Did you know that other people associated with Columbia besides the Terrible 12s have been doing things (exciting things, in fact) this summer? It's true! Here, we'll prove it to you:

-- Columbia law professor (and subject of a 2007 Blue and White profile) Tim Wu wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about bandwidth, in which he warns of a bandwidth cartel and suggests alternate technologies with which to move information.

-- Fun fact: Terrible war criminal Radovan Karadzic (the only person to ever be indicted on genocide charges at the Hague) is a proud graduate attendee of the Columbia med school.

-- Today is Sunil Gulati's 49th birthday! Bwog has now wished Gulati a happy birthday three years in a row.

Oh you kids today, with your New Facebook and AOL Instant Messager and such. The New York Times talked to a bunch of you who prefer going online to reading books that your parents bought for you. It seems that the standardized test scores of Kids Today have declined and plateaued, causing many older people to blame the Internet. But some others are saying that the Internet has created a "new kind of reading", claiming that even reading New Facebook is better than watching TV because at least there are words involved.

We hear from a bunch of online readers like anime enthusiast Nadia, who counts among her favorite literature some nonsense entitled "My absolutely, perfect normal life ... ARE YOU CRAZY? NOT!" Bwog found this thing online and we can see why all the adults are so worried. To quote from Chapter 30: "I drop my hotdog! It just flew towards the end... uwahhhh!! Damn plane! Wait... is that? MY HOTDOG!? I MUST REACH OUT TO IT!! WAIT..."

Two happenings we brought to our attention today involving Columbia students past and present on the internet.

First up, by way of tipster "um... anonymous", Torah Bontrager, GS '07, has told the Four Hour Workweek blog the story of her escape from the Amish.

In the Q&A, Bontrager spells out some "common misconceptions" about the Amish. For instance, according to Bontrager, it's untrue that "the Amish are 'peaceful gentle folk." Amish also speak Amish, which is different from English and actually more closely related to German. Who knew? She also describes community-wide child abuse, including her own experiences with her parents. (The blog is careful to note that this is one person's experience and is not intended to stereotype all Amish.) At 15, after a near-suicide attempt, she picked up in the middle of the night, leaving her parents and eleven siblings behind.

We've gotten like 1,000 emails this morning (Columbia, you're quite partial to the Weddings Section!) about the New York Times marriage announcement of PrezBo's son, who is also named Lee C. Bollinger and looks exactly like him. (Speculates one friend of Bwog, "Obviously PrezBo has really powerful genes.")

Lee C. Bollinger the younger, or Young Bo, was married on Friday to a one Ms. Jennifer Ellis. Ellis teaches elementary school in Illinois and attended Western Michigan Univeristy and then DePaul University. Her parents have very nice and respectable-sounding jobs, but whatever, on to the bridegroom's family.

Spawn of Bo is an intellectual property lawyer who attended UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, and Washington Sq.-based archenemy NYU.

And oh look wow, his father is the president of Columbia University! His mother, the elusive Lady Bo (or "Jean Magnano Bollinger"), is an artist.

UPDATE:

Philosophy professors Philip and Patricia Kitcher's son Charles was also married this weekend to fellow Columbia law graduate Sue-Yun Ahn. The wedding was held at the Columbia Club.

Charles is a law clerk but leaving his job to become a laywer in D.C., Sue-Yun Ahn is also a law clerk who's on the brink of starting to clerk for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Bwog tipster Sara Vogel informs us that Robert Thurman, professor of Buddhist studies and relative of all sorts of famous people, is this week's New York Times Magazine "Questions For..." interviewee. In the interview, Thurman talks about why the Dalai Lama never comes over to hang out anymore, totally disses Slavoj Zizek, and also at one point says, "I meditate on how Dick Cheney was my mother in a previous life and nursed me at his breast." (Impromptu Photoshop contest: if you send us an image of Thurman suckling at the teat of our Vice President, we will include it in this post.)

For more of the Robert Thurman interview experience, check out the Blue and White's October Conversation.

UPDATE 12:06 AM: A treasure arrives in our inbox, from Photoshop hero Jon Hill:

(Hello, Daily Intelligencer!)

Two Columbia-related articles of interest in the New York Times recently: First up, an op-ed from physics professor/Colbert Report interviewee Brian Greene sent to Bwog from tipster Lucy Tang. In a piece currently #1 on the Times' Most Emailed list, Greene recounts receiving from a letter from a soldier stationed overseas from whom Greene's book (the immensely readable and enjoyable The Elegant Universe) was "something of a lifeline. [...] It speaks to the powerful role science can play in giving life context and meaning. At the same time, the soldier's letter emphasized something I've increasingly come to believe: our educational system fails to teach science in a way that allows students to integrate it into their lives." Greene goes on to lucidly and convincingly argue for a "cultural shift" that would emphasize the philosophic importance of science.

Next up, via tipster Ian Corey-Boulet, a piece which focuses the on Sisters Colleges' (your strong, beautiful Barnard College among them) initiative to recruit more students hailing from the Middle East. According to the article, admissions deans from the Sisters believe that their schools' emphasis on encouraging women to engage in science and math-related fields, in addition to providing a less-jarring transition from single-sex high schools, would make them an especially appealing option for prospective students from places like Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait.

