, friendship and manipulation. Visually, “Two Boys” was nothing short of breathtaking. The sets, designed in collaboration by set designer Michael Yeargan, lighting designer Donald Holder and 59 Productions, conceptualized the Internet as a pulsing morass of intrigue, fantasy, love, lust, lies and machinations.

For years, the Internet has been defining our lives and this opera now attempts to return the favor by spinning a rich and visceral narrative.

Light Up Your Menurky!

by Daniela Rios

Whether you’re hollering at your halfdrunk uncle Bob across the dinner table to pass the mashed potatoes during the infamous annual Thanksgiving dinner or lighting the first candle on the gold, richly detailed vintage menorah, I’ve got you covered this holiday season to get you through these two charming and hilarious holidays without potentially hurting anyone (yourself included).

Every Thanksgiving, I make sure to shamefully hide all my belts and jeans and replace them with stretchy skirts and stockings. Why? Because my stomach is more than likely to inflate five inches with all the delicious food my relatives bring to the table with a mischievous smirk sprawled across their faces. If you tend to be more cautious about your calorie intake, then you might want to eat light the days prior to the enormous buffet on Thanksgiving night. It will make you feel less guilty but equally satisfied. It is also smart to eat in proportions, you’ll get to savor everything and not worry about having to secretly throw out the experimental coleslaw salad your cousin Linda thought she could make after watching an hour of that new food network show. I’m willing to bet the 350 bucks I don’t have that gym membership numbers skyrocket the day after Thanksgiving. But hey! There is

nothing better than homemade food and slipping on a cozy knit sweater the next morning while eating leftovers and watching season 6, episode 10 of How I Met Your Mother titled “Blitzgiving.”

real tough and edgy pilgrim outfit and gather around the table.

a ticket to Las Vegas to “get lucky” along with Daft Punk’s latest album.

Perhaps, if you’re not Jewish, the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about Hanukkah is that super catchy song written and sung by America’s favorite goof ball Adam Sandler. But, there is so much more to it than Adam Sandler’s outof-tune voice, I promise!

As children, we were given blank wooden dreidels to paint and decorate however we pleased, in fact, they were one of the first real canvases of our early artwork as aspiring kindergarten artists. Real dreidels, however, contain a letter from the Hebrew alphabet on each of the four sides. These four letters form the acronym of the phrase: "Nes gadol hayah sham," meaning "A great miracle happened there,” a reference to the Hanukkah miracle that transpired in the Land of Israel.

Hanukkah, the "Festival of Lights," is about happiness, strength and celebration. Strength because of the time the Jewish people fought back against religious oppression in their own land, and celebration because of their victory in gaining that religious freedom and being thankful for all the miracles.

Photo courtesy of kickstarter.com

Above all, Thanksgiving is about being thankful for all that you have. It’s about spending time with those you love, friends and family, who kindly serve as friendly reminders that there are, to your terrifying surprise, people weirder than you. Didn’t get to dress up this Halloween? It’s not too late! Pick out a

Hanukkah is eight nights of fun and tradition, but picking out special gifts for loved ones for these eight days can sometimes be tricky. One of my favorite Jewish families, the Zaglins, gave me some of their usual go-to places to find the perfect gifts. Places like Gadgets & Gizmos and websites like Amazon carry some of the unusual things that the Zaglins seek out every holiday. They are all comedians in their own way; the daughter once bought the father a hair growing kit and the brother is planning to get the mother

A 9-year-old little genius named Asher Weintraub, from Brooklyn, invented a “menurky,” a turkey-shaped menorah — or Hanukkah candelabra – and has had a copious amount of customers eager to get their hands on Mr. Weintraub’s awesome creation.

So go buy your menurky and have the best of both worlds by celebrating “thankgivukkah” this year because the convergence of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah won’t happen for another 77,798 years!

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MUSEUM REVIEW:

The Mystery of the Ordinary

by Yesica Balderrama

exhibition featuring some 80 works from 1926-1938 is “The Menaced Assassin,” based on a scene from the popular WWI “Fantomas” fiction crime series. Men in black suits stand in various stern positions inside a white room with an open window and a nude woman bleeds at the neck, left center. Drama, gore and mystery merge to create a climatic effect.

Magritte pushes us to the edge of a cliff and leaves us dangling there, we are unsure of what we are looking at or what will happen next.

Photo courtesy of times-arrow.com

Upon arriving at the sixth floor of the MOMA a long line snakes around a rope.

