In case those high lottery cutoff numbers had you thinking EC was some sort of “Palace in the Sky,” you can enjoy a hearty helping of schadenfreude this morning.

Tipsters tell us and Housing confirms that all hot water is off in the building because of “emergency repairs.” Maintenance crews are just now arriving, so there’s no estimated time yet for when the hot water might be back on.

So, if you live in EC and were in need of a hot shower this morning, you may want to investigate the time-honored tradition of the bucket bath. Be sure to heat the water in your microwave first.

UPDATE 12:07 p.m.: Housing confirms the hot water is off in most dorms, the notable exceptions being Woodbridge, Watt, and — The Land That Happiness Forgot — McBain. Repairs are nearly completed, though, so the hot water should be back on shortly.

Bwog contributor Anna Kellner sends this dispatch from Thursday night’s Creative Writing Lecture Series talk, delivered by James Wood. (No, not that one, this one.)

Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Harold Bloom.

A Creative Writing MFA student opened the talk, titled “Creating Fictional Character: Presences and Absences,” by rightfully exulting James Wood’s place in this pantheon of literary critics. 

“Although Wood doesn’t believe in a traditional God,” he earnestly stated, “he turns authors into gods, and books their worlds.” Read more…

Image courtesy of Mom3Teach

NYU students are way, way cooler than we could ever hope to be.

The homeless are too lazy to build their own robots.

New York City is the center of the Universe.

Of all the aquatic mammals, it’s the beavers who will accost you.

Lerner 6 has no purpose — okay, maybe that stereotype isn’t so unfair. 

-Photo via Washingtoninformer.com

Spring break is behind us, and now it’s time to celebrate the delightful lull before finals come into full swing. The city might be our classroom, but this week we’ve got the time to make it our playroom.   



Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

Zing, Zang, Zoom!

Various times until April 13th, Madison Square Garden Seventh Ave at 32nd St (212-307-7171)

The circus has come to town!  Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus bring a little bit of magic and whimsy the the big city, so catch them while you can!

Price: $15-150

Tropical Butterflies Alive in Winter

Daily 10am-5:45pm, American Museum of Natural History Central Park West at 79th St (212-769-5100)

If you feel like you need a more concentrated dose of warm-weather splendor, head into the vivarium.

Price: $13.50 students Read more…

Bwog has now entered the dictionary and was featured by the New York Times–sort of. Thanks to a tip from a handy-dandy commenter, we discovered a NYT blog post on vocabulary introducing ‘unbwogable‘ into the English lexicon. According to the post:

‘Unbwogable (adj): unshakable or indomitable–from the Kenyan word bwogo, meaning scare or shake.’

The word is used in Kenya to describe Barack Obama, which is weird since we have found him very bwogable.

It turns out that use of unbwogable extends beyond our 44th President. There is the unbwogable blog, which has just been bwogged, and a song by the Kenyan hip-hop group Gidi Gidi Maji Maji titled Unbwogable, which has also now been proven incorrect.

We eagerly await the first proper use of unbwogable. In the meantime, several staff members are recovering from an overdose of “meta.”

-DJB

The Varsity Show and the Blue and White are looking for experienced graphic artists who are comfortable using Adobe Photoshop to clean up photos and make them illustration-quality (see examples at right).  Your skills will be put to use in designing the images in the Varsity Show program. 

If you’re interested, please email bweditors@columbia.edu immediately.

Housing just announced the appointment times for Suite Selection. Appointments will be in John Jay Lounge and start at 9:30AM on March 30th and continue at two minute intervals until 4:30 every weekday through the seventh of April. 

Don’t be late, and, if you’re assigning a proxy to pick a suite for you, make sure to register your proxy with housing. Good luck…

Full email after the jump. Read more…

-Photo via Biojobblog.com

How bad is the economy? Even the coffee lackeys are going to be out of work. For the 2009 internship season, companies are hiring almost 21 percent fewer interns. In a double shaft to college students everywhere, the number of applicants for these positions has increased by around the same percentage. That leaves far more people vying for far fewer positions.

