Sorry buddy, no party here.

Always striving for topicality and curious as to whether 1020 would be offering a little something special on the date with which they share their name, we conducted the following, very brief interview:

1020: Hello, 1020, how may I help you?
Bwog: Hi, I was wondering if you’re doing anything special beause it—
1020: No.
Bwog: You’re not?
1020: No, we’re not.
Bwog: But this only happens once a year…
1020: We’re having happy hour from 4 to 7.

Sorry folks. Enjoy happy hour.

Codecademy Homepage

Codecademy, a quick, fun way to learn the JavaScript programming language has only been live for less than 100 hours, and it has already crawled its way to the front page of Reddit and been featured on Wired and Techcrunch. Developed by recent graduate Ryan Bubinski, CC ’11, and Zachary Sims, CC ’12 (and taking a leave of absence to focus on this project), as part of the prestigious Y Combinator program, the site provides free, hands-on lessons that introduce different aspects of programming one by one. New lessons build on previous ones, and as users progress they earn badges visible to friends. Continuing with our series profiling recent Columbia undergrads, Bwog talked to Zach and Ryan about Codecademy, their time at Columbia, and their pets.

How did you come up with the idea for Codecademy?
Zach: We had worked on another project earlier in the summer, but the two of us had always been frustrated by the fact that my coding skills weren’t as good as they could have been. I took a bunch of tutorials over the summer and had watched videos, read books, and taken a class at Columbia. Nothing seemed quite right, so we decided to try to build something that would help people like me.
Ryan: I spent a large portion of my time at Columbia teaching and practicing programming, and I honestly believe everyone should have at the very least a foundational knowledge of the craft. If you love teaching and you want to reach as many people as possible, the logical conclusion is to build a learning platform like Codecademy.

Are you surprised to see it take off on such a large scale? So quickly?
Z: Yes. We intended on getting some quick feedback and making some changes before trying to get more users. We posted Codecademy to Hacker News in an attempt to get some feedback, but got more than 700 upvotes. Everything started rolling from there.
R: Absolutely. At any given moment we’re reaching thousands of people across the globe. It’s very inspiring.

Are there any Columbia easter eggs in the program?
Z: Not yet.
R: Nope, but we’re open to suggestions. Read more…

From left to right: Heems, Lakutis, Dap, Bwog

Before their set on Saturday, Himanshu Suri (Heems) and Ashok Kondabolu (Dap) of Das Racist, and their friend Aleksey Weintraub (Lakutis), sat down with Bwog to talk about—almost exclusively, though appropriately for Bacchanal—being really fucked up and on the Columbia campus.

Thanks for letting us speak to you guys. We’re pumped for the show and we’re glad to have you guys here.

Heems: Sure.

Dap: Thank you.

First of all, we figured about half our our readers wouldn’t know who you are. How would you introduce yourself to those people?

Heems: We’re Das Racist. We’re a rap group.

Dap: We’re funny. On the stage…on the stage we’re funny.

Heems: I’d say we’re a smart and funny rap group.

So how do you guys feel about performing at Columbia?

Heems: This is kind of New York, right? This is kind of New York?

Dap: Yeah.

Lakutis: But none of the people here are from New York.

Heems: Everything up until the walk through Morningside Park was real nice.

What was wrong with Morningside Park?

Heems: Nothing was wrong with Morningside Park. I didn’t say…

I thought you said you said everything up until Morningside Park was nice?

Heems: No, until campus. This isn’t the city I grew up in any more.

Lakutis: It looks like a Tommy Hilfiger ad up here.

Dap: You know about the Weathermen? All that agitation was caused when they were going to build a facility in Morningside. Some guy, like, blew himself up. But it’s really cool to be here. What do you think?

It gets better…

On Monday, we learned the identities of the academic top dogs in CC, and last night, Bwog caught up with this year’s valedictorian, Arianne Richard.

How did you find out that you were valedictorian, and did you do anything special to celebrate? Dean [Michael] Pippenger emailed me about two weeks ago with the news of the committee decision. After a laughing fit in a stairwell (lame, I realize, but I was not in a place where I could start jumping up and down publicly), I called my parents and told several friends. My weekend then became a series of celebratory dinners and drinks.

Do people treat you differently now that you’re valedictorian? Not at all. And I am very glad. Except campus publications…this is new.

Did you ever find the Alma Mater’s owl? I hate to burst any legend-loving bubbles, but I never even looked for it. I actually don’t know where it is.

