Soon we won't even be allowed to play our trombones in the streets

To celebrate the two month anniversary of OWS, protestors pledged to shut down the NYSE. While so far unsuccessful, police and protestors are already clashing outside the Exchange doors. (Gothamist, NYTimes)

Protest is sure to be especially charged today, after a New York State Supreme Court justice ruled that those from OWS do not “have a First Amendment right to remain in Zuccotti Park along with their tents, structures, generators and other installations.” (Bloomberg)

Police have arrested a man suspected of firing two shots at the White House last Friday night. (NYTimes)

Once the people’s potty, Starbucks is closing down its bathrooms to the public across New York City. (New York Post)

In case all of this news makes you want to hole up and read comics, your dream might come true. Chris Claremont, comic writer most famous for his work on the X-Men series, will donate his archives to the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. (PublishersWeekly)

Muted trombone via wikimedia.

Day

Columbia’s celebrated Earth Day for a long time, and that proud tradition continues today. If you’re not spending the day getting closer to nature in Riverside Park (or just the lawns), why not check out some of the conferences and symposia the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences has planned for today?

If you want to keep your weekends devoted to entertainment instead of education, check out The Great Immensity, a piece of experimental theatre focusing on climate change. Excerpts of the play will be performed at the Elebash Recital Hall at CUNY tonight at 6:30 pm.

Did all that ecological edification and entertainment make you thirsty? Grab a reusable mug and head to Starbucks, where baristas will fill it up with free tea or coffee. And don’t just throw out that mug when you’re done! Even on non-Earth days, you can bring in a reusable mug and get it filled with coffee—it’s not free, but you do pay $0.10 than the normal customers who destroy the environment.

To really celebrate Earth Day, you should head to Roone at 5 pm tonight for ECOPALOOZA, an “Earth-minded Culture Show” full of free food, talks from professors, performances by CH Dhoom, Metrotones, and CU Swing, and even a raffle for a Kindle and other prizes! Free tickets are available from the TIC, but you need to pre-register by filling out this online environmental quiz before ordering tickets. Yeah, it’s confusing.

But if you absolutely insist on staying indoors, cooped up with your computer, we suggest procrastinating with PowerUp, the official video game of Earth Day.

Is there anything you shouldn’t do today? Yes, in fact. You should not go to Ferris, put a bunch of food on your plate, and then throw most of it out. That’s exactly what EcoReps found happened at John Jay on Tuesday. After scraping the plates, they found that in one night, Columbians wasted 236.5 pounds of food, specifically 120 meatballs, over 400 servings of pasta, and over 150 servings of vegetables, all of which could’ve fed at least 100 people.

Our home we must protect from Wikimedia Commons

John Law (and Order)

Floridita (you know, that Cuban restaurant that was relocated due to Manhattanville expansion) is suing Columbia University for moving it to a building contaminated with asbestos. This isn’t the first of Columbia’s asbestos-related issues. (Village Voice)

Starbucks’ new 31-ounce Trenta cup can hold an entire bottle of wine. Oh, the possibilities! (Eater)

A Connecticut pot grower inadvertently turns himself in the the police when he calls 911 to ask “how much trouble you can get in for [growing] one plant.” This is, like, totally not fair. He was just wondering… (Daily Intel)

Sarah and Bristol Palin are looking to trademark their names. Apparently, a successful trademark “could also prevent the misuse of the women’s image on things like bobblehead dolls and sex toys.” Aw, shucks. (ABC)

Yesterday afternoon, hundreds convened in Times Square in a protest to promote Egyptian democracy. Here are some photos. (Gothamist)

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

The sought-after economist was spotted yesterday during an interview for WNYC/BBC/PRI’s “The Takeaway” in the cozy nook of our very own Starbucks.
Photo by Jon Hill

It’s summer, and it’s that magical time of year when things change and you come back next year only to think, “Hey, when did this happen?” Well, now is when!

Lerner Renovation: First and foremost, the plans and models we saw back in May for a new Lerner 4th Floor, home to the new Center for Student Advising, are finally beginning to materialize in real life. Prefrosh about to take Gateway next year, take note… this is how it’s done. The changes to Lerner have also caused the Office of Multicultural Affairs to relocate to Lerner 5.

