In case you were wondering why there are 6 vehicles with flashing lights basically blocking 115th St., the building above Uni Cafe is undergoing what one fireman calls “boiler problems.” You can’t see anything externally, but if you look up (possibly from Schapiro) at the building on 115th, you can see sparks coming from the roof and fireman walking around up there.

Illustrations by Maddy Kloss

In the latest issue of the Blue & White, Carolyn Ruvkun hangs with her heroes, the bubbly bibliophiles of Columbia libraries.

“We have a responsibility to posterity,” explains Karen Green, Columbia Librarian for Medieval History and Graphic Novels. In their duty to capture history before it dissolves into the unrecorded past, Columbia’s librarians are entrusted with a treasure trove of extraordinary resources—a centuries-old Buddhist sutra, John James Audubon’s “Elephant” folio edition of the Birds of America, and the Shoah Foundation’s visual history archive containing 50,000 hours of video interviews with Holocaust survivors, just to name a few.

Columbia’s librarians are not so much the stereotyped, buttoned-up shushers as bubbly bibliophiles eager to share information with students spelunking in the stacks. Donna Reed may have played a pitiful librarian in It’s a Wonderful Life, but Batgirl worked as the head librarian at the Gotham City Library when she wasn’t fighting crime. Even the reckless romantic Casanova spent a decade working as a librarian for Count Waldstein.

Librarians in today’s digital age just don’t fit the old stereotypes. Facing an era exploding with new information in modern formats, they bring rich tradition—Melvil Dewey, founder of the Dewey decimal system, used to be our chief librarian. The first academic reference department and the first school of library service were founded here. Columbia is simply steeped in library history. Read more…

Sorry to say it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to pick up your package before 5. Better luck tomorrow! They’re really swamped though and it’s not their fault. Please don’t be mean to them.

You spend a lot of time in elevators. You go up. You go down. You stare awkwardly at the door. You stare awkwardly at the ceiling. You try not to breathe too loudly. You scroll through your address book. You browse your music library, first by Artist and then by Genre. You…have a dinner party? Yes, you have a dinner party. And then you take a picture of it and send it to Bwog. This is your dinner party in the Carman elevator:

With a Tablecloth and Everything!

Bwog ventured out to College Walk this morning and was greeted with a pleasant surprise–balloons! Anybody know what they’re for?

Update: We’ve been informed! They’re for the Black Heritage Month opening reception.

Photo CS

Some very sad news: JaHyun Kim Haboush, Professor of Korean Studies in EALAC, died yesterday after a long struggle with breast cancer. Our thoughts are with Professor Haboush’s family, friends and students.

We welcome you to share memories of Professor Haboush in the comments.

En plein air, just like student groups!

CCSC holds weekly meetings. Brian Wagner attended one of them last night. This is what he saw.

• The meeting opened with a discussion of a new committee. Bureaucracy! The special committee would tackle co-sponsorship requests. At present, groups requesting co-sponsorships from the different student councils schlep to four different meetings to present their case. If a new committee were created, it would allow for a more efficient process carried out by a single body. Some groups have purportedly been gaming the current system by telling individual student councils that they requested less from the other councils than they actually had in an effort to convince the duped councils to give more (Bwog calls shenanigans!). However, some feared a loss of control by each of the individual councils, and a potential influx of co-sponsorship requests. Plus, the CCSC Constitution would have to be amended to allow for the change (Hopefully quills would be involved). One council member wanted to know if this “would be like how Columbia went to the Common App?” In the end, the council took no further action and is waiting to see how the other councils feel before moving on.
• The council only discussed one resolution last night. The resolution would make student group events scheduled outdoors known to the public ahead of time. Following last semester’s Israeli border simulation on Low Plaza, opposed groups were upset that they had not known of the demonstration until it was already happening and were then unable to organize a sort of counter-protest. Events scheduled indoors are visible online in advance, but the same doesn’t apply to events scheduled to be held outside. The council discussed making it easier to reserve outdoor spaces online, reducing the headache imposed on student groups. As Learned summarized in a fit of tongue-tripping, “This makes them visible, it doesn’t makes them book.” The council passed the resolution without making any changes.
• A speaker from the Global China Connection gave a brief presentation; the group is looking to introduce the Chinese students who will be coming to America in February to collegiate student leaders. They thought it would be cool for the students to meet CCSC and see how we do stuff here, and CCSC thought so too.
• Finally, the council took on the Course Evaluation Overhaul plan. The idea is to make the Courseworks evaluations that we all suffer through when we should be studying for finals visible to the public. If you’re a well-informed Columbia citizen, you’ll remember that the council passed a resolution on this last semester. The council will now gauge the interest of individual departments in the change. More progress should be made on this soon, that is as long as no non-tenured professors go postal on the innocent little CCSCers who visit them.

