The National Zoo’s panda Tai Shan turns 3 today. China can take him back in a year, so love him while you have him.

Flickr photo from user BrightStar used under a Creative Commons license

How did The Independent, which actually trumpets its objectivity in its name, become the blindest Georgetown booster this side of GAAP weekend? I don’t know how the eventual popular history book about Georgetown newspapers will answer that question, but I can predict that book’s Appendix A: An Insider’s Guide to Life at Georgetown.

Writer Jenna Weiner spends most of the piece straining to remember her last campus tour, then typing it. Presented without comment, the four parts of the article most likely to be included in Blue & Gray:

• Over 300 words on how to use Rate My Professor
• “It is your four years, it is your Georgetown. Make it unforgettable.”
• Jenna advises using the laundry room if you’re worried about laundry.
•  ”You will come to love the dining hall”

There’s no mention of actually useful things to know about, like outrageous GOCard replacement fees, the worst stir fry cook, or Georgetown Day’s open container amnesty.

To Jenna’s credit, she never uses “Joe and Jane Hoya”, and The Independent’s guide to protesting is good. Still, freshmen and those who want them can expect better new student information soon from this very blog.

Writer Henrietta Rose-Innes got a month-long scholarship at Georgetown for winning the Caine Prize for African Writing, but she’ll probably spend more time in her room watching The Office than teaching us how they party in Pretoria. I can tell she’s depressed because of the description of her short story’s main character, who she describes as “a version of herself”:

Unlike the other characters, Lynn is unable to accustom herself to the changing world and is left eating crisps at the garage as the others leave.

“She can’t stay in her old ways, symbolised by Cape Town which is now under threat, but she’s also not quite ready to take that step into the broader reality of the country with its dangers and opportunities,”

Aw, cheer up.

If you’re looking for a reason to sanction Chinese human rights abuses by watching the Summer Olympics, here’s one: former Georgetown Sailing Team captain Andrew Campbell (SFS ‘06) is on the US Olympic Sailing Team.

“It’s really not going to hit me that I’ve made it until we walk into that stadium on August 8th,” Campbell wrote in an e-mail.

Ranked 15th in the world in his class, the handsome San Diego native has just returned from Beijing, where he practiced for the 2008 Summer Olympics with the seventeen other members of the US Olympic Sailing team. Equally impressive, he managed to keep up with his blog.

Some of his blog posts will appeal only to sailing aficionados, others provide charming personal experiences with the Yellow Sea sludge.

“It’s our own personal version of the sci-fi movie: the Blobs!!!” Campbell wrote about the bulbous algae blooms currently choking the Olympics sailing site.

Someone gives it 110%, after the jump

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