...Huh?

Women in physics

2008-03-30T22:37:00.003-05:00

The APS site has a section called Female Friendly Physics Graduate Programs, where they survey various physics programs and have collected statistics on things like faculty and student male/female ratios, availability of maternity/family leave or family health insurance, etc. One question they asked all of the schools was, "Please describe why someone applying to graduate school who is interested in a female-friendly department should choose your department." The responses were provided by (or at least requested from) the department chairs, and some were a little...tongue-in-cheek?

Here's an excerpt from Harvard's response to the previous question:

"Harvard is Harvard. The physics department is full of very active and highly motivated people. It is not a good place for shrinking violets, female or male... After Harvard President Lawrence Summers made his well-publicized remarks about "innate differences," a number of the physics professors, female and male, were among the leaders in marshalling an appropriate response. Physicists were also well-represented on the "task forces" set up to address the concerns of women in science, and their recommendations are a useful blueprint for further improvement. You should apply to Harvard in [sic] you are interested in being where the action is, both in physics and in women in science issues!"

Grad school update

2008-03-26T19:56:00.005-05:00

Nobody told me that the most stressful part of applying to grad schools would be this part, where I have to pick one. I applied and was accepted to many schools with excellent reputations, but since I've started visiting them, it's become clear that they're all...really excellent. How am I supposed to narrow down my choices, let alone pick one school, by April 15?

It's looking like I'm going to have to tackle some of the Big Questions I had been secretly hoping to avoid, like: Materials Science, or Applied Physics (or Electrical Engineering, for that matter)? Hands-off advisor with a big group, or hands-on advisor with a small group? New professor, or someone who's older and more established? And, of course, could I survive 5 years in Ithaca?

Going to all of these schools has made me realize that, for every interesting research topic that I know a thing or two about, there are at least five that I know pretty much nothing about, but that sound potentially just as interesting. I would love to be able to go to a school and spend a semester getting to know potential advisors and their work before I make up my mind. Some places really seem to support and encourage this, while others don't seem to understand the sentiment.

I'm waiting to hear back from national fellowships, too. Of course, bringing my own funding with me would make it a lot easier for me to shop around, and would make it a lot less likely that I would be refused by my eventual advisor of choice. In some ways, waiting to hear from these fellowships is worse than waiting to hear from grad schools was, because there's a narrower time window when I could conceivably hear from the fellowship committees (and I'm right in the middle of it!). However, not getting a fellowship is a whole lot better than, say, not getting in to grad school, but that's a tough perspective to keep when I don't have to worry about getting in to grad school anymore.

I'm not sure how much importance I should place on location/weather, but there are some pretty big contrasts between my various options. In California, they were apologizing for sunny, 50 degree weather - in March. On the other hand, I'm going to visit Cornell this weekend, and...

Brr.

On an unrelated note, Atlas Shrugged is actually getting better as it goes. It's also an excellent travel book, being interminable and all, as I've discovered during all of these grad school visits.

A book review?

2008-03-01T17:52:00.006-05:00

I've started reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read The Fountainhead a couple of summers ago, and was surprised at the reactions I could provoke just by carrying the book around with me. They ranged from the kid who lent it to me, who said something like, "Ohh! You'll read The Fountainhead, and you'll love it, and then you'll read Atlas Shrugged, and then you'll become...an OBJECTIVIST!!" to others, whose reactions were more along the lines of, "How can you get through two pages of that THING."

Long books have never bothered me - I was perfectly happy all through Anna Karenina, where they spend a few hundred pages skipping through the countryside before getting around to the actual, you know, plot. (Oddly enough, it's rare that I can sit through a movie that's more than two hours long.) On the other hand, I can't say I came out of the experience of reading The Fountainhead touting Objectivism to the world. In reality, Rand's philosophy is pretty well-aligned with my own, but it seems to me that it's more important to actually get out and live it (the same goes for feminism, for that matter) than it is to sit around and discuss it. Ultimately, I spent my childhood watching older and more interesting people than me read Atlas Shrugged, and I would be disappointed if I never got around to reading it myself.

I'm about 100 pages in (out of 1000+). It took me a good 20 or 30 just to keep myself from laughing at the book, which definitely takes itself too seriously at times. And it's a little frustrating how similar the ~~caricatures~~ characters in Atlas Shrugged are to those in The Fountainhead. On the other hand, it's fun to read, because it's fun to daydream about a world where people spend a lot of time dramatically posed on top of cliffs and skyscrapers, where they bask in the power of their accomplishments, or lament the human condition, or whatever. It would be nice if everyone's personalities and motives were so clear-cut. Also, if this sort of thing were to take place today, it would be much less interesting because they could just go and look up John Galt on Wikipedia, and figure out who he was once and for all.

