Some kind souls are giving out free ice pops on Low steps. Go nab some while it’s hot!

Purely out of the goodness of their hearts

Wikimedia Commons“>

You could be like this guy!

Riverside Church is collecting food on 110th Street. Give if you can!

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Come one, come all for free cupcakes! Not actually – this only applies to you if you have a ratty, unwanted, or unfashionable coat lying around (which we know you do) and can carry it to the ProjectHealth Coat Drive between today and Saturday (which you probably can).

If you do bring over your old coat, you’ll feel ironically warm and fuzzy AND you’ll get a free coupon for a cupcake (read: you’ll get a free cupcake) from Kitchenette. Bring coats to Low Plaza the Sundial, Furnald, EC or Broadway between 12 and 4pm until and including this Saturday. 

The CU Dance Marathon finally wrapped up at 4:00 PM today after 28 hours of the “Cha-Cha Slide,” a bhangra lesson, and pretty much every Top 40 dance hit since 1985.  Sadly, Bwog missed the rumored Judah Friedlander appearance.

But the good news is the grand total raised: $50,020 by over 80 dancers for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. They may all be asleep now, but Bwog definitely gives each and every one a hearty congratulations.

The Columbia University Dance


Marathon is already 3/14 (or 21.4%) done!  Bwog suggests you go on and Electric Slide your way down to Lerner soon, because there are only twenty-two more hours to see all your favorite people shakin’ that thang for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.  In fact, 30 Rock aficionados should hustle a little more, even, because Bwog’s heard a rumor that “actor Judah Friedlander will be appearing around 11 p.m.”

Public Service Announcement:  people unfamiliar with 30 Rock and Mr. Friedlander (are there such people?) may want to absent themselves from CUDM at that hour.

The 9th annual Dance Marathon will be shaking down this weekend, from Saturday at noon to Sunday at 4pm. That�s 28 hours of straight dancing for charity � to benefit the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. The event has become Columbia�s biggest annual fundraiser, having raised $338,000 for the Foundation throughout the years.

There will be boogie, twist, waltz� well maybe not waltz, but there will be almost everything else. From line dancing to prepared hip-hop routines to DDR, dancing events will occupy the registered dancers for the entire 28 hours, and they are meant to be on their feet the entire time.

Too much for you? It�s late to officially register to be a �moraler,� who for at least 2 hours cheers the participants on and maybe dances a little. But unregistered moralers, dancers, and spectators are welcome at this festival of boogie-down ($10 tickets can be purchased in Lerner during the marathon). You could even make a small donation, your parents could make a small donation, or if you�re interested in getting a little more involved, check out the marathon�s current homepage. You can also attend their date auction at 9 p.m. in Roone Arledge Auditorium, or the Senior Night at Village PourHouse at 11.

If you aren�t as excited as Bwog is about this incredible display of caffeinated willpower put to music, check out clips of the Dance Marathon from a few years ago, and remember that there will be few other opportunities to do the community service President Obama expects of us all while dancing to ABBA.

Maybe you made some new friends at your internship or job over the summer, how nice for you. Professor to the Stars Jeffrey Sachs has made some new best friends and oh, they are awesome. Here’s our Jeff Sachs (right) with famous people John Mayer (he of smoldering stare on the left), and Jennifer Aniston (center), hanging out and probably talking about sustainable development and Brad Pitt and the like. Scholarly journal Us Weekly reports that the photo was taken at dinner for Sachs’ Millennium Promise project. 

Oh, and just for good measure there’s a photo thrown in of Sachs with old friend Angelina Jolie, who is neither famous nor good-looking enough to merit a larger photo.

There’s a lot of talk about  Columbia students being too fortunate for our own good.   That may or may not be true.  But  there is no question, we got lucky today.  Columbia students could not have asked for a more ideal afternoon for Relay for Life.  The event began at noon and will continue until three am Sunday morning.

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Hurry! From 6-9 tonight, the Blue Key Society hosts a competitive, campus wide Spelling Bee in the Wien Lounge.  ROAR, LION, ROAR! [Results after the jump!]

For almost every student, Spellcheck is an indispensable tool. Thanks to Bill Gates and his brainchild, Microsoft Word, the once tedious process of editing a paper for spelling errors has been reduced to a series of simple clicks. But then, there are those other students…

Yes, at Columbia,  there is a strange breed of students whose spelling capacities surpass those of that supercilious dancing paper-clip icon. These students spell with natural confidence and verbal intuition. Their vocabularies are so rich that while Spellcheck may flounder over obvious Greek derivatives, like, dialogism and phyllophyllin, Columbia’s superior strain of spellers can easily tackle any word.

