Mindless Philosopher

I came across this interesting article in Ha’aretz about the history of the Gaza Strip and how that pertains the to the current disengagement.

Tuesday I headed deep into enemy territory. Dodging portraits of Gerald Ford, Dick Cheney, and Alan Greenspan, I ate lunch with a fellow pre-PhD student at AEI. They must have sensed a disturbance in the ideological flow of the room because it took a while for us to be served. The food was delicious, though not as divine as Cafe 15’s dinner (which I was treated to Wednesday night).
Slipping further into uncharted territory, I attended my first national league game Tuesday evening. RFK doesn’t look as bad as I thought it would (I’m impressed by the retractable wall and stands), but the overall ballpark experience was poor for several reasons. One of which was that the game took 3 hours! What happened to the 2-hour National League games I was promised? Also, there were a ton of empty lower-level seats–though I’m sure they were paid for but unused by area businesses and hot shots. (On the other hand, the Nats still lose out on potential concession profits from the no-shows.)
The Nationals lost to the Marlins, but the O’s won (my Dad and I spent way too much time checking the out-of-town scoreboard for AL East games).
Continuing with the trend on Tuesday, I rushed back from the ballpark to Chu’s, where I made my first cake from scratch. We conjured up a tasty Raspberry-Blueberry cake for the purpose of entering Mellman Group cake-off. Sadly, we didn’t win, but our cake received many compliments from the judges. Next month the category is Cheesecake, and we’ll be much more prepared.
Speaking of uncharted territory, given these trends, MIT will probably have its first majority female student body in the near future.

Played some ultimate last night with the West Wing crew (as there was no West Wing to watch). We used “cool”-Amy’s glow in the dark frisbee. And, I hate sounding sexist, but my team of six women and me absolutely decimated, evicerated, and obliterated the opposing team of three guys and four women. Girl power, woo!
Speaking of getting decimated, evicerated, and obliterated, DC United got served last night in the CONCACAF semifinals 5-0. Well, I guess we can’t win every year (PDF).
In other news…

Sam: By the way, my Princeton Tigers could whip your Cal Bears any day of the week.
C.J.: At what?
Sam: Logarithms, possibly.

Damn skippy, Sam. Possibly.

The hall below my former quarters at MIT built a USB-controlled Dance Floor–pretty nifty (video here. Go First East!
Also, my predisposition to shaking my leg is genetic and shared by 15% of the US population. Ah…one step closer to “normal.”

Turns out you can do some interesting customizations with Google Maps. If I ever bring back Bottled Lightning, this extension would be a great vehicle for walk lists.
Found on Slashdot: CalTech Hacks MIT Prefrosh Weekend [link removed because the site disappeared]. There’s an open invitation for MIT hackers to have at CalTech’s (upcoming) Prefrosh Weekend. For once in my life, I’m rooting for Tetazoo.

Saw Donnie Darko last night (for free) at Georgetown Loews. I’m not really sure what to make of the movie. I feel that the writer had a lot of interesting points to make but that these insights lacked a common thread. Perhaps the point of the movie is out there, but I’m just missing it. Though, on the other hand, Billy Collins would probably just tell me to hold the movie “up to the light like a color slide” instead of “beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.”
Chu and I also finished up with the innards of the TiVo. (Well almost finished: there’s still an CD-DVD audio cable that I need to buy.) But, the matter of which Linux distribution to use is still an open question. Eliminating KnoppMyth based on Rachel’s feedback, and dropping Slackware since it’s still based on the 2.4 Kernel, I’m left with Fedora, SuSe, and Debian as my top 3. Someone out there must have some words of wisdom on this.
So if people have either (a) an interpretation of Donnie Darko or (2) knowledge of Linux distros, I’d love to hear about it.