One thing that's never sat well with me is how Rand portrays completely man-made things as being more awe-inspiring than anything natural. (Here's the beginning of Atlas Shrugged: there used to be this really spectacular tree in Eddie Willers' front yard, until it rotted out and was struck by lightning and DIED, and he was crushed and never trusted nature again. Or something like that.) I've always thought that our most spectacular creations are those that mesh with their environment perfectly, merging the natural and the man-made...and I'm not sure the philosophy in these books is totally against that, either. But passages that extol the beauty of subway tunnels ("She watched the tunnels as they flowed past: bare walls of concrete, a net of pipes and wires, a web of rails that went off into black holes where green and red lights hung as distant drops of color. There was nothing else, nothing to dilute it, so that one could admire naked purpose and the ingenuity that had achieved it.") are a bit much.

But the most important question at this point is: Who is Dagny going to sleep with? The female protagonist in The Fountainhead, Dominique, really got around, and I don't expect any less from Dagny. There are at least 4 or 5 men so far who I could definitely see her with at some point, and really, anyone but her brother is fair game. Time will tell...

Lettuce rant.

2008-02-05T23:24:00.001-05:00

I hate iceberg lettuce. This is something I would enjoy on a sandwich:

(from Wikipedia)

This is something I might use for bedding in a hamster cage:

I'm not sure that there are too many people out there who find shredded iceberg as repulsive as I do, but I am sure that they don't live in Philadelphia. Ok, the shredded stuff is cheaper, but I'd be hard-pressed to find a sandwich shop on campus that actually used Romaine (and made sandwiches that were less expensive than, say, $7).

Whatever, that's just my opinion. But what really pisses me off is when I'm forced to eat the stuff, or pick out the individual shreds, because people don't seem to understand that no lettuce means no lettuce.

Here's a (dramatic reenactment of a) conversation I had last night:
"What would you like on your burger? Tomatoes, lettuce, onions...?"
"Tomatoes, and onions, but no lettuce."
"No lettuce?! Are you sure?"
"No lettuce."

I bet you can see where this one is going. Shredded iceberg lettuce does not belong on a burger (and there were no onions either, by the way), so I had to pick it out, ketchup-covered shred by shred.

There's another place I order from sometimes, that makes the most amazing portobello mushroom wraps. They're filled with warm and juicy grilled vegetables and they melt in your mouth. Yum. Except that the last couple of times I've ordered, they've added...shredded iceberg lettuce. I really don't get this. When you them order online, you have to explicitly ask for lettuce. I don't. This means that someone at the restaurant must see my order, notice that I didn't ask for lettuce, and make a conscious decision to add it anyway. Some people like iceberg on their burger, fine, but lettuce of any sort on a sandwich like this is repulsive, hands down.

I apologize for writing one of the most boring things ever written, but there has got to be someone out there who's just as frustrated about this sort of thing as I am, and they will understand.

While I'm at it, I'm also frustrated about the really stupid comment someone made today in psych class. We're learning about the Stanford Prison Experiment. The premise of the whole thing was: if you take a bunch of otherwise completely normal guys and stick them in a prison environment, will the randomly-selected "guards" become sadistic and the "prisoners" feel hardened and hopeless? The answer is...yes. A resounding yes. They had to shut the experiment down after 6 days because everyone had gotten way too wrapped up in their imaginary prison world, and the everything had spiraled out of control.

So after we watch a video about this, I'm walking out of class and the girl in front of me says to her friend, "Wow, I bet the guards were really glad they weren't picked to be the prisoners instead."

No. You fundamentally misunderstood the experiment. If the "guards" had felt any sympathy for the "prisoners" at the time, would they have made them strip and do push-ups and piss in a bucket and stay locked in a closet for hours on end? Do you bring your brain to class?

Sigh.

