Poking the village idiot

Nothing like a well-mixed metaphor on a hot day, is there?

But holy cow! I could not believe the headlines this morning!

Congress spat in Bush's eye, took a dump on Wall Street, and rubbed Obama and McCain's noses in it!

Hurrah! I realize that they've probably precipitated a global financial crisis that will be the end of all of us, but when the hell did congressmen grow balls?

We're all going down in flames - but by God, America's still swingin'!

Sabaah il riir from the Left Coast! I am now an AssProf (as my brother Toby likes to call me) in the Department of Bioengineering at Stanford. Perhaps an appropriate name, given the content of my previous blog post. I have to say, one of the most exciting things that has happened to me in the last week is that my car arrived, which meant that I could go shopping, which meant that I could FINALLY buy toilet paper. What was Casey using to clean up after his Sudokus before that, you might well ask. Well, my strategy was to pilfer a TP roll from somewhere on campus, or a restaurant, or even the rental office if it came down to it (hey, they’re charging me $2500/month for a 1BR, they can afford a roll of 2-ply). However, the Bay Area seems to have cottoned on to this: every roll in sight was bolted down in some container from which extraction was impossible. So, I resorted to the tactics of my pilgrim forefathers, using anything that came my way (handtowels from the sink, napkins from the cafeteria, you name it). I just found out today from the Omnivore’s Dilemma that this is where the slang term “corn hole” comes from: pilgrims using husks of corn on their oh-so-sensitive bums.

(Speaking of Omnivore’s Dilemma, I was reading the book today while sitting in an In ‘N Out Burger, eating a Double Double Animal Style and Animal Style double-fried fries. I wonder if this is the form of consumption the author intended…)

Now that the essentials of life were taken care of, I moved on to matters of work. First, to order business cards. Tiffany had a great idea for a name for my website: http://whatislife.stanford.edu. “What is Life” is a great short treatise on biology written by Schrodinger, of feline fame. I just received a box of 500 beautifully printed business cards, and showed them to Tiffany, just like this:

Let’s see if you notice the same thing I did when I turned it back around to face me (there’s a hint at the end of this post).

Things are pretty uniformly great here, except for the fact that Tiffany and I have been twisting ourselves into knots trying to meet somewhere. I’m teaching on Mondays, she teaches on Thursdays, so it is basically impossible to meet, even in London or NYC, for anything longer than a Friday night to Sunday morning jaunt. If you have any suggestions, we would very much appreciate them.

For any of you who are coming through the Bay Area at any point, please drop me a line and hopefully we can connect.

Hint: I’m not an Engiener.

Techno-terrorism

I admit, I'm really lazy about following the news. Anywhere.

Not having a TV really helps. So does being too cheap to buy newspapers or magazines. I make a pass through the New York Times every day if I can manage, but if I don't, it doesn't keep me awake at night.

So of course I saw a few blurbs about the terrible train wreck on Friday in LA that killed something like 25 people. As an EMT, I can begin to picture way too clearly what a scene like that must've looked like. And sounded like. And smelled like.

But KC sent me this link that really got my attention:

It looks like the train driver was text messaging just before he blew through the red light signals intended to avoid just such a catastrophe.

I'm aware of the irony that I use Web 2.0 technology to rail against, well, things like technology, and teenagers, and the general state of society. But on the other hand, I tried using Twitter after reading about the kid who got out of an Egyptian jail by using the software. I enrolled, and then after about an hour I turned it off, because it was just too irritating. I realized I didn't actually care what any of my friends were doing every second of their day.

This guy who was supposed to be driving the train may have been texting with a 15-year-old just a minute before the train crashed. Leaving 25 people dead.

I rant and rave at my students about leaving the laptops out of my classroom (too many distractions) and making sure I never even see, let alone hear their cell phones. I admit, at rock bottom I'm annoyed by their lack of attention, and the concordant lack of respect for me that this seems to imply. "Just pay attention!" I want to scream. "Pay attention to what you're doing so I don't have to repeat myself 20 times and respond to 40 emails asking me the same stupid question I've already answered!"

(Ahem. Can you tell what I've been doing for the last few days?)

I'm accumulating evidence to support my remarkably-informed, even-keeled, social theory of What's Gone Wrong With Everything. Maybe I should write it out one of these days ... what do you call that again?

Manifestos?

Oh, no, wait, I remember ... they're called blogs.

Set game face to ON

Tomorrow's D-Day for me: my first day on the New Campus.

Short proposal summary: AUC is relocating from its 90-yr-old location in downtown Cairo to a site an hour east into the desert.

Short results summary: Fiasco.


Analysis: shocker. In some sense, I'm not sure what I thought was going to happen. Did I really believe that a massive building project was going to be completed on time and in a quality fashion in this country? Guess I was dreaming. The Pyramids, this ain't.

