Bwog has been readying a list of procrastination tips, but an ambitious group of SEAS students has outdone every activity we Bwoggers suggested. James Williams reports that just outside of Butler stands--yes--a frisbee-throwing machine. And daily editor Justin Vlasits overheard a poetic passerby mutter "and my heart is like a frisbee flying onto the lawn." Bwog is mystified by this utterance, but that might just be because Bwog's heart and mind are like a squirrel's wrinkled corpse, sucked dry by a masterful hawk. Thank you, reading week, for your joys (see photo at right) and terrors (see previous sentence).

For SEAS Class Day speaker engineering is the new liberal arts.

FaCU, SGB funding meetings should be open to all.

The New Harlem, its a happening place.

The mayor of Brigadoon bids farewell.

Gandhi scholar to hang it up after 40 years of teaching the same course.

Jeffrey Sachs goes back to the future.

Hungry for seafood on a college budget? The prospect of Morton Williams make you ill? Bwog correspondent David Iscoe has found a solution in the form of the New Young Fish Market.

The first time I saw the New Young Fish Market, I thought the sign said "Neil Young Fish Market," but the real name is almost as strange. Behind the strange title, unassuming sign, and bland facade at 108th and Amsterdam is a horde of seafood that beats anything in the neighborhood. I first went inside about a year ago, and found out what I'd been missing.
For a small place, the selection is huge. Take today's choices, for example. 27 different fillets and steaks. Seven types of raw shrimp. Conch, oysters, sea scallops, bay scallops, clams and mussels. 19 different kinds of whole fish, as well as squid, octopus, and assorted fish heads. In the front, a stack of tanks houses live lobsters and crabs, and in the back coolers are stocked with dozens of extra items, from cooked shrimp and imitation crab meat to lobster tails and king crab legs.

Barnard, CCSC and Spec may entice their most willing and bored with chances to win a free iPod for participating in online surveys. But usually chances are low, and who wants to spend five minutes towards an iPod that you might not even win? Not SEAS!

SEAS students, when they participate in the deliciously-acronymed APPLES survey will receive $4 deposited into their Pay Pal accounts.

It would only take 75 engineers combining their $4 winnings to purchase a $300 20 GB iPod. That's math. And Bwog doesn't even go to SEAS. Impressed much?

According to the latest breaking news from the Spec, President Bollinger announced today that Thomas Alva Edison Professor of Applied Physics Gerald Navratil will serve as interim dean of SEAS for the 2007-2008 school year. Navratil has served on Columbia's faculty since 1977 and specializes in plasma physics. He is currently being funded by the U.S. Department of Energy for fusion energy research and is also a recipient of the 2006 Fusion Power Associate Leadership Award. Just in case you were wondering.

On a slight side note, Bwog discovered some photos of new Interim Dean Navratil in the depths of Columbia's website -- judging from that demeanor inhis smile, we think he'll do just fine.

(As long as he can write a good e-mail, of course.)

It's official! SEAS Dean Galil brings good tidings of the engineering school's class day speaker in the latest Zvi-mail, as follows:

Hi All,

It is with great enthusiasm that I share with you the following news. This year's Class Day speaker will be the world famous architect/civil-engineer/artist Santiago Calatrava. He has designed the Transportation Hub that is being built in lower Manahattan, the Athens Olympic Stadium and dozens of marvelous bridges and buildings all over the world. Last year the Met had an exhibition of his works of art (paintings/sculptures/pottery/design).

If you want to learn more, Google him.

Dean Galil

Sort of.

ESC online voting started at midnight, and SEAS kids have until 6:00 PM on Tuesday to register their choices for Academic Affairs, Alumni Affairs/Professional Development, and Student Services Representative--all the other offices are uncontested. But one-party races do make for fun campaign speeches, and courtesy of ESC's web wizardry, you can watch them as many times as you want! Here are the cliffnotes:

Class of 2008: Narrowly defeated E-Board candidate and current 2008 President Eash Cumarasamy, looking confident: "We're going to be a great class council, if we're elected, as we hope to be. Come to our meetings. Uh, that's all. See you next year."

Class of 2009: The Fu Fighters gave a perky performance, self-consciously switching off the mic while listing their accomplishments. Do they tag-team e-mails, too?

Class of 2010: Double points for stating their platform in verse! Long, awkward, not especially metric verse, but hey [insert SEAS joke here].

- LBD

Dear SEAS: Here are the candidates for the ESC e-board, who will fight it out tonight at 9PM in the Satow Room. You won't get to vote on them, but at least you know who might become your quasi-elected leaders.

President: Eash Cumarasamy and Liz Strauss

Secretary: Erin Svokos and Krissie Zambrano

Vice President Intergroup: Gunnar Aasen, Samantha John, and Daniel Wong

VP Policy: Chandni Saxena, Prish Dunstan, and Michael Fu

VP Student Life: Kim Manis

UPDATE, 8:57: Mistakes posted originally have been corrected. Bwog pleads mornings.

E-Weeks, the celebration of everything Engineering at Columbia, concluded tonight with a Battle of the Bands and a Mr. and Ms. SEAS pageant, featuring performances by The Folk, Charlie Foxtrot, The Shake, Party for Mojo, and DJ Tanner. In the running for Mr. SEAS were Sumeet Shah, Nat Gale, Robert Sokola, and Robert Frawley while Tamsin Davies, Sarah Clarke (returning champion), Tani Othanoski, and Shella Bakke competed for the women's title. Bwog reporter Steven Thomas sat through the three-hour event. His highlights follow.

• Charlie Foxtrot's cover of "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5, dedicated to Zvi Galil. (The idea of begging Dean Galil, "Darling, I was blind to let you go," is amusing).
• Tani Othanoski's Cow Costume/Reference to the Zvi-mail — "This is actually a dolphin. If you see anything different, you may be under too much stress."
• Same contestant, when asked "Why is SEAS better than CC?" completely crashed upon being asked such an obvious question and could only come out with, "Because engineers kick ass."
• Shella Bakke's reply to "If Zvi were a boyband, which would he be?" "He'd be N*SYNC because he's going Bye Bye Bye, but we don't want him Gone."f
• Nat Gale's choice of costume: hairnet, apron, spatula, and frying pan as a tribute to Wilma
• Robert Frawley's costume selection: colorful balloons taped to his jacket. When asked to describe his outfit, he paused, collected himself, then whispered into the microphone, "I'm a rainbow."
  

And then things got a little bit weird.

CCSC elections aren't the only democratic contest going on this month--starting at 11:00 PM on Monday, anyone who wants to run for Engineering Student Council executive board positions can nominate themselves by e-mail. But don't start practicing your flesh pressing and baby kissing: all you have to do is appeal to a small fraction of the SEAS student body, because Councilmembers are the only ones whose votes count. Again.

There are two ways to change ESC elections procedures. You can put them on the ballot as a referendum, which requires 150 signatures and the approval of 2/3 of the Council, or you can propose a constitutional amendment, which requires the approval of 2/3 of the council. Last year, an attempt to change the system of internal elections failed rather pathetically when, although 67% of students voted against them in a referendum, the results of the vote were nullified because of low turnout. Last week, a similar constitutional amendment went before the Council, and "unfortunately" failed yet again to recieve the necessary support, according to ESC President Dan Okin (who called internal elections, by which he was voted into office, "a bad system").

So you can't vote for your president, and you can't vote on whether you can vote for your president, and even if you are allowed to, your vote isn't counted. And when Bwog tried to find out the percentage of those voting against the most recent attempt to bring democracy to SEAS, we learned that that information is secret and the vote was closed to the student body. At least you don't have to look people in the eye while they screw 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