Your whole life just got squeezed into one of these

Applying: Columbia sure isn’t the easiest school to get into, but they’ll be much more excited about you if you happen to be a military veteran. (NYTimes)

Extracurriculars: Outside of classes, you may find time to participate in student groups like the Quidditch team. And maybe you’ll even make it to the Quidditch World Cup, which took place this weekend (Gothamist)

The Job Hunt: Before long, your parents and more exceptional friends will provide not-too-subtle reminders of your unemployment. Panic will ensue, and you’ll probably apply to Apple or Google. But let’s be real: it’s Columbia, so odds are you’re shooting for that I-Banking job too. (WSJ)

Coming Back for More: After a few years in the real world, you might be overcome by a strange desire to return to school. Turns out Columbia isn’t a bad place to do it, as our Executive MBA Program is number two in the nation. (Bloomberg Businessweek)

Deciding to Donate: After amassing your wealth many years down the road, you might decide to increase your children’s chance of admission display your bottomless generosity by donating. But you might not want to do it to a school’s science program. (NYMag)

Trivialization of your existence via Wikimedia

Today’s Bwoglines challenge the things you love most:

Cartoons: Pinocchio should be punished, Spongebob will destroy our children (Slate, Atlantic)

Cigarettes: The future of smoking is e-cigarettes. (NYMag)

Sex: Has been displaced by Facebook. (Gizmodo)

World History: It’s whatever. (New Yorker)

Take-Out: It’s evil! (Gothamist)

Emoticons: Sometimes they look like vaginas. (NYT)

Google: Is actually taking over the world. (WSJ)

There’s one exception! Beavis and Butthead are not only recognized for their honesty, compassion, and humility, but are also back for a new season, starting Wednesday. (NYT)

Halcyon days.

In the last 48 hours, the US has received a specific, credible, but unconfirmed threat of a terror attack this Sunday, on the 9/11 anniversary. Moreover, a survey by the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia revealed that Americans have a false sense of security, and that in the event of a disaster, more than half of families have no emergency plan. (WSJ)

CAVA reflects on their reactions to September 11, 2001. (Spec)

Obama urged legislators last night to pass a new stimulus designed for job-creation specifically through cuts in public salaries and tax breaks and hiring holiydays for small businesses. Here’s to ya, 2011! (NYTimes)

Continuing their enduring quest to own everything—ever—Google has unexpectedly purchased Zagat, those little red things you used to read reviews in. (Dealbook)

A USDA study has reported that 2.5 million New Yorkers cannot afford enough food at some point in the year. So seriously, guys, John Jay isn’t that bad. (Gothamist)

Image from Flickr/ZagatBuzz

• 

  Everybody else seems to get their tender lovin' before us.

  Trojan ranked us number one in safe sex among universities. (Gothamist)

• Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture and Planning and Preservation students win contest, redesign Long island. (Inhabitat)
• New York Public Schools get Google Apps, before we do. (WSJ)
• Next year, you can text your friends from some subway stations. (Telegraph)
• Financial aid forms are now simpler to file. (Spec)
• New York Public Libraries mistakenly put in charge the president of Amherst rather than Prezbo. (NYT)
• Even Nobel Prize winners procrastinate! Now get back to that CC paper. (New Yorker)

Logo via Wikimedia Commons.

As of yesterday, tipster Masud Mahdi informs us that Columbia now is now featured in the integrated Google Earth and Google Maps. Cool!

Read more…

Photo via NYT

NYU plans to move into Brooklyn and Governor’s island. One of its goals in expanding is to provide 240 square feet of space per student (currently 160, compared with Columbia’s 326) by 2031. (NYT)

Mujib Mashal, CC’11 has been capturing the lives of educators on video in war-ravaged Afghanistan, preventing the loss of their contribution to history.

Googlemania explodes around the country. (NYT)

Morningside Heights presents: Free Food Heaven! Pick up a free pastry at Starbucks (114th AND 111th and Broadway) and a free cone at Ben and Jerry’s (104th and Broadway).