To their credit, AUC has been driving their contractors like demons, trying to make things as good as possible for the opening of the school year - during Ramadan, no less (my response? Hire Christians!). And a lot of the buildings are standing, most of them with the normal parts like windows, and doors, and such. There are flagrant exceptions to this, but on the whole, it's not that bad - overall.

Even though classes started yesterday, though, I'm hearing that none of the science labs are operational. The large auditorium (which we use for my class) is nonfunctional, although there appears to be a substitute that will either be adequate or a disaster. I'll find out next week. Supposedly the majority of the 140 classrooms will be "usable", which means (I think) desks, and whiteboards, and maybe but not necessarily lightbulbs. Forget projection hookup or any of the much touted "Smart" features of these new classrooms.

As for yours truly, I'm waaaaay up the proverbial creek. I have a big, beautiful office that is completely bare. No, wait, I'm lying. It's filthy, so I suppose there technically is stuff in there. But there's no furniture - not a stick. The picture I'm showing here is what my office will look like, insha'allah, in some undisclosed future. When it's done, my office will be obscenely large and well-apportioned. I've got so many bookcases, I'm thinking of going out and buying some pottery to put in them.

Don't even get me started on the transport system out there, or my hour-long commute each way (which I've done once and it wasn't that bad). My office stuff - most of which I need for class - is in some Egyptian Area 51 because it can't be moved into my office. First I need furniture, then I need to have the stolen battery replaced in the electronic doorlock. Then, God willing, someone will give me my stuff back (which has been boxed since the end of May, because I was told it would be moved in June. Hahaha), and at some even later mysterious date, I might actually be able to use my computer. You know. For working.

It's good to know things could always be worse. Moving the university could've been my job.

Not in my backyard

Thanks to you Alert Readers out there, I heard about the Cairo rockslides. Notice the part in the article about the smell - it's been in the high 90's every day here for awhile.

This is nowhere near me - Muqattam is way out on the edge of the city.

The BBC is running a bunch of images of the devastation, like this one:


And, well, it was only a bunch of desperately poor people living in illegal slum housing, right?

Right?

I occasionally find myself wondering which particular straw is going to break the camel's back here. And when.

A woman I could vote for

I just finished Maureen Dowd's column about Sarah Palin. I especially enjoyed this part:

The movie ends with the former beauty queen shaking out her pinned-up hair, taking off her glasses, slipping on ruby red peep-toe platform heels that reveal a pink French-style pedicure, and facing down Vladimir Putin in an island in the Bering Strait. Putting away her breast pump, she points her rifle and informs him frostily that she has some expertise in Russia because it’s close to Alaska. “Back off, Commie dude,” she says. “I’m a much better shot than Cheney.”

If only it were true! Now that's a candidate I could get behind.

Especially while she's reloading.

Dahab Diving, Done

Got back late last night from the Dahab trip, so I'm back safe in Cairo.

After my trouble with the dive on Day 3, I took the rest of the afternoon off. I woke up on Day 4, filled with determination - I was not going to squander the rest of this dive trip! So I signed on for a return trip to the Bells and the Blue Hole.

The wind had continued its surprising onslaught during the night, but the water wasn't nearly as rough as it was on Day 3, so I had hope. We got a slightly late start, though, so the dive site was very crowded - and there was a line to enter the Bells.

The dive was fine, although the visibility was worse than the last time I'd gone to the site on Day 2 - but not nearly as bad as the murk at Islands on Day 3. I didn't have any really outstanding encounters either, probably because I couldn't see too well. But it was a good solid dive, it was led by my friend, and I was glad to be back in the water.


The big event of the day, however, happened a few hours after our return - my friend completed her dive master certification! I know I never would have made it through her training - it took a month, and I'm awed by the physical, mental, and emotion exertion she went through. Truly astonishing - she's got the right stuff.

To celebrate, we did a victory lap - she guided her husband and me as her first bona-fide certified dive master dive. We did a nice easy dive in the bay in front of the dive center - a dive called Lighthouse to Bannerfish Bay. The vis was lousy, but the dive was quite pleasant - a grassy slope with a bit of coral, a bit of sand, and a bit of junk - which marine critters love. We were looking specifically for two things: a turtle (which KL's never seen - I told her about Abu Dabab), and a seahorse (which I've never seen). Both eluded us, but I saw a baby pufferfish the size of my thumb joint, an equally small (perfectly formed and colored) triggerfish, and two cranky eels (one white, one yellow) inhabiting the same teeny rock cluster. Pipefish abounded, there were flounder, crabs, and two types of sea cucumbers.

All in all, the trip was excellent. I was very happy with the dive center, Dahab was cool, and best of all, I wasn't staying in a resort. I had four outstandingly good dives, and if the weather hadn't turned, I'm sure the rest would have been just as good. I managed to get 7 dives in, 3 of which were deep dives (about 30 m). Current dive total: 37, plus 5 training dives. I had a really fun time with my friends and met some nice new people.

[sigh] Now I guess it's back to reality. Including the potential disaster of the move to the new campus before classes start on Sunday.