Jonas Kaufmann as hot dolled-up Siegfried

You may have realized that Bwog is secretly a huge opera fan.  So when this question landed in our tip form, we were more than happy to find the answer.

Dear Bwog,

I just heard WKCR is doing a 48 hour broadcast to commemorate Wagner’s bicentennial in a week and a half. Can somebody please get the scoop on this and find out which recordings they are playing, and who’s programming it? I’m planning to skip work both days if the recordings are good.

Regards,

Gesamtkunstwerk-er

Indeed, it’s a big year for opera.  While Bwog’s twiddling our thumbs waiting for Verdi’s Bicentennial, I suppose some people are excited for Wagner’s…  Wagner was born on May 22, 1813, and WKCR will be honoring that this May 22.  Unless you’re busy with Commencement or whatever, we recommend you take the day off (and the next day too) to check out this great collection.  They’ll be broadcasting all of his operas chronologically from Rienzi to Parsifal — “We’d have done his first two, but 48 hours wouldn’t have been enough.”  Check out the lineup, courtesy of Stepan Atamian, CC’16, and WKCR, below:

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Drugs: they’re in our DNA!

Canada to conduct study using MDMA to treat patients with PTSD. Bwog’s reaction: OMFG! (Vice)

Last night President Obama must have been on some serious shit. Either that or Daniel Day Lewis is even better than we thought. (The Guardian)

Bwog is now officially ten times more terrified for its mandatory drug test. (Gawker)

Enabling you via Shutterstock

On Tuesday night in 413 Dodge, Susan Bernofsky, director of Literary Translation at Columbia (LTAC), held a conversation with Lydia Davis.  At a Columbia Summer Program in high school, Alexandra Svokos was told to read Davis, fell in love, and natch was there on Tuesday.

There’s no way to say it without sounding pretentious: I saw Lydia Davis do a reading at Shakespeare & Co. last summer.  I was in Paris for a wonderful writing course and Davis was reading her characteristic short short stories to a massive crowd that extended out to the street, all clamoring to see her.  To me, Davis is almost strictly a writer, but on Tuesday, for a crowd of LTACers, she was in pure translator form.  She speaks with careful word choice, but honestly, with a voice like a whisper.  It was fascinating to hear this side of her work, which relies on respect for and dedication to another author, rather than letting her own inventiveness take over.  She spoke mainly about her translations of Proust’s Swann’s Way and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.

The conversation opened with Davis explaining her psychological analysis of why she so loves translating.  Her family moved to Austria when she was 7.  She sat in class, with German all around her, and watched the language slowly begin to gain meaning.  Moreover, Davis has always loved word puzzles.  ”A Proust sentence is like a long, elaborate word puzzle,” she said.  A Barnard alum, Davis’s first published translation was actually in the Columbia Review.

Go on

Woodford

Columbia’s University Lecture was held on Monday at 6 pm in Low.  Michael Woodford, John Bates Clark Professor of Political Economy, gave a lecture entitled “Fedspeak: Does It Matter How Central Bankers Explain Themselves?”  Syntax and grammar enthusiast Alexandra Svokos heard the answer.

Much as Michael Woodford cares about how bankers explain themselves, he cares about how he explains himself.  From an essayist’s perspective, this was a lovely structured lecture, with clear and rational movement from section to section for highest effectiveness.  First, Woodford explained “Fedspeak”–a favorite of Greenspan–vague statements given by the Fed.  Recently, however, the Fed has opted instead to actually explain their decisions and have higher transparency.

Under Bernanke, the Fed has given frequent press releases and conferences and meeting minutes have been made public. Notably, according to Woodford, the Fed has explained future policies–including the August 2011 announcement that the federal funds rate would be kept around zero until mid-2013.  This has since been adjusted to benchmarks rather than specific years: it will remain at that low rate as long as unemployment was above 6.5% and inflation below 2.5%.

Go on

Quick! Somebody call generic-superhero-man!

Holy nostalgia, Batman! Give us a minute while we try to contain our childhood nostalgia. If you ever attempted to shoot webs from your fingers, wore a cape everyday, or jumped off a jungle gym thinking you could fly, you would have found kindred spirits at Monday’s “Picture This: The Art of Comics Adaptations” Lecture. Bwog’s Arbiter of Intergalactic Justice, Josh Dillon, reports on the surprisingly complex world of comic books.

At approximately 5:58 pm Monday night, I sauntered into 523 Butler for “Picture This: the Art of Comics Adaptations.” My sauntering was on the account that I consider myself well acquainted with comics and comic books. I have dozens at home, I Wikipedia the abilities of different comic book heroes instead of sleeping, and I have attended the New York Comic Con.

