Sidewalks of Buenos Aires

This may sound like a totally random, and fairly ridiculous topic, but one of the things I adore about Buenos Aires are the sidewalks. They change so much. In the US, the sidewalks are really a public space in that they are built and maintained by the city, which tends to mean a pretty uniform type of paving tile or concrete slab.

In Buenos Aires, this is not so.

As far as I can tell, the building is responsible for the sidewalk directly in front of it. This makes for patchwork sidewalks. There are poured concrete sections, pathways of small square paver stones, portions of patterns pavers, even painted tiles. It is less than predictable, and for some reason, to me, completely lovely. It is just one of the ways that Buenos Aires is different than every other city I have been in. The city has such a lovely mix of everything, not just sidewalk tiles.

I feel like I am part of the city waking up as I walk to work.

Argentina is not a country of early risers. Because of the schedule of the consular division, I work from 8 to 5, which is considered very early to start work. I am on the streets before the rush starts, and see shopowners putting up their awnings, unlocking their doors. I see how every morning the doormen of buildings and the owners of shops wash off the sidewalks in front of their buildings. I feel like an insider, like I get to see the city before it is all shiny and polished and ready for business. And feeling like an insider, well, that feels good.

Things one learns in the post office

Fact of the day: international postage for a letter (this being an item in an envelope weighing less than one ounce) from the US to anywhere else in the world (not on the North American Continent) is 94 cents. This seems semi-relevant, since several of us will be departing to bits of the world not on the North American Continent at various points throughout the year. I think it will cost more than 94c to get there though.

Notes on France: Red Buttons

As you may or may not know, I’ve been in France for the past 6 weeks. During my time there, I didn’t post anything here, so I’m going to write a few post-posts about my trip and various things in France. During my time there, it was mostly the little cultural differences that I took the most note of. Example: red buttons. Now, I can’t vouch for any other countries, but I know that growing up in the US, at least, has taught me a fear and respect for the omnipresent red button. Maybe it’s the emergency stop in an elevator, maybe it’s the alarm button in a building, maybe in milder cases it’s just a “cancel” button– wherever it’s found, there seems to be a simple rule: Don’t Touch the Red Button. Seriously, you don’t want to go there. Alarms, bells and whistles, the police, Something that you don’t want to happen will happen if you press that button, so it’s best to just leave well enough alone unless the situation is dire. As I discovered my first few weeks abroad, this is not the case in France. The school I went to was about a 25-minute walk from the place I was staying, so I sometimes walked and sometimes took the bus. My first time on the bus, as I was checking my maps and watching every street that went past, determined not to miss my stop, I realized that I didn’t know how to call for the bus to stop. There was no convenient cord to pull on, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I started watching the other passengers, looking for an answer that I found quickly enough – a button! I could see the man press a button on a post, and sure enough, “Arret Demandé” appeared at the front of the bus. I looked for a button in my area, and found one, except…it was red. I watched some more people, and sure enough, seemed to me that the red button was the way to go. Now, logically, it was easy for me to tell myself, “Okay, press the red button when you want to get off the bus,” but it was inexplicably difficult for me to actually press that button. There was even a little picture on the button of a man getting off a bus, but I still had a feeling that something bad would happen when I pressed the button. It didn’t. Even armed with the bus experience, I found myself in a similar situation just last week, in Paris. I was staying at a friend’s apartment, and I was going out to walk around a bit. The apartment entrance has two doors with codes, one to the building, and a set of double-doors to the alley in general. I left the building, got to the alley door, and pulled the handle to go out. The door didn’t open. I tried pushing, still nothing. I looked at the other door. Where the handle should have been was a black contraption with, you guessed it, a big red button in the middle. Now, unlike the bus situation there was no convenient picture, no people around to observe – just me, in an alley, with a red button. I spent about a minute trying the other handle again, looking around on the door for any other opening mechanism, before I finally decided it was probably the red button. I admit, I considered whether or not I could open the latch with a credit card in an attempt to avoid that button, such has it been ingrained in me that Red Buttons Are Bad. Even after coming to the conclusion that it had to be that button, I stood looking at the door for probably another minute, steeling myself, and even as I pressed the button, I was cringing, sure that alarms would sound any second. Again, they didn’t, and it seemed just as illogical to me then as it does now that such a little thing as a red button can override reasonable thinking to the extent that it did for me. Maybe I’ll take comfort in the fact that somewhere, someday, a Frenchman will press an unmarked red button and set off all manner of alarms, because he wasn’t raised with an (un?)healthy paranoia of red buttons.

The Case for Mars: The Musical

I am a nerd, and I have no problem admitting it. Specifically, I am an astrophysics/ cosmology nerd. My nerd credentials include attending nerd camp at Stanford University (Introduction to Cosmology) and doing astronomy research with a UAA professor senior year of high school. And, here's a secret, I love really nerdy sciencey cool stuff. This ranges from interplanetary trivia to goofy science videos. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where this comes in:



This video was made by a project called Symphony of Science, and there are many more like it. They take snippets of speeches and television programs by prominent astrophysicists, astronomers, physicists, cosmologists, aerospace engineers, etc. and auto-tune them into a song. The goal? "to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form." I'd say they do a pretty good job at that. Plus, Carl Sagan is my idol.

Who says textbooks can't be mildly amusing?