After all those grad school visits, it was time to have some fun. Karen, Mike, Dawn, and I went out to dinner in Davis Square Friday night. Karen and Mike took us to one of their favorite restaurants and at the beginning of the meal asked the waiter his name since they eat there so often. Of course, by the end of the meal they had forgotten it, so asking didn’t do a whole lot of good. (I did remember that his name was either Tetsen or Testen, and a Google search favors the latter.)
After dinner we went bowling at Sacco’s. After two frustrating games, the joy of candlepin came back to me and I started to bowl well again. Karen took the first game, Mike won the second, but I managed to edge them both out in total pins over the thirty frames. Dawn did less well, but still had lots of fun :)
Saturday I visited Kate and Priya before driving the first leg of my return journey. Just outside of NYC (Bronxville) I met up with Chicklet and (shockingly) we decided not to wait outside in the pouring rain for the Ave Q lottery. Instead we went to the Upright Citizens Brigade theatre and watched some pretty funny improv.
But actually, the funniest part of the evening wasn’t at that Chelsea theatre. It occurred when Chicklet and I took the commuter train from Bronxville to NYC. When the train arrived in uptown Manhattan we walked (admittedly slowly) off the train. Just as we about to disembark the “doors closing” chimes rang, and I futilely tried to stop the huge, sliding, automatic door from closing on us with my forearm. I was able to hop onto the platform but Chicklet wasn’t so lucky: the doors closed right between us, leaving me in the station and her on the train. Thank goodness we live in the age of cell phones, because I truly don’t know what we would have done otherwise. We met up at the Met, our original destination.
Sunday I raced back to help Mookie with a database he needs for a VA delegate race that he’s running. We met with Barson in JBird’s new pad, which is nice but in an extremely ugly part of DC. Jarel and a Michelle (from the DNC) were also there to help JBird move in. We got to look through his old scrapbooks, which included funny junior high pics :)
Also Sunday I went to Leahy’s birthday party where her boyfriend Erich made the most delicious (and most unhealthy) french toast. Later that night, Wass and I met up for the first time since she moved down here from MIT. We ate at this great Labanese place in Old Town (I don’t remember it’s name other than it had the word “Pita” in it) and then spent the rest of the evening unsuccessfully searching for anything else open.
Monday: Nick, Sean, and Amy came over to watch UNC (mostly) dominate Illinois. Sadly I didn’t win any money this year. (Though that was certainly expected after Kansas’ early exit.)
Tonight: Santos won the nomination (shocker!) in an extremely anti-climactic West Wing. But next week we’re planning to play some ultimate with a glow-in-the-dark disc.

I successfully visited four grad schools in three days. I met with 18 professors and post-docs, and several more grad students. I was only late to one of those meetings (damn traffic on 95!), and I really learned a lot about the schools (well, excepting for MIT: after living there for five years, I really don’t need to watch a promotional video).
Princeton: This was the only school on this trip that I visited during the official prospective student days. I had lots of half-hour meetings with professors, went on a tour with one of the current grad students, and Prof Bartels invited the Americanists over for dinner at his large and beautiful house. It was odd being on a campus where the poli sci building was closer to center campus than computer science (certainly not the case at MIT).
Columbia: What I found interesting about Columbia is that the school is on a platform above the city’s street level. Thus, they are able to build a somewhat normal-looking campus in the “middle” of Manhattan. Besides the obvious symbolism between academics and city-dwellers, I think the setup works quite nicely. The department was nice enough to send me to lunch with other grad students in the fancy faculty dining hall. The desserts ther were phenomenal.
Yale: In direct contrast to Columbia, this campus is built into the city of New Haven much more than I expected. Unfortunately, most of the professors in my subfield weren’t around to talk. I met with post docs and took a tour of Yale that was mainly tailored for undergrads. During the tour I stepped on an unlucky stone by accident–the tour guide didn’t warn us! (I say “an unlucky stone” instead of “the unlucky stone” since given the amount of superstition on that campus, I’m sure there are more than one. Perhaps this mysticism comes from the culture of the secret societies.)

Mara was kind enough entertained me Thursday evening; Sam D stopped by as well. Mara, her sister, and I had famous New Haven brick-oven pizza; following dinner we went to the Yale Rep theatre (the one with the big red doors). I can’t say that the play we watched (Miss Julie) was all that engaging–I started to doze off at some points (hey, all these meetings tire you out).
MIT: Thanked my former professors for giving me such a great undergrad education that I got in to all these schools!
For the curious, I am closer to making a decision, but you’ll have to ask me about it personally, as some of the aforementioned schools have visited MindlessPhilosopher.
More on the non-school part of my trip later. (Chicklet and I are trying the Avenue Q lottery again tonight.)

