~E.L.S.

The pictures really help, and its a blog worth reading for the style alone. That aside, the content for the next few months will be especially fascinating as Jenny acclimates to living in Moscow, Russia, of all places!

Check it out.
I highly recommend.

Today, Ethan called me on the phone to let me know that John Hughes had died. I was taken aback, for a moment. It’s always a bit of a blow, hearing things like that, unprompted. Not that I’m going to lose it over a man I hardly knew, who died of more-or-less natural causes, somewhat towards the latter part of his life. But I did feel a little pang that caught me unawares.

John Hughes, for those not aware, is a celebrated American filmmaker whose run of teenage angst films in the 1980s came to define the time for kids living back then. Among his bigger movies were The Breakfast Club, Ferris Buller’s Day Off, and Sixteen Candles. Later in life, he penned, under a pseudonym, the first two Home Alone films.

It’s just funny, because even though those movies came out almost 25 years ago, I feel like they have just as much impact today. They’re no less relevant just because their soundtracks are composed of a fantastically retro spread of 80s pop artists, and in fact I’d say that only serves to ramp up the nostalgia factor. The themes dealt with are pretty universal for growing up in middle America though: peer pressure, isolation, popularity, love, parents, friends. And the films managed to do it in a pretty earnest fashion.

The Breakfast Club, I feel, was Hughes’ best work. It has the best blend of humor, emotion, dancing, and “fuck-you-mom-and-dad-and-teachers-and-world” of any of the movies. Buller was funnier, and Sixteen Candles more quirky, but TBC pulled it off better than any of them. I remember watching that movie countless times in high school, feeling more and more spoken to with each successive iteration. Not to mention that opening the film with a Bowie quote was essentially one of the coolest things I could possibly imagine for such a film.

I noticed a while ago that I haven’t watched, nor felt the need to watch, TBC in quite a while. This startled me, because I used to watch it at least once a month the first two years of high school, and a few times a year Junior and Senior years. It occurs to me that perhaps this has something to do with the fact that I don’t need it like I used to. Those awkward years when everyone’s looking for reassurance of their own self-worth, and where everyone has a different way of finding it, have gone by, I suppose.

That’s sad to think about, that I don’t need Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, and Judd Nelson like I used to. The memories persist though; one time Lydia Schneider put an anonymous question in the “ask Mr. Hashman” hat which we passed around in scripture class. Hashman pulled it out and read it aloud to the class:

Does Barry Manillow know you raid his wardrobe?

I believe that, to this day, both men remain in ignorance of that undoubted truth. As for me?
“I’ll be alone, dancing, you know it baby.”

[see post for embedded player]
[ mp3 ♫ ]

Not a whole lot to say about this, except it’s awesome, and you should watch it.

I feel like this is a good note upon which to end the most prolific month in blogging Schrödinger’s Blog has ever seen! Thanks for reading. I will do my utmost to keep it up!

[NOTE: I did check NBC's website for the official upload of this clip, but couldn't track it down! EDIT: After NBC sniped the YouTube video, I was able to track down the official one. Which does look better, to their credit.]

[DOUBLE NOTE: (9.10.10) I keep losing this video because NBC is kinda fickle on what videos can stay up, below is a clip of the Tonight Show on MSNBC, introed by Howard Dean, which I think makes up for the slight degradation in video quality!]

They’re including a given senator’s vote on the Sotomayor confirmation in their ‘ratings’ of senators, and I guess that’s fair. I just kinda feel like that’s kinda cheap. You only decide to include it after you’ve found her to not love guns to the extent that your bloodlust is satisfied? NRA, you should have been on top of this a long time ago. It’s the supreme court, for crying out loud! That should be in your stupid little evaluation thing either way.

From my read on the situation, these ratings the NRA arbitrates seem to carry a good deal of clout in getting people elected. That stands to reason, given the funding and resources behind the gun lobby. I guess it just makes me sad. I’ll go on record saying that I don’t like guns too much, and I wish nobody had ‘em, and also:

Confession: This post was supposed to have more analysis, but I lost an hour and a half watching Eddie Izzard clips on YouTube after looking for that clip. Oops.

