Sure, it’s Saturday night, but it’s also finals week, meaning that your closest encounter with anyone “dressed to impress” will likely be with this girl. Regardless, that urge to pack up and hit The Heights is probably pretty strong about now. To aid in your decision, we happily present a favorite from the archives, the Bwog Finals Fortune Teller:

It’s always times like these when we feel like giving up and leaving our finals fates to the gods. Fortunately for everyone, Bwog has a serious god complex, and we’re prepared to dole out our predictions for your final exams with extreme authority. 

So if you trust Bwog with the weaving of your academic fate (and you totally should), check out our fortune teller. We promise it’ll make way better use of your print quota than that anthro reading you skipped. 

Instructions and cutout (PDF)

Big version (PDF))

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh…Who lives by a trash can right next to south field? Apparently, this guy. Who is either the creation of an imaginative procrastinator or an adorable little Nickelodeon fan. We’re not sure how long he can survive without water, so hopefully someone will adopt him soon and give him a cozy submerged fruit to live in.

Looks like he's working his tan. Or maybe just dehydrated.

Forget career fairs—TMNT is recruiting on campus. Everybody’s going green nowadays, so why not join in the fun? This sign spotted near the flagpole at the top of the steps tells you to “inquire within,” but provide a ColumbiaTMNT@gmail.com email address for the less reptilian folk out there.

Don't be surprised if you see new regulars at Koronet soon

Their disclaimer reads:

If you lack the ability to enter this drain, you would only make the annual limbo competition awkward and therefore are not wanted.

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

I wonder if they moor it near memory lane.

Fashions change, but tradition lives on. New Yorkers sported interesting Easter attire as they galavanted about yesterday. (AP, Examiner, Gothamist)

Recent findings that the iPhone stores a log of its user’s location for the past ten months in an unencrypted file leaves some longing for cellphones past. A Latvian man has wedded the OED’s “twitter” with the Internet’s definition by making real birds post on twitter using a carefully arranged bits pork fat. (Wired, Mashable)

While memories of home slowly fade, sometimes old homes go out with a bang. (NYPost)

A genuine, freewheelin’ drifter passed through Manhattan recently. This “real character and artifact out of our American experience” presents a tempting alternative to these Butler-rooted pre-finals days. (NYTimes)

On a more serious note, yesterday, Wikileaks began releasing numerous documents from Guantanamo Bay. Several News agencies offer their insight. (Wikileaks, NYTimes, Washington Post, Al Jazeera).

Floating abstraction via Wikimedia.

We found this on the Library’s website, and it was too good not to share. Dwight Eisenhower wasn’t around all that much during his five-year presidency of the university, but he seems pretty chuffed to be at Columbia here, circa 1953.

What joie de vivre!

After a few unfortunate experiences with a certain caffeinated alcoholic beverage last semester, we at Bwog decided to turn over a new leaf. Our New Year’s Resolution? Keep it classy, baby. Indeed, Bwog has been sharing our appreciation of the more refined tastes of the Columbia culinary community for quite a while now. Today, however, we begin our journey into uncharted territory—the world of mixology. Join us as we explore fancy drinks with the Columbia Bartending Agency in our new weekly feature! This week, the CBA’s Managing Director David Shiovitz introduces us to the Peanut Butter and Jelly:

One of the first drinks I fell in love with is the Peanut Butter and Jelly. The liquid form of the childhood favorite sandwich, this drink has all of the grown up sophistication of your typical cocktail, without the sticky mouth result. This drink can be served shaken on the rocks (one of the CBA staff favorites), as a martini, or scaled down to a shot.

Ingredients:

¾ oz Vodka

¾ oz Amaretto

¾ oz Frangelico

¾ oz Chambord

3-4 oz Cranberry Juice (to fill cocktail)

Directions:

Shake ingredients on ice. For martini, strain into a chilled class. For the shot form, use ¼ oz of each liquor and ½ oz cranberry and strain into a shot glass.

We’re stuck in Butler too, wishing we were back in elementary school when all we had to do was color in the circles and not calculate their velocities relative to the Sun as they hurtle through space.

Holding fast to the spirit of youth, we’ve created a cootie catcher. Now this toy you once used to judge your friends will help you ace your finals. Well, kinda. Click the flyer below for instructions on how to make your very own Bwog Fortune Teller or click the fortune teller to see a larger version!

Instructions and cutout (PDF)

Big version (PDF)

Carolyn Ruvkun horsed around with the Equestrians and wielded swords with the Kendokas, but no club has quite kicked her ass like Parkour.

Ninjas walk among us. For the members of the Columbia University Parkour Club, New York City is a jungle gym with endless opportunities for death-defying jumps, leaps and tumbles. Parkour combines philosophy with physicality; traceurs, those who practice the extreme sport, aim to travel from one point to another as efficiently as possible. After all, why take the elevator when you can scale a wall?

A derivative of parcours, French for ‘course,’ the term originally referred to the obstacle course style of military training created by naval officer Georges Hebert. But, David Belle, another Frenchman, is credited with founding the urban sport. Thrill seekers all around the world soon embraced the extreme display of efficiency. Parkour YouTube videos amassed millions of views; even The Office parodied the international obsession.