I’m told I have to go back down to the lobby and wait in a line starting at the elevator. It’s hot and crowded—people are shuffling about in their thick winter jackets and coats, clamoring to move

forward. The security guard announces we can finally enter and the man behind me jokingly replies, “We were told that last week.”

The opening centerpiece to Rene Magritte’s “The Mystery of the Ordinary”

Is this a fragment from a dream? What defines reality and fantasy? These are the questions provoked by Magritte’s paintings, often blending the mechanical man made objects, such as shoes and eating utensils, with the organic, people, backdrops of serene skies and mountains. A train protrudes from a fireplace in “Time Transfixed,” and an eye becomes the sky in, “The False Mirror.” Body parts are

distorted, displaced, and fragmented, characters stand muted and awkward, locked in place; “The Lovers” cannot pull apart from each other. The combinations can be apparent and visceral, in “Rape” the nude body of a woman is pasted onto a face, and in others the result is subtle, requiring further inspection to recognize the surprise twist, such as a man’s missing reflection in “Not to be Reproduced.”

Despite recurring subject matter, Magritte plays with framing, canvas shape, placement and size, with the addition of text. His poetic titles suggest explanations yet are still ultimately unrevealing. We are drawn inside fantastical dimensions of mismatched objects and curious scenarios, where anything is possible, and the ordinary becomes the extraordinary.

BOOK REVIEW:

Twitterature

by Yesica Balderrama

As a literature enthusiast, the El Dorado of goals is to read every major classic in the literary canon. Years have passed and the list has amassed to include hundreds of titles. It does not suffice to place them under my pillow in the secret hope my brain waves will absorb the text as I sleep. This is where Twitterature comes in, 82 major novels including writers from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch to Jack Kerouac condensed to twenty humorous tweets or less, exceptional attention span and vocabulary not required, hence the “Twit” in Twitterature.

Raunchy jokes are all but avoided and each writer is assigned a witty username, notable examples include Franz Kafka’s @bugged_out and Vladimir Nabokov’s @PolanskiFan106.

Despite the obvious effort of simplification, basic background knowledge in history and pop culture is needed, and background context of the novels is helpful in understanding the humor.

The tweets are written with current colloquialisms, a blending of old and modern English, and were not written to be taken seriously. Authors Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin do not shy away from making risqué jokes about gender, sex, racial, war, psychological issues and social class, often pointing out women and minorities having little to no rights before the twenty-first century.

A staunch traditionalist might be offended or even appalled by the unabashed skinning of such renowned novels, and might say Twitterature is a gimmicky lucrative move of Aciman and Rensin. How dare they desecrate the divine words of the greats by reducing them to incomprehensible scraps? However Twitterature is written in

good humor and is a novel interpretation of decades old material. The reader is left with plenty of laughs and some knowledge of the literary canon, as the main

we communicate with one another. We digest information at faster speeds, in greater amounts and more varieties, dispensing of traditional punctuation, spelling, grammar and syntax. We want information and we want it now, the simpler the better. Lengthy long-winded paragraphs and in depth examination are being replaced by brief sentences, emoticons, abbreviations and lower caps, dust is accumulating on the punctuation keys of our keyboards.

One can only imagine the reactions of Emily Bronte, Shakespeare, Stendhal and Fyodor Dostoevsky to Twitterature.

Were they alive would they post selfies Illustration by Yesica Balderrama on Instagram? What captions would they use? What would they tweet? We ideas of each novel are still reflected and live in the age of the short sentence and described in the tweets. who knows, maybe the next addition to the literary canon will be written in this Twitterature is essentially a satire about style. the current state of the English language.

Social media has rapidly changed the way

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NOVEMBER 2013

MOVIE Review:

THE FIFTH ESTATE

by Kyle Dunigan

film by Daniel Brühl). Together, Julian and Daniel take us on a sensationalized 128-minute journey into the controversial and fascinating secretive world of “whistle blowing.”

Photo courtesy of Impaawards.com

At one point in our lives we all accidently manage to get caught up in a spider’s web, whether we are cleaning the garage or at some crappy Halloween party. The Fifth Estate is not a film about spiders, but rather a man named Julian Assange who uses the Worldwide Web to catch corruption. Assange, played by an eerily similar looking Benedict Cumberbatch, is the founder of a then controversial and secretive whistle blowing collective known as WikiLeaks. This film is adapted from a book by WikiLeaks employee Daniel Domscheit-Berg (portrayed in the

The Fifth Estate seems to have a strong case of attention deficit disorder based on the changes of its plot, location and characters every few minutes.