There’s Boston, then there’s Boston College, and then there’s Boston College Physics. The three are somewhat distinct entities, and I feel like I should address them individually:

Boston (the City) is fantastic! I love it to death. There’s a million different things to do, and so many people! I mean, I live in a major metropolitan area, I will not strip Kansas City of that well-earned title, but it’s nothing like this. There’s just people everywhere. That was the biggest surprise was that it could even be possible for so many to live in so small a space. I’ve visited New York City, which I suppose is the quintessential example of such a place, but I never lived in New York.

Having lived in Boston, the sheer scope of the number of people living hear freaks me out just a bit. Those people, however, are all different races, and speak a host of different languages, which also surprised me. The most common non-English we get in KC is a modest bit of Spanish… Today we visited the Boston Aquarium, and I heard languages I couldn’t even identify! So that’s pretty neat, diversity and whatnot. To see what it really looks like, for once, has been nice. Missouri: You’ve got a long way to go.

Speaking of journeys, how about the T?! That is what the Massachusetts Transit Authority calls its bus/train/commuter-rail system. It is the best thing ever. Public Transportation is like… a hobby of mine, I suppose? Maybe that’s too kind of a word, and ‘infatuation’ better describes it. Riding the T is just fantastic. I went to the trouble of getting (for free!) a little card that has an RFID chip in it (remember those, debate folks?) that I don’t even have to take out of my wallet; you just slap the wallet against the console at the front of the bus, and it takes the money off!

Of course, eventually you need to put more money on… which I’ve done a copious amount. It’s too much fun though to just hop on and have it take you straight into town for 1.70$, and then not have to worry about parking, something happening to your car, the weather, drunk drivers, any of that! You just do your business in town, and provided said business is over before 12 AM, hop on the T and head home. BC is even the last stop for the train that I take, and so I can even nap on the way back without worrying. On top of all that, every time I ride the T is a time I’m not sitting my ass down in a car to burn fossil fuels, which also adds to the enjoyment of it all. (Caveat: Grocery shopping via public transport is sortof a hassle…)

Boston College: I have fewer good things to say about BC. Like, for me, right now, it’s great. I have a big old room, my suitemates are good dudes, the REU people are fun to hang out with, campus is fairly easy to navigate, and so on. But never have I been more proud of Truman. I don’t mean this as a slight to BC… but- well I’ll stop. The examples I present aren’t that lengthy so we’ll just hit it:

1) Papers
So it’s a silly complaint, but I’m gonna make it nonetheless. BC has no papers for me to read. Even during the summer (I can speak from experience) Truman has the USA Today / NYT / STL Post out there in full force for the summer students to read. I can see no sign of a news paper program here at BC, which I think is abysmal for any self-respecting academic institution. Even if the defense is that they subscribe to a lot of online sources or something, I’m gonna say that’s not good enough.

I’ve got a tech article in the wings where I compare the different feed-readers I’m trying, and how well they syndicate my news, which is something I’ve had a lot of trouble with recently. I’m go out on a limb, though, and say that I’m in the minority. Unless this news is readily available to students, I think it just encourages a lot of the apathy that’s already implicity in my age bracket. So yeah, the lack of a newspaper program is reprehensible.

2) Rec Center
So I can’t really comment on the nature or quality of BC’s recreational center because I haven’t been inside. “But Tom! How then could you possibly level an accusation of a shortcoming!?” Watch me. The reason I haven’t been inside the Rec here? It costs money per-visit! Madness, you say? Indeed. Their response? A 65-dollar all-summer pass. Really? REALLY?! That’s got to be a joke. It isn’t.

