As the spring semester came to a screeching halt all too quickly yesterday, levying reading week and an ignominious batch of finals upon Columbia students quite eager to enjoy the pre-summer sunshine, Columbia Daily Spectator production also came to a halt yesterday, with an equally cheery promise to resume coverage in the fall. While Bwog has very much enjoyed offering you a daily dose of Spec this year, sadly today there is no Spec over which Bwog editors may voraciously pore.

Therefore, in lieu of QuickSpec this morning, Bwog invites you to have a gander at its very own Columbia news roundup trawled from a Gmail inbox chock-full of Columbia University Google Alerts. Speaking of Google, Bwog also recommends that readers check out Google's device called Google Reader to stay caught up with and organize all of the blogs, news, and gossip that might ever suit your fancy.

Wait, Columbia doesn't already own the NYT?

How hard is it to get a Columbia degree?

City Journal is still silly over 1968.

Graduate! It'll do the economy good.

Superhumans and Columbia's supercomputer.

Save water to avoid eating your neighbor.

Did Lindsay Lohan steal your $11,000 coat?

Bwog has recently been made privy to Grand Central, a Google-owned program that allows users to sign up for one number that will make all your phones ring when called (both landlines and cellphones). Grand Central also has numerous creepy/cool features like requiring people to state the reason for their call before getting to speak with you and allowing you to record calls at a moment's notice (without the other person's knowledge, natch.) But like any cool toy, this one comes with a warning:

"Note: If you choose to record, be sure to check your local laws regarding call recordings. Most states only require one party's consent (yours), but others require both parties to consent. There are significant penalties for recording a call without the other party's consent in these states so to be safe you should let your callers know you are recording the call. It's the nice thing to do regardless. "

Orwellian! We like!

Bwog Arts Editor Justin Goncalves explains that you can actually switch the number from your cell to your room's ROLM phone (the thing you unplugged and stored under your bed on move-in day), and use the phone to make outgoing calls. Says Justin: "I realize I'm way too excited about this, but I feel like others should know. Save your cell phone bills!"

...meanwhile, Google nerds across the world sit and wait...their imminent reign quietly yet unmistakably approaching.

Bwog has been experimenting with Google Docs, the friendly and clean web-based word processor, (really the West Side Market of word processors). It seems that under the "Word Count" feature, the program will tell you the grade-level equivalent of your writing. We played around with this feature using some of our favorite theorists, celebrities, novelists, and lolcats!

"A civilization that proves itself incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization." - Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism (Grade level: 15)

"Nurture an appetite for being puzzled, for being confused, indeed for being openly stupid, and that - despite what you may think - is very difficult...We all know the cliche' that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. It is also true that a lot of knowledge can be a dangerous thing as well...use your ignorance as well as your knowledge for creative means."- Lee C. Bollinger (Grade level: 3)

"The other did not move, jackknifed backward between the two bunks, grave and clean, the cigar burning smoothly and richly in his clean and steady hand, the smoke wreathing upward across his face saturnine, humorless and calm."- William Faulkner, Old Man (Grade level: 4)

"I can has cheezburger?"- lolcat (Grade level: 2)

So you thought the Facebook apps were bad.

Now Facebook has this nifty little feature where non-members and search engines can access your Facebook too! In technical terms, your public search listing is indexed by external search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.).

Now alongside your high school cross-country race times, curious minds can also see that lovely profile picture and your list of friends. Then, a click will allow them to message you. It's only weird when grandma starts messaging you on Facebook.

Or you can just go to your privacy settings and turn the feature off.

From a tipster:

As if websites, news, print media, videos and pictures weren't enough, Google has made Googleable yet another category of information: every fucking square inch of Manhattan. While Bwog is impressed with the audacity of such an undertaking, it's not sure how exactly this is useful, unless you have hours to kill at your internship or are badly pining for College Walk. Cool new feature, or part of Google's sinister conspiracy to enslave the human race and ascend to God-like heights? You be the judge.

1) Finding the Columbia search engine less efficient than manually locating wanted pages? Google through all of the columbia.edu pages here. It works like a dream.

2) Cents and insensitivity: Moneycontrol India asks whether Indian students may be deterred from studying in the U.S. following the massacre at Virginia Tech. Columbia's cited.

3) The beacon of hope and UN Millenium Villages frontman, Jeff Sachs, may be drinking from a quarter-full glass. In this BBC lecture, the future looks bleak.

4) CUAssassins...is over! The Commissioners write, "The game lasted a whopping 55 days, but congratulations are in order for team C-Unit for coming in first place, team OB GYN Kenobi for coming in second place, and Agent MCPants of the team C-Unit for assassinating 17 of the rest of you."

A tipster wrote in to alert Bwog to an apparent SEAS conspiracy brewing at Google Labs. The image of Columbia's campus on Google Maps is overlaid by "Columbia Univ - School of Engineering" while "Columbia University" is confined to 120th & Broadway, somewhere in the neighborhood of Pupin.

We knew SEAS had been stepping into the spotlight under Dean Galil, but we didn't know he had launched some sort of coup against the powers-that-be in Low before shipping out to Tel Aviv. Our informant concludes otherwise: "Looks like the old question about the engineering school as the 'back door' into the university has finally been settled -- by Google."

-CJS

Not only does Bwog read your papers and listen behind your back, we can also see how you find us! Below some of the best searches that resulted in someone clicking on the Bwog...

Why does urine glow?
Olsen twins vending machine:
good places to get food if your a nyu student.

Punjabi verb conjugations,
salsa closet for ladies,
pretentious jokes.

Strip clubs morningside, height's
chastity belt.
Sexual subliminal messages, herbal essences.

Hard core blue wig:
shaggy dog. Burn like a women
I got peed on.

Winsor or Columbia or Hate or Massachusetts Emma Gillespie
Mr. Bananagrabber.
Naked swordfights women pictures,

Honeydew melon masturbate.
Beautiful Uzbek romance language,
what does cognac taste like?

Hamster babies,
guilt.

A few days ago Google introduced a new feature called "Trends" that allows users to view statistics about the search queries that Google fields by the millions every day. And finally, we have proof that Columbia actually is more important than its ivied brethren.

A comparison by volume of the search term "columbia university" versus "harvard university" et al., and "columbia" versus "harvard," etc., reveals that Columbia is well ahead on both counts (and it's assigned us a fitting color).

Columbia 1, all other Ivies 0.

Update: Also, check out "columbia college" versus "harvard college".

The score: 2-0.