You know who’s fun? Karl Rove.

I’m not kidding. Ever since he dropped his day job as a torture enabling evil genius, not only has he emerged as an ace TV analyst, but he just seems like a swell guy. A friend of mine still in college reported that when Rove was on campus giving a speech recently, he dropped by to sit in on her political journalism seminar—”and he couldn’t have been nicer!” I think that means he didn’t threaten to waterboard anybody.

It was apparently in that spirit that Krazy Karl agreed to sit down for an interview with On Harvard Time, a student-run online comedy news show. (Yes, it goes as badly as you’d expect.)

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I don’t remember worrying that much about my college acceptance letters. Maybe I was less driven than my peers, but I only applied to three schools and got the thick letters of acceptance from all of them. (Thanks again, Emerson!)

So maybe I’m not the best person to tell kids at Newton South High School that they should calm down about their rejection letters.

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Parents these days are busy. Whether they’re working to pass Proposition 2 1/2 overrides or forcing their kids to give up their birthday presents for charity, it’s hard to fit in the mundane tasks of raising a child. Which is why etiquette classes for kids are becoming wildly popular.

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No matter how many safeguards we put in place, kids are bound to have a horrible teacher at some point during their educational career. Someone I know still has night terrors about his sixth grade teacher who smelled of cigarettes and hazelnut coffee, and who made her students feel responsible for her inability to teach.

Once an incompetent teacher is in, the teachers’ union makes it nearly impossible to get rid of him or her. But the state wants to allow more stupid people to teach your kids.

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We love Elizabeth Edwards. Whether she’s fighting cancer or Ann Coulter (not that there’s much of a difference between the two—ba dum dum) she appears to be a smart, savvy woman.

So our day was brightened a bit by the news of her accepting a visiting fellowship at Harvard.

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I only spent only one year of my college career in a dorm, and in that time I had three roommates. The first was a friend of mine from high school who liked to lock me out of the room when her boyfriend stopped by. The second liked to hook up with her guy friend when I was still in the room. The third spent all of her time in her boyfriend’s single. She was my favorite.

But never during those nine months of tumult did I ever wish I lived with a guy.

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21, the celebration of MIT geeks based on Ben Mezrich’s novel was the highest grossing movie in the country this weekend. While millions of Americans were watching Jim Sturgess and Kate Bosworth wear fun costumes, another made-for-Hollywood story from MIT was making news.

The latest scandal is less Oceans 11 and more All the President’s Men. An MIT doctoral student has been subpoenaed by the New York City Police Department for information about TXTmob, a service that is like an internet bulletin board, but instead of checking your email to get the latest communication you send and receive text messages. The service was used by protesters during the 2004 Democratic and Republican National Conventions, and the NYPD wants to know who was using it.

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Boston Daily is a big fan of academic achievement. Whether students are building robots or, as we learn in the new issue of Boston magazine (seriously, isn’t John Krasinski reason enough to buy it at your favorite newsstand now?) developing green concrete, we support them in their efforts to create things we never thought possible.

Including the geniuses of the Lambda Phi Epsilon fraternity, who managed to inflict a stunning $25,000 in damage to the Days Inn in Allston. [Link via Bostonist.]

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Kids these days are fat. The Globe reports on a Newton-based company that hopes to change children’s eating habits by involving parents in revamping their diet and levels of physical activity.

But some parents are already leading by example. Instead of holding bake sales, a parent-teacher group in that town is raising money for programs by auctioning off pole dancing lessons.

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Everyone has seen the highlight: Doug Flutie, scrambling madly (and wearing an unfortunate, navel-showing jersey), unleashes a long Hail Marry pass that’s somehow caught for a touchdown as the clock expires. The play ushered B.C. to an improbable victory over Miami back in 1984, and it’s still thought of as one of the best single efforts in college football history.

But in addition to becoming one of the most re-shown highlights ever, the play is credited with creating something called “The Flutie Effect.” To wit: applications at a particular school increase shortly after the college does something unexpected or exceptional in athletics (like throwing a Hail Mary, or winning the national championship).

For a long time, The Flutie Effect was little more than urban legend. Now, a recent study says it’s legit.

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