What’s your go-to study strategy when trying to stay focused? I write. Everything. I have a terrible time paying attention to anything I read unless I’m taking some sort of notes. (Several of my classmates can probably attest to my frantic scribbling during lectures.) Even when I am reading my class notes before an exam, I write all over them. In the end they’re illegible. Read more…

Like all the rest of you, we have spent the past few weeks salivating over the salacious advertisements for today’s Indian cultural extravaganza, Tamasha. While we suspected for the longest time, like so many others, that Zamana had just lifted a picture from the Internet after Googling “hot Indian girl.” But something about the smile and the jaw line made us suspect that the Tamasha girl was, in fact, Bwog contributor Liz Jacob, CC’13. Bwog’s Relentless Navel-gazing Bureau Chief Mark Hay caught up with Liz and pulled her off into a side room to have the following conversation:

Bwog: Oh my god, you’re the Tamasha girl!

Liz: Hah, yeah, I am.

Bwog: Well, now, how’d that happen?

Liz: Actually, it happened on Gchat – a few weeks ago someone from Zamana just asked me if I wanted to be on the posters for this year. And for a while I tried to convince her to use one of the other girls on the table, but … I just said yes. It was pretty quick.

Bwog: Wait, wait, there was a table of girls? How were they selected?

Liz: I don’t know. There are a lot of attractive girls on the Zamana board, so I think they just had a lot to work with.

Bwog: Okay, but you said yes. Didn’t you know what you were getting into?

Liz: Not really. … I showed up to the shoot and I mean, this is the first time I’ve “modeled” or anything, so I was a bit awkward during the whole thing. But we had a really great photographer and I think that’s the only reason I actually look that good in the pictures.

And actually, our media person, she kept telling me over and over, I didn’t Photoshop you at all! But actually in the beginning I had asked her if she could Photoshop a six pack on there, because I thought that might be cool. Read more…

Contessa Gayles woke up very, very early to meditate and hang out with Columbia’s Bhakti Club. After a 7:00 AM mantra meditation session, she sat down to talk with Gadadhara Pandit Dasa, the current—and first ever— Hindu chaplain at Columbia. They spoke about a typical day in the life of a Hare Krishna monk, and what it’s like to be a monk in New York City.

Why did you decide to become a monk?

That question could take about an hour to answer! It definitely wasn’t something like, I woke up and decided; Hey, you know I want to become a monk! I always had spiritual questions growing up. Questions like, what happens to me when I die? Do I come back to this world as something else, or does my existence just come to a halt all together? Since I grew up in the Hindu tradition, I always believed in the idea of reincarnation; that life will continue, and I just accepted that, but it was hard to understand or grasp it really. Also, questions like, what is God? Is it a person? An individual? Can I relate? Is it just an energy? How is it that I’ve been so fortunate in life? I had everything growing up that I wanted, and there are so many people in India that are very impoverished. How is it that I somehow was born to a set of parents that could immigrate over to America? Why wasn’t I born to a set of parents who were just struggling to get a meal every day? Somehow I landed this…how did that take place? And many times when I experienced misfortune in my life, I wondered, what have I done to deserve this? These are questions that anybody can have. It wasn’t until there was a severe financial difficulty that my family faced that I really inquired deeper; I feel like I’m just a piece on a chess board. Who is in control here? To make a long story short, I came across the Bhagavad Gita, which is the main spiritual text of India. As I started reading it, it started giving me the answers to the questions that I was always pondering and I found myself becoming a little bit more peaceful. When you’re uncertain about something, that’s when anxiety comes up and when you’re certain about something, even if you’re not comfortable with the explanation, it is easier to deal with. So for about five years I studied this and other spiritual texts, I started talking to monks and in 1999, I decided to quit my job as a loan officer in a mortgage company and go to India and explore my spirituality. I didn’t even go there with the intention of becoming a monk. I just wanted to take a break from life, because life already took me through a roller coaster.

After a six month monastic stay in Bombay, Pandit returned to New York City and lived in a monastery for a summer, an experience which he describes as the happiest he had been in his entire life. Ten years later, he continues his life at the same NYC monastery.

Read more…

Bwog sent Lookin’ and Feelin’ Good Specialist Sarah Camiscoli to Ricky’s to get the ultimate opinion on Columbian fashion and some advice on how to look and feel, well, good.

Now that anxiety of midterms has transformed into dread over future GPAs, the Halloween hangover has subsided, and fall break has brought salvation, students are looking for a fresh, new start to last them until winter vacation. To initiate this turnover, I wanted to focus on the basics of lookin’ good and feelin’ good. But getting students to understand this sort of change would require some professional help.