Although much of the movie takes place at various computer oriented hideouts around Germany, the film also takes its audience to Libya, Iceland, and Washington DC. This may have been a deliberate attempt to make the viewer feel as they are themselves an eccentric vagabond wanderer like Julian. More likely, however, this could have been the finished product of an over-revised script.

In spite of the jumpy narrative, Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Brühl give flawless performances that do their real world counterpoints justice. Cumberbatch was able to capture Julian Assange’s peculiar mannerisms effortlessly, especially considering he wasn’t afforded the opportunity to ever meet Assange in person.

The movie itself works hard to show how living in the world of secrets takes its emotional and physical toll on each and every person caught up in its web.

The film is peppered with romantic conflict, political drama and real world footage of WikiLeaks media coverage.

At times the film teeters on the edge of feeling like a documentary, but always snaps back quickly into the suspenseful drama that is supposedly the world

of whistleblowing, or rather, persons who exposes misconduct happening in an organization. Creating a visually entertaining experience focused around computer codes, screens and the Internet has always been an issue for filmmakers.

Director Bill Condon attempts to remedy this by creating a visual representation of WikiLeaks at pivotal moments in the plot. Ultimately these scenes end up just adding to the already confusing narrative. The soundtrack, therefore, becomes imperative in directing our emotional journey through a film where the on-screen action can become choppy and unfocused.

Overall, The Fifth Estate is an entertaining film that seems to work hard at being free of bias. Julian Assange said in an open letter to actor Benedict Cumberbatch, “It is distorted truth about living people doing battle with titanic opponents. It is a work of political opportunism, influence, revenge and, above all, cowardice.” The Fifth Estate covered many secrets of the last decade, but the biggest secret now might be figuring out how accurate this movie really is. Despite its shortcomings, the film is a worthwhile watch, and especially a must see for those who might not have kept up with recent world events.

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Emojis: Express Yourself Through Text and Fashion

by Chloe Dewberry

It's hard to think back and imagine the days when texting a simple colon and parentheses was enough to represent an emotion. Back in the emoticon days, switching that colon to a semicolon to represent a winking face was thought of as revolutionary and the idea of textmessage conversations that only involved emoji symbols seemed like an impossible dream.

Nowadays, it's hard to picture a world where you can't send a hamburger or pizza emoji to talk about lunch plans. What would Alexander Pope (an 18th century British poet and essayist) say about replacing words with pictures? You can hardly argue that this is helping to build vocabulary skills. We’re already talking like a bunch of superannuated 5th graders.It's even harder to imagine a world where technological innovations don't somehow end up as fashionable accessories that can be worn on your body. Fashion and technology have always gone together hand-in-hand.

Technology in fashion has garnered an increasing amount of publicity in recent years with the development and popularization of digitally printed fabrics and daring new innovations. French brand Carven recently collaborated with artist Michael Wolf on their Fall/Winter 2013 collection that featured digitally printed fabrics of Wolf's photographs of cityscapes and office building windows at night. And who could forget Diane Von Furstenberg's Spring/Summer 2013 fashion show where she sent models down the runway with the Google Glass prototype  masking their faces?

Furstenberg proved that the geek-chic

look is attainable and introduced a new functional and technological accessory.

While all of these innovations have caught the fashion world's eye and have become trendworthy, nothing has been as explosive and accessible as the emoji graphic print trend. The emoji , which is Japanese for "picture word," is a pictograph of things such as faces, weather, or activities.

They are also the latest graphic fashion trend that can be spotted on everything from t-shirts to jewelry.

The most notable innovator to introduce the digital emoji fashion trend was designer badboy Jeremy Scott with his Fall 2012 Ready-toWear collection. Scott peppered his collection with an overwhelming amount of instant message emoticons and modern emojis. Models flounced down the runway in a variety of smiley face themed outfits that included smiley faces in sunglasses, smiley faces with heart eyes and even melting smiley faces. The trend has since spread and can be purchased at a great deal of retail stores and websites . Thanks to sites like shopjeen.com, you can now wear sushi print on your sweatshirt in addition to eating it and sending an emoji that describes how you can't live without it. You also no longer have to actually play football to rep the sport. The Been By D'Heygere football t-shirt is perfect to wear while including the football emoji in a Tweet about watching the game. Emojis and fashion are both ways to express yourself and they have come together in perfect harmony to a store near you. Insert happy face emoji here.

