I wonder if it was always like this in the the Ugli, or if it is as recent development. Although I didn’t spend very much time in them, I always got the impression that the the Rock and Gelman were super quiet food-free spaces.

Interestingly, the one thing I don’t see a lot is people napping, which I both observed and partook in both the Rock and the SciLi. I am 98% sure it is because there are few if any couches here. It’s all blocky wooden chairs and tables.

Joseph Weizenbaum, Famed Programmer, Is Dead at 85:

The seductiveness of the conversations alarmed Mr. Weizenbaum, who came to believe that an obsessive reliance on technology was indicative of a moral failing in society, an observation rooted in his experiences as a child growing up in Nazi Germany.
…
Mr. Weizenbaum also believed that there were transcendent qualities in the human experience that could not be duplicated in interactions with machines. He described it in his book as “the wordless glance that a father and mother share over the bed of their sleeping child,” Ms. Turkle said.

Lazare Ponticelli, France’s Last Veteran of World War I, Is Dead at 110:

Survival in itself is not necessarily an achievement, and Mr. Ponticelli said in an interview with Reuters last year that he “never knew how I got to this point.”
…
Mr. Ponticelli’s view of war was dispirited. “You shoot at men who are fathers,” he once said, according to an obituary by Reuters. “War is completely stupid.” He kept his many war medals in a shoe box.

(In the course of writing this post I came across this slightly worrying blog post from two years ago about aforementioned professor, who also wrote a recommendation for my transfer applications. The last time I talked to him was when I ran into him on the street second semester freshman year and told him I had gotten into Chicago. I hope he has fully recovered.)

The combination of soccer, the weather, and being around people made me happy (before dinner it was Jessie and her friend Alex, before that Patrick in the suite). I was also very happy to find today that Maurie is going to be home for the summer.

I went to Art House to see Jessie. They were having a Thanksgiving dinner there last night, I guess because some people would not be around next week. I saw everyone, or at least I think most people, in Art House for the first time. Everyone was very nice. It reminded me of Snapshot at GWU, the photography Living And Learning Community (LLC because everything at GWU has to have an acronym) I was in freshman year. Although the time we tried to cook we mostly failed and burned a bunch of sausages and biscuits in the oven. My contribution was grilled cheese, I think. Art House managed much better, people made real food like turkey and yams. Also Art House has a kitchen that isn’t half the size of my room at GWU, perhaps that could be something to do with it.

The end of the story is that I stayed up until 11pm and then I woke up at 5:15am. I stayed in bed and pretended I would be able to fall back to sleep until 6 and then I got up and did laundry. Oh well. It’s almost 7 right now which is when I would usually get up. Time to put my clothes in the dryer.

I suppose I am also hoping that this inspires me to take more pictures next year at Brown. At GWU I took a miserable single roll of film. The first half was from the very beginning of the year before I had given up on the place and when I was still optimistic that I would be happy and have lots of friends and know enough people that I felt comfortable around to actually make a real yearbook. Didn’t happen. I took some at Brown but nothing compared to my high school yearbooks, probably because they are all digital to begin with and I don’t have the satisfaction of sorting picking up the photos from CVS like they are a present and sorting through them and cutting them and arranging them and sticking them in a black sketchbook.

I forgot to mention this yesterday but I started reading The Da Vinci Code again. I still can’t get over how badly it is written, but this time I read far enough in one sitting to get hooked. I like being in the middle of a book. It always gives me something else I could be doing, something to do, a purpose. The trouble with this book is that it is going way too fast. I did find some of Mummy’s old college books which will be dry and academic but perhaps interesting and should last a lot longer than junk-food-esqueDa Vinci.

Mummy has started to call Charlie “Zack” by mistake sometimes.

For those of you playing along at home, other classes that have ended in applause:
* PS105: “Ethics & Public Policy” last Wednesday when Professor Frazer gave his last lecture for the class
* PL8: “Existentialism” last semester when Professor Reginster gave his last lecture to a full house (okay, so the class was over-registered — but everyone definitely showed up on the last day)
* PHIL 120: “Symbolic Logic” (GWU) with Fleishman. This is the only class of under 20 people where there has been very enthusiastic applause. Also, my only GWU period that ended with applause, as far as I can remember.
* PS 11: “Intro to Political Thought” with Tomasi. I am pretty sure we applauded at the end, but I have to admit my memory is foggy because the class ended during reading period.

Classes which should have concluded with applause, but did not:
* PHIL 801: “Justifying Punishment” (GWU) with Professor Brand-Ballard. The class was mostly a bunch of indifferent freshmen who didn’t appreciate the class.
* PSC 2: “Intro to American Politics and Gov’t” with Professor Sigelman. Sigelman was awesome and really knew what he was talking about, but as far as I can remember, no applause.
* AP US History with Mr. Monteleone. But I guess you don’t do that type of thing in high school.
* AP Calc AB with Mrs. Silberman. Math I suppose is not so conducive to enthusiastic applause. Also AP classes never end with a bang because the test is so early, they always just sort of trickle to an end…
* Humanities with Mr. Boswell. There were some bad (i.e. deadly silent) moments, but this was the most interesting class I took in high school, and the most like a college class. It made me want to do philosophy in college.

In the next couple of days I have a ton of reading and a ton of writing. Two papers due next week and a quiz on Wednesday. Lots of reading. Not panicking yet; I feel like if I can keep working steadily and do everything in chunks it should be fine. And then I will have had a terrific productive streak like the ones I used to have to high school all the time. Before now I’ve always had so much free (read: bored and lonely) time that I always finish things way ahead of time.

My bangs are sort of getting my eyes. I think I need to cut them.

At lunch I somehow ended up at a table with Natalie, a midyear transfer from Carleton who went to my high school. Two of her midyear transfer friends were also there. One of them came from GWU! He lived in Mitchell two floors below me last year, and last semester in the West End three floors below Eric’s triple. We compared unsatisfactory experiences. He reminded me greatly of Mike’s friend at Amherst David (who, for those keeping track at home reminds us both a lot of Eric.

Anyway. Strange, small world.

Happy spring break to everyone who is off next week. I can’t believe we go to lottery on Monday (second to last group to pick, but we are on the first night so that’s pretty cool). I can’t believe our spring break is the week after next. Soon I will have spent as much time at Brown as I spent at GWU. Snap.

I have a regular job that both helps occupy my time and gives a (small, but) steady income. I feel productive.

I have more than one close friend.

I make better use of the libraries as a place to study that isn’t my room.

I take photos again.

I’ve reinvigorated my interest in and enthusiasm about computers by exclusively booting Linux, and using (and often compiling myself – hooray!) open source software.

I’m knitting again, and learning new skills in the process.

I have a bike that I love and I go biking when I have time and it’s not too cold.

Today I’m scanning pages from a Brown songbook circa 1891 instead of Lovecraft. The book is scanned in at 300 dpi which gives me less time in between scanning and cropping and saving. So instead of knitting I’ve taken up a tagging old entries of Toast, an project I started awhile ago (during the last summer, I think?) but gave up after a few weeks at school. This time instead of going from the present back in time, I’m starting with 2001 and working forward. Sometimes I can’t believe that I wrote and thought like that back then. On the other hand, sometimes I can’t believe I write this way now. I always feel strangely detached from entries as soon as I press the publish button.