The solution? Get to Ricky’s. Whether it’s giving advice on back-to-school hairstyles, advising ladies on which storybook character will be most appealing for Pike’s Halloween bash, or simply just observing students meandering around the store taking a misplaced mental health break, Ricky’s personnel are among some of the most well-acquainted community members with the do’s and don’ts of Columbia’s many exterior states. Read more…

While Ira Glass refuses to admit that he has adoring fans or that he is a journalist’s icon, it’s hard to prove otherwise. Named best radio host in America by TIME Magazine, Glass hosts NPR’s This American Life, which is broadcast on over 500 stations nationwide to some 1.8 million listeners. In his weekly interviews, Glass has covered a lot of ground – from cattle ranches to a cruiser somewhere in the Arabian Sea, and everything in between. From the new issue of the Blue and White (on racks near you soon), contributor Mark Hay met up with Glass at the show’s Chelsea studios.

The Blue and White: What is your approach to storytelling and interviews?

Ira Glass: Stories on This American Life are narrative stories. That’s the way they’re different from a lot of things on TV or in journalism. That is, there’s a character, the character’s in a situation, there’s a plot, things happen to that character and they learn something from their experiences—or at least their experiences drive them toward some thought or some thought about the world that then they share with the audience. It’s very old school… it’s the most traditional way of telling a story.

B&W: In the past you’ve shied away from run-of-the-mill headline news stories. But I recall you in a recent episode saying that you felt bad for sitting out Kosovo.

IG: [Laughs] Yes. Well, I felt bad as a news consumer. At the beginning I didn’t get the characters straight and, “Wait, who’s who and which one is the one we like and which is the one that we’re not supposed to like?” And I kept waiting for the big New Yorker piece that was going to explain it all to me and, in fact, there even were a couple pieces like that, but then I didn’t get around to them. And I think people don’t generally talk about what our experience is as consumers of the news, but at least for me I know for sure there are entire news stories that seem too hard, and I just think, “I’m never going to figure that out.” And so I just sit it out. Read more…

Dear readers,

As you may know, Columbia’s gotten a few new bigwigs this semester, and for the first time, the administration’s letting us interview them. Yep, next week, we will be interviewing Provost Claude Steele, CC Dean Michelle Moody-Adams, and SEAS Dean Feniosky Pena-Mora.

But rather than entrust the questions to our own journalistic abilities, we’re hoping you can help us out with the questions from you, the readers. This is a chance to ask that one question you’ve been dying to know the answer to, but would rather not attend a tea/fireside chat for. You can either post your questions (anonymously) in the comments section of this post (which will remain in our headline box until we’ve received enough questions), or send them to bwog@columbia.edu. Happy interrogating!

Sincerely,

The Bwog Staff

Columbia may depend most on its students and faculty, but there are many members of both the Columbia and Morningside communities who make the years here a little more enjoyable. We at Bwog feel they deserve a little time in the spotlight for all their hard work. Today: Sir Michael of Carman

Sir Michael Layne puts a little soul into Carman Hall residents’ daily grind from his post at the security desk. “What’s up, baby? Haven’t seen you in a decade, man,” he offers to a flustered first-year hustling past. The mellow sound of Motown soothes the lobby; The Very Best of The Temptations rolls from track to track.

Hailing from Panama, Sir Michael came to New York in pursuit of musical dreams. After his traveling vocal group, ­The Flames, disbanded in Mexico, he took the opportunity to cross into the United States. The year was 1970, and the man came to America wearing his “singing suit” – complete with bow tie and ruffled shirt. “People were lookin’ at me funny,” he recalls. “I took the Greyhound, saw the country, was forced to – didn’t have enough money to go any other way.” Read more…

The new issue of the Blue and White is on a Butler desk or newstand near you! Daniel Libeskind is one of the world’s most famous architects, having designed some of the most striking buildings of the past two decades, including Berlin’s Jewish Museum, the extension to the Denver Art Museum, and Toronto’s Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, which Condé Nast Traveler has called one of the “New Seven Wonders of the World.” Libeskind is also the master architect behind the new World Trade Center, a massive project that stands to revitalize lower Manhattan when its first stages are completed in the coming few years. Blue and White senior editor Jon Hill visited Libeskind at his Financial District studio to talk about the project, his career, and the future of modern architecture.

The Blue and White: What first sparked your interest in architecture?

Daniel Libeskind: It was not at first. I was a professional musician, in fact. But, I got interested in mathematics and the sciences, and I was always painting and drawing. I think I fell into architecture because, in a way, architecture combined all my interests. It’s visual music. It’s about proportions; it’s about geometries; it’s about precision and emotion. But it’s not as if I started at the beginning saying, “I want to be an architect.” I hardly even knew what an architect was. I had never met an architect until when I was in school.

B&W: And has that influenced your designs today?