One of the greatest perks of an Ivy League education is having all sorts of guest lecturers and talks hosted right on campus. Yet many of these great talks are not publicized enough. Enter Bucket List, a weekly feature that aggregates these events in a single location that will hopefully make you realize, like Bwog has, how special our campus is. Our recommendations for this week are below; the full list is after the jump. Now that you’ve finally settled in for the semester, come all the way out of intellectual hibernation and indulge in some of this week’s offerings.

Recommended:
Mon, Jan 31

• “EHealth—A Paradigm Shift in Delivery of Healthcare” 1512 IAB, 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm, Zakiuddin Ahmed
• “Life after Columbia” 403 Lerner, 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm, Peter Kang, Seth Zuckerman, Tao Tan, Kelly Gavin, Wei-Jen Hsiesh, Montse Ferrer, and Robyn Burgess
• “So, You Want to Work in Politics?” 602 Hamilton, 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm, Matt McMillan

Tues, Feb 1

• “’Racially Inferior’: Roma, Sinti and Other Holocaust Victims” Italian Academy, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm, Speaker TBA/Day of Remembrance Event
• “’I’ve Lost My Whole Life’: Narrative Crisis and Oral History among People with Mental Illness” 270B IAB, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm, Clare Oh
• “On Violence: The Wretched of the Earth” 106 Hartley Hall, 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm, Student Discussion

Wed, Feb 2

• “The Jihadis’ Path to Self-Destruction” 801 IAB, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm, Nelly Lahoud and Jean-Pierre Filiu
• “Truth, Errors, and Lies: Politics and Economics in a Volatile World” Presidential Room 1, Faculty House, 6:15 pm – 7:45 pm, Grzegorz W. Kolodko
• “Three 2nds Concert with Lucy Shelton” The Italian Academy, 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm, with Steve Taylor, Charles Neidich, Meighan Stoops, Curt Macomber, Julia Lichten, Marcy Rosen, Fred Sherry, Chris Goddard, Felix Behringer, Carlos Cordeiro, and Hannah Levinson

Thurs, Feb 3

• “The Prospect of Molecular Prosthetics” 209 Havemeyer, 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm, Martin Burke
• “Examining Restrepo—Film Screening and Panel Discussion” Lecture Hall, 3rd Floor Journalism Building, 5:00 pm – 8:00 pm, Sebastian Junger, Tim Hetherington, and Paul Elie
• “Wikileaks—The Inside Story” Low Library Rotunda, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm, Bill Keller, Alan Rusbridger, and Jack Goldsmith
• “Composer Portrait: Julia Wolfe” Miller Theater, Dodge Hall, 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm, Julia Wolfe and Brad Lubman

Fri, Feb 4

• “When Media Are New” 332 Uris Hall, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm, Martin Elton and John Carey
• “Po(e)tluck II Columbia Review Fall/Winter Issue Release” Potluck House, 606 W. 114th, 8:00 pm – 11:00 pm, Student Readings

Sat, Feb 5

• “Sahra Falastineyeh” 1501 IAB, 8:30 pm – 10:00 pm, Palestinian poetry, spoken word, traditional music, folk dance performances

Sun, Feb 6

• “Exploring Identity and Social History Through a Palestinian Lens” 309 Havemeyer, 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm, Thomas Hill, Richard Pena, and Helga Tawil-Souri

Read more…

Captain Future

One Oxford academic plans to live the rest of his life like a grad student. And he thinks you can, too. (Slate)

New York City is looking for the “Taxi of Tomorrow.” The New Yorker has a few suggestions.

We are constantly thinking about the future–planning for it, making guesses about it, trying to make it better. Not surprisingly, we’re not the first. Witness the future New York of the past. (NYT)

Google is both a verb and a noun. Behind-the-scenes changes going on at one of the world’s most visited websites are happening with an eye to the future. (Bloomberg)

Columbia’s faculty has been looking into the future, too. The Record has a whole slew of articles on Columbians and climate change.

Lost Friday at 1020.
Peruvian llama wool, tan with white/red/brown pattern and ear flaps. No label inside the hat.
If found, contact wbp2107@columbia.edu.

Bwog staff celebrating.

