Maybe you made some new friends at your internship or job over the summer, how nice for you. Professor to the Stars Jeffrey Sachs has made some new best friends and oh, they are awesome. Here's our Jeff Sachs (right) with famous people John Mayer (he of smoldering stare on the left), and Jennifer Aniston (center), hanging out and probably talking about sustainable development and Brad Pitt and the like. Scholarly journal Us Weekly reports that the photo was taken at dinner for Sachs' Millennium Promise project.

Oh, and just for good measure there's a photo thrown in of Sachs with old friend Angelina Jolie, who is neither famous nor good-looking enough to merit a larger photo.

There's a lot of talk about Columbia students being too fortunate for our own good. That may or may not be true. But there is no question, we got lucky today. Columbia students could not have asked for a more ideal afternoon for Relay for Life. The event began at noon and will continue until three am Sunday morning.

Hurry! From 6-9 tonight, the Blue Key Society hosts a competitive, campus wide Spelling Bee in the Wien Lounge. ROAR, LION, ROAR! [Results after the jump!]

For almost every student, Spellcheck is an indispensable tool. Thanks to Bill Gates and his brainchild, Microsoft Word, the once tedious process of editing a paper for spelling errors has been reduced to a series of simple clicks. But then, there are those other students...

Yes, at Columbia, there is a strange breed of students whose spelling capacities surpass those of that supercilious dancing paper-clip icon. These students spell with natural confidence and verbal intuition. Their vocabularies are so rich that while Spellcheck may flounder over obvious Greek derivatives, like, dialogism and phyllophyllin, Columbia's superior strain of spellers can easily tackle any word.

Matt Damon-fucking comedienne Sarah Silverman is coming to Lerner Hall! Silverman will be performing stand-up on May 9th to benefit Project ALS, an organization which benefits Lou Gerhig's Disease research. Tickets are a minimum of $100 each (and $500 for a VIP ticket), so if you're feeling really (really) generous, best to book early.

Scrabulous devotees beware: Bwog newcomer Mariela Quintana shares a cautionary tale of addiction, rehabilitation, and quasi-salvation in the form of a charity Scrabble tournament.

For many a puzzler, the insatiable need for crosswords can spiral into an addiction. Like any nasty habit, crosswording starts as a leisure activity and spawns into an all-consuming compulsion, driving its victims to steal crosswords from waiting room magazines, to desperately horde their goods for private use and to deny any need of help.
The satisfaction that completing a crossword provides makes this at once an appealing activity and also a deadly one. The perfect X-word may, in fact, may seem impossible at first, but in the end the solver should triumph and think: Oh, how clever I am! Is it any surprise then, that this self-indulgent assurance of one's own acumen is a favorite pastime among members of the Columbia community? I should think not.
By New Year's, the level of my crossword consumption had surpassed satisfaction and reached disgust. For 2008, I resolved to cut-down on crosswords. I was nervous, but as any crossword addict would know, a challenge is only an occasion to harness our signature mental dexterity and cerebral savvy. In past weeks, I have found new ways to utilize the time I had once devoted to my addiction. I've come a long way; I visit museums, I catch up with old friends—I even began performing community service!

With Thanksgiving a distant memory and our 39 day winter break on the horizon, the holiday season is officially upon us. No matter your non-secular celebration of choice come December, campus groups are affording everyone the opportunity to do good deeds. Karma: the gift that keeps on giving.

Today in Lerner there is a veritable buffet of opportunity to do something generous for the human race. Starting from up the ramp going down, The Clothesline Project has set up a public display of hanging t-shirts designed to raise awareness of sexual violence. (The set-up is also adverti sing a workshop tonight in Hamilton for all those interested.)

Further down the 1st floor ramp are three girls selling baked goods in order to benefit cyclone victims. "They're all baked!" explained one. Indeed. Cupcakes and cookies were plentiful, as was were what Bwog believes to have been apple cider. Autumnal!

Following the bake sale was a mysterious display of Hershey's brand candy bars (Reeses, chocolate bars, Snickers) and one Special K bar. No explanation as to where the proceeds from the candy bar sale would go, but numerous Clip Art smiley faces convinced Bwog that where ever the dollar we paid for a Special K bar was going, it was a good place.

In addition to Lerner's offerings today, Barnard sent out an email last week encouraging students to donate food or time to local soup kitchens and attached a document making it easier to do so. Even future the Masters of the Universes at SEAS are organizing a toy drive, inviting you to drop off gifts for kids in Botwinick Lab in Mudd.

So get to it, kids. 'Tis the season.

Students who log on to the Dining Services website to complete a quality-assurance survey are in for a special treat. Columbia is going to donate ten cents to the charity of your choice!

Ten cents?! You might think. That's vaguely offensive and pathetic! But wait! You can take the survey as many times as you want. So that's like, an entire dollar to charity for completing a quality-assurance survey ten times.

Columbia: forerunners in philanthropy and accuracy.

At 4 pm Sunday, JJ's place is the launch spot for a student group with a name that cuts to the heart of student charity - the "Feel Good" project, through which grilled cheese sandwiches are sold in order to raise money for world hunger. It is a known fact that eating grilled cheese sandwiches, the best kind of cheese sandwiches (get out of here with that "cabrese"), does make people feel good, and the fact that the profits go to charity has been known to make people feel better about problems of all sorts. World hunger? Partially alleviated! Your hunger? Partially satiated! You might be a few hundred billion dollars, and a soup, side dish, and thick drink short of ending both problems, but it's a step in the right direction.

In case you'd rather have the sandwich free and refrain from the charity, you can seek out one of the "lost cheese" flyers the group has hidden across campus. The flyers are apparently in color, made to look like swiss cheese, and have the word "FOUND" at the top. Swiss cheese is a questionable choice for a grilled cheese sandwich, but perhaps they know something we don't. They have released these clues towards locating the fliers, after the jump: