My last all-nighter as an undergrad
ends in 24 hours.
Racist vandalism at the Claremont Colleges
From a thread on cmcstudents, hyperlinks added:
[Tuesday], at 4pm, there was a community forum at CMC's Athaneum called "Hate Speech Versus Free Speech". During this, Professor Dunn made statements in support of minority groups and against hate speech, actions and perpetrators of such. She criticized the recent incidents* on the 5 C's [Claremont Colleges]. Sometime between 4pm-8pm (so right after her speech), her car was found vandalized in the parking lot on 6th and Amherst, all tires slashed, windows smashed, and spraypainted were the words, "nigger lover," "bitch," "SHUT UP," and "kike whore." The Claremont Police classified it as a hate crime.
WTF.
*the recent incidents had varying severity and racial motivation:
- Four students stole and burned a cross during winter break. (This incident divided students in several ways.)
- A club's scavenger hunt included the item "Photograph yourself with 10 Asian students".
- Someone took a green marker and wrote "NIGGER" next to George Washington Carver's picture in a calendar. The calendar was on a hallway bulletin board at CMC.
- Scripps students put up posts such as "'Nigger.' Renewing old hate in the new millennium." and "'Nigger.' This is the ignorance that a $35,000 a year education produces." Some students didn't see the satire indended by the creators of the posters.
NeonGecko's demo
The NeonGecko Clinic team demonstrated their forum post categorization software with two examples. It correctly classified
I have a feisty persian. How can I save the furniture?
as "cats" (91%) and
I have a feisty Persian Gulf crisis. How can I save the future?
as "politics" (84%) and "bush" (9%). If you mix the two examples, it gets confused, as it should.
Honest prof
The Abstract Algebra homework is due next Friday evening. Jamie wouldn't say exactly when he would pick it up, but he did give us a probability distribution:
Phonogenic
My favorite a cappella group, The Claremont Shades, released Phonogenic today. Track list with MP3 samples of 4 songs:
- Beautiful Day (u2 / bono)
- Sexual Healing (marvin gaye / brown)
- Walking on Broken Glass (annie lennox)
- Push It (garbage)
- The Way It Is (bruce hornsby)
- Techno Fusion (paul oakenfold, alice deejay, sonique)
- When There's Nothing (jake oken-berg (shades member))
- The Boy Is Mine (monica / brandy)
- What's Love Get to Do With It (tina turner / britten / lyle)
- Time After Time (cyndi lauper)
- Freedom 90 (george michael)
Pomona College Magazine gives the history of my favorite track, Techno Fusion:
"We're taking three different techno songs and basically doing what a DJ would do at a club, which is take them and mix them all together." [Jake Oken-Berg]
"Techno Fusion" was arranged by the Shades' newest member, Pomona College freshman Rob Breahrs. The piece makes liberal use of vocal percussion and combines Paul Oakenfold's "Ascension," Alice Deejay's "Better Off Alone" and Sonique's "It feels so good."
"I realized there are a lot of parts in the background we could write, and a lot of things going on in the middle parts that make it more interesting," Breahrs said. "Then, I also realized that one song would be too boring: techno's kind of repetitive, so I decided to take three different songs that most people know and then put them all in the same key and then kind of go back and forth between them during a medley."
I am disappointed that Phonogenic doesn't include the great versions of Harder to Breathe (Maroon 5) and Don't Speak (No Doubt) that I've heard at recent Shades concerts. I wonder if those songs will be on the next Shades CD.
Full MP3s of songs from old Claremont Shades CDs:
- I Can See Clearly Now (Johnny Nash) from Prescription Only
- Isobel (Dido) from Color
Photos from the CD release party/concert: friends who were there, the Shades singing.
E-mail me if you want to know when I figure out how you can order the CD.
You know the economy is down when...
there are no free t-shirts at the Harvey Mudd College career fair.
