Keep your eyes open for the October issue of The Blue & White, coming soon to campus. Until then, Bwog will honor our heritage/amorous affair with our mother magazine by posting highlights of the upcoming issue online. Among the treats to look forward to: a debate on the merits of Times New Roman, an examination of Columbia’s updated sexual assault policy, and a critical analysis of the logic behind Barnard’s Nine Ways of Knowing. Here, contributor Somala Diby, in preparation for Halloween, seeks out magic and the occult on Columbia’s campus.

Illustration by Chantal McStay

It’s that time of year again. The time when girls parade around as sexified bunnies and magic floats through the air. But for those of you looking to indulge in genuine supernatural spookery on campus, Columbia has few options.

One finds a glimmer of the existence of the occult the Columbia University Science Fiction Society’s annual mock virgin sacrifice. CUSFS President Suzanne Walker CC’12 has inherited the responsibility of overseeing the annual event, in which a “small, scrawny boy” (the virgin) is carried to the Sundial, whereupon he is stabbed and the adherents of Cthulu, the Lovecraftian demon-god, are stained with a red food coloring-corn syrup mix. “This is where I’m revealed to be the queen of geeks at Columbia. It’s fun and ridiculous,” says Walker.

Psychology major Nina Torres CC’12, on the other hand, takes her occult rituals more seriously. According to her and the University Chaplain’s office, Nina may be the only Wiccan student on campus, and has been actively practicing for over a year. Despite its common pop culture portrayal, the religion’s brand of magic is not a mere recitation of Latin incantations. The use of magic in Wicca involves the philosophy of positive reinforcement, and more closely resembles philosophical elements of the best-seller The Secret than of some shallow spell book. “It’s a vehicle for achieving the things you want and putting those things in mind,” says Torres. “By strengthening the powers of your mind, you’re able to better manifest the things you desire in life.”

Read more…

Hiding in Butler, you’ve got six papers due in ten hours but you’re engaged in a poke war on Facebook.  It’s time to buckle down and get some real work done.  SocketHop is here to help.

Image via Flickr

Lose the Clutter

There’s a million ways to have distraction-free word processing, but Bwog has two favorites.  Dr. Wicked’s Write-or-Die is a website that allows you to set word count and time goals to keep you writing at a consistent speed.  Should you fail to keep typing, the website will flash heart-wrenching colors and spout horrible music.  Writer is a web application that provides stripped-down editing with .txt and .pdf file export options, as well as limited save options.

Half of writing a research paper is, well, Googling other people’s research papers.  And reading all those random articles can be hard on the eyes.  In comes Arc 90′s Readability bookmarklet.  A bookmarklet is a bookmark you can store on your bookmarks toolbar that performs a function (rather than just linking to a Web site).  Readability removes all the clutter from your web-based reading and formats the text with clear fonts in narrow columns.  All this can be customized, as well, creating a distraction-free reading environment.

Save Your Eyes

Late nights in Butler mean late nights staring at your bright, white LCD screen.  That translates to red, sore eyes by morning.  Enter F.lux, a small tray application (Windows and OS X) that solves this problem.  In a nutshell, F.lux modifies the color temperature of your screen to match the time of day.  This means that as the sun sets, your screen transitions from a blueish hue to a yellowish hue, matching the color of your fluorescent hell.  It sounds like a strange idea at first, but once you become used to it, you’ll never switch back.

One more tip and a geek level-up after the jump. Read more…

Image via terriemiller.com

Waiting for lab computers to (eventually) log you on so you can print that rightfully-forgotten graduate Kant dissertation is a relic from days past.  It’s very easy to set up your own computer to print to lab printers.  In fact, you can print to any printer on campus from any computer you like.

CUIT’s instructions are, like commencement speakers, thorough, longwinded, and a wee bit annoying.  We’ve shortened and sweetened them for you, our dear readers.  You can now enjoy the freedom to print from the roof of Mudd because, yes, the wireless reaches up there.

Our version–in English–after the jump. Read more…

That celebrity magician guy David Blaine is outside Lerner right now, performing card tricks for adoring masses of 12s (see Blaine — he’s the one directly under the boom — and said adoring masses, below.) If he makes himself levitate or makes the 12s disappear, Bwog will probably go back and snap another picture.