Waiting it out

2008-02-02T17:44:00.001-05:00

Things I check while I'm waiting to hear back from grad schools:

My email. I didn't think I could possibly check my email more often than I used to, but it turns out that's not true.
The Spam Folder, just in case the good (or bad) news somehow didn't make it to my inbox. Since I don't know the names of the people I'll be getting emails from, I'm forced to open anything with a vaguely promising subject, although I draw the line at, There will be no stopping you after this. Your powers are soon to be unleashed.
My (snail) mailbox. Rumor has it that some schools actually send out admissions decisions this way, without emailing first. Certainly, good news by email is generally followed up by something in the mail. I used to check my mail once every couple of weeks, and I'd be lucky to get anything. Now, I check it every day, and sometimes twice a day (maybe they hadn't delivered the mail the first time?).
Thegradcafe.com. It's a website where people post grad school admissions results, along the lines of, "Stanford's Electrical Engineering PhD program rejected me on 1/31 by phone." I doubt I could glean any sort of accurate information from it, since it represents such a small sample of applicants, but that doesn't stop me from checking the site every 5 minutes. When I'm feeling particularly masochistic, I'll look at all the rejections from MIT in years past. They have forums, too.
School websites. Just in case I missed some key piece of information, but usually, I end up re-reading the vague promises in the graduate admissions FAQs, like, We make our final decisions in late February or early March, or We're not telling you what the average GPA/GRE/research experience of our admitted applicants is, because we like to look at the whole picture (yeah right!).
The stats on my personal webpage. Ok, now I'm getting desperate, but they are a legitimate indication of who has been Googling me lately. Not that I'm even sure what it would mean if somebody had. Perhaps they could be really, really interested in my application. Or, maybe they would want to have a laugh at the crazy girl who was naive enough to think she actually had a shot of actually getting into their institution. Or, perhaps they could need more information about me because my application was on the fence (given the current state of my website, I think my application would be hastily rejected by anyone who stumbled across it). This is all hypothetical, of course, because my website is still getting the usual 10-20 hits a month, most of them through my boyfriend's page.

A few more weeks, and I'll know about most places for sure, but the wait is painful.

Died in a blogging accident

2008-01-11T02:43:00.000-05:00

(xkcd)

A few hours ago, there were only two, but now there are at least 83 of us...

3:54 am: I'm left in awe of what a few insomniacs and/or Europeans with a nerdy sense of humor and nothing better to do can accomplish in the early morning hours. Blogging has become at least twice as dangerous as camping, and having camped a time or two before, I can attest that that's pretty scary. I'd better stop before I get struck by lightning or eaten by a bear or something.

Also, this post has gotten more hits, by far, than anything else I've ever written...although I'm not sure that's a testament to anything other than the fact that most of what I have to say isn't all that interesting. Hm.

8:19 pm: 3,220. I'm crazy to even be typing this. I might as well go skydiving...4.53 times.

This has got to stop.

2007-11-27T22:53:00.000-05:00

I'd like to go out tonight.

How about a nice dinner at Sitar, the best Indian restaurant in University City (in my humble opinion)? Whoops, forgot - there have been two shootings on that block in the past week, and a third in the past month. Scratch that.

It's ok. I'll just grab a bite at a more casual establishment: say, Allegro's, or Wawa. Well, no, that's right - can't go anywhere near Spruce Street, because that's where a still-unidentified man broke into a woman's apartment a couple of weeks ago. And raped her. Nevermind.

I can't say I'm feeling too safe to be walking anywhere on my own at night, to be honest. Doesn't Penn have a walking escort service just for that purpose? Yes - if you don't mind the occasional security guard who occasionally enjoys exposing himself.

Fine. I'll take a cab, and hope that the driver decides not to hold me at gunpoint and take me to ATMs around the city, demanding that I hand over all my money.

On second thought, I'll order in tonight. And I think I'll sleep in tomorrow - I certainly don't feel safe in class, knowing that any of my seemingly-normal professors could suddenly snap and do something as rash as, say, bludgeoning his wife to death.

You know what? I'm not leaving. I'll stock up on food, keep my door locked, and camp out here. What could possibly reach me on the fifth floor of a limited-access, professionally-guarded, on-campus apartment building? Well, ok, maybe a crazed Penn undergraduate stalker with a panty fetish who has somehow managed to steal my room key. Or maybe space aliens.

Shit.

Astrology

2007-06-15T18:16:00.000-05:00

It just so happens that I am nearly out of every cosmetic/toiletry/personal hygiene product I use on a regular basis. All at once. Shampoo, conditioner, bodywash, shaving cream, toothpaste - you name it. And if you go by the recommended "change your toothbrush every three months" rule, I'm way overdue for a new one of those, too. I suppose I've still got a good bit of deodorant left, but for consistency I may have to buy some more of that as well.