Needless to say, I was completely under qualified for this event.

I was expecting to see undergraduate students wearing sitting excited in their chairs. Not nerds (hey this is Columbia), but rather, casual students who like to forsake going out once in awhile to read a new comic book. Instead, I was greeted by so many well-dressed (so many scarves!), eloquent socialites. I took to a seat in the middle and pulled out a small moleskin to take notes in.

Mistake.

Almost every person in the small gathering had some sort of leather bound, tiny notebook. But rather than fitting in with my name-brand, I stuck out. These notebooks were filled with fantastic drawings and, to my amazement, audience members sketched the presenters throughout the next two hours. One girl to my left was able to accurately capture a presenter mid-word, making me wonder, “WHAT AM I DOING HERE?”

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The Columbia Humanist Society, a new group at Columbia dedicated to secular discussions about politics, society, and everything in between, had its first big event last Wednesday, when they invited A.C. Grayling to give a small lecture in Hamilton. A. C. Grayling, first Master of London’s New College of the Humanities. He’s written numerous books, most notably The God Argument; the Case Against Religion and For Humanism, which he was promoting at the event. All agog atheist Artur Renault reported:

After a long introduction by a CHS member, A. C. Grayling stepped up to the podium with his outrageous gray mane and warmed up the crowd with a warm humblebrag: “One thing I’ve learned in my career is that if you do less, you get to speak earlier.” From that point on we could see that his gentle British humor would keep us company throughout the lecture.

The beginning of the speech was an interesting digression from the general trend of New Atheism, because Grayling said he didn’t want to change anyone’s mind: he just wanted to examine the argument. He noticed that after 9/11, religion seems to have penetrated public life in a new way. Previously, religion was something private and out of the public eye. But since, thousands of books have come out preaching religion and about half a dozen have come out speaking against it, including those by Grayling’s friends Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Steven Pinker, and no public debate seems to be free from the influence of faith.

Grayling separated this phenomenon into three different debates that are often confused. The first he called the atheism debate: what is in the universe, and what controls it? The second, the secularism debate, regarded the role of religion in society—he stressed that it’s possible to be religious and secular. The final debate, he said, was one of ethics: how do we lead our lives?

What did he say about that?

Look at the blatant marketing to young teens!

On Wednesday evening, Columbia’s SSDP (Students for a Sensible Drug Policy) hosted a panel that gave the real story behind everyone’s mysterious friend: Molly. Somewhat sensible student Alexandra Avvocato was there, accompanied by Angel Jiang, who was there to explain the pop culture references.

As we walked into the Roone Cinema, hip-hop beats played from the speakers, lending a nicely awkward ambience. The promo image for the event loomed above us on the projector screen: “The Truth About Molly” accompanied by a little unicorn-decorated tablet, presumably Molly herself. Among the panelists were Allison Bajger, a doctoral candidate at Columbia; Ingmar Gorman, a doctoral candidate at the New School; Brittany Lewis of Global Grind; and Dr. Lewis-McCoy from CUNY’s City College. The wide range of expertise among the panelists exemplified the danger that my AP Euro teacher constantly warned us of: that which is broad must be shallow. While many interesting tidbits and pieces of trivia about MDMA were thrown around, there was little chance for the panelists to reach a deeper conclusion about the relationship of the drug with any community.

Spoilers: Molly is MDMA.

Speaker Quinn and DSpar

Last night, Speaker of the City Council Christine Quinn stopped by Barnard to campaign for mayor discuss the problems facing women and those facing the city. Bwog’s City Hall bureau chief Peter Sterne reports.

The Diana Event Oval auditorium was packed with Barnard (and a few Columbia) students hoping to hear from Quinn, who is the first woman and first openly gay Speaker, as well as the frontrunner in the race to succeed Mayor Bloomberg.

Quinn began her talk by praising Barnard—”a place where women are encouraged to take risks”—and noting that more people working on her campaign came from Barnard than any other college. Later, she explained that she is a fan of single-sex education in general, and Barnard in particular. A plurality of people working on her mayoral campaign, she added, are Barnard graduates. Later, DSpar asked her a question submitted by a member of the audience—”a man, judging by the sloppy signature”—about whether single-sex education was worth it. Quinn, who attended an all-girls high school and a co-ed college, insisted it was because it provides “less distraction.” Single-sex schools, she added, have a “much better impact in creating leaders than co-ed schools.”

