Week in Review: July 27 - August 2 (Law and Order Edition)

During summer, when there are no parties to break, or drunk students to catch urinating, what exactly does PSafe do? Catch criminals, that's what. In this week's edition: Water guns? Public lewdness? Princeton quickly becomes the next possible locale of a CSI spin-off. Meanwhile, The New Yorker is all like, "You guys were so right about the Kindle thing," and coincidentally "the Kindle ate my homework" becomes a viable excuse. Also, oh my God!, the Princeton Review made lists of colleges and people  freak out about them.

• Remember that call you got Monday morning from the automated robot woman who cried wolf? About a possible gunman on campus and staying indoors and all that? That was because Public Safety heard from an employee that spotted a young man with what looked like a gun (prompting the flurry of emails and calls to students and faculty). Well, couple minutes later, turns out the guy was a camp counselor carrying around a water gun. Again, those sick sons of bitches at Nerf spark a Princeton lockdown . While we certainly appreciate the attention to campus safety (really! we do!), we're sure that everyone would prefer a little more discretion at PSafe Headquarters before pressing the big red panic button.

• Moving on down the police blotter... Guess who decided to make an appearance on campus this weekend? Yes, that's right, our very own Professor of Public Lewdness, the Princeton Masturbator. Not to be outdone by watergun-toting teenagers, the wanker struck again, this time between Clio and West College. Sporting a hip but conservative white button-down and jeans, the young man asked a visiting lady for some directions Saturday night, while, you know, exposing his genitals. But folks!, this might be the end of an era. Shortly after receiving the call about the man, PSafe sprang into action and actually caught the perp, took him into custody, and charged him. Could this have been the wanker's last strike? Is there more than one of them? Just why does he always hang around Clio Hall and East Pyne? Why does he always ask for directions? Is he lost and looking for a way home? So many unanswered questions - we'll keep you updated with any answers.

• This week in "Dude we were SO right about this": This week's New Yorker features a review of Amazon's Kindle. Fervent book-fan Nicholson Baker issued a harsh review of the Kindle 2, noting the paltry book selection in the Kindle store, the crummy textbook graphics on it, the fact that it "kills the joy" of newspapers (besides not including all their content), how the thing is so "cold and grey" and sucks the life out of words (or something), and on and on. Oh, right, also: Apparently if you take notes on the thing, there's a chance their existence hinges on the whims of Amazon. A student had taken notes on a novel on his Kindle, only to have the book and his notes deleted when Amazon pulled the book from their store (1984, of all ironies). Like a good litigious American, he's suing. So, to those of you diving into next semester with a Kindle DX: have fun lugging that thing around!

• What do colleges like? Lists. What do colleges like Princeton like? Being at the top of lists. Good news for us, then: the Princeton Review released their "Best 371 Colleges" this week, with 62(!) ranking lists. The press is a-buzz because, wow, college kids drink (that, and colleges have 62 chances to say, "Look we made the top of a list!"). Princeton nabbed a few of these titles, like "Best Library" (#2), "Students who study the most"(#9), "Most beautiful campus" (#7), and "Most politically active students" (#18). You'd think our students are always carrying around freshly-checked out books on Eastern philosophy and modern geometry, reading them on lush lawns and basking in the warm sunlight, studying intently for their midterm three months away, all while coordinating their latest sit-in against the administration. Which, I think, is only true in the admissions brochures.