Classes
I'm taking 6 5 classes this semester:
- Math 171 - Abstract Algebra (mostly groups, some rings and fields)
- Econ 179S - Economics of Strategy
- Psych 160 - Perception and Cognition
- CS 141 - Advanced Topics in Algorithms (advanced data structures and their amortized analysis, on-line algorithms, matroids and the theory of greedy algorithms, parallel and distributed algorithms, and about 6 weeks of student presentations)
CS 133 - Databases- CS Clinic (counts as a class)
- CS Colloquium (required, doesn't count as a class)
On both MW and TTh, I have 15 minutes between a Pomona class and a Mudd class. It takes about 15 minutes to walk from Pomona to Mudd. That means I won't be able to hang out after Perception and Cognition or Abstract Algebra to chat with the profs.
Most of my classes this semester will have presentations. Economics of Strategy will have some kind of presentation-centered project. (The first time Prag taught the class, he had each student pick a failed dot-com and present about it.) Clinic has two big presentations. In Algorithms, I get to give half a lecture on a topic of my choice, or pair with someone to give a full lecture on a topic of our choice. Perception and Cognition has "convention-style" presentations on the last day of class. Only Abstract Algebra has no presentation.
I'm sad that this is my last semester here.
The RotK experience
Like Fellowship, Return of the King came out during Mudd's finals week. Despite the timing, 300 of Mudd's 700 students went to Ontario Mills AMC on Tuesday night. Tickets only cost $3 thanks to a subsidy from DOS and APC.
FNMG showed extended editions of Fellowship and Two Towers in a lecture hall on Tuesday, creating a private version of Trilogy Tuesday. I had a International Economics final Tuesday afternoon and a Microeconomics final on Wednesday to study for, so I only watched the first half of Two Towers. I liked the added rope scene at the beginning.
Theater 16 was almost entirely Mudd students and students from the other Claremont Colleges who bought their tickets through Mudd. I brought Set and started a game on the floor in the front of the theater. We quickly had 12 players. I still have all of my cards, and I was the only person to step on the case.
I liked RotK, but there were a few things I didn't like:
- The ring had an immediate effect on Smeagol's grammar. It's easier for me to believe its effect on emotions than its effect on grammar... I blame the linguist in me. (Hmm, wasn't Tolkien a linguist?)
- The battles were too predictable. During the battle for Minas Tirith, I was waiting for the army from Rohan and the army of the Dead to show up rather than wondering how well the good guys would hold the city/castle.
- The steward of Minas Tirith seemed to be doing everything in his power to screw up his side. His actions didn't seem to be random, but he didn't seem to be under Sauron's control either.
- There's no way an army of ents can keep Saruman locked in his tower without a strong leader like Aragorn or Gandalf around. I'm told they don't succeed in the books.
- Aragorn ends up with Arwen rather than Eowyn. I'm told that the relationship between Arwen and Aragorn makes more sense in the books. (I only read Fellowship.)
The part of Two Towers where Theoden (King of Rohan) discovers his son's death is still the only part of the trilogy that makes me cry.
Geekiness
"Is 'Oomph' a unit of impulse or a unit of force?"
"Hard drives are so fucking slow. Their seek times are measured in milliseconds!"
"Pass-by-name is like pass-by-reference on crack."
SCAMfest
I went to SCAMfest without Helen because we broke up on Wednesday. But I invited my parents, who hadn't been before, and they loved it. My parents and I bought BOCA 2002, and I plan to buy the new Shades CD, "Phonogenic", when it comes out in December.
My favorite songs from SCAMfest were Hotel California (UCLA Random Voices), I Heard it Through the Grapevine (USC SoCal VoCals), Fields of Gold (Midnight Echo), Poisoning Pigeons in the Park (Midnight Echo), and Harder to Breathe (Shades). Of these 5 songs, I knew the original versions of the first 3.
SCAMfest 2003
The 8th annual Southern California A Cappella Music Festival will be Friday Nov 7 at 8pm. Last year's SCAMfest was amazing, so if you're in the Los Angeles area, you should come.
