ADI (you know, the group of cool cats who brought you DevFest) is hosting a ”Meet & Greet” this evening from 6 to 8 pm in the Botwinick (Gateway) Lab on the 12th floor of Mudd. We hear that pizza and drinks will be served, pleasantries and small talk will be exchanged, and all will have an awesome time. And in case you’re interested in more than just free food, the fine members of ADI would be happy to chat with you and answer any questions you might have about startups, programming, computer science, and getting involved in Columbia’s developer community.

In case you were wondering what building it was that you just walked into, Columbia has thoughtfully provided guidance for the lost:

Photos by DCH, GD & AB

Photo via thenaturalmd.com

Maybe they look like these gourmet beauts! Run! Rush! Walk fast!

Update: A word to the wise: the cookies are free, but you may be guilted into donating to the SEAS Senior Fund.

There seem to be some big changes afoot in Mudd. It’s a tale with which we are all too familiar: vending machine change insanity! Click to enlarge for the full scoop. Yes, you heard us: scoop.

The approach of midterms week means Dante’s Inferno is to be found in the sweaty hands of freshmen this week. Urban Spelunker Gavin McGown was not content to simply flip pages: he was jonesing to explore! Mudd’s basement is a dark and terrifying world Dante surely would have assigned to heathens and traitors.

Huddled as it is against the northeast corner of campus, the unapologetic Seeley W. Mudd Hall extends itself many stories aboveground, a bulwark against ignorance, home to generations of Columbian engineers. Its characteristic miner of shrewd and pinched face embodies the literal and figurative steel of the structure, casting a disapproving sneer at those filing in and out of the building at whose entrance he stands attendant, as if he sensed in them intellectual pursuits directing them towards weak disciplines (gender studies, pure mathematics, political “science”).

Finding myself, however, at that unaesthetic edge of the campus, I ignored the statue’s contemptuous glare that seemed to counsel me to abandon all hope, and marched brazenly on through the doors that opened, supermarket-like, at my advance. No Limbo eased the passage between light and darkness: I crossed, so to speak, the river Acheron (descending a staircase infected with the sound of an unceasing and ominous mechanical whirring), and found myself immediately confronted by a dusty and dreary vision as the first of many basements, bathed in a sallow light, extended on before my eyes.

Read more…

Photo by AB

Bwogger Anish Bramhandkar started his year off right by heading up to the 12th floor of Mudd to catch a few minutes of Disney/Pixar’s Monsters Inc., spotted on one of those ubiquitous flatscreens.  Why is SEAS spending its considerable brainpower on kids’ movies?  Bramhandkar suggests the display is designed to convince freshman engineers that fun stuff happens in Gateway.  Let’s hope so.

A Bwog classic, Campus Corners is returning from a two year hiatus — for one day. Here, we bring you some of Columbia’s less crowded study spots, if only to get you to leave Wien’s warm embrace for a couple minutes.

Getting into the computer science lounge isn’t easy. Last year, every undergrad was sent an email with a picture of a balding, middle-aged man in a tweed-patched jacket. As it turned out, this still-unidentified pseudo-intellectual (at whom nobody would have batted an eye were he teaching databases) didn’t work at Columbia. His job was to walk into the CS building and steal computers.

Since the day that those security camera photos first circulated, admission to the computer science department has required special swipe access. Two swipes after 5 PM. Three swipes for a special windowless room where it’s always 52 degrees, but never mind! Because behind the second door, if you’re walking behind a gullible or easily distracted programmer, is the computer science lounge. Read more…

Or so claim some senior bio majors evacuated from the building a few minutes ago.  They say that their professor told them to get out as soon as they smelled smoke coming from one of the upper floors–other students stood around in puzzlement, and few of the evacuated seemed to be enjoying the all-too-brief break from their academic pressures. “I’d rather be working,” an Earth Science professor told us. “Fresh air is highly overrated.”

The Bio majors, who were interrupted mid-lab, agree. “Cells are dying,” one of them said gravely. A panicky grad student echoed her concerns: “I need to get back. What the fuck?” she exclaimed–thankfully for her overworked, engineering ilk, the building was reopened just a few minutes ago, although nobody could else could give a solid explanation as to why it was evacuated in the first place. We’ll have more details as soon as they emerge.

Update: The building services guy at the 119th St. entrance tells Bwog that Mudd was evacuated due to a lab fire on the 3rd floor. The fire didn’t spread, but the man said that the university doesn’t take any chances as far as chemical conflagrations are concerned. Most reassuring!

Meanwhile, a cop car ran aground on a parked SUV at 119th and Amsterdam, and as of a half-hour ago police were routing traffic through Morningside Drive. The two incidents aren’t linked…we don’t think.

-ARR

Manhattan poll takes calculated, er, “responsible” stance on expansion: city’s “success…difficult to absorb”. There’s always Bounty.

Mudd to get greener (does that mean less muddy, or more?)

Police rubber-stamp 11-block strike walk…

…but in opinion, we find self-conscious Iraq caution, and the same message with a lot more braggadoccio…plus, to top it all off, love is slaughtered by science. With V-Day and the aforementioned strike looming, we predict such selections will stay the course.