The Heyman Center kicked off its Fall 2009 lecture series with Harvard Library Director Robert Darnton. Stacks Correspondent Mark Hay reports:

A fair chunk of the audience at the Schapiro Center’s Davis Auditorium on Thursday fully expected this, the first Heyman Center event of the fall, to be yet another aging professor’s lamentation on the death of the book. Perhaps the audience was drawn less by the subject matter than by the opportunity to observe America’s most powerful librarian, Professor Robert Darnton, director of the University Library at Harvard University, outside of his natural habitat. Darnton, though, much to the attendees’ pleasant surprise, had no interest in discussing the death of print. A leading expert on the history of books, Darnton quickly dismissed the notion of the death of print with a volley of comparative historical anecdotes and facts and figures on recent book publications. Even the moderator, Professor Eric Foner, seemed a wee bit surprised.

Indeed, Darnton wanted to discuss the effects of Google Books’ digitization projects on the large research library. Though this may seem an extraordinarily dry and niche topic, something in Darnton’s passion, touched with dry wit and a number of charming tales, kept the audience enraptured. We let out a series of collective laughs and gasps and I am sure I heard someone brought to tears (although this may have been unrelated to Darnton’s subject matter). This man was good – so good that we were all willing to take his side in the matter without a second thought. Up with the underdog! Bunk the man, man! Read more…

Image via bittenandbound.com

It’s a sign of the times: parents have kids to figure our their technology for them.

A student talking on a cell phone outside Roone earlier this week:

“I don’t think Rachael Ray sells microwaves. … Just Google “Rachael Ray microwave” … I don’t think you understand- you can Google anything! … There’s no penalty for Google-ing stupid things.”

Actually, they do make a Rachael Ray microwave.  Cooks everything in thirty minutes, whether you like it or not.

You may have noticed, yesterday evening sometime, that Gmail had gone insane. Everything was blue–had hamsters been let loose in the Google servers, Bwog wondered? To our relief, we found we could return to the older version, like Facebook let us do for a short time before forcing us into new Facebook forever. And then, to our delight, we learned that Google was in fact offering us more choices, not forcing us unto an page-view driven “improvement” (yeah, we hope you’re listening Mark Zuckerberg). 

But what to choose? (
If you haven’t figured it out yet, go to “settings,” and pick “themes”). Obviously not any of the sleek professional ones. Tea House is a bit gimmicky, and Phantasea rather trippy for our taste. Ninja is a bold selection–yow!–and you might last a few days with Candy before perishing of saccharine pink.

Bwog is going with “New York,” for now, which shrouds the interface in a pleasant overcast. But perhaps something else tomorrow–if Gmail is our lives, why not try a new identity every day?

Here is a Google Maps App that tells you where to go to cast your vote today. (If you’re at school, it’s probably Wien, despite Google’s uncharacteristic misspelling.)

The app also includes reminders like “you must be registered” and whether or not your location offers early voting, which at this point is irrelevant, but still, we will remember this thing for 2010′s election. 

Oh, and check back later today for more election stuff, including a very scientific exit poll.

Welcome back to Bwog’s latest feature, “In Defense Of…” Here, a writer defends something that most students consider useless, inferior, or downright loathsome. In doing so, Bwog hopes to bring you a new perspective, and give the subject the appreciation it deserves…or not.   This time, you guessed it, it’s CubMail.

Although google is taking over the world and accruing more and more gmail fanatics by the hour, there remain a few traditional CubMail users. I am proud to be one among them.

The simplicity of CubMail is what I like best. The terseness of the email addresses it provides lends itself to people with long, cumbersome, hard to spell names. With CubMail, Maria Elena Quintana becomes a tidy MQ2139.  To follow the gmail trend, I would have to go with some like mariaelena.quintana, which eliminates the all important space between my first and second name and leaves me with stuck with an unpronounceable string of vowels in the middle. If I threw in an additional dot, I would get maria.elena.quintana, which is more aesthetically pleasing than the former but ultimately just as confusing. In this situation, Elena could easily be mistook for my middle name, which would leave me as Maria and cause an identity crisis among other confusing things.

