Columbia has long had a penchant for the hazardous.

Shopping carts, to your hands. Just by touching them, you risk diarrhea and worse.

Sleep deprivation, to your heart. Nearly everyone with a college degree will probably have a heart attack 50 years after graduation.

Cancer drugs, to your fetuses. But now, the miraculous techniques of freezing means you can prevent the first and save the latter.

Vermin, to your asthma. Oh, and also to your general sanity.

Rocks, to carbon dioxide. Nothing says "run away" like the word "sequestration."

Everyone's elections predictions (which took up most of the "Columbia University" hits this week) came out alright, but there are still more predictions to come.

Stiglitz says "Yes We Can...eventually"

Eisenbach says "See? I told you this one would be different."

A Columbia scientist says, "The predictions were too late."

Those who were around in '68 say, "It's gonna be just like it used to be, dang nabbit."

The cover story in this week's Village Voice is an interview with Columbia's Klaus Jacob, geophysicist and adjunct professor of international and public affairs.

Jacob is a big time disaster expert: in the 90s, his research on earthquakes convinced the city to change its building codes. And when he worked for President Clinton, he was the first to lead a national study on the effects of global warming.

Nonetheless, Jacob has been trying to warn Columbia for four years about the possible dangers inherent to the University's blueprint for Manhattanville. Columbia, as it tends to do from time to time, is not listening.

For one, he believes that the new campus is located right in the heart of a flood zone (Think about the valley where the 1 train comes above ground. In fact, there's Jacob over there to the right, standing in this very valley.) And thanks to global warming, the possibility of flooding due to hurricanes is only going to steadily increase over the years.

In which Bwog lecture hopper Phil Crone reports back from the Heyman Center's discussion on climate change

Altschul Auditorium was host last night to a panel discussion featuring PrezBo, Joseph Stiglitz, and various experts on the ever more apocalyptic science of climate change. What exactly PrezBo, a freedom of speech scholar-cum-university president, was doing heading a discussion on climate change was anyone's guess, but by the end of the evening it was clear that he had taken on the position of moderator mainly to provide comic relief for an audience presented with the grim scientific and political realities surrounding the topic.

Comedy, however, was not the first item on the agenda. The main event began shortly after eight with PrezBo introducing the four members of the panel: James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies; R.K. Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); Cynthia Rosenzweig, an adjunct professor at Barnard who also works on the IPCC; and Columbia's favorite Nobel laureate, Joseph Stiglitz.

According to a press release by University Spokesman Robert Hornsby, carbon emitted by Commencement ceremonies starting about now (watch the live webcast here!) will be offset by the purchase of carbon credits, which pay for carbon absorption projects around the world. It's all the rage among the guilty-conscience set--and now you can calculate just how much greenhouse gas you're pumping into the atmosphere on your ride home! Bwog's only remaining question: did they factor in what will be coming out of Prezbo's mouth?

Also, some leftovers:

Via Ivygate: All you Office fanatics, the show came to Columbia just as you left.

And...at least somebody liked Quigley's speech.

If you read our February issue, you'd have heard of the Global Roundtable on Climate Change, a group of blue chips that has been meeting for the last two years to come up with some sort of statement on what do about our warming world. Last Tuesday, they came out with their joint statement, which has been garnering a lot of low-level press around the world. The statement itself is nothing to get your knickers in a knot over; mostly the conventional wisdom of what needs to happen that's been out there for years, with lukewarm verbs like "provide," "support," and "encourage." (Meanwhile, these guys are saying the same thing, but less delicately.) The list of groups endorsing is about half the size of those participating in the process--Ford, Google, and Wal-Mart are conspicuously absent. But many of those who didn't sign as organizations have added their names as individuals, and now you can too! An e-mail went out on the ABC listserv asking students to get on the bandwagon. And chuck your car keys on your way out.

- LBD

Veritas Forum subjects: infinitude of knowledge, the Almighty, plagiarism

Message of a loving God creates schism, property rights issues, "trouble"

Surprise! Noam Chomsky is anti-war!

Poverty = another reason to worry about Global Warming?

...never fear, J-Sachs' anti-squalor sustainability squad is here!...just don't ask too many questions.

Left Wing Jihad scores funds?

Left Wing Jihadist scores funds!

Spec dreads us having to "likely spend more money on better fakes"

Oh, you didn't know? Yo' ass better caaallll somebodyyy!

Man, I forgot how good Giuliani was. Maybe we should have let him cancel that election.

Class of 2010 apparently most athletic in history, too

Dear Sig Ep,

A Global Warming party? How clever. At least the College Republicans were trying to make a statement!

Love,

Bwog

P.S. (We may still come anyway)

Because a few interesting tidbits have been coming over the alias, and we're tired of talking about grades too.

- We may have forgotten about the Minuteman dust-up, but the members of New York Immigration Control and Enforcement (a few of whom were in Roone on the fateful night) couldn't let it go. According to CNN, "several" protested outside Lerner on Thursday, demanding that the offending students be expelled. Bwog has learned that eight students have been sent disciplinary letters and decisions are pending, but we'll go out on a limb to say that they'll be able to finish out their time at Columbia.

Meanwhile, protester-in-chief Karina Garcia will be back at school this semester after having taken the rest of 2006 off to go on a speaking tour of high schools, colleges, and radio stations, including a keynote address at the Socialism Conference in LA hosted by the Party for Socialism and Liberation. The College Republicans haven't got anything on their docket--could 2007 be the year of chill at Columbia?

- Not weatherwise, anyway. It was 68 degrees today in the city, and 2006 marked the first time that New York had a snowless November and December since 1877. But really, it's all just hype...

- Carrie Bradshaws of the world, take note! The Spectator is looking for editorial board members and columnists. Yes, including a sex columnist.

- Twenty-one blocks north, a much nicer subway story than those involving chainsaw-wielding goons.

- It seems that Macintosh is closed for asbestos removal. That explains some things.

- The Columbia crown has been turning up in some strange places recently. But considering Public Affairs still hasn't decided whether the logo should be secular chic or trendily theist (in Bwog's estimation, crosses and spades have aboout an equal presence on campus these days), Duke Nukem is the least of their worries.

Thanks to Julia Kite, Dan Gant, Jessica Cohen, Addison Anderson, and Miguel Lopez for the tips.

- LBD

Photos and commentary by Bwog Photographer Sumaiya Ahmed.

This Autumn sort of passes at times without my notice. But one day, my CC class decides to savor global warming outside and I remember my camera. On my way to Arabic class in Kent, I want to take pictures, but I wonder maybe my camera shouldn't get wet. There are leaves on the window sill, headlights smear the cobblestone paths of college walk. A few minutes early for class, I keep snapping pictures of people under umbrellas outside and can't decide which frame shows the expansive quality of our piazza best. I settle on this one because I like the yellow light that says hello from a window in Journalism on the left. There are days the light is so crisp, the pictures take themselves. There is the bareness that welcomes winter, the typical silhouettes.

More photos after the jump

Café Science solves Global Warming.

Barnard plans new major.

Pre-meds: crazier than engineers?

Bob Dylan musical: worse than that Beach Boys thing

EDITORIAL: Hey Everybody! I'm Liberal!

While Bwog was browsing the Earth Institute's Environmental Programs fair this afternoon--at which earthy professors explained how eager students could save the world, including through a new undergraduate sustainable development major which may or may not exist--we heard one upside to the otherwise disturbing trend of climate change:

"I don't think I've heard anyone make the connection between global warming and pornography before. Because people will be wearing less clothing..."