Seriously, though, when was the last time you ran out of all of that stuff at the same time? The amounts of time it takes to empty a tube of toothpaste and a bottle of conditioner, say, are vastly different (at least for me), so I never would have thought that things would work out such that I would need to replenish five different toiletry items at once. It feels like the planets have aligned...and they're pointing me in the direction of CVS.

A dream with George Bush

2007-05-31T19:21:00.000-05:00

I can't make this stuff up (well, I suppose my subconscious can):

There's been an announcement that Bush wants to declare some sort of an emergency military dictatorship, because of the war and all. Something where he gets to be dictator, appoint whoever he wants to do whatever he wants, etc. A bit vague on the details (you don't question much in dreams), but it's known for sure that us regular old citizens are going to be stuck painting buildings for the next 5 years until it's time for a reassessment of the situation (5-year plan, anyone?). Of course, we'd have to, you know, modify (destroy?) the constitution to make all this possible, but this is the sort of thing that political analysts think Bush could pull off. After hearing the announcement, I strolled through the city, talking to a friend of mine about how we hoped our science degrees would prove useful to the government and get us off the hook from painting buildings for 5+ years.

Next scene (my dreams come in scenes, or else I forget the parts that glue them together): I'm back at my house, having a nice conversation with none other than Mr. President himself. I'm a bit concerned about the whole military dictatorship thing, you see.

Me: "Have you read 1984?"
Dubya: "I don't remember titles of books. Just people - who's the author?"
Me: "...George Orwell?"
Dubya: "Hm. Never heard of him."
Me: "Well, Mr. President, you might want to read it. It's a great book, and it deals with all the sorts of things that can go wrong when you have a society that's set up under the influence of the military like this. Quite scary, really - this whole announcement has made me nervous, thinking about this book and all."
Dubya: "Shucks!" (I distinctly remember "shucks!") "That was just the sort of reaction I didn't want people to have."

Eventually, I appear to have gotten George Bush genuinely interested in reading 1984.

Me: "I do understand that you're a very busy man. But, of course, there are..."
Dubya: "...CliffsNotes? Would they really have them for this book?"
Me: "Definitely."

I'll take what I can get.

Next thing you know, I'm spelling out George Orwell's name for Bush, who scribbles it down before he's due to ride off in his limo somewhere. I spend the rest of the dream trying to find my own copy of 1984 to lend to him, but never manage to find it, and as I wake up I groggily realize that I threw it away. Because it got water damaged. Because it was sitting on the floor when my goldfish bowl spontaneously broke and leaked all over everything in the middle of the night, and I woke up just in time to save the goldfish (but not my books).

Yes, that part really did happen.

On becoming a senior, and tradition

2007-04-21T23:56:00.000-05:00

At Penn, juniors celebrate "Hey Day" on the last day of classes, where they are officially declared seniors. Hey Day is best known for debauchery from the junior class, and a one-way food fight from the senior class (more on that), but it was also one of those events where it hit me that I'm - you know - old.

Hey Day dates back a hundred years or so, but one of the most recent additions to the list of traditions associated with the celebration is that, while the juniors process through campus in celebration of their impending senior-dom, the senior class pelts food at them. It's a new tradition, but old enough that it goes back farther than the collective memory of the current undergraduates. Historically, there have been some pretty innocuous things thrown around (flour, ketchup), and some less harmless ones (eggs, and, rumor has it, urine).

A line was crossed when a student got sent to the hospital last year with an egg in their eye, and the university decided to crack down on the Hey Day food fight this year when it hit home that this was sort of like institutionalized hazing. A battle ensued on the online comment section of the Daily Pennsylvanian (which should always be taken seriously) between the seniors ("You're treating us like children!") and the 5+ year alumni ("You're acting like children!"). And, as the ominous date moved closer, it was revealed that the university's plan of action was to try and get seniors to sign an anti-hazing petition, and to hold a barbecue for complacent seniors where they would hand out "approved items" for throwing. The approved items? Streamers and marshmallows. So I was, understandably, a little bit nervous that the seniors wouldn't decide to buy into this.

On Hey Day, the juniors all wear red t-shirts, and I bought mine at the beginning of the week (this year's design made us all look like giant bottles of ketchup - cute, but ominous). It was around this time that it felt like, without warning, the juniors were slapped across the face, reminded that we couldn't stay here forever. It seems to me that traditions like these serve to force you both to remember where you've come from, and to remember that you have no idea where the hell you're going.