Read more…

Why is Google so biased against the Columbia University College Republicans?

A furtive, anonymous tipster, known only as “Dispose Me,” just informed Bwog of some foul play at work within the liberal search engine.

“The Columbia Republicans site appears to have been plagued with viagra ads. And penis elargments. It’s also quite visible when you google search for ‘columbia college republicans’. For the lazy.”

Also, according to well-places sources, this very Viagara-riddled website ceased to be the official online home of the CUGOP when Kulawik graduated. Apparently he didn’t leave the new board instructions on how to access and edit the site. (Note how he’s still listed as President). The new site, for those who want to keep their student group bookmarks updated, is here.

As the spring semester came to a screeching halt all too quickly yesterday, levying reading week and an ignominious batch of finals upon Columbia students quite eager to enjoy the pre-summer sunshine, Columbia Daily Spectator production also came to a halt yesterday, with an equally cheery promise to resume coverage in the fall.  While Bwog has very much enjoyed offering you a daily dose of Spec this year, sadly today there is no Spec over which Bwog editors may voraciously pore. 

Therefore, in lieu of QuickSpec this morning, Bwog invites you to have a gander at its very own Columbia news roundup trawled from a Gmail inbox chock-full of Columbia University Google Alerts.  Speaking of Google, Bwog also recommends that readers check out Google’s device called Google Reader to stay caught up with and organize all of the blogs, news, and gossip that might ever suit your fancy.

Wait, Columbia doesn’t already own the NYT?

How hard is it to get a Columbia degree?

City Journal is still silly over 1968. 

Graduate!  It’ll do the economy good.

Superhumans and Columbia’s supercomputer.

Save water to avoid eating your neighbor.

Did Lindsay Lohan steal your $11,000 coat?

Bwog has recently been made privy to Grand Central, a Google-owned program that allows users to sign up for one number that will make all your phones ring when called (both landlines and cellphones). Grand Central also has numerous creepy/cool features like requiring people to state the reason for their call before getting to speak with you and allowing you to record calls at a moment’s notice (without the other person’s knowledge, natch.) But like any cool toy, this one comes with a warning:

“Note: If you choose to record, be sure to check your local laws regarding call recordings. Most states only require one party’s consent (yours), but others require both parties to consent. There are significant penalties for recording a call without the other party’s consent in these states so to be safe you should let your callers know you are recording the call. It’s the nice thing to do regardless. ”

Orwellian! We like!

Bwog Arts Editor Justin Goncalves explains that you can actually switch the number from your cell to your room’s ROLM phone (the thing you unplugged and stored under your bed on move-in day), and use the phone to make outgoing calls. Says Justin: “I realize I’m way too excited about this, but I feel like others should know. Save your cell phone bills!”

…meanwhile, Google nerds across the world sit and wait…their imminent reign quietly yet unmistakably approaching.

Bwog has been experimenting with Google Docs, the friendly and clean web-based word processor, (really the West Side Market of word processors). It seems that under the “Word Count” feature, the program will tell you the grade-level equivalent of your writing. We played around with this feature using some of our favorite theorists, celebrities, novelists, and lolcats!

“A civilization that proves itself incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization.” – Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism (Grade level: 15)

“Nurture an appetite for being puzzled, for being confused, indeed for being openly stupid, and that – despite what you may think – is very difficult…We all know the cliche’ that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. It is also true that a lot of knowledge can be a dangerous thing as well…use your ignorance as well as your knowledge for creative means.”- Lee C. Bollinger (Grade level: 3)

“The other did not move, jackknifed backward between the two bunks, grave and clean, the cigar burning smoothly and richly in his clean and steady hand, the smoke wreathing upward across his face saturnine, humorless and calm.”- William Faulkner, Old Man (Grade level: 4)

“I can has cheezburger?”- lolcat (Grade level: 2) Read more…