Iceland's President keeps his politics cool, and then in a snowy flourish, he was gone.

Radio Perfecto came and went... and now it's time for something completely different.

Columbia's Capital Campaign gets a boost.

Battle of the Editorials: It's Kwame vs. Ariel!

Battle of the Books: It's Barnes & Noble vs. Book Culture!

Over the summer, an anonymous tipster noticed that the Columbia homepage had added a "Giving" button. Poking around further, the same source found the University's gift guide, in which everything has a price.

• The Arts Initiative is looking for between $225-670,000 for a "unified University Box Office" in Lerner with online ticketing. Finally?

• Putting on the annual orientation arts party will only cost you $50,000

• Endowing a head coach: $2,000,000

• Endowing M. Diane Murphy: $5,000,000

• Endowing a professor (with matching funds from Trustee Gerry Lenfest): $1,500,000

• Schermerhorn Hall was built with a $500,000 gift. Today $500,000 will only get you a room in Hamilton.
  

• For only $10,000 you can change the life of a starving college student today! Think of the hipsters, please. The student will send black and white pictures and letters hand written in crayon.

A sharp-eyed tipster wrote in to let us know that the Columbia home page just gained a button, right below the events calendar: "Giving to Columbia." It's a snazzy site--Provost Brinkley, whose homepage doesn't seem to have been updated much in 11 years, would be jealous.

It may even be better than those of Brown and Dartmouth, which are the only other Ivies to have found it necessary to, er, wear their need on their sleeves. They're also the at the bottom of the Ivy League endowment barrel, with $2.3 and $3.5 billion each. Strangely, Dartmouth boasts the second highest alumni giving rate of the great eight, coming in behind Princeton at 50%. According to US News and World Report, Columbia and Cornell come in dead last on that one (35%).

So...Barack must have learned it somewhere else?

- LBD