Illustrations by Sara Rabin

FIT SPEAKS The Unpaid Internship: Legal Disaster or Blessing in Disguise

by Rich Gilmartin

Almost every twenty-something living in New York City knows what it’s like to be at the bottom of the food chain in the workplace. Somebody has to do all the menial tasks, and here we are, young willing and able to take on the large burden that so many do not want to deal with. We deal with it now in hopes of being able to pay our dues as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The implication in question is that if we are miserable now, we will eventually grow into a position that pays well and makes us happy. However, with recent scandals such as the decision to cut internships at Conde Nast and a high profile lawsuit against Hearst, many have been left asking an important question, is it worth it?

In a recent interview with CNN, Melissa Benca, Director of Career Services at Marymount Manhattan College, stressed the importance of internships stating, “Graduating students with paid or unpaid internships on their resume have a much better chance at landing a full-time position upon graduation. Students are doing internships as undergraduates, and it is now not unusual for recent grads to take an unpaid internship with hopes of turning it into a permanent position or at least making some contacts and building their resume” Almost any college student would agree with this statement.

With the recent economic downturn it is almost just as beneficial for companies to have interns as it is for students to fill those positions and gain the learning experience.

I know personally I have completed several internships, some legal and others not so legal. In the past, I have exposed myself to intense workplace culture and have allowed my skills to be exploited because I was uneducated in industry norms. While I wasn’t paid with monetary rewards I was paid, however, with valuable life lessons. Being able to evaluate my own value and owning it is an invaluable skill I have learned from past internships and with that, I have thankfully been able to move on to something that is better paid with a great corporate culture.

Money is nice, but it isn’t everything.

Naturally it’s easy to question unpaid internships because any money is better than no money but so many valuable lessons can be learned from the hands-on

experience. A recent study done by the APS (Association for Psychological Science) suggests that true happiness comes from how much the people around you respect and admire you and not by how much money you are making.

Doing grunt work may be miserable, but that should not be the main focus right now. The benefit lies in learning what kind of work environment is beneficial and healthy for you. If you can learn to value a good work culture early on in your career, I guarantee it will only help you in attaining your dream job in the long run.

Cats of Instagram

by Fernanda DeSouza

Ask me why I refused to join Instagram for over a year and you’ll get the following reactions:

the photos look less iPhone 3-esque so people don’t make fun of my ridiculous outdated device seems like a good option.”

“I have an iPhone 3 (yes, I’m that archaic) and photo quality is not as sharp on iPhone 3. Plus I have no flash, therefore, no drunk selfies at bars can be captured and showcased.”

“I want to follow every cat account there is.”

“I have a $700 DSLR camera, it’s better than my phone and takes great photos.”

“I’m a little snob and didn’t want to follow the new social media hype. Nor did I want another excuse to be attached to my phone.”

Ask me why I got on Instagram and you’ll hear: “As a marketing student, I should probably see what it’s all about and stay on top of current channels of communication between consumers and companies.”

“Downloading an expensive app to make

I’m sorry. I don’t care about your selfies or the filter you used nor the #stupid #hashtags #you #write #below #your #tacky #picture #of #your #tacky #Subway #sandwich #that #you #felt #the #need #to #post #as #if #you #were #eating #a #meal #at #the #Ritz. Calm your tits with those hashtags, folks and forget your sandwich picture (#foodporn is getting old). Let’s focus on what’s become a phenomenon on everyone’s favorite social media platform: CATS. I first realized this trend of “cat everything” at Urban Outfitters. Sweaters and soap dishes were adorned with cat faces and whiskers. Don’t forget the socks (currently wearing a pair as I write this).

Perhaps the Urban designs stemmed

from the famous Charlie Schmidt’s Keyboard Cat video, a YouTube sensation with over 33 million views. This keyboardplaying cat has even been mimicked on the Pistachio commercials and who could forget the jingle? So it’s safe to say he’s the Feline-God-Being that started it all. Lil Bub was sensationalized through her debut in her very own documentary. Partnering with Vice Magazine, “Lil Bub and Friendz” premiered this year at the Tribeca Film Festival and explored the popularity of cat memes and their fixture on the Internet today.

Then came Grumpy Cat. With over 63,000 Instagram followers, Tardar Sauce, the kitty behind the “Grumpy,” sparked the “meme” generation on Instagram, revolutionizing, or rather, personifying our feline friends as bitchy domestic pets they are typically stereotyped to be with funny captions on her images.. Nothing will beat the jubilation I experience while scrolling through cat Instagram accounts and double-tapping their photos, not even chocolate.