It was worse on the morning of Hey Day, of course. It's easy to forget about class designations at college, other than a campus-wide groan about the incoming freshmen every fall, but it's different on Hey Day. Wearing the Hey Day attire made me feel like I had a giant sign that said "I'm a junior!" on the front of me (and a target on my back). And, on top of this, there's the notion that there are a whole bunch of seniors on campus who aren't going to be around next year, and that I'm going to find myself in that position pretty soon as well. It's a bit overwhelming.

They hold a picnic for the junior class before the big event, but they have to monitor what people bring in (see: debauchery). So, basically, they throw us into a rented chain-link fence pen and let us fend for ourselves for a few hours. This is also the part where they hand out the hats and canes. Did I mention that we get hats? And canes? So cool. Of course, there's nothing like being stuck in a pen with a bunch of drunken college students, all of whom have canes.

The hats were traditionally straw but somehow evolved into Styrofoam. As goes another tradition, whenever you come across someone you know, you take a bite out of their hat (adding little bits of Styrofoam to the growing list of things that had to be cleaned up at the end of the day). I had an epiphany: namely, this is by far the best way going of greeting someone, and that people should wear straw/foam hats all year round. Seriously.

Without warning, the crowd started to leave the pen - it was clear that it was time to start the procession. I scurried to find a strategic dry spot in the crowd, squeezing through to ensure that I was not too close to the back or the right or left edge. To be honest, though, I had pretty much resigned myself to anything at that point. I wore my holiest jeans, and fluorescent yellow rubber sandals - and I had repeated the mantra, "Urine is generally sterile. Eggs are good for your skin," to the point where I almost believed it. Earlier in the day I ran into a Penn alum who commented on my striking footwear, and who was, like most alumni, appalled that we had to put up with getting food thrown at us if we wanted to celebrate Hey Day. I guess that her being appalled, while appreciated, didn't do me much good - it was far past the time where I could let this sort of thing bother me and still keep my sanity. But opinions varied wildly among my classmates; I had many friends who opted out altogether, while there were some juniors who were so enthusiastic that they started early and showed up to the picnic already covered in ketchup.

I didn't have a view of much beyond my feet as we marched around campus - I was more struck by how strongly mustard smells than by much else. The marshmallows, ironically, had formed a sticky paste on the ground, making it a little difficult to walk in flip flops. And, other than watching the people in front of me squeal and run to avoid being drenched in some nondescript liquid, or a yogurt-covered sorority girl trying to hug my boyfriend, things seemed pretty harmless - until I realized that we had to go twice the distance of what I thought we did, and that the worst was yet to come.

A minor miracle happened, though. It seemed as though the only juniors who were getting pelted were the ones who actually wanted to, while my boyfriend and I escaped relatively unscathed. I watched a fraternity guy in front of me get an egg in the shoulder, while I was left to inventory the bits of what appeared to be shaving cream that had somehow appeared on my left arm. I think that the senior class really pulled themselves together, considering that it's only been a year since the university has cracked down on the whole food thing. There were threats to cancel or seriously alter the whole event if the seniors didn't shape up, but I hope that the university decides this is unnecessary, because I'd love to be around when the next class of juniors has their Hey Day, too.

The best part was at the end, when Amy Gutmann, Penn's president, declared us seniors. From amongst the yelling and cane-waving, I was able to discern that she required us to pass one more test before letting us become seniors. Question one: "Who founded the University of Pennsylvania?" Answer: "AMY GUTMANN!!!" She giggled, "Um, that's wrong..." Question two: "Who is your class president?" Answer: "PUNEET (Amy Gutmann)!!!" Question three: "What class are you?" Answer: "08! 08! 08!" And thus, we (apparently) passed, and became seniors. It's lucky they didn't test us on our knowledge of "The Red and Blue," the school anthem, because we were supposed to sing it afterwards - about 1/3 of the class knows the words beyond the chorus of "Hurrah, hurrah Pennsylvania..." and I am definitely not one of them. But I waved my cane around. It was good enough.

American Idol, and Simon Cowell

2007-03-04T20:58:00.000-05:00

In a matter of hours, my boyfriend developed a new interest in American Idol. Or, more specifically, Simon Cowell.