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Matt Damon-fucking comedienne Sarah Silverman is coming to Lerner Hall! Silverman will be performing stand-up on May 9th to benefit Project ALS, an organization which benefits Lou Gerhig’s Disease research. Tickets are a minimum of $100 each (and $500 for a VIP ticket), so if you’re feeling really (really) generous, best to book early. 

Scrabulous devotees beware: Bwog newcomer Mariela Quintana shares a cautionary tale of addiction, rehabilitation, and quasi-salvation in the form of a charity Scrabble tournament.

For many a puzzler, the insatiable need for crosswords can spiral into an addiction.  Like any nasty habit, crosswording starts as a leisure activity and spawns into an all-consuming compulsion, driving its victims to steal crosswords from waiting room magazines, to desperately horde their goods for private use and to deny any need of help.

    The satisfaction that completing a crossword provides makes this at once an appealing activity and also a deadly one.  The perfect X-word may, in fact, may seem impossible at first, but in the end the solver should triumph and think: Oh, how clever I am! Is it any surprise then, that this self-indulgent assurance of one’s own acumen is a favorite pastime among members of the Columbia community? I should think not.

    By New Year’s, the level of my crossword consumption had surpassed satisfaction and reached disgust. For 2008, I resolved to cut-down on crosswords.  I was nervous, but as any crossword addict would know, a challenge is only an occasion to harness our signature mental dexterity and cerebral savvy. In past weeks, I have found new ways to utilize the time I had once devoted to my addiction. I’ve come a long way; I visit museums, I catch up with old friends—I even began performing community service!

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With Thanksgiving a distant memory and our 39 day winter break on the horizon, the holiday season is officially upon us. No matter your non-secular celebration of choice come December, campus groups are affording everyone the opportunity to do good deeds. Karma: the gift that keeps on giving. 

Today in Lerner there is a veritable buffet of opportunity to do something generous for the human race. Starting from up the ramp going down, The Clothesline Project has set up a public display of hanging t-shirts designed to raise awareness of sexual violence. (The set-up is also adverti
sing a workshop tonight in Hamilton for all those interested.)

Further down the 1st floor ramp are three girls selling baked goods in order to benefit cyclone victims. “They’re all baked!” explained one. Indeed. Cupcakes and cookies were plentiful, as was were what Bwog believes to have been apple cider. Autumnal!

Following the bake sale was a mysterious display of Hershey’s brand candy bars (Reeses, chocolate bars, Snickers) and one Special K bar. No explanation as to where the proceeds from the candy bar sale would go, but numerous Clip Art smiley faces convinced Bwog that where ever the dollar we paid for a Special K bar was going, it was a good place.

In addition to Lerner’s offerings today, Barnard sent out an email last week encouraging students to donate food or time to local soup kitchens and attached a document making it easier to do so. Even future the Masters of the Universes at SEAS are organizing a toy drive, inviting you to drop off gifts for kids in Botwinick Lab in Mudd.

So get to it, kids. ‘Tis the season.

Students who log on to the Dining Services website to complete a quality-assurance survey are in for a special treat. Columbia is going to donate ten cents to the charity of your choice!

Ten cents?! You might think. That’s vaguely offensive and pathetic! But wait! You can take the survey as many times as you want. So that’s like, an entire dollar to charity for completing a quality-assurance survey ten times.

Columbia: forerunners in philanthropy and accuracy.

 

At 4 pm Sunday, JJ’s place is the launch spot for a student group with a name that cuts to the heart of student charity – the “Feel Good” project, through which grilled cheese sandwiches are sold in order to raise money for world hunger. It is a known fact that eating grilled cheese sandwiches, the best kind of cheese sandwiches (get out of here with that “cabrese”), does make people feel good, and the fact that the profits go to charity has been known to make people feel better about problems of all sorts. World hunger? Partially alleviated! Your hunger? Partially satiated! You might be a few hundred billion dollars, and a soup, side dish, and thick drink short of ending both problems, but it’s a step in the right direction.

In case you’d rather have the sandwich free and refrain from the charity, you can seek out one of the “lost cheese” flyers the group has hidden across campus. The flyers are apparently in color, made to look like swiss cheese, and have the word “FOUND” at the top. Swiss cheese is a questionable choice for a grilled cheese sandwich, but perhaps they  know something we don’t. They have released these clues towards locating the fliers, after the jump:

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