8:41 PM, January 30th 2006, five years ago today: Someone at NASA collected the first comet dust. Nelly bragged about his dental swag on someone’s stereo. Someone celebrated Mozart’s 250th birthday three days late, while someone else bought a plane ticket to Italy for the upcoming Olympics. The stage was set for the Bwog’s inception, and with an awkward post about Russian art, Bwog was born!

Today is Bwog’s 5th birthday, and we would like to take a moment to reflect on how much Bwog has grown up. Back then, Bwog wasn’t sure who it was: reposting comments from the then brand new Bored at Butler, Googling “Bwog porn”, and offering to post questionable singles ads for $10. Look how far we’ve come! (Now we post personals for free.) These days we have features and slightly less awkward reviews. Maybe it’s just Bwog exhibiting the standard 5-year-old ability to “recognize categories.” We only hope that Bwog continues to grow into its 5-year-old self by becoming “less fearful of the world than toddlers because [it] understands the world better” and “jump over small objects.”

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you, our loyal readers, for your tips, comments, and love.

Yours truly,

Bwog

Internship, schminternship! In Hidden Talents, Bwog exposes your classmates as the weird and glorious wunderkinder they truly are. Bwog’s Jack-of-All-Trades Matthew Schantz brings you a profile of the high-flying Logan Donovan. Would you like to share your talent? Is your talent exposing other people’s talents? If you satisfy one or more of these conditions please let us know via tips@bwog.com

Logan Donovan is an engineering student at SEAS, but her suitemates introduce her as the “skydiving girl.” Her enthusiasm for the sport is obvious. While discussing her passion in a recent interview, I hardly had time to ask any questions as she interrupted herself to explain a specific piece of gear or drop me some lingo (airports are “drop zones,” a backpack is a “rig,” most dramatically, the sign up kiosk at a drop zone is a “manifest window”). Some people think of life in terms of money, or family, Logan thinks of her life in terms of jumps.

She made her first jump a few days after her 18^th birthday while flying over New Zealand. While for some, metaphorically flipping off gravity for the first time would be horrifying, Logan recalls her first jump with a grin. She remembers thinking to herself, “Oh that’s cool, I just wish I could do that every weekend,” but didn’t consider getting her license, a process that usually takes 2 to 3 months, at the time. It didn’t take much longer for her to come around to the idea. She got it in two and a half weeks.

Skydivers joke that once you get your license, you quickly lose touch with your non-skydiving friends. As Logan put it, jumping out of planes with strangers “creates an unusual bond.” Read more…

Ginsberg promises it will be a Howlin' good time

I saw the best minds of my generation at the Bwog meeting, starving,
eating free birthday cake,
dragging themselves out of the butler stacks around 6 looking for the Bwog meeting,
at 7 PM in the SGO on the 5th floor of Lerner

Bwog may not be able to promise an ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night, but we are serious about the free cake.

See you there!

Update (Feb 3): Chris Beam, CC ’06, just published this piece in Slate, explaining some of the history of the Rockefeller Laws and the significance of the “prestige factor” in deciding the fate of the arrested Columbia students.

The lawyers of Michael Wymbs and Chris Coles are seeking a “diversion to treatment” on behalf of their clients, Associated Press is reporting. The article explains the current legal negotiations being conducted on behalf of two of the five students who were arrested in December as part of Operation Ivy League. 2009 revisions to the stringent Rockefeller drug laws allow more leniency in sentencing, which could result in treatment for substance abuse instead of jail time. Marc Agnifilo, who is representing Coles, is quoted as describing Operation Ivy League as “probably the case that’s going to cause light to be shed on what these new laws mean: When diversion is appropriate, and what the Legislature intended when it cut back so drastically the Rockefeller laws.” Michael Bachner said of his client, “at the end of the day, Michael Wymbs is better off among us, working to help society, than being labeled as a felon and being ostracized.” Although further indictments may be filed, currently Harrison David is the only student out of the five arrested who is facing a mandatory prison sentence. The 2009 revisions had removed some of the minimum incarceration terms.

Bachner and Agnifilo both claim their clients were struggling with substance abuse, and should be treated accordingly. According to the AP article, Coles and Wymbs are hoping a judge will use the flexibility given to them by the recent legal revisions to try their cases in a special drug court. Defendents in these courts will typically undergo a year or more of treatment and may end up being charged with misdemeanors if they are charged at all. Prosecutors allegedly declined to comment on the students’ request, and a judge has yet to make a statement. Neither of the students’ lawyers were available to comment.

Had a scarf on the right pocket.
If found, please email ter2108@columbia.edu
Reward offered.