Columbia events, in the national spotlight. Kind of. The New York Times ran an article about President Bush, who in a conference yesterday about race relations denounced incidents involving nooses and said: "The noose is not a symbol of prairie justice, but of gross injustice. Displaying one is not a harmless prank."

The Times mentioned incidents in Jena, La. and our fair Alma Mater as inspiring President Bush to discuss racially-charged incidents and issues of injustice during a Black History Month press conference that is normally used to focus on contributions of black members of society.

Columbia: partially kind of—but not really—changing the way things are done around the White House.

- JNW

Meanwhile, The New York Times has reported that Columbia and USC lead the nation in percentage of international students, edging out downtown rival NYU. The Times also commenced its coverage of the hunger strike on its CityRoom blog.

The New York Times ran a glowing article about Barnard's long and distinguished list of literary alumnae.

And now it's free for all to read, since Times Select is no longer any more of a reality than the campus presence of the Barnard Bulletin.

...zing.

- JNW

Free TimesSelect is here with the wave of your Columbia/Barnard email address.

And although you have to give your CU email to the Times, (and to all your professors and Michelle Diamond and Lee Bollinger and Austin [!] Quigley), that doesn't mean you have to deal with CubMail, Columbia's the homage to 2002's latest technologies. After the jump is Mark Holden's guide to forwarding email to Gmail. It ran about a year ago and remains some of the most usable and earnest advice Bwog's ever given.

Today's Sunday Times is chock-full of Columbia nuts. First, the lead story in the Magazine, by Mark Lilla, is regurgitated CC, and any good humanities student worth his or her weight in Enlightenment and secular/liberal theory should be able to follow his argument and add a dash of insight to boot. Then, the Lives essay is by a J-school prof who meets up with a former story subject and has a ball. Over in Arts, there's a long article about "mumblecore," a micro-genre of indie film in which Barnard grad Greta Gerwig (and the WBAR station) are key elements. And, finally, there's a pretty long piece about the guys behind Indoctrinate U, which we know you all love.

We got distracted in all the weather-related excitement, but if you did read the Times this morning, you may have noticed a full page ad headed by none other than Lee Bollinger--he became the poster child for academic freedom after protesting a British teachers union boycott of Israeli universities a few months ago, and now the American Jewish Committee is gathering signatures in support of his statement. The ad ran with 286 schools, including some heavy hitters: almost all the City Universities of New York, most major state universities, Princeton, Cornell, Georgetown, the University of Pennsylvania, and dozens of other schools nestled comfortably in U.S. News' top 100.

The interesting part, then, is who didn't make the list. Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago, Amherst, Williams, Duke, Stanford, and Brown were nowhere to be found. Eighteen other schools--including NYU, Temple University, George Washington, and Johns Hopkins--signed on since the ad ran today, so presumably the silent ones have had a chance to reconsider. And in any case, the story broke at the end of May, which means that the AJC has been scuttling around since then gathering signatures.

What gives?

- LBD

The bowels of New York exploded in a seismic geyser-like spew! Turn on your TV to local NY news to watch incredible footage of a steam pipe gushing gas and mud into the air!

It's not terrorism.

UPDATE 7:20 PM - Our resident steam correspondent ZvS can see the steam all the way from Brooklyn, and has called our attention to the above pretty awesome photo on Flickr.

ALSO - We'd like to take a moment, purely for history's sake, to appreciate the crazy shit that happened last summer in New York: Power-saw slicing. Suicide bombing. Prolonged blackouts. Let us appreciate what hot weather will do.

He may have baby-sat New York as the crack epidemic left pipes and vials all over city sidewalks and the Crown Heights riots fissured West Indian-Hasidic relations in that neighborhood, but David Dinkins' opinion still holds sway. A politician with firm roots in the Harlem political establishment, Dinkins wrote an op-ed in support of Columbia's Manhattanville expansion in the City section of this Sunday's Times.

"Columbia's Manhattanville proposal takes the best of these ideas to gradually create a new kind of open, urban campus that will improve local streets; bring back commercial life to Broadway, 125th Street and 12th Avenue; and better connect the residential areas of Harlem with the waterfront park now under construction along the Hudson River."

As the Neighborhood Retail Alliance (a.k.a momandpopnyc) points out in an item published Monday (that curiously does not mention the Dinkins op-ed), Dinkins is also on SIPA's payroll -- he teaches classes and has hosted a forum on urban policy there for the last dozen years. Meanwhile, other Harlem politicians, community groups, and Borough President Scott Stringer (who actually has some measure of oversight in this whole process) remain skeptical.

Gothamist has a handy little digest of the op-ed with some links.

The late John K. Lattimer, the military buff and ex-professor and chairman of the urology department at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons, was noted in yesterday's New York Times as the latest owner of Napoleon's penis. Check it:

"Dr. Lattimer, a urologist, could claim a professional interest in Napoleon's genitalia. Not so its previous owner, the Philadelphia bookseller and collector A. S. W. Rosenbach, who took a 'Rabelaisian delight' in the relic, according to his biographer, Edwin Wolf. When Rosenbach put the penis on display at the Museum of French Art in New York, visitors peered into a vitrine to see something that looked like a maltreated shoelace, or a shriveled eel."


Concludes the columnist who made these observations: "it's time to let Napoleon's penis rest in peace."

Thanks to CJS for the tip.