The new JE dining hall has made its debut — and was even more crowded than Amy Arnsten’s “Brain and Thought” lecture. Some students complained of crowds, noise and a chaotic servery layout.

Things got slippery in Ezra Stiles last night. A pipe burst in Entryway I, flooding some rooms and common spaces.

The closure of the L-Dub gate for renovation — forcing students to walk a full 20 feet to enter Old Campus via Durfee’s — was the latest in an unusually long list of construction-related inconveniences that includes the finishing touches on JE, the complete makeover of Calhoun, Beinecke’s blue-tarp buffer and Payne Whitney’s scaffolding mask. Some lecture halls were perceptibly trembling from nearby construction. “It’s like an earthquake all the time,” Yelin Qiu ’11 said.

The Flower Lady now has business cards.

The Temple Street Bridge by University Health Services is closed to auto traffic — not to be confused with the already closed Hillhouse Avenue bridge on the other side. Now the combination has made reaching DUH by car “increasingly difficult,” said director Paul Genecin. No word yet on whether either bridge will be finished before DUH moves to Lock Street in 2010. The Yale Facilities Web site says the Hillhouse bridge “will be completed by the summer of 2008.”

President Levin asked students in the selective “Grand Strategy” class to supply him with questions for an interview with Tony Blair on Sept. 18 in Woolsey Hall. It’s unclear whether GS students will be allowed to program Blair into their Blackberrys.

We’re toast. You may have noticed, while frowning over a room-temperature bagel, the mysterious case of the missing toasters in dining halls campus-wide. The culprit: some of the heating coils exploded, according to one dining hall worker. Expect the toasters back as soon as they can figure out how to get them to stop doing that.

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY 1996 A surging 25-percent return pushed Yale’s endowment to $4.7 billion, cutting the University’s expected deficit to $4 million.

Political Parties The Independent Party beat the Yale Democrats to the Branford TV room to watch John McCain’s acceptance speech. The IP agreed to share, so long as the Dems toned down their heckling. (Those who wouldn’t could always watch the football game, although McCain did have to deal with several hecklers in St. Paul.) After the speech, IP whip Meredith Morrison ’11 said McCain once again seemed clear about what he believed. “It’s refreshing to hear,” she said.

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