If you are truly, truly desperate for an internship (and loaded), the WSJ reports that parents have been forking over thousands of dollars to buy internships for their children. Also, the bizarrely named University of Dreams will guarantee you an internship, if you pay them $5,000 to $9,000 dollars, that is.

The glimmer of hope is that the pay rates for internships have actually gone up for this year, but, even if you nab a high paying internship, you will still have this to contend with.

 -DJB

Free tacos and classical music on Lerner Ramps RIGHT NOW! Hurry!

(And yes, this is the same photo we used two weeks ago. Our tipster says it’s the same setup).

-Photo via The Eye

Columbia imports a student from the army…

…and a student who doesn’t want the ‘college experience.’ Going to college is probably not the best way to accomplish that. 

TV has unrealistic characters? That’s not possible!

Plus, we’re trying to bring in a linguistics program.

-Photo via Medicaltourismmag.com

Today is the last day to switch your classes to pass/fail, so if the pre-spring break midterm you just got back was not quite what you expected, switch now or take the letter grade.

Bwog’s chief grading transition expert Julia Mix Barrington alerted us that, for Barnard students, the switch to pass/fall is all done online, so save yourself a trip to the registrar and head to the joy that is eBear.

For the engineers among us who may have spent too much time watching robot death battles and too little time studying, today is the last day to drop a class for SEAS.

-DJB

-Photo via Failblog.org

The MTA is raising fares and cutting service.

The M96 is the slowest bus in the City.

And the person with the best lottery number is studying abroad!

CU Assassins has finally come to a bloody, ruthless end. “The Commissioners” have informed the participants via email that Team “Teamname” officially won the game with three Agents still alive when Agent Claytoya murdered Agent bearclaw at 1:30pm today.

Though the last kill appears to be a clean one, the recent animosity over unclear kills persisted to the very end. The second to last of the kill reports contains an exerpt of an angry email sent by the victim to her murderer:

Time of Death: Monday, March 23 at 08:32 PM

Location of Death: Vine

Summary of Death: A great team, a great sport, a great kill. Also, i would just like to post part of an email sent to us by our previous victims… Enjoy. “Dear Douchebags, “I don’t know exactly who’s cock you sucked on the rules committee, but seriously, could you be any more of a bunch of jackasses?” skip to the end. “All in all, I’m just amazed that you kids can turn a few tiny drops into a clean shot to the back in each case. That must be some fantastic head for the rules chair. But I don’t want there to be any hard feelings, so I want to get each of you a consolation prize: a travel-sized bottle of Scope to get the taste of fresh cum out of your mouths. Enjoy your victory, you’ve certainly earned it. “Sincerely, A person who enjoyed this game until some douches took it over. (Aka Agent Tiger Steelrail)” Vined em. Then END.

In addition to politely apologizing for any judgments players might (just maybe) have found unfair, the email from on high awards Agent bearclaw the prize for most kills, Officer Darwin the award for best Police Officer, and Agent the candlestick a big hug from the ESC president for being the first agent killed.

Many congratulations to the various winners – may your aim always be true and your trigger fingers muscular.

(Photo above is of next year’s winners. No photo available of this year’s winning team)

To aid you all in the existential crises at hand (Wien or McBain… oh the horrors) Bwog’s Special Inebriated Stunts Correspondent Jon Hill has been tracking stumbles, drunk dials, puke incidents and blackouts for months to bring you the complete breakdown of every dorm on your list by Blood Alcohol Level.

Long live the atrocious reign of Carman.

Just so you know, the guy sitting next to you in lecture might be able to build a robot that could kill you in 10 seconds flat. But if he can do that, he’s probably also more concerned with building a super-cool robot designed to kick other robots’ butts in a national robotics competition. 

This year, a number of Columbia faculty and SEAS students are acting as involved mentors for a high school robotics team known as 2 Train Robotics. The kids come from Morris High School Campus as well as other city schools, and they work at Columbia’s super-teched-out MechE lab.

They also participate annually in a robotics competition run by an organization known as FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), with multiple levels of competition. And while you were sitting around on spring break, these guys and gals were kicking metallic ass in Philadelphia, where they took first place in regional competition. Pictures of the epic battle after the jump.

Read more…