Wikimedia Commons“>

Chainsaws not provided.

Gear up, read a Whitman poem for inspiration, and boldly leave the comforts of your dorm and go carve some pumpkins! Even though it is snowing, it is still Halloween, and what better way to celebrate than over some pumpkin fun with the RAs of The Block? Swing by 546 W. 114th Street from 2 to 5 p.m to get in on the action. Pumpkins, carving tools, and pumpkin seeds for Halloweekend snackage will be provided.

Extreme pumpkin carving via Wikimedia Commons

“Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.” 

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Grab your sled, build a snowman, and roast some chestnuts, it’s snowing! This morning, Columbia has woken up to the first flurry of the season— which by the looks of it, is slowly turning into a blizzard. Join Bwog in putting your boots on and being jolly. Picture submissions welcome!

Keep your eyes open for the October issue of The Blue & White, coming soon to campus. Until then, Bwog will honor our heritage/amorous affair with our mother magazine by posting highlights of the upcoming issue online. Among the treats to look forward to: a debate on the merits of Times New Roman, an examination of Columbia’s updated sexual assault policy, and the festive search for magic on campus. Here, contributor Will Holt tells how Knickerbocker Motorsports became a Formula SAE contender.

Illustration by Liz Lee

Unless you happened to catch the Formula One-style race car sitting on College Walk during the activities fair back in September, Knickerbocker Motorsports probably means nothing to you. So, if the name Formula SAE sounds like an alternative to breast milk, here is some explanation.

Organized by the Society of Automotive Engineers and founded in 1978, Formula FSAE is an intercollegiate design competition in which students develop Formula-style race cars that are meant to serve as prototypes for a hypothetical autocross racer. The competitions are set up on the premise that a fictional manufacturing company has hired a team to design this prototype, which runs a full gamut of tests–from overall design to fuel economy–to gauge its viability as a production item.

Columbia University’s chapter of Formula SAE arose in 1997. “Then it was only five to six guys building the entire car themselves,” said Columbia FSAE’s current president, Christopher Correa-Henschke, SEAS ’12. “Their goal was to design and build a chassis.” The two inaugural engines came from a junkyard, and the team spent the majority of its time those first few months stockpiling materials for the years ahead. According to the organization’s website, alumnus Steven Wang built the team’s first chassis himself in the summer of 1998, “spending months in the back of the Wind Tunnel lab with his welder and the tubing.” After graduating, he went on to design for Ford.

“It was just so undermanned, then,” said the club’s vice president, Sakina Pasha, BC ’13. “We didn’t have our first [full] car ready for competition until 2004.”

Nowadays FSAE is currently the only student-run organization on campus to have its own home base, a garage in Mudd that no other student organization has access to. Their $30,000 yearly budget is a considerable help. Building a car from scratch is expensive business.

It’s the team’s effort rather than Columbia’s money that matters, and the evidence is manifest. The FSAE workshop in the basement of Mudd is a cluttered array of power tools, machinery and car parts. The trash bins are filled with tangled wires, takeout boxes, and empty beer bottles from all-night shop sessions. Stepping through the door, one feels as if on the set of Discovery Channel’s Monster Garage, but with someone considerably less intimidating than Jesse James at the helm.

Correa-Henschke’s leadership and that of his immediate predecessors is paying off: FSAE has been growing at an incredible rate, from 15 students in 2004 to 55 students this fall. Whereas the original incarnation of FSAE had the luxury of a small and close-knit group of dedicated gearheads, Correa-Henschke now oversees 10 separate systems operating simultaneously.

Read more…

Natural Disasters: Columbia University researchers have said that the retreat rate an Antarctic glacier will be sped up 20 years, thus increasing global sea levels. (RedOrbit)

Monsters: The protagonist of the prequel to The Thing that is being released this week is a Columbia University graduate student. (Craig Daily Press)

Finance: Bloomberg has rated Columbia the most expensive university of 2011. (Bloomberg)

Hunger: Upper West Side police are taking an initiative to crack down on illegal food vendors. (DNA Info)

War: 13 Americans are said to have been killed by a Taliban suicide car bomb in Kabul. (NY Times)

Disease: The government is considering testing the Anthrax vaccine on young children. (NY Daily News)

Ghosts: The etymology of the the word “Boo” reveals it won’t work for scaring people in other countries. (Slate)

Vintage Spookies via Wikimedia Commons

Pink Latin text found sitting on the counter of the breakfast line in Ferris. Title is Cicero: Pro Caelio by Walter Englert. Email cjr2151@columbia.edu to claim

Night number two of this year’s Halloweekend—that’s a thing, we swear… use it—brings with it the longest line Morningside Heights has seen since Campo Mike first introduced “Cloud Nine Saturdays” (may they rest in peace). And fear not, freshpeople, you don’t even need a fake ID once you reach the front!

