Philosophy Department Barbeque

In front of Stuart.

Philosophy Department Library Stamp

University of Chicago
Philosophy Department
Library
Stuart Hall 216
1115 E. 58th Street
Chicago, IL 60637

Burke

Conservatism gets cleaned up.

11th and L St, NW, Washington, DC.

Photo by Melody.

Thoughtless Arrangement of Appliances

Over the past few weeks, Melody looked at something like half a dozen apartments in DC and Northern Virginia. Many suffered from thoughtless arrangement of appliances. Here are two examples (photos by Melody):


The refrigerator blocks half of the kitchen window.


Melody said that she couldn't reach the washer wedged behind the dryer. Maybe you're supposed to climb on top of the dryer to put your clothes in the washing machine?

The End of Summer

Yesterday was the first day you could tell that summer was ending. Not only were undergrads moving mattresses into grubby apartments, but it got a little chilly in the evening.

Where's Trump-o?

See if you can find Donald Trump in this picture from the first round of the US Open.

New York Rodeo

The Painted Pony Rodeo, Lake Luzerne, NY.

Jay said that it's a telling fact about a rodeo that a clown is in charge of safety.

Spending the Night in Midway Airport

Last week I got stuck in Midway Airport for 15 hours. There was nonstop lightning and heavy rain all afternoon and evening, and by midnight the airplane crews were obligated to call it a night. My flight was cancelled, but they appropriated a new flight to handle all of the passengers from my airplane that was supposed to leave at 6:40 the next morning. So I decided to spend the night. They put out maybe a hundred cots that were all occupied by the time I decided to go looking for a place to sleep:



I wandered around the gates looking for a spot to set up a little bivouac, but all of the obvious spots (including everything near a wall outlet) were taken. After a couple of laps around the terminal, I spotted a small space behind a Northwest Airlines desk that was isolated and semi-private. When I walked back into the space to investigate, I found that it had a covered floor socket, and that someone had stashed a folded cot behind a storage locker. So I set up a little makeshift capsule hotel for myself and got some fitful sleep under the bright flourescent lights.



The cot had one absurd design flaw: whenever you shifted your position at all, it made a loud, comical squeaking/stretching sound. I managed to drive off a person who was sitting about 20 feet away by continually readjusting my position on the cot. And there was noticeable annoyance in the larger areas where the cots were assembled, because there was a loud squeaking always coming from some cot as people were trying to fall asleep.

Santa Barbara Shellfish Company

The Santa Barbara Shellfish Company is at the end of the Santa Barbara pier, in a spot where you'd expect to find only tourist tat and terrible food. But, surprisingly, the food is pretty good, and you can sit just feet from the water. The seagull scavengers were preoccupied with a big dumpster we passed on the way in so they left us alone.

We didn't know the difference between spider crab and rock crab so the waiter brought us a sample of a spider crab. It was thrashing around.

(Photo by Melody)

The waiter said that the four pound spider crab he was holding wouldn't be enough food for two people. Instead, he recommended two orders of the rock crab special. Two orders of the special was more food than we could possibly eat.



The crab was good, and fun to disassemble. But I had forgotten that eating an enormous amount of crab becomes a chore and the sweetness of the crab eventually becomes cloying. I longed for more onion rings or something else salty to offset the sweetness of the crab.

La Super-Rica

La Super-Rica in Santa Barbara.

We waited probably 45 minutes for lunch, and it was more or less worth it. I really didn't mind the waiting, since I had company. I think the long wait is explained by the tiny kitchen:



Once we ordered, the food was ready quickly (with the exception of a gordita which took about ten minutes). The corn tortillas smelled fantastic and the pinto beans were spicy and savory. Our favorite item was the roasted pepper and cheese item in the upper left corner of the picture below, but the beef and pork tacos were also good. We were worried when the food arrived that it wouldn't be enough, because the tacos are small. But we learned that there was plenty of food and that we're not particulary good at estimating how much is required to satisfy our appetite.



If it were raining, the wait probably would have been shorter.

Tracks

It's easy to get lost when you leave the car and start walking around in California. We took a wrong turn on the way to a place to have breakfast and ended up crossing some train tracks and running into the 101, which is an impassible obstacle for foot traffic.

(Though the freeway is not impossible to navigate by foot--on a recent trip to LA, I saw a friend of a friend run across five lanes of traffic on the 101 to rescue two bags of luggage that fell off the roof of our van into the car pool lane. He rescued one bag intact, and, amazingly, retrieved the contents of the second which were spread over several lanes after it got hit by a car. He was then trapped on the center concrete divider, but some friendly person stopped in her car to give him a lift to safety. The whole situation made me think of Concrete Island.)