It all started tonight, when he came across a blog that mentioned that there was an Indian contestant on the show this year. My boyfriend is generally disgusted with the underrepresentation of Asians (East, South, and otherwise) in American media, so naturally, he had to check this kid out. One thing led to another (YouTube works that way), and now I'm being subjected to some of the worst so-called music I've ever heard as he sits, hunched over his laptop, completely absorbed by 2 minute clips of screeching and wailing American Idol contestants who try out for the show and get shot down. It never gets old. The more screeching, the more disproportionate the overinflated ego of the contestant, and the more tears by the end of the clip, the better. Neither of us have TVs, but there's enough fodder on YouTube to keep him occupied for hours. Every 10 minutes or so, I get an email from him (we're no more than 5 feet away from each other - nevermind that we have nothing better to do on a Saturday night) with a new YouTube clip of Simon that I have to watch. "He's so genuine! He's an asshole! I love this guy!" "This is humanity at its best, right here!"

It's not just my boyfriend - my parents spend their evenings glued to American Idol, and actively look forward to the start of every new season. And, while my boyfriend will probably forget that American Idol ever existed by tomorrow morning, I feel like this is one of the few "reality" TV shows that has truly stood the test of time. In a culture where TV shows go in and out of fashion more quickly than a single season can pass by, it's a minor miracle that American Idol has managed to stay popular for so long. Refined tastes go out the window when we can sit back and watch most of these singers flounder, and then be able to personally follow a few who ultimately succeed. What is it about this show? Do we secretly wish we could tell off the self-absorbed and deluded idiots of the world, Simon Cowell style? Do we secretly love to put our heart and soul behind our favorite Ordinary Neighborhood Kid who just happens to have extraordinary talent and then nudge them a bit closer to the fame that we think they deserve with our own personal vote each week? Is it the show's refreshing simplicity? Is there just nothing better on TV? There's so much out there - what is it about this show that keeps people coming back for more, when so many other shows seem to follow the same formula and don't meet the same success?

Life, the universe, and Feynman

2007-02-18T16:23:00.001-05:00

I love moments like this - a minute before I took this picture the snow was falling so quickly that you couldn't see more than a few feet in front of the window, but then, just as quickly as the snow began, it disappeared in a matter of minutes or less, and in that fleeting moment where the sun had just started to peek out from behind the churning clouds, I had to try and snap a picture, even when I knew that all I would get was a skyline with a bunch of white dirt on it, and instead I started clumsily waxing poetic about how awesome this place and world and universe are, but then I realized that Feynman already had me beat.

"I have a friend who's an artist and he's sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree, I think. And he says - "you see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing." And I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me, too, I believe, although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is; but I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I can see much more about the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter, there is also beauty at a smaller dimension, the inner structure. Also the processes, the fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting - it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: Does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why it is aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which shows that a science knowledge only adds to the mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds; I don't understand how it subtracts."

-Richard Feynman (1918-1988)

Philadelphia snow-related wimpiness

2007-02-15T12:07:00.000-05:00

We just had our first "real" snow storm of this freakishly warm winter: after 2 straight days of continuous snowfall, a whopping 3-4 inches of snow have actually accumulated. I've seen more snow accumulate in 2 hours - Philadelphia, your winters are pathetic.

Coming from Massachusetts, I love to watch the city squirm when winter comes around. Any time the temperature approaches the freezing point, Philadelphia braces itself. "Ok, we can handle this," they say, "Bring out the salt!" Every road, sidewalk, set of stairs, and otherwise horizontal surface that might get stepped on is coated with a crunchy layer of white and blue pellets. Any dent in the sidewalk where a puddle of water might accumulate and ice could possibly form is filled in completely with salt. I lament that I can't wear my pants for weeks in a row without washing them, because the salt dries on them, making ugly, white salt stains. And Philadelphia breathes a sigh of relief knowing that the city is defended against the Perils of Ice. Speaking as someone who has could have ice skated in her driveway during the winters of her childhood, I can't help but chuckle.

The thing is, when actual snow falls, Philly freezes up. Salt can't help you now, can it? Penn does a decent job at keeping the walkways clean (they have these giant brush things that sweep up the snow, but would probably flounder in the face of the wet, heavy, and quickly accumulating stuff we often have to face up North). Philly, however, stays holed up indoors, peering out the window as the snow falls and mumbling "Please go away!" while rocking back and forth anxiously.