Eleven college a cappella groups will perform this year:
- The Claremont Shades
- mp3: I Can See Clearly Now (cover of Johnny Nash)
- mp3: Isobel (cover of Dido)
- Claremont Midnight Echo
- Claremont Shower Quality
- Claremont Soul Control
- Pomona Men's Blue and White
- Pomona Momen's Blue and White
- UCSD Tritones
- USC Reverse Osmosis
- USC SoCal VoCals
- mp3:
Torn(cover of Natalie Imbruglia) [mp3 removed after SCAMfest]
- mp3:
- USC Sirens
- UCLA Random Voices
Tickets will be available starting tomorrow at the ASPC office (above Edmunds Ballroom at Smith Campus Center at Pomona College) for $5. If you live in the Los Angeles area and want to come, tell me so I can get you a ticket. Or call Lisa D'Annunzio from the Claremont Shades at [phone number removed after SCAMfest] to reserve a ticket to pick up the night of the concert. The concert will be in Bridges Auditorium aka Big Bridges on Pomona College.
Fire
I started seeing and smelling smoke yesterday. Today, the fire became visible on the hills north of the colleges. There was a fire on the same hills last year. But last year, smoke and ash didn't reach campus, probably because the wind was different. Last year's fire was fun to watch. But this time, being outside at all is unpleasant because of smoke and because of ash getting into our eyes. And this time, several suburban houses have already been destroyed, only a day or two into the fire.
My dorm room smells like smoke even though I haven't opened my window, so some smoke must be getting past the air conditioner's filter. Adam Bliss told me that even the underground Libra complex smells like smoke.
Most of the pieces of ash are tiny, but Jessica Nelson and I found part of a burnt leaf on the ground. It is about an inch long.
Vons.com supsends delivery service due to strike
Retail clerks and meat cutters initiated a work stoppage at the three major Southern California grocery store chains, including Vons. This labor dispute has affected operations at stores that fulfill Vons.com orders. As a result, we have suspended delivery operations for the time being. We will notify shoppers when Vons.com deliveries will resume. Thank you for your patience.
The words "strike", "union", and "health care" are notably absent from this statement shown to Vons.com customers.
I also tried signing up for Albertsons.com, which I had never used before. Albertsons.com has also suspended its service. Like Vons, Albertsons avoids the word "strike", but at least it doesn't hide "labor dispute" in the middle of a paragraph and try to blame its employees.
Unfortunately, due to a labor dispute, Albertsons.com is unable to serve you today.
We are sorry for the inconvenience and hope to resume our online service as soon as possible.
I might have to beg for a ride (or walk) to a physical grocery store for the first time in a year. I haven't decided whether to cross the picket line at the local Vons or find a non-unionized grocery store.
Default major
Sara Saperstein told me that at Reed, students who don't know what major they are often become psychology majors. Partly as a result of this, the psychology major isn't as challenging or as interesting as it should be. Sara is no longer a psychology major.
At Mudd, engineering is the (unofficial) default major. Engineering is also the most difficult major in terms of course load: it has difficult labs, 3 semesters of Clinic, and allows students only 1 free elective for their entire 4 years. I don't know why it's the default major despite being so hard.
Do other colleges have "default majors"?
National Novel Writing Month
My girlfriend is going to participate in National Novel Writing Month. She assures me that I will see her at least once during the month of November.
False fire alarm
South has about one false fire alarm a year, usually due to kitchen non-fires. When there was a fire alarm at 6:50am last Friday, many students stayed in their rooms the whole time. I do not think this is a coincidence.
I took time to get fully dressed, and even then I was one of the first students in the parking lot. Only a third of the students in the dorm came to the parking lot during the 10-minute alarm. Some students came out of their rooms briefly, saw Michaela waving her burnt toast around, and went back into their rooms. The rest either slept through the alarm (unlikely, given how loud it is) or decided to stay in bed.
In California, it is illegal to "impair the effective operation of a [fire-protection system], so as to threaten the safety of any occupant or user of the structure in the event of a fire". So it's clear that we can't reduce the sensitivity of alarms in the dorm just because we find false alarms annoying. But what if we think a reduction in the false alarm rate would make residents take fire alarms more seriously? Could we argue that making the detector near the kitchen less sensitive would make the alarm system "less impaired"?
Cornell University has taken steps to reduce false alarm rates in dorms. They were able to do so with the encouragement of the Ithaca Fire Department and presumably without breaking any New York laws. This is encouraging, even though I live in California.
