Columbia University President Lee Bollinger will chair the New York Fed's board of directors.

The new chairman of the New York Fed is not a banker or financier! It is Denis Hughes, the president of the New York State AFL-CIO. And the deputy chairman is Columbia University President Lee Bollinger! Crazy! [WP]

Your favorite former prostitute from New Jersey will be breaking out the bubbly this evening. Ms. Ashley Alexandra Dupre is 24 today. Kirsten Dunst's celebrating, too. She's 27. Columbia University president Lee Bollinger is turning 63. Socialite Allison Sarofim is 41. Former Knicks coach Isiah Thomas is turning 48. Former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer is 59. Socialite Cynthia Lufkin turns 47. Cloris Leachman is 83. Rapper Lloyd Banks is 27. Willie Nelson is turning 76. And David Miscavige, the head of Scientology and the only man who can give Tom Cruise orders, turns 49 today.

You may just be excited to have a job right now. But some people have it really good: The Daily News has a rundown of New Yorkers who get sweet, free apartments as part of their jobs. Included on the list is UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon (five-story townhouse on Sutton Place), Columbia President Lee Bollinger (his Morningside Heights house is worth an estimated $19.8 million), Michael Bloomberg (Gracie Mansion comes with the job although he doesn't actually live there), and a bunch of pageant girls (Miss USA, Teen USA, etc.) Also included: Cardinal Edward Egan (left) lives in a 48,550-square-foot Madison Avenue mansion right behind St. Patrick's. (Yes, you read that number right.) Of course, he's also had to devote his life to God and abstain from sex all these years in order to qualify for the sweet housing arrangement, a trade-off that not too many people would be willing to make.

"PrezBo" is the president of Columbia University and a member of its law school faculty. He's known for his work on free speech and First Amendment issues.

Lee Bollinger—president of Columbia University and friend to the Bush administration? We were not aware such an oxymoronic existence was possible, but it seems Bollinger's little performance during the recent visit to the school of a certain Iranian dictator has his faculty all atwitter.