So I started unfollowing friends on Instagram (sorry, you’re not worth it) and gave my sole attention to these “katz.” And

I’m not the only one. There is a cult following and I’m going to be the first one to flat out say it: this cult is made up of a majority of hipsters living in Brooklyn or Brooklyn-esque places around the world as well as single women who gave up on their love life and reside with 80 cats (one of which is named Mr. Mittens). @ BodegaCatsofInstagram spawned from the popular Tumblr page and allows the users to interact with the digital-feline world. I have since hashtagged the kitties I’ve come across NYC bodegas just to feel part of this world (pathetic, I know).

And now cat owners all over are starting Instagram accounts for their own cats in hopes of hitting big numbers in terms of traffic and followers. I can’t say I’m one of those people (as pets are not allowed in my apartment building, much to my dismay as I found a mouse sneaking around my room last month), but I will say I’m quite jealous. My meme: “Can I haz a kat prease?” with my sad face. Maybe if I send that to my landlord he will comply?

So to all the cat accounts out there, thank you and your owners for being a little quirky. You make my life a little more bearable with your fluffiness and meows.

OYB:

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Red Hook

by Dana Heyward

Around this time last year, Red Hook, Brooklyn was one the many areas in New York that suffered from damage from the category two level storm, Hurricane Sandy.

Streets were flooded, subways shut down and residents lived without power for several hours. But today, while the neighborhood is still rebuilding and recovering, parts of the area are still very-much alive.

Red Hook is definitely most well known as being the neighborhood that’s home to the monster IKEA store (or the Real World: Brooklyn house, depending on who you ask). But if you ever decide to head down to Red Hook for a day trip, you’ll find the area has more to offer.

During your journey you’ll probably feel like rewarding yourself. Head over to Van Brunt Street and check out Baked. This place is known for their brownies (Oprah even praised these amazing things), but also take a moment to indulge in some of their cupcakes, cookies, or whoopie pies.

Their pumpkin cheesecake is on point, and will surely get you into the Fall spirit.

Up the street from Baked, you’ll come across Erie Basin. This antique jewelry shop is known for their classic jewelry but specifically their vintage engagement rings. Even if you don’t plan on popping the question to anyone soon, still, feast your eyes on their amazing jewelry collection that dates back to the 1800s.

If you’re ready for a feast, head over to The Good Fork. This rustic spot, offers up dishes like dumplings, Korean style steak and eggs and a lamb chop to write home about.

The thing I love about Red Hook is that I feel that I could have a good day just simply walking around. Once you’re done stuffing your face, stick with Van Brunt Street and honestly see where it takes you.

Around this time of year, the neighborhood’s industrial charm definitely shines through and one can’t help get a cozy feeling while strolling around. Head over to the piers to catch some killer views of the waterfront and maybe even a view of the Statue of Liberty. And of course if you must, head over to IKEA just to say that you did.

While Red Hook is still definitely a bit off the beaten path in terms of transportation, it’s totally worth it. The neighborhood’s mix of quaint bars, restaurants and shops mixed with its semi-gritty image made me want to explore the neighborhood for hours on end. So take the G train, the ferry, or even rent a CitiBike (it’s said that the neighborhood is best explored by bike), and have at it. You may stay longer than you expected.

photos courtesy of Dana Heyward

W27

Zoe Weber | Fashion Design | technolohy plays a big role in my style from interactive design to LED lights

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Ryan Moore | Menswear | I cannot live without my iPad mini, it connects me to fashion and style information at the swipe of my hand

NOVEMBER 2013

Kirin Taylor | Textile Surface Design | Technology, is the ultimate fusion of connectivity and communication

style on 27 Photography by Jessica Farkas

Shannon Dermont | Merchandising | Technology affects my everyday life so much because everything I use revolves around technology

Jessica Mathieu | FMM | Makes life much easier

Autumn has arrived, bestowing it’s brisk climate upon us. Students have welcomed this change, and have even go so far as to take it as a challenge to show off their savvy fashion sense. Layers of fur, patterns, and mixtures of neutral and regal burgundies and magentas have been spotted across campus. W27 took this opportunity to showcase their styles and ask them how technology affects their life.

Yun Qu | Fashion Design | Technology makes my life more interesting and easier

Dilnoza Samatova | FMM | Technology makes my life so much easier

Jamie Portera | Accessory Design | Technology affects my life greatly, its how I connect to the world and get inspiration