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.

The New York Times is reporting that the J-School received a 5 million-dollar gift today from one Mr. Leonard Tow, a Columbia grad whom the Times identifies as "a former chief executive of Citizens Communications, and Century Communications" as well as a philanthropist -- and how!

Tow is hoping that his $5 million will aid J-Schoolers in figuring out how to save the dying newspaper business by attaining Internet-savvy. (Hint: stop printing newspapers on paper.) Tow also explains that he was annoyed at Harvard and its fancy "Internet institute" because it was much better than Columbia at teaching grad students how to publish things online.

Tow also donated $3 million to the CUNY J-School to create the Tow Center for Journalistic Innovation, which will focus on research and development. Funds at Columbia will be centered around training J-Schoolers in "digital media." What exactly can 5 million buy these days? Accoring to J-School dean Nicholas B. Lemann: "two professors in new media" and "a curriculum that may include data-driven reporting and software design for news organizations."

According to Editor & Publisher, CUNY will have to match the donation through fund raising in order to receive it. Columbia will have to do the same, but it will have to double Tow's donation and fund raise $10 million.

Or so says 95-year-old philanthropist John Templeton, who, among his billionaire chums, must endow the most mystical foundation. The John Templeton Foundation has power-given millions of dollars to scientists researching questions of God, ethics, and spirituality. One of their projects, buried within their labyrinthine website, is a ranking of the colleges most committed to building character. Does Columbia, with its lessons in Western philosophical history, place? Of course not — but Columbia Colleges of South Carolina and Illinois do! Could it be our friendliness with Ahmadinejad and our enmity with the Minutemen that caused us to miss making the list? A link on the front page to an application for the 2002 edition of the ranking suggests otherwise. Still, it's a small comfort to remember that accusations of spineless liberal-fascist asshole elitism have been flung at Columbia for ages. If John Templeton doesn't recognize us as inheritors of the noble tradition of ethical reasoning, there's always that noble tradition to fall back on, right?