I had some of my fellow REU students assure me that this was well below what a full-time, equivalent gym membership would cost, but that really dodges the point. It should be free. You should be able to go exercise whenever you think you need or want to, and not have to worry about how much it costs… not have to factor it into your budget. Like with the newspapers, the dedicated kids are always going to find a way… but if Truman charged per visit? I don’t think I’d even be able to tell you what the inside of my OWN Rec Center looked like, because that’s not really my beat.

Point here is that if lowly Truman State can swing this, surely the illustrious Boston College should be able to as well, and I’m in awe of their failure to do so thus far.

3) Dorms and Residential Life
As mentioned above, this isn’t a huge bitch-fest about how much I dislike BC. Allow me to reiterate that I’ve been treated very well, and have tremendously enjoyed my time here. Stark differences remain though, and this category is the most telling one. BC has a beautiful campus: some manner of Gothic architecture graces many of the older structures, while the others are tastefully modern with overt and cohesive structural ‘tips of the hat’ to the Gothic style. It looks really good. Inside many of the main buildings you’ll find cutting edge equipment, new, clean and modern work spaces, and some of the most qualified instructors in the Boston area (which is saying something, given the looming presence of Harvard, MIT, and some 35+ other higher education facilities).

None of this, however, changes the fact that if I leaned hard enough, I could destroy the wall that separates me from the small hallway in my suite. At night, light seeps through the top of the wall and the ceiling because the two don’t actually connect in many places. As a result: you guessed it! These things are about as acoustically insulating as a facial tissue. The suite is designed for two people per room, with three rooms total (meaning 6 occupants) supported by 2 bathrooms and 1 kitchen, equipped with a GE oven circa 1950, and an average-sized fridge. In addition, there are two small, adjacent common rooms to stave off what must be the inevitable cabin fever.

I guess the punchline to all of this is that Ignacio Hall, where I live, is undisputed as the best dorm on campus. I had to hide my surprise when I heard that. Again, not that it’s uninhabitable, but only that… relative to all the other stuff on campus, it does not “wow” in an appreciably comparative way. Say what you will about ol’ C-Hall, but you could throw bricks at the interior walls of that room all day and into the night, and the worse you’d do was chip the paint. The outer-walls of the rooms here could stand such a test; they’re made from brick. You know how I know? THEY WERE NEVER PAINTED. You literally walk down a hallway composed exclusively of brick, with only the periodic door to break the pattern.

Ack. It also doesn’t help that laundry is expensive as the dickens (1.50 for a wash, 1.50 for 60 min. drying time). That’s one thing, I understand stuff costs what it costs… but the machines only take quarters. Annoying as that is, it would be ok if there was a change machine nearby. There isn’t. Perhaps someone like myself felt this was an injustice, and got them to allow you to place money on your ID, and then you could then in turn use that to pay for laundry. You can. JUST NOT IN THE SUMMER TIME BECAUSE THEY SUMMARILY SHUT DOWN THE ENTIRE SYSTEM FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON. I swear, at every turn, I feel increasingly more thwarted.

So these aren’t huge issues. But they are issues. I’ll openly call out BC’s student government (http://ugbc.bc.edu/), and ask them “Where the hell have you guys been?!” I know I don’t understand the situation fully, but I gotta ask myself what these people have been up to, given their failure to address any of the issues mentioned above. To their credit, they have a professor evaluation system in place… which is open to the public so near as I can tell (it’s called PEPS), which seems like an awful idea. But again, I’m willing to acknowledge my ignorance of the entire field of issues.

Somehow, our Student Government, for all its flaws (and there are many!) and trouble getting students engaged, has managed to bite, claw, kick, and bitch its way to a point where students are in a good place; and in areas where it isn’t a good place, it’s one that’s getting better. All those times I felt like maybe we took ourselves a little too seriously, I suddenly feel less bad about.

Anyways.

BC Physics is a slightly less soap-boxy story (albeit more technical): You can ready my impressions of it over at the SPS REU Amalgamate Blog which I haven’t posted nearly as much as I should, having founded the damn thing. So it goes.