The result of all this is that, when I woke up yesterday and trudged to class, none of the roads had been plowed. The only thing that's more pathetic than getting only 3 inches of snow from a 2 day long storm is a city that is incapable of plowing the roads quickly enough to keep up with snow when it falls at a rate of one flake per hour. I actually laughed out loud as I gingerly stepped across the brown, slushy muck that was once a street on my way to class. I laughed as I watched people trying to clean the dusting of snow off of their cars, as this is something my father and I never used to do for our commute to school in the morning; we would run the wipers and go, chuckling as hunks of snow came flying off of our car roof on the highway. I laughed when I saw the lone facilities worker in charge of clearing (and consequently salting) stairs on campus.

Reading today's Daily Pennsylvanian, though, was the last straw - I'm thoroughly convinced that this city and this school are filled with a bunch of wimps who don't know the meaning of "winter":

"It was a combination of slush and icy streets that made College sophomore [Redacted]'s morning walk to an Annenberg class tougher than she would have expected. 'It was a pain. They should have plowed the streets earlier,' she said, adding that she had to struggle to get to class on time from her house at the corner of 41st and Spruce streets."

Say what? Did you say it was a pain to trudge 5 blocks through a few inches of snow to get to your class? Did you have to wake up, like, 5 minutes earlier to get there on time? Did your precious shoes get mucked up? Poor baby. Looks like you've never had to get up at 5 in the morning to clear the driveway enough so you can get your car out to get to school on time, because your town refused to cancel school even when all the other schools in the state had snow days. (It was my dad who got up at 5 in the morning, but I'm trying to make a point here.)

I love snow, enough so that I'm willing to zip up my boots and do a little slipping and sliding to enjoy it. Can't we all just fall on our asses, laugh about it, and have a snowball fight? Philadelphia could do better, that's for sure, but I guess I don't have the sense of self-entitlement that's necessary to feel like the sidewalks had better be dry and snow-free so I can walk to class in the morning without any inconvenience.

New York City subway etiquette

2007-02-04T17:05:00.000-05:00

I own one of those "Worst Case Survival Handbook" manuals. Mine specializes in travel emergencies: how to jump from a runaway train, how to get rid of leeches, and other stuff like that. At the back, there's a list of things that are taboo in certain parts of the world - you know, like how making the "OK" hand gesture has weird sexual connotations in various countries, etc. The most memorable, and funniest, went something like, "When on a subway in New York City, do not, under any circumstances, make eye contact with any other passengers. Read a newspaper, or stare at a spot on the floor."

I can't tell if they were trying to be tongue-in-cheek, but I was amazed at just how right they were when my boyfriend and I went on a trip to NYC this weekend. When we go, we usually get around by taxi, but with our hotel in the financial district (= far away from everything else), it finally donned on us that the subway is a perfectly legitimate and much cheaper form of transportation. Guess I never realized how eerie a trip in the New York subway can be. It feels like sitting in a library - my boyfriend and I often felt the need to speak in hushed tones, just loud enough to hear over the clanging subway car careening along the tracks.

The weird thing is that the NYC subway system is actually pretty darn nice. With one exception, all the cars we rode in were outfitted with crisp dot-matrix displays and had understandable, prerecorded announcements. They were clean, their seats were made from something indestructible, and their color scheme didn't make me want to puke. And, most importantly, the people on the subway were surprisingly non-threatening. As long as you didn't actually look at anyone, they didn't give a shit about you, either.

It's a stark contrast to SEPTA, Philly's bankrupt subway/public transportation conglomerate. First thing after arriving back at 30th Street Station, we were pretty severely heckled by an angry guy, who shoved money and an empty baseball cap at us and wouldn't go away. The atmosphere is completely different on the subway here - it's dirty, the people smell funny, and the seats are in rows, making it okay to stare at the people in front of you. I feel safer at Penn than I do in New York, but it takes guts for a 20-something woman to brave SEPTA alone.

Weirder still are the women in New York. Everyone seems to have it all together in the Big Apple - maybe they really do have it all together, or maybe New Yorkers are just really good at faking their composure, but it's impressive either way. Whatever the cause, it's this composure that makes women who would look ridiculous in any other context look bold, stylish, and chique on a New York subway car. Take some girl wearing too-tight jeans and lime green stiletto boots at Penn - likely, I'll chuckle to myself if I see her. But, put a female New Yorker in those same clothes, and put her on the subway, and I'll find myself with an odd, implacable respect for her. How do New Yorkers do that, anyway?