Pupin Scaffolding: Mysterious scaffolding has shown up on Pupin; we’re assuming it’s for some sort of routine cleaning, but if you have a better idea of what’s going on, be sure to let us know in the comments.

“Premium Rush” Filming: This one stars our very own Alma Mater, folks! Well, sorta. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in this film about “a bike messenger [who] picks up a package at Columbia University and subsequently catches the attention of a dirty cop.” Close enough, Alma! A tipster informed us that they are filming today at 116th and Morningside–could they possibly encroach on campus grounds soon? Let us know if you see/hear anything!

Starbucks Gets Fancier: We’ve been tipped that the Starbucks on 114th is now shinier and all-around snazzier. Now the environment you sit in can send just as bold of a message as that frap in your hand. If you have any pictures of these renovations, please send them along to tips@bwog.net.

We Getting Slang Soon: Seeing as these aren’t exactly terms we hear on campus on a daily basis, there are some big changes coming to our lexicon. Huffington Posts documents a bunch of college slang that we can only assume every other place of higher education in America uses. Remember incoming shmen, don’t skip your gut classes and blitz us with tips!

Lerner photos by HEH, Pupin photo by Daniel Sims

DSpar preaches about the mandatory meal plan against a backdrop of free food.

If you wandered past Barnard’s new Events Oval last night, the first thing you might have noticed at the Meal Plan Forum, even before the presence of the forty or so mostly angry attendees, would have been the two tables of catered food. Ironic, yes, but it did placate the hordes of meal plan-protesters, at least for the first half hour of the event. Here’s our recap of the the long, passive aggressive battle that was the Meal Plan Forum of ‘010.

Seniors v _?

A number of seniors showed up to voice their disapproval. Given that the meal plan is not in effect until next fall, no one quite understood what the seniors were one doing there, though one senior took the floor to violently express her dissatisfaction with the controversial Barnard graduation-room change.

Hand-Raisers v Other Hand-Raisers

Instead of instructing questioning students to form a line, the event’s organizers distributed approximately three microphones, all switched to “on,” among the first shift of hand-raisers, whose own questions initiated further hand-raising and general mic-fueled chaos. This disorder persisted until a full-scale mic war had broken out on the floor, with students straining to raise their hands the highest and gain entry into the next round of question-asking.

Read more…

Feeling sleepy and stingy at the same time?  Need we even ask?

Starbucks, mother of all things bohemian, is offering a free tall coffee to anyone daring enough to take the VIA Taste Challenge in participating branches through this coming Monday.  As the latest promotion for its newly released instant coffee, VIA Ready Brew, the challenge is meant to prove that instant coffee can, in fact, taste just like drip coffee if you hold your nose tightly enough while drinking it. Read more…

Here is another joyful indication of the approaching holiday season: yesterday, local mom-and-pop coffee shop Starbucks began its annual tradition of serving coffee in wintry red cups. Bwog doesn’t even like Starbucks, and yet there’s something about Red Cup Day that makes us inordinately happy.

So, take your red cupped hot chocolate and take a stroll amongst College Walk’s secular tree lights. After all, whether it feels like winter or not (and today it definitely does not), classes end in a month!

From now until 4pm, you can go to College Walk and EarthCo will exchange 10 plastic bags (bad for the environment) for 1 Westside Market tote bag (good for the environment).  Seems like a good deal for you and the world!  Also, from the EarthCo email:

The first 70 people will receive a new tote, but after that the rewards do not stop.  All people who come after the bags have been distributed will be entered into a raffle to win a $20 Starbucks card, to help supplement their caffeine addiction that is flaring its ugly head during this fall’s midterm season.

Caffeine and environmentalism?  No way.

Bwog passed the Carman gates at 114th Street and was happy to find representatives from Seattle eager to bequeath $5 Starbucks Cards as well as Tazo Tea and their replacement for adderall to students harried by midterms.  All you have to do is put your “name” and your “address” onto a postcard that you are sending to your “parents.”  Enjoy!

For the next two and a half hours, all Starbucks locations in the eastern U.S. will be closed. According to The New York Times, Starbucks needs the time to teach their employees new ways to use the coffee machines. Because, you know, there’s more than one. As to why this process will take a couple hours, Starbucks has remained cryptically and smugly quiet.

Meanwhile, the under-caffeinated sit patiently and wait during what is soon to be known to Blue Java employees as “the best day ever.”