Coincidence
Aurora Burd, Dave Gaebler, and I all have escheresque posters involving stairs behind our doors. I have Peacock's "The Courtyard", Aurora has Peacock's "Castle of Illusion", and Dave has Escher's "House of Stairs".
Fire drill and donuts!
There was a fire alarm in South Dorm last night. Unlike the first time I heard a fire alarm in South, I managed to leave my room quickly despite the deafening noise and strobe lights in the hall.
As I got to the parking lot where we gather after fire alarms, several South Dorm residents noticed 3 stacked boxes of donuts. We wondered what the donuts were doing unattended in a parking lot. Then we saw Dean Guy Gerbick carrying additional bags of donuts from his car. He told us the donuts were for us to eat during the drill.
Security silliness at Mudd
From an e-mail titled "Terror Warning 3/18/03" and sent to all Mudd students:
The President of the United States has announced his intention to remove the current leadership of Iraq. As a result, the intelligence community believes there is a high probability of large and small-scale attacks that could involve mass casualties and seek to cause maximum economic, psychological and symbolic impact. Reports from Los Angeles County of Emergency Management, State Office of Emergency Services, and the Federal Department of Homeland Security suggest that terrorists may attempt multiple attacks against U.S. and allied targets.
Officials have expressed particular concern about buildings, subways, and other enclosed areas. There is also concern about Iraqi sleeper agents proficient in assassinations, kidnappings, and bombings.
To address the increased level of threat, the Department of Homeland Security has raised the national Terrorism Threat Level to Orange-Plus Alert (High).
Recommendations
In response to specific recommendations from the Department of Homeland Security, the HMC Incident Management Team suggests that as far as possible, we:
Limit visitor access to buildings and school campuses to a single entry point.
Effective Wednesday, March 19, 2003, limit access to each building to the main entrance. All other entrances will require key or combo access.
The "one unlocked door per building" policy was not implemented well. One building has a glass wall with many doors along it, and even there only one door was unlocked. The unlocked door for a building at the edge of campus faced a street rather than the rest of campus.
But even with those minor problems fixed, the policy was silly because it introduced inconvinience without protecting us at at all. The policy was killed within 3 or 4 weeks.
What security measures or "security" measures have you been affected by?
Vons delivers to my dorm room
I eat in my room a lot, but I don't drive and I don't like carrying heavy bags of groceries 2 miles. Instead of begging for rides, I order from vons.com. They deliver groceries to my dorm room. I've been using vons.com for a year, but most Mudd students don't know about it.
The site's "Favorites" feature makes it possible to order very quickly if you buy the same things each time. Many items have photos, so lists are easy to scan.
The minimum order is $50 and the normal delivery fee is $10. $10 is worth it for the time I save by not begging people for rides, riding to Vons, walking around the store to find the groceries I want, waiting in line at checkout, waiting for the people I rode with to finish, riding back, and carrying bags of groceries to my room in several trips. Orders over $150 have free delivery, but my orders aren't that large.
When you check out, you have to specify a 2-hour delivery window when you know you will be in your room.
My complaints about the site:
- The front page doesn't mention the $10 delivery fee.
- At 800x600, the "main" frame is tiny and I have to scroll a lot.
- I have to enter my credit card information for each order.
- The site isn't sure whether it's Vons or Safeway. (They're the same company. The store is called Vons in southern California and is called Safeway elsewhere.)
Tips for Mudd students:
- If you live in South, give your location as "South Dorm", not "Marks Hall". Many Mudders don't know where "Marks Hall" is, and there is also a "Marks Hall" at CMC.
- Give the address of your dorm (below), not your mailing address (340 E Foothill). I don't know if this is necessary, but it's what I tried first, and it worked for me. (Source for addresses: Dean Guy, "Cable Television" e-mail to all Mudd students, Sept. 2002.)
Dorm Address Garrett House 495 East 12th Street Atwood 1200 North Mills Avenue Case 560 East Foothill Linde 550 East Foothill South 400 East Foothill East 445 East 12th Street North 440 East Foothill West 425 East 12th Street