It's Just A Glass Cube

Gothamist reports that after a study of millions of photos on Flickr, scientists at Cornell have concluded that the glass entrance to Manhattan's Fifth Avenue basement Apple store is now the fifth most photographed object in NYC and the 28th most photographed in the world. The top four in NYC: Empire State Building, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Grand Central. Embiggen the below chart for the 25 most photographed cities in the world and the favorite landmarks in each. Here's a super-complicated PDF of how the scientists reached their conclusion.

Cornell Student Canned From Leadership Of Christian Group After Coming Out

Upstate in Ithaca, a Cornell student was asked to step down from his leadership role in a campus Christian group after he told them he had accepted his homosexuality. The school's student newspaper suggests that a school-funded group should not be permitted to discriminate.

A campus Christian group that receives funding from the student activity fee is coming under scrutiny after a student was asked by advisors to step down from its leadership team when he told them that he had openly accepted his homosexuality. This incident is also raising questions about the effectiveness of campus mechanisms for addressing instances of discrimination. Chris Donohoe ’09, who joined the Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship when he was a freshman, said he had been openly struggling to reconcile his sexuality with his faith in Chi Alpha before he was asked to step down from the leadership team by Matt and Tracy Herman, the organization’s pastors. The Hermans, both members of Chi Alpha at Missouri State University before graduating in 2002, became Cornell Chi Alpha’s campus pastors in 2006.

The student filed a bias report with the school administration but was told no action could be taken because he was permitted to remain in the Christian group.

Cornell Students Stage Valentine's Kiss-In

The University of Colorado wasn't the only place to stage a Valentine's kiss-in for homo visibility today.

Love — or, at least, lust — was in the air on Ho Plaza at 12:15 p.m. A group of roughly 20 students lined up to hold a colorful banner that read “QUEER KISSIN’ … in progress” and then proceeded have a queer kiss-in, which lasted about five minutes. Direct Action to Stop Heterosexism sponsored the event, according to kiss-in participant Ashley McGovern ’09. She explained that heterosexism is “kind of like homophobia except heterosexism has to do with all facets of society … so the normalization of heterosexuality in society.” Heteronormativity refers to the idea that heterosexuality is the “normal” sexual orientation. This includes the notion that people fall into two discrete categories — male and female — and that sexual relations are normal only between two people of different sexes.

I know y'all are wondering about "Ho Plaza." The plaza was a gift from the Ho family which has had five members graduate from Cornell.