A tipster reports a line of extraordinary (but not completely unprecedented) proportions outside our very own Ricky’s location. Looks like we’ll be sticking with last year’s FourLoko stained bunny ears…

Word to the wise: order online next year.

Update: Word on the street (literally…) is that Possibilities@Columbia, at Broadway and 111th Street has its own share of costumes and no line. And if you do make it off of said street(s), don’t forget to enter your costume via tips to our fifth annual contest.

Just kidding! This is a lecturehop, but it did involve mountains of Mario’s creations. Bwog’s favorite foodie, Brian Donahoe, was there.

The man of the hour

Thursday evening, Bwog passed through the ever-enticing yet forbidding door of Casa Italiana, and after making it past security and up an imposing marble staircase took a seat in the Italian Academy’s fabled ballroom along side a packed house of approximately 300 other excited guests. As they waited for the man of the hour himself, chef and television celebrity Mario Batali, the crowd leafed through their programs, containing half a dozen recipes (and accompanying photos) from his latest book, Simple Family Meals from My Home to Yours.

And then he appeared! Camera phones were aloft as Mr. Batali and Dr. Sharon Akabas, Director of Columbia’s Institute of Human Nutrition, took the stage for their Conversation on Culture and Cuisine, presented by the Kraft Family Fund. Mr. Batali played to type, wearing baggy cargo shorts, an untucked collared shirt with vest, and signature orange crocs that would be familiar to viewers of his show. Interrupting his introductions by University Chaplain, Jewelnel Davis, Batali showed himself ever the man of people by jokingly taking pictures of the crowd as though to say, “yes, I am one of you.”

The evening began with a discussion of Batali’s personal background: A Seattle native of Italian and French Canadian ancestry, he told the audience that his love of cooking began at home, where his family regularly pickled and preserved foods “before,” he noted, “that was hip.” Batali went on to stress that nightly family dinners, which always began with the question, “what was the funniest thing that happened today, the least funny thing that happened, and who’d you sit with at lunch?,” instilled in him an appreciation for a meal’s power to bring people together.

Read more…

That throbbing noise you hear outside is the sound of Columbia students coming together for a rare moment of honest-to-goodness community. Head over to Low Plaza for the Chinese Students Club’s Night Market 2011: CU LIGHTS!  from 6 to 9 pm for an evening filled with free food, raffles, and sick student performances from Raw Elementz, Notes and Keys, Dhoom, Taal, and many more. The evening will also host famed food trucks Korilla BBQ and Big D’s Grub Truck, though the food won’t be quite as free as it was yesterday.

Once you’ve had your fill of nighttime delectables, mosey on over to Lerner Party Space at 7 pm for free candy, punch, a spooky Glee Club performance at CCSC’s Haunted House: The Dark Side of the Core. According to the Facebook event, “One might find a group of murderers, a fiery descent into hell, a cave full of half eaten limbs and broken skulls and maybe…something else….” We’re not sure what that “something else” might be, but we encourage you to find out for yourself. Just try not to get, like, eaten or something.

Stock gourd-like squash via Wikimedia Commons… although check back soon for more of Columbia’s own concoctions

So angsty.

Bwog’s Wednesday Daily Editor, Jed Bush, headed to Lerner Black Box last night to witness the biggest deal ever–Columbia does Hamlet.

I’ve never been a particularly big fan of Shakespeare—my exposure in high school was mostly limited to second period English, where I used our class readings of As You Like It, Twelfth Night and the Tempest as a chance to catch up on sleep. Yet when approaching Hamlet, it was hard, even for me, not to feel a certain gravitas, and I’m sure the cast and crew felt the same way. Its legacy speaks for itself and is so ingrained in western culture that even Roland Emmerich can’t resist destroying it.

So as I entered the Black Box last night, the minimalism of the production immediately struck me; the set modifications were limited to two sheets hanging on the stage, the props were few and far between, and the costumes were simple and modern, not unlike what you might see along College Walk. In clumsier hands, this approach could have felt lazy, but here it accentuated the few choices director Thomas Kapusta (CC ’12) did make (including portraying King Hamlet’s ghost as a silhouette against one of the sheets), while shining the spotlight on the actors. Read more…

While this isn’t the first time we’ve encountered self-aware posters, we admittedly got a bit gushy after seeing this one. Spotted in Lerner, this bearer of good news seems eager to please. And judging by the looks of it, at least a couple people seem willing to take up the offer.

