Bucket List represents the unbelievable intellectual privilege we enjoy as Columbia students. We do our very best to bring to your attention important guest lecturers and special events on campus. As always, feel free to mention any events we may have missed in the comments section and we’ll add them. Our recommendations for this week are below and the full list is after the jump.

Recommended

• “A Few (Un)scientific Thoughts on Backlash” Wednesday, September 19 4:10 pm – 5:00 pm, 614 Schermerhorn Hall, Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers, Blink, the Tipping Point, and writer for the New Yorker (Psychology)
• ”Politics of Change [part of the 2012 Program on Indian Economic Policies Conference]” Thursday, September 20, 7:00 pm – 9:00pm, IAB 1501, India politicians Salman Khurshid (Minister of Law and Justice), N K Singh (Member of Indian Parliament), and Arun Jaitley (Leader of Opposition in the Upper House of Parliament), registration required
• “World Leaders Forum: A Discussion Featuring Daw Aung San Suu Kyi” Saturday, September 22, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm, Low Rotunda, Nobel Peace Prize Recipient and prominent Burmese political activist Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, moderated by Ann Curry—Registration will open on September 19 at 10:00 am. (more…)

Maybe this Indian dessert will be there! Maybe not!

Every fall, Club Dimensions, a South Asian campus group, throws their annual Guria benefit–it’s full of dancing and food, and it’s fun. To plan for this year’s iteration, they’re joining forces with the CU Culinary Society for a study break featuring “gourmet Indian desserts.”

Stop by the Lerner East Ramp Lounge at 9:00pm to nosh, plan, and learn more about both groups. “this event is blowing my mind,” reads the Facebook event listing.

And there’s also free pizza at the Dance Marathon info session today at 6:30, 568 Lerner.

Photo via Wikimedia.

Looking to get his fill of international conflict, Kashmir Bureau Chief Mark Hay grabbed a chair in the Satow Room last night for “Pakistan-India: What’s Next?”

November 26 will mark a somber anniversary – one year since the coordinated terrorist attacks of the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba ripped through the Indian city of Mumbai, paralyzing both nations for several days. And just like that, after several years of improved relations – cooperation on anti-terror issues, relaxations on border controls – the India-Pakistan debacle was back in the news. Since the relative silence after the Kargil War of 1999, observers had all hoped that what some had called the most dangerous conflict on earth would just fizzle out and die.

Fat chance, as it turns out. So it was in memory, in fear, and in a tenacious spirit of hope that the Organization of Pakistani Students and the massive pan-South Asian club Zamana convened a panel of experts last night to discuss the vital question of “Pakistan-India: What’s Next?” (more…)

Engineers Without Borders is holding a giant Roone-sized event this evening at 7:00.  Beyond Borders: Food will feature discussions with experts about the “cultural and social contexts” and the “systemic factors” affect our food.

Academic blathering aside, the event will feature an “Indian/African” dinner – no word on whether this is a hybrid or two seperate cuisines, but run on over and fill your plates.

Free tickets are at the TIC.

Already tired of cooking in your nonexistent dorm kitchen?  CCSC 2011 is hosting a welcome back-style dinner in Lerner Party Space tonight at 6:00 PM.

 The food will be from Indian Cafe on 108th and Broadway.  CCSC 2011 President Learned Foote helpfully notes that the dinner will be “first come, first serve,” meaning that it’ll probably run out by 6:15.  Hurry!

It’s the final stretch.  Post-break, you might have time for a few distractions.

Photo via mycaricatures.co.uk

Monday

Society, Toleration, and the Jews: Ira Katznelson, professor of political science and history, will discuss toleration “as an alternative to persecution.”  Sounds good to us.  6:15 PM @ Low Rotunda.

Tuesday

Brinkley, Foner, and Stiglitz: Capitalism is in crisis.  How will it affect our politics?  Probably the same way every other economic crisis has: protectionism.  7:30 PM @ 309 Havemeyer.

Indian Chief Justice P.N. Bhagwati: Interpreting the country’s relatively new constitution in favor of broad human rights.  5:00 PM @ 101 Jerome Greene Hall.

Wednesday

New York City at 400: Representations of the island through time; part of a year-long celebration of a really old city.  7:00 PM @ Deutsches Haus 420 W. 116th St

Thursday

Free screening of Defiance: Hosted by Ferris Reel.  7:30 @ Roone Cinema.

Unexpectedly Dancing in Boise: A CC senior’s thesis has gone off-broadway.  TRF, 8:00 PM @ The Producer’s Club Theatres, 44th St. between 8th and 9th Ave.

Friday

Chowdah: Brand new, sexy material.  9:00 PM @ Wien Lounge.