Oklahoma: Well, the people are very nice. I’m not sure they’re used to our east coast mentality. My boss and I were at an italian restaurant in Oklahoma Cities and had just ordered, when my boss got an “emergency” email on his blackberry and had to spend the entire meal talking on his bluetooth headset in a corner of the restaurant. Well, I wasn’t going to just sit there and eat alone (while his food got cold), so I pulled out my Treo and talked to Chicklet. My boss got back to the table just in time to ask the waitress to give us the check and pack up his entire meal :) … she was very understanding, but it seemed that not too many Okies from Muskogee try to pull that.
Speaking of Okies from Muskogee, I finally heard that song and I must say I was slightly offended. What? We don’t wave American flags in courthouses on the coasts?! Sure, you don’t do LSD or light up, but you get drunk off your arses from “white lightning!” Please. Get over yourselves.
Friday I played Settlers of Catan with Nick and Sean. You may recall that last time we played I went 1-1. The outcome was the same this time as well. (If not for a stupid, stupid move on my second turn of game #2 I would have gone 2-0.)
This weekend I got over a small cold (it was nothing to sneeze at). Also, Chu and I started work on my TiVo, which consisted of putting lots of little connectors into the right pin. It was high school microelectronics all over again. Now the motherboard is connected to the case, so today I ordered a hard drive, CD/DVD-burner, memory, and TV tuner. I also started the bit torrent for the OS (though I’m still deciding between KnoppMyth and Fedora…suggestions?).
On Sunday, I attended my first Easter party. With no clue what traditional vegetarian Easter food is, I decided to bring some Charoset–traditional Passover food. It wasn’t my best batch, but people liked it (it’s hard to go wrong with Charoset). And I used my honed Afikomen-finding skills to locate four of the nine eggs hidden throughout Miranda’s living room. I didn’t partake in egg-dyeing: I figured egg-hunting made me a good enough Pagan.
NCAA update: I plummeted to the 59th percetile in ESPN’s challenge. But, while I’m out of the running in my office pool, I’m still in the running in the family pool and am 6th out of 88 in the large Capital One office pool (I know someone who works there). Thus, if Louisville beats Michigan St. in the national championship (assuming they beat Illinois and UNC, respectively), then I win $25 in the Strauss pool and have a really good shot at $250 in the Capital One pool. A longshot with those teams, I know, but something to root for.
Tomorrow I leave for a east coast road trip (this time with a new SmartTag card: yay!). The agenda is Princeton, NJ (Wed.)->Columbia in NYC (Thur.)->Yale (Thur., Fri.)->MIT (Fri., Sat.)->NYC again (Sat., Sun.)->home for a friend’s birthday party on Sunday. Hopefully, I’ll be able to report in at least once on the trip.

Even with the Kansas loss mentioned below, my NCAA picks for the first two rounds weren’t bad at all. I’m winning the Mellman Group office pool, running in the 98th percentile in ESPN, and moving up in the all-important family pool. My later picks are such that I’m not expecting to win the office pool, but if Louisville goes deep I’ll almost certainly finish in the money in the Strauss pool. Fly, Cardinal, fly!
I got back from U of M on Saturday night, just in time to attend Jenna’s birthday party at the Casablanca restaurant. There we were served delicious Moroccan food and entertained by belly dancers. Later, with the staff playing “Happy Birthday” as impetus, Jenna showed off her belly dancing skills on the floor. (She had taken a few classes.) As the group was working out the bill, Jenna gave me a quick lesson, which had the desired comedic effect on those observing. It was just a restaurant full of people watching me make a fool of myself: nothing too unusual.
Sunday, with Chu’s help, I actually had a meal at home (stuffed portobello mushrooms–yummy). But now I’m traveling again–I’ll be in this great flat state of Oklahoma until Thursday. You really can’t find vegetarian food in here–I ordered a house salad and it came with bacon on it. My cab driver from the airport was taken aback by my diet: “Even turkey, too?” he asked incredulously. (Supposedly Tulsa, my destination Wednesday, is more forgiving to us herbivores.)
But, as long as I avoid the tornadoes everything should be fine.