How the University of Chicago Stays Warm

In the basement of Rosenwald.

Oriental Institute Library

D.G. told me about this place in a comment on the previous post. The library is up on the second floor of the Oriental Institute. There's an Indiana Jones vibe up there--I walked past a couple of open offices stuffed with weird fetishes and piles of musty books. Maybe the Ark of the Covenant was up there.

The library was very pleasant. Quieter than the Div school library, with almost no traffic noise. The chairs were big wooden affairs, less comfy than the Div school but still conducive to study. I had a pleasant afternoon reading a couple chapters of Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science in here.

Div School Library

When I was an undergrad, I thoroughly explored my college campus, in search of secluded places to study. I did find a cool library, the Kennedy Bioethics Library, in the Healy building. For whatever reason, I haven't really looked around Chicago for a similar spot, even though I've been here for five years. Last night, I was walking around campus without anything to do. I walked into the Seminary Co-op building, and decided to climb the stairs leading up the chapel. The chapel was closed, but down a paneled hallway, lined with portraits, I could see a spiral staircase and what looked like a library. I asked the girls working at the desk of the co-op what was upstairs. They said that it was the Div School library. Maybe a good place to get some thinking done?

Regenstein and Max Palevsky

More Gothic Gloom

More from the drizzly walk to campus yesterday.

Winter Break at U of C

I walked to campus today to pick up my CAS check. It has been raining, and all the snow has melted. No one was around, and campus looked especially gloomy.

Spiritual Exercises

Philosophy department, University of Chicago. Final paper drop box for Prof. Arnold Davidson's Spiritual Exercises and Moral Perfectionism class.

Rally Against the Common Application

Students rally against the common application at the University of Chicago. They are chanting: "Who are we not? BROWN! Who are we not? HARVARD! Who are we? CHICAGO! What are we? UNCOMMON!" Etc. As you can see, we got the first real snow of the year a couple days ago.

Terrible Water

I was waiting for a fellowship interview earlier this week up on the second floor of Walker, and I was so nervous that my mouth was all dry. I started frantically looking around for a drinking fountain, and I drank from this one without even noticing the sign until I took a big swig.

The water had an initial kind of citrusy taste that wasn't unpleasant, but it had a pretty foul unidentifiable aftertaste.

Lite Brite Neon

Outside Wy's studio, Brooklyn, NY.

The Rolls

More fun courtesy of Isaac & Jenny and the Manhattan Classic Car Club: the 1989 Rolls Royce Corniche II. You sit incredibly high off the ground, surrounded by all kinds of knobs and analog dials, including an analog temperature gauge. In the passenger seat, there was a champagne flute chiller by my right knee. And it's a convertible. As we cruised around Brooklyn with the windows down, no one asked us for some Grey Poupon, but we got lots of stares and one woman approached us at a light and said, "Is that a Rolls? Niiiice." I thought riding around in this kind of car would provoke a class war, but people seemed pleased just to see the Rolls roll by.