- Photo via The Earth Institute

It’s not uncommon to see Columbia’s celebrity economist in the news, but three times in one day? First, “the noted economist” tell the Press Trust of India (India’s AP) that India needs to spend more money stimulating the economy to ensure a quick recovery. Sounds kinda like what a Columbia alum just signed.

Not content to merely be interviewed, Sachs also has his own essay on Fortune‘s website, detailing his plan on how to fix the Big 3 auto companies. “The Big 3 are not just another industry segment,” he writes, “they are world-leading organizations that can reassume that role in technology and markets with an appropriate public-private partnership over the coming decade.”

And because writing isn’t enough, he’s also headlining the launch of a new Earth Institute project, GlobalSoilMap.net, today at Casa Italiana. According to the event description, “this initiative, which will map most of the ice-free land surface of the globe over the next five years, will help scientists and policy makers tackle pressing issues like food security, climate change and water scarcity.”

Next up: leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Hey, it’s easier than saving the Dow.

For everyone whose mouth waters at the thought of Indian cuisine, today is a lucky day.  The Bhakti Club is holding its first free Indian vegetarian cooking class of the semester tonight at 7pm in the Broadway Room in Lerner. 

And, as the product of the class is a delicious, vegetarian, Indian meal, there will naturally be plenty of free food to follow — guests have even been told to “bring tupperware.”  And, in case further motivation is necessary, Bwog has been reminded that “Hare Krishna monks with New Jersey accents never fail to delight.”

In which Bwog Daily Editor Zach van Schouwen gives in to the demands of anonymous commenters and buys a plastic bag full of curry powder.

In a previous edition of Cooking with Bwog, our high esteem for fried okra was called into question by a number of advocates of bhindi. Bhindi is the Hindi word for okra, but also refers to a particular way of cooking it, using curry, masala and yogurt.

Anyway, it wouldn’t be cooking if we didn’t get to act like imperialists. So I promptly co-opted the Indian tradition and made some bhindi myself. It was pretty damn good, anonymous Bwog commenters, I’ll give you some props. My version of the recipe follows, with instructions and a backstory.

First, it’s necessary to cobble together the necessary ingredients. Hopefully, you have a friend with a spice rack, because you’re going to need (1) curry powder, (2) masala, (3) cumin, (4) turmeric, (5) red chili powder, (6) salt. You also need about 15 pieces of okra (go to West Side), peanut oil (vegetable is OK) and a cup or two of plain yogurt.

Curry and masala are hard to find (although you can probably get them at West Side). I couldn’t find them at my neighborhood supermarket, so I took a nice 90-minute stroll to Jackson Heights and bought them at the Cash and Carry, which is probably the least organized supermarket in New York. But cheap! If you can find curry leaves, use them instead of the powder. I couldn’t lay hands on any, because my Hindi is… not so great. (I only know the word for “okra.” It’s “bhindi.”) (more…)

This month, Bwog staffer Armin Rosen finds himself in Bangalore, which is not as unlike Manhattan as you might think.

Up until this weekend, my lone experience with south Asia’s IT boomtown was crossing the street between its central bus and train stations. Simple enough in theory—but, owing to the city’s notorious Friday-night traffic and fenced median strips, terrifying in practice. After hopping a couple of barriers and reaching the other side of the median, I found myself stranded with a small group of prospective street-crossers. And although my only words of Kannada are illa (no), and bedda (fuck off), I didn’t need the lingo: their faces communicated “what the fuck?” as well as speech.

Bangalore is one “what the fuck?” after another. Most of them have to do with the fact that, like India itself, Bangalore is both thriving and struggling horribly. The doctor in charge of the NGO where I’m interning lamented that the city’s pollution and uncontrollable growth rate have turned his once-pleasant hometown into a gridlocked basket case—but he added that it has everything you’d expect to find in the nicest parts of most western cities.

The great Bangalorean paradox of simultaneous prosperity and ruin is on display on Commercial Street, one of the city’s major shopping arteries. On the prosperity front, the street’s upscale Indian-style clothing stores attract tourists, expats and upwardly-mobile middle-class Indians. On the ruin front, Commercial Street feels like a place subverted by its own incredible success, and subsequently has almost no character of its own. Bangalore boasts none of India’s architectural wonders (with the possible exception of the spectacular Karnataka state assembly building–although it does have IT, out-of-control growth, consumer decadence, and general aesthetic blight. Jam-packed Commercial Street has elements of all four, although, I did find a pretty delicious “New York Style” chicken dog. While not exactly a dead ringer for Grey’s, the presence of spicy, Indian-style ketchup atop classic American street food gave me heart. (more…)

BW staffer Kate Linthicum left us this semester for the wilds of Tibet and Bhutan, where’s she’s studying abroad and generally being cooler than those of us cloistered on College Walk. In one brief internet cafe session, she updated Bwog on her life.