For Columbia’s traceurs, Parkour is no passing trend. One club member, Hussein, displayed Tarzan-like abilities even before arriving on campus. “I’ve been lost in the Tanzanian jungle three times,” he revealed in an opening getting-to-know- you circle game. Parkour club co-head Chris Jordan, CC ’13, grew up climbing around New York’s concrete jungle. He enjoys leaping between the connected roofs of Brooklyn brownstones. Chris has even climbed a multiple story building along the outside. Applying physics to his daring stunts, Chris takes calculated risks. Amazingly, he’s never broken a bone— only once taken a bad tumble. “I was running off the side of one structure then jumping and trying to land on a bridge, but I missed and fell on my back.” No, Chris didn’t watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a kid. “I grew up surrounded by circus people,” he explains. Gypsies babysat young Chris. “They bent spoons with their minds.”

Chris co-heads the team with his former RA, Phillip Dupree, SEAS ’11. They both train with professional Parkour practitioners and teach Columbia’s traceurs. Unsurprisingly, the Parkour club attracts a motley crew of daredevils.

Practice started with intensive conditioning: walking planks along Low steps, sashays around Alma Mater and “explosive” Parkour crunches.Warmed up, we jumped walls. A basic wall jump involves running to the wall, kicking up off it, and grabbing for the top ledge to push yourself over. It’s counter-intuitive to run at a 10 foot concrete wall, but a well-executed wall jump is fluid and elegant. Eventually, Public Safety asked us to move. (This just added to the Ninja factor). We headed to Uris, where tourists marveled at our monkey-like maneuvers.

But what goes up must come down. Properly dismounting from a wall is as fundamental a skill as getting to the top. The proper Parkour roll absorbs the impact of the fall, while protecting the neck and head. Plus, practicing this crucial landing is a fun excuse to roll around in the grass.

So what’s the ultimate Parkour goal? Getting on the roof of Low.

For those freshpeople too busy with their hedonistic pursuits to finish AlcoholEdu, today is the deadline! A friendly reminder to the Class of 2014 from your friends at Bwog: be sure to complete part 2 of AlcoholEdu or something may or may not happen to you.

Don't Forget!

The basement of the West End. Photo via Wikimedia

Sometimes, fresh-people, in a seminar, or at a party, someone will reference something that used to exist and doesn’t anymore, and you will have to nod your head or laugh knowingly. Ah yes, Morningside is like, so gentrified, you will say.

We asked alumni of The Blue and White and Bwog for places, events, and trends that once were and are no longer. Here’s your leg up.

• When at least some people on campus wore fleeces and baggy-ish jeans
• JJ’s at 4 AM (now open until 2 AM, was a bar when your dad went here)
• McIntosh Hall and the old WBAR studio in it
• Flashing, not swiping, your CUID to get into Butler
• A respectable 1020 (was once an upperclassmen bar before the West End became Havana, now your first NSOP stop)
• Shit in the McBain showers
• Arson in the McBain shaft
• Using AIM
• AmCaf
• The Village Pourhouse used to be Mona, a bar that was better than the Village Pourhouse. Before Mona, there was SoHa. Girls used to dance on the bar. “There would be massive drunken dancing,” one alum whispered over GChat, “and then you’d just start making out with random decent-looking girls.”
• CoBag (Columbia Bagels, open 24/7. Bwog editors coined the ‘Morningside Heights Happy Meal’: a 40 and bagel at 3 AM)
• “I once saw a rat in Ferris”
• The West End basement when Lil’ Jon was popular (fabled Columbia hangout of everyone, ever, including Obama and Jack Kerouac, with fantastic burgers and lots of beer pong)
• Creepy Wein doors that had horizontal slats at the top (for oxygen, we believe)
• The yearly letter Foner would write to Spec explaining that he is not a Gyllenhaal
• The old Westside
• Good Spec reporting (MEALAC!)
• Vampire Weekend performing at ADP and St. A’s
• CUCommunity (offered a share in Facebook, but they turned it down. Bummer!)
• Manhattanville protests
• 40′s on 40 without the playpen and drink tickets

With only a month of school left, this is a sad time for many seniors, who look around them and can’t help but feel waves of nostalgia issuing from all corners of this revered, and remarkably architecturally homogeneous campus. Soon-to-be graduate David Roche sent us this gem, and we were so touched that we thought we would send out a call for any and all nostalgic photos of the Columbia campus, the best of which will be posted closer to the time of graduation. Please send photos to tips@bwog.net. Happy (sad) snapping!

It’s only a small step towards a brave new world of medicine, but scientists in Columbia’s Biomedical Engineering Department, led by Professor Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, have successfully created part of a jaw joint from stem cells.

The scientists say that the joint (at right) is the first “complex, anatomically-sized bone” created using stem cells, and will create new ways for scientists to treat joint disorders, and repair various skeletal problems.Vunjak-Novakovic said, “We thought the jawbone would be the most rigorous test of our technique; if you can make this, you can make any shape.

Plus, even a stem cell bone is significantly less weird than a snake with a hand. 

Spotted outside the doors to River:

- Photo by JYH

The Blue and White’s February/March issue is now online! From the issue:

Columbia and internet start-ups: two tastes that don’t go well together.

Remember, Hitch did go to Columbia…

Memories of far-flung homes, including Jack Daniel’s in Tennessee and guns in San Antonio.

If only bureaucrats liked the idea of going undercover…

And: a church without a neighborhood, two very different campus leaders, and whether you should go to grad school.