Bwog expected Quinn to deliver a stump speech and was surprised that she instead talked about how the young women audience should seek to break out of rigid gender roles. She explained that breaking free of gender expectations saved her grandmother, who was a passenger on the Titanic and only survived because “when the other girls got down to pray, she started running.” She also encouraged the audience not to trust “naysayers,” including their own “internal naysayer voice.” She recounted her run for City Council Speaker, when “naysayers” told her that she could never win since she was a gay woman who represented the West Village. Of course, she ignored those concerns and proved them wrong. The lesson for young women? “Every time they tell you, you can’t do something, it’s not because you can’t do it. It’s because they’re afraid they can’t.”

Read on for all the political stuff

The man, the myth

On Wednesday night as part of the Writing Lives Series, Nick Hornby, author of About A Boy and High Fidelity had a conversation with Saskia Hamilton.  Voracious reader Julia Goodman fangirled.

I had been looking forward to seeing Nick Hornby since the Heyman Center sent out their calendar of events in January. Being a chronically late person, I decided to get there 45 minutes early–and I was still far from the first to arrive. Snagging a seat near the front, I watched the room fill with young women, young men, and more young women. I felt like I had stumbled into a surreal world where everyone is born with a moleskin and plaid button-down, and nobody ages past thirty.

The event began with a brief introduction, explaining how the talk came about. Turns out that Hornby, who wrote a song with Ben Folds called “I’m In Love With Saskia Hamilton,” had emailed Hamilton to ask permission. The idea became that if he came to Columbia, she would be the one to interview him. Describing the email as “one of the nicest emails [she’s] ever gotten,” Hamilton set the tone for the evening. The two were enderingly flustered at first, stepping on each other’s sentences, and I heard a woman behind me whisper, “It’s like they’re on a first date!” It was, indeed, a little like a first date. They were both so taken with each other that the audience couldn’t help but love both even more.

Fall in love with Bwog

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a lecture hop!

Hosted by Columbia University Libraries and the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, The Comics at Columbia lecture was hopped by graphic enthusiast Zachary Hendrickson. The panel included Paul Levitz as moderator and former President of DC Comics; Larry Tye, an author and historian; Al Jaffe, the illustrator whose work is most notably on EVERY ISSUE of MAD Magazine ever; Denny O’Neil, a comic book writer and editor; and Jay Emmett, a former Warner executive.

Last night, I assembled with comic book fans of all ages and from all walks of life. We were celebrating something that many look down upon as childish, but that nevertheless has survived for decades. Comic books, their characters, and the stories they hold are the collective childhood of America. And as America has grown, our comic books have grown alongside us. Over the years, they have become a sort of American mythology. A magical thing happened in that cramped 5th floor room of Butler; lawyers, artists, historians, and students were able to drop our well-polished Bruce Wayne personas, show our true colors, and honor the legendary bards of our time.

The panel conversation started with an introduction from Karen Greene, Librarian for Ancient and Medieval History and Graphic Novels. Greene started the Graphic Novel section at Columbia and has been responsible for its unprecedented growth over the last seven years (3 graphic novels total in 2005 to 3,400 now). She quickly handed the conversation off to Paul Levitz, who opened the discussion by asking perhaps the most enlightening question of the night:

Why comics?

Analyze THAT!

The latest in the J-School’s Delacorte Lecture featured Fox News contributor and Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol. In a room packed with J-School students and retirees hoping Kristol would use the opportunity to “debunk” global warming, political peer Adam Shapiro listened on.

Professor Victor Navasky (former longtime editor of The Nation) introduced Kristol by mentioning his work for the Reagan and Bush administrations and the McCain 2008 campaign. Navasky then told the audience to brace for “something completely different.”

Kristol began by thanking the Columbia Journalism School for being “fair and balanced” enough to invite a conservative to speak. He candidly talked about becoming Republican, explaining that being conservative was a form of rebellion growing up on the Upper West Side. He half jokingly explained that he later read books to justify the prejudices he developed.

Kristol focused most of his lecture on his belief that the internet is radically reshaping the political and media landscape. Despite his “normal inclination as a conservative to debunk claims of novelty,” he posited that in the last twenty years things have changed at unprecedented speed. As a conservative, he’s enthusiastic about the changes the internet is bringing and sees them as healthy for democracy and good for the individual.

Steam engines and Sarah Palin

Dervis, Stiglitz, Papandreou, Anderson, Soros, Svejnar

Registration filled up in minutes after Columbia announced its latest World Leaders Forum event, a distinguished panel charged with discussing the future of Europe after the ongoing crisis. Audacious alliterator Artur Renault wrote a report:

In my short time at Columbia so far, no list of speakers for a World Leaders Forum event held as much recognition or excitement as this one, as it contained George Papandreou, George Soros, Joseph Stiglitz, Kemal Derviş, Anne Anderson, and Jan Svejnar; individually all the panelists would have been worth watching, but together they were just too good to miss.