Dear New York,

It’s been a month and a half since I last strolled your smooth, shining streets, and I long for them now as I tumble across the Bhutanese countryside in a rickety van known by locals as the “vomit comet.” This letter to you, just like the saccharine beats of The Blow pumping out of my ear buds, is a bit of deliberate escapism from these twisting, pockmarked roads. Six weeks of constant stimulation in the Himalayas, I think, warrants a bit of reflection.

I spent my first month of the semester in Dharamasala, India, a colorful, bustling town of Tibetan refugees tucked at the foothills of the Himalayas. I stayed in a 10 X 12 ft. room with a family of five Tibetans who recently fled China. They were sweet and funny people, and I already miss them. Almost immediately upon my arrival, the kids found out one of my most embarrassing childhood secrets, which led them to refer to me forevermore as “Baby Model.” In the middle of the street or a crowded market they would call out to me in perfect British accents, “Baby model, would you like a piece of candy?” I later learned that self-deprecation is a key part of the Tibetan personality, and that any social blunder (and ensuing teasing) actually worked to my advantage. I learned this one evening after my host mother cooked me a plate of momos — luscious little dumplings that are perhaps God’s greatest gift to the Tibetan people. Like most nights, after eating I hugged my belly and said, in terrible Tibetan, “This food will make me fat!” Finally she told me that instead of saying “gyiakpar,” the work for fat, I had all along been saying, “gyiakar,” the word for shit. (more…)

Last night, panelists held a discussion at the Law School regarding what may be an emerging political and cultural alliance between India and Israel. Bwog dispatched not one but two correspondants to the event in order to give readers as well-rounded a perspective as possible. Below, in the second and last part of our series, Josh Mathew presents his take:

Bwoggers, lend me your ears.

I write to you in between classes so brevity must be the soul of wit. What brings India and Israel together? According to last night’s discussion lecture “India, America, Israel: Emerging Relations,” it’s the terrorists…and the post-lecture free kosher Indian buffet…but…but mainly the terrorists.

United Nations Development Program specialist Ms. Mandakini Sud began the series by emphasizing the importance of connections amongst common men and the necessity of philanthropy. Her message of good will deteriorated, however, when she later suggested that the Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence has become obsolete in an age of terror when the enemy utilizes fear and violence without any desire for dialogue. I guess the Mahatma had it easy with British colonial armies.

Former Indian Army major and current SIPA student Probal DasGupta was the most blunt of the speakers when discussing the nature of the Indo-Israeli relations. He celebrated the military assistance Israel has presented to India, whether it be counter-insurgency training, intelligence, or Galil sniper rifles. While it seemed easy to get lost in his long list of arms transactions, he concluded his speech with a series of poignant yet disturbingly false analogies comparing Israel’s conflicts with Palestine, the Arab states, and Iran with India’s own clashes with Pakistan and, to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia. His suggested justification for a close military partnership between the two countries wasn’t lost on the audience as a close friend wondered aloud afterwards whether he was actually missing MSA’s sponsored event on Islamophobia.

(more…)

Last night, panelists held a discussion at the Law School regarding what may be an emerging political and cultural alliance between India and Israel. Bwog dispatched not one but two correspondants to the event in order to give readers as well-rounded a perspective as possible. Below, in the first part of our series, Armin Rosen presents his take:

Monday is the dreariest day of the week, and Israel is generally on the drearier end of frustrating geopolitical issues. Imagine the dual misfortune of another spiritually dehydrating Monday and another discouraging panel discussion on how Israel and the greater Middle East is completely FUBAR, and it would look nothing like last night’s forum on the “emerging” relationship between Israel and India. The discussion, which included representatives from Jewish and Indian organizations as well as the former Indian ambassador to Israel (and current ambassador to the United States), ended with a surfeit of popadoms and potato curry.

For those who haven’t tried it yet, veggie Indian food is the shit. But no foodstuff, no matter how delicious, can allay the piercing skepticism of one who has just been subjected to two mind-erasing hours of Asian Hum. It can only give him the taste for meat…or, in this case, curry powder.

Some explanation: the event, entitled “India, America, Israel: Emerging Relations” explored the strong and somewhat counterintuitive bilateral relationship between India and Israel. According to the evening’s panelists, Israel and India conduct almost $3 billion worth of trade with one another, and cooperate in virtually all areas of security and defense. Ambassador Raminder Singh Jassal provided interesting reason for this: both countries are democracies that face unique social and economic challenges, they share similar strategic interests, particularly regarding security, and they have followed similar historical trajectories.

(more…)

Gothamist is reporting that lefty New School students are doing a much better job protesting John McCain in his last commencement stop of the year than we did. Where was Columbia’s 1,000-signature petition?

They even care about it in India!

And no, that’s not the ceremony. Bwog is just still confused by the orange theme.