Letting in some light where the sun doesn't shine

Dark pink with a black cover and black earbuds. Lost in either Kent or Dodge Hall on 10/27. Large reward if found. Contact: ael2139@columbia.edu.

Clubbin’ profiles some of the more unusual and eclectic student clubs around, from Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to the Equestrian Club. This time we send Raph Debenedetti and Alison Herman, our noobiest of noobs when it comes to gaming, to battle beside and learn about the StarCraft Club.

Their facilities aren't as decked out as this, but one can dream

When you think of StarCraft, the enormously popular science-fiction strategy video game, you probably think of sun-deprived, junior high schoolers locked up for hours at a time in suburban basements. Ben Graif, GS ’14, Martin Li, SEAS ’12 and Charles Zhang, CC ’12, beg to differ. The three, known online as “Benji,” “TaylorSwift” and “The Red Comet,” respectively, have founded a group at Columbia dedicated to playing StarCraft at the competitive, collegiate level.

For the yet others who know next to nothing about StarCraft, the concept of the game is relatively simple. Explains Li, “Basically, it’s a real-time strategy game. You get money, you make shit, and you kill other people’s shit.” Gamers can choose to play as one of three races: Terran (humans), Zerg (“insectoid alien type things”) or Protoss (“kind of hard to explain but it involves psychic forces”). StarCraft players range from novices to professionals, with the heads of the Columbia group falling somewhere in between. Graif and Li are both members of the “Masters” division, which comprises the top two percent of players in North America.

As part of the Collegiate Star League (CSL), Columbia StarCraft, now 53 members strong, competes against schools such as NYU and Penn. Although the group isn’t quite official—they’re currently lobbying for ABC recognition—many of its members have been practicing together since the release of StarCraft 2 last July. Online practices take place every Saturday for a grueling three hours, and tournaments on Sunday, as team members are matched up against players from other schools in virtual tournaments broken into of fast-paced, twenty-minute games.

Graif praises StarCraft as an activity that includes “people from all over campus—medical school, GS, and CC.” Li urges Columbians to look beyond the stigma traditionally attached to video games: “The reason Koreans are generally better at StarCraft is that gaming is more mainstream there. I think StarCraft has the potential to be like poker, where you can turn on the TV and just tune it.” We may be far from mainstream reach, but Columbians can do their part by joining one of CU’s fastest-growing student groups. For those interested in trying their hand at StarCraft, the Columbia group can be contacted at columbia.starcraft@gmail.com or through their Facebook group.

Competition via Wikimedia Commons

In the past, we’ve covered the whole spectrum of cooking all the way from the cooking essentials to Morningside’s exquisite dishes. This week, we challenged our fearless chef Matt Powell to enter where maintenance seldom ventures—the dorm kitchen. Contributor Marcus Levine offered to descend with him to the lowest depths of foodie hell. Matt recounts the adventure:

"But there's nothing on this list!"

In my time writing this column, I have been met with my fair share of criticism. My love of exotic ingredients, over-equipped kitchen, and enthusiasm for cooking (especially arugula), has at times seemed out of place in the scruffy dorm kitchen.

So what happens when you take away my usual kitchen amenities, ingredients and the rest? Will the enthusiasm remain? I showed up to last week’s Bwog meeting fully unaware of the challenge that would behold me. Marcus stood out from the group when he pointed out that he had duck prosciutto in his fridge. I figured that duck prosciutto was indicative of a student having at least a bit of culinary knowledge.

For my challenge, I was allowed only a single ingredient and one piece of kitchen equipment. Stripped I was of my fancy ingredients, my spice cabinet, my cookware, even my good plates and lighting equipment! How could I choose just two things? In the end, it came down to my trusty oven-proof nonstick skillet and figs.

Much to my surprise, I arrived to the Hartley suite to find that Marcus was not much of a food enthusiast. He didn’t even have salt and pepper! What he lacked in kitchen staples he made up by quite a selection of charcuterie and cheese. He had but a cutting board and dull ceramic knife, while no baking sheet or oven mitts could be proffered. So, putting my limited tools to good use, I created this little wonder.
Picture of the final dish and recipe after the jump!

Caped and ready for action

With the latest round of midterms (hopefully) coming to an end, it’s finally time to brood over your professor’s office for that recommendation letter she promised weeks ago. We’ve got two different kinds of office hours for you starting next week. First, Deantini will be hosting an informal meet-and-greet on Wednesday from 5:30-7:30 pm in Lerner 401. The Division of Student Affairs asks that you register, here. Then afterwards, drop by CCSC’s extended office hours, which will be ongoing Monday through Friday at 8 pm on the Lerner ramps. Now you can finally propose that marvelous campus contraption you dreamt up during CC.