Also, the guy sitting across from my boyfriend and me on the NYC subway this morning pulled out a camera and surreptitiously videotaped his neighbors - looks like we might end up on YouTube, eh? So much for "You don't look at me, I don't look at you" subway car etiquette.

He/she

2007-02-02T16:00:00.000-05:00

I'm generally a stickler for grammar, but here's one exception:

Due to an angry movement demanding gender equality in every possible facet of life, the English language is in desperate need of a genderless third person singular pronoun. When referring to a person whose gender is unknown, the only options that I can think of which are both grammatically and politically correct are "one," which is haughty and often inappropriate, alternating "he" and "she," which is confusing and awkward, or my favorite: "he/she." Are we at the point where the need for equality supersedes any sense of style? What about when the "gender is only a social construct" movement picks up steam, and decides to claim that "he/she" is an inappropriate term which propagates the destructive view that people must be exclusively male or female (...how about thon!)? You probably have better things to worry about, but I don't.

There is, however, one possibility for a genderless third person singular pronoun that's widely used, but is still considered unacceptable by the keepers of the rules of grammar: "they." "They," as far as I'm concerned, is a perfectly good substitute for a more awkward choice. It's unambiguous whether "they" refers to one person or to many about 90% or the time, and when confusion is possible, it's easy to use one of the options above instead. I don't understand why authorities (like Microsoft Word, the only authority I know who is omnipotent enough to underline my grammatical mistakes in green as I type them) keep insisting that "they" is inappropriate to describe one person with an unknown gender, when adopting "they" would really help our language out.

That being said, I do know how to get "they" into English usage: use it, and use it shamelessly (I found this website after searching for this topic on Google - which I didn't think to do until just now - and they said almost precisely the same thing that I just did, only much more methodically. Whoops). I wonder what my philosophy TA would think if I started using "they" in my essays in this context...

My tuition payments fund:

2007-01-18T15:21:00.000-05:00

What are a giant penguin on a zamboni and a googly-eyed Penn Transit bus doing on Locust Walk? Apparently, Penn groups in need of a publicity boost have decided on a new advertising strategy: make a mascot. What's next? A giant condom, handing out fliers about free and anonymous HIV testing on campus? This is hilarious. It's too bad I spend my days holed up in the Engineering Quad, or I might actually get a chance to see one of these guys first hand.

I'm not sure whether or not getting a flyer from a stuffed Penn Transit bus impaled on a strange man would actually encourage me to ride the real Penn Transit bus, but these groups don't seem to care. From today's Daily Pennsylvanian, concerning our ice rink's giant penguin campaign:

"If this public relations campaign does not succeed in drawing in more students, rink officials say they will bring the penguin back."
(see this article)

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again...right?

It's better not to read the label.

2006-12-24T01:03:00.000-05:00

I went Christmas shopping in Barnes & Noble yesterday (it's really the only shopping I've done - one of the perks of having finals in mid-December). Needing to break the twenty in my pocket, I decided to buy the cheapest thing they had at the in-store Starbucks, which turned out to be their Vanilla Mints. I decided to peek at the ingredients, and I'll cut to the chase: Starbucks mints contain silicon dioxide. For the scientifically-impaired, "silicon dioxide" is the fancy chemical name for...glass. So, what the heck is glass doing in a mint? I've got nothing from a quick Google search. All I found was a patent where a tiny amount of silicon dioxide is used as a "flow agent" in those weird milk & cereal bars, a blog about snack foods where the author says something along the lines of, "These soy chips claim to be all natural, but they have 'silicon dioxide' in them...too bad I don't know what that is," and a bunch of sites that used "Starbucks" and "Silicon Valley" in the same sentence. To tell you the truth, I'd rather ingest a small amount of glass, which is inert and will likely just "pass on through," than some weird chemical that performs the equivalent function. But still, I haven't been able to find a good answer to why glass needs to be used in food processing, what it's used for, and why no other consumers seem to have figured out that they're eating glass. Hm.

Sex and the City

2006-12-23T11:42:00.000-05:00

Right, I get it - Sex and the City was bold and revolutionary, the first of its kind, etc. But have you ever noticed how the girls who are the most avid watchers of the show (I'm talking the ones who own all 6 or 10 or however many seasons on Special Edition DVD and regularly get their girlfriends together for Thursday night appletini parties, throwing out quotes from the show at random in reference to their own love lives) are also the ones who always make bad relationship decisions? Because I have. And it's time for me to watch The Simpsons.