The event was held in Low Library’s monumental rotunda, and the number of press members there was a testament to the importance of this panel. Even PrezBo’s opening speech, usually long and reverential to the guest, was cut short. He barely spoke a paragraph before he passed the authority of the debate to Jan Svejnar, professor of global political economy and director of the Center on Global Economic Governance and moderator of the panel.

Svejnar announced the panel’s structure: each of the panelists would express their opinions for 10 minutes; then, they would be given a chance to react to the other panelists; finally, the floor would be open to questions from the audience. The panel turned out to be an incredibly informative and insightful experience since all of the speakers were very passionate about the issue and, obviously, very knowledgeable on the subject.

But what did the they actually say?

From the Met to the IAB

This past Thursday night, Russian could be heard echoing through the halls of IAB. This was not a simple run-of-the-mill discussion on the Cold War or the Russian geopolitical threat. It was something much classier! Up and coming opera sensation, Anita Rachvelishvili, was there to discuss her life and what it’s like to be a star. We sent Bwog’s very own opera enthusiast, Claire Friedman, to work on hitting her high C#.

When I first sat down, I had a split-second “what have you gotten yourself into?” moment. The room – a poorly labeled IAB conference room that took me an embarrassingly long time to find – was filled with glamorous people all speaking Russian. Probably the youngest person present by at least ten years, I took my seat next to a woman who looked to be the carbon copy of Jamie Lee Curtis in Freaky Friday.

Anita Rachvelishvili herself is exactly as divalicious as one would expect. With dark hair and bright red lipstick, I could easily imagine her belting out Carmen on the Met stage. But Anita has much more than the hair of a Disney villain. Her voice is so spectacular that she is one of the youngest opera singers to ever take on the role of Carmen. However, youthful vigor can come with drawbacks. Rachvelishvili says that she plans to stay with Carmen for a couple of years because her voice is not yet mature enough for other roles.

Anita’s rise to operatic fame started at the age of seventeen. Born in Georgia and coming from a musically inclined family (her father was a composer, her mother a singer and ballerina), Anita has been singing her whole life. Surprisingly, though, Anita wasn’t originally interested in singing opera; instead, she spent the formative years of her life obsessed with rock music. Led Zeppelin, she says, is still her go-to music choice. When Anita turned seventeen, her father brought her to her first opera lesson. Like nothing she’d ever heard before, Georgian opera instantly enchanted Anita. Within months, she was well on her way to becoming an opera star.

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In the flesh!

A couple nights ago, Cornel West paid a visit to our fine campus. In attendance (along with what seemed like half of the entire Columbia population) was Bwog’s Resident Lecture Lover, Eric Wimer.

The fire code was almost certainly being broken by the crowd packed into Northwest corner 501, all there to see Cornel West. The Columbia NAACP introduced him as the kind of guest that was certainly worth breaking a few codes to see. Amid a chorus of snaps and ‘mhmms,’ he sketched out the legacy of Martin Luther King and touched on a Core Curriculum’s worth of writers, artists, and leaders, from The Merchant of Venice to Louis Armstrong, “a sad soul with a cheerful disposition,” to Anton Chekov, all with a poetic flourish.

King, he said, “mustered the courage to think critically in the Socratic tradition.” Columbia too, Cornel asserted, should teach its students to examine themselves in this tradition; to do so is to be human. But students here should “beware of deodorized discourse.” Students should instead follow the path of King, who “said let’s deal with the ambiguity and complexity of life. He was not just a ‘civil rights leader.’” A good education, he expounded “should not teach you how to live, but how to die.”

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The latest event in the World Leaders Forum series featured Song Sang-Hyun, President of the International Criminal Court, speaking on the history and structure of the ICC. We sent our atrociously amateur reporter Artur Renault to watch what went down.

The lecture about one of the world’s most ambitious judicial projects took place in the main room in Casa Italiana, which features a large stage covered in allusions to Rome, the birthplace of many legal concepts that influence the ICC. This seemed appropriate. The room was crowded with journalists and grad students and human rights majors who know a lot more about the ICC than I do, but I was eager to learn. We sat as Prezbo stood up and delivered a short introduction, describing the ICC from its creation by the Rome Statute (which you may know because it protects your Facebook rights) to its current challenges in Kenya.

The crowd could instantly notice Song’s friendly presence and good humor when the judge joked that, while he considers New York his third home (after Seoul and The Hague), in the city his heart resides at NYU because he taught there some time ago.

The serious part after the jump.