DL: Oh yes, absolutely. I think for many years I didn’t build not because I was averse to building or because I was a theorist, but because I took a different path to architecture. I didn’t apprentice myself to architects because I didn’t like what they were doing. And I didn’t like the whole idea of the office, this kind of nine-to-five idea. So, I thought, “I’ll do architecture in another way,” and to support myself, I taught. Students are very creative, very different from the commercial world where people have a narrow view of what is good and what is not good. Read more…

On the eve of CCSC Elections, Bwog sat down with the dueling slates for 2010 Class Council. Below is our interview with AJ Pascua, Shirley Chen, and Joey Goldberg of The Party Party (not a typo). CC juniors can also read our debate coverage, and can find our second interview, with The Clear Party, here. Voting begins tomorrow.

“You’re perceived by some as the party of incumbents, yet many have also had problems with class council in the past – how important do you think that council experience is?”

AJ: We’re also the party of a fresh perspective. Valerie, Joey and I have experience, but we also Shirley and Maximo, who are foreign to student government.  They’re active in other groups, and they bring that fresh perspective. We have the best of both worlds.

Shirley: When AJ’s explaining events to me, I can see how hard it is for someone with no experience to come in and get started right away. I think you need to have students with council experience

Joey: I think that’s really the point to hit home: we’re not saying that the other party is not capable, but we’ve been to these events, and we understand what it takes to put on a given event, and make sure that these are memorable events.

AJ: Both parties want to have Lerner Pubs, but Joey and I have been involved with the planning this year. We know who to talk to and how to put on these good events so the people have fun. Read more…

It has been a while since Bwog writers Pierce Stanley and Lucy Tang called to session a recent incarnation of the Bwog Book Club.  For those short of memory or perhaps for whom the summer has worn on maybe a bit too long, the Bwog Book Club kicked off several weeks ago with a reading of Nathaniel Rich‘s debut novel The Mayor’s Tongue. Bwog was fortunate enough to sit down recently with Mr. Rich for an interview to discuss the challenges of writing a debut novel.  Lucky for Bwog, the discussion took place in the comfort of The Paris Review‘s famed TriBeCa offices. Bwog is grateful to Mr. Rich (and The Paris Review) for hosting us so hospitably and for dedicating time for discussion of The Mayor’s Tongue. 

Bwog: We’ll start the interview with the book, The Mayor’s Tongue. It was a great debut.

Nathaniel Rich: Thanks — it took a long time to write, about five or six years. I worked on it in total secrecy for most of that period, and while I was working on it I always had other jobs, and was living in different places. There was never a sustained period where I sat down and wrote the whole novel. It was something like a process of accretion. That said, nothing in the book came about in a haphazard way — for the first two years I worked on the book, much of what I was doing was writing an outline, and planning the novel’s structure. At the beginning there was way too much planning — not enough writing. I blame it on nerves.

Bwog: Is that why there is a parallel structure to the work? It is sort of bizarre how the parallel stories never meet. Which came first? How did it all come about?

Read more…

Bwog tipster Sara Vogel informs us that Robert Thurman, professor of Buddhist studies and relative of all sorts of famous people, is this week’s New York Times Magazine “Questions For…” interviewee. In the interview, Thurman talks about why the Dalai Lama never comes over to hang out anymore, totally disses Slavoj Zizek, and also at one point says, “I meditate on how Dick Cheney was my mother in a previous life and nursed me at his breast.” (Impromptu Photoshop contest: if you send us an image of Thurman suckling at the teat of our Vice President, we will include it in this post.)

For more of the Robert Thurman interview experience, check out the Blue and White’s October Conversation.

UPDATE 12:06 AM: A treasure arrives in our inbox, from Photoshop hero Jon Hill:

(Hello, Daily Intelligencer!)

Bwog freelancer Stephanie Quan isn’t a classical music buff, but she got interested in virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell when she heard about this experiment in a D.C. metro station. Eight months later, she snagged a phone interview with the Strad-playing celebrity, and quizzed him on childhood habits and favorite dead people.

Bwog: Hi.

 

Joshua Bell: Hi! This is Joshua Bell here.



Hi, this is Stephanie. Shall we start? I’ve got a lot of questions written down here.

I got answers. 

So you first began violin after your parents found you playing with rubberbands on your dresser. What inspired you to do that? 

Well I grew up with a lot of music around me. So I’m sure that I was stimulated by hearing my mother play the piano and my father, [he] loved music. [he] had a violin himself. Although he was sorta self-taught. But there was just a lot of music going around. All my cousins, my siblings played music. So I suppose hearing all that made me want to make music and my first sort of homemade instruments were those rubberbands on my dresser drawer. Then my parents got me a violin and it was just a very natural thing. It was like learning to speak, you know, playing music. I can’t even really remember not playing the violin. 

So I’ve actually had to try this myself… and it’s not easy! How does it exactly work? Where do the rubberbands go? 

Well I haven’t repeated the experiment myself in the last thirty years. I had a set of nine little dresser drawers and I used to string these rubberbands across from one to the next and open up the drawers to different lengths to get different pitches. Read more…