The section we just read in my womens' studies book is entitled "Women, Power, and Politics." One of the issues it discussed was women involvement in the military. In a sidebar about a study done in 2000 on opinions among military men about women serving in the military, I found this tidbit:
"Although a relationship between leadership potential and upper body strength has yet to be discovered, men expressed resentment toward women who were securing leadership roles in the military withough necessarily 'proving' (i.e., women are not required to do as many push-ups as men) that they belonged there."
Interesting. Dry humor aside, this does raise an interesting question: why, exactly, do people object to women serving in the military?

Okay, I'm back

...and I'll try to stick around a bit more. I have, in fact, been reading ScatteredAK regularly, just not posting. So, for my first return post, I'm going to be lazy by posting something I wrote a while ago instead of writing a new story. But just for now! I'll write original things later. Soon, later. Word of warning: this thing that I wrote is a bit of a rant. Backstory: The College of Engineering sent out a survey this spring toward the end of the semester to all the women (and ONLY the women) asking about their experiences in engineering. This is kind of a sore point for me, as you will see, and ties in in a way to Andrea's recentish post about feminism, which is what gave me the idea to post it in the first place. I'll post three of the questions that were on the survey, and my answers to them, which will pretty effectively explain both the situation and the way I feel about it.

24. How welcoming has the college and/or your department been to you as a woman?

Here's the deal: This survey, like a lot of things in the college of engineering, is really kind of starting to irritate me in regard to my gender. Yes, I am a woman in engineering, but I feel like the college is constantly trying to put me in a box under the guise of "helping me get support, because I'm a woman." I am a PERSON. Yes, I am female. Yes, I am an engineer. But being a female engineer does not define me, and I really don't appreciate being singled out by the college because of it. You may think you have good intentions in trying to help women because they're underrepresented, but I feel like what you're actually doing is reinforcing the archaic idea that being female and an engineer is so unheard-of that we need protection from the big, scary, real world. Stop.

27. Do you feel that the college has adequate support structures in place for women in engineering?

Again: please leave me alone. Constantly bombarding me with "support structures for women" implies that I am not capable of succeeding in engineering without somebody to baby me and lead me along by the hand. This is incredibly offensive. If I were a man, I would be just as capable of excelling in engineering as I am now - I didn't get into the college and the Engineering Honors Program on some kind of special deal because I'm female. I got in because I am good at what I do. I get good grades, I work hard, I am successful. Nowhere in that is my gender relevant. Yes, in hard numbers there are more men than women in engineering, but that doesn't mean that the women are delicate flowers that need protection. It's misogynistic, belittling and offensive. If, for some bizarre reason, I felt the need to seek gender-based support because I couldn't cope, I would seek it. I don't appreciate it being shoved at me at every opportunity. The pervasiveness of the idea that women need extra support in the engineering field appalls me, and I feel that it works against your goals at equality and making everybody feel included. Example: one of my female engineering friends was recently told by a male engineering friend that she had only gotten her excellent summer research position because she was a female engineer and that, had she been male, she would have had to work much harder to get it. Naturally, we were both very offended by this, but I feel that this stems from the culture that CU Engineering creates by treating women as though they need extra help and special treatment. If this attitude weren’t spread around by the departments and staff, the male friend would have recognized the true reason my female friend got the job: because she DESERVED it.

43. Is there anything else you want to tell us about your experiences in engineering?

I would reiterate the part about not singling me out because I'm a woman, but I feel like I've got it just about covered in previous responses. What I said might sound harsh, but I genuinely mean every word of it. Please, please, take it seriously and reconsider your policy toward women in engineering.

Of course, it is not likely that I will ever see any direct results of this input, because I have said things along these lines in previous surveys (albeit not in such length and frustration), and nothing seems to have changed. Maybe next year when the inevitable rash of surveys arrives, I'll write three pages. Or call the dean.

In case you were wondering....

Err, what's going on with the blog? It looks... different.
Yes, well I'm fiddling with it.
Good lord! Why?
Honestly? I got bored. I'm in Arizona, and it's hot, so it's not like I can go outside or anything like that.
Yes, but... Why?
Oh, well, specifically, I thought the blog needed some sprucing up. See, the internet is an exciting place with lots of exciting things to do and see and, lets face it, our blog was a little boring to look at. So, I'm fixing it up a bit.
Who, exactly, gave you the right to do that?
Well, I suppose Sam did, seeing as she gave me admin privileges. Also... I seem to be the only one posting right now. It's very sad. Please, come back guys! I miss you! And my blog posts are kind of boring. Please come back...
Umm... Yeah, back to the blog...
Oh! Right! Sorry... Essentially, the blog needed a make over. And I have a lot of time on my hands, so I decided to do it.
Well, what exactly is happening, then?
Honestly? I'm not sure yet. I'm trying a few different things out, trying to see what I think works. There will probably be lots of changes that don't stay. There will probably be  a lot of changes that are atrocious, but will stay for a while because I have nothing better to fix it with. Menus will move, labels will change, the Universe will come together in harmony. Ok, maybe not that last one. Anyway, most changes will be temporary. Probably.
Ah. So, there's no grand plan then, is there?
Well, not really, no. The ultimate goal is just to make something that I think is both pleasing to look at and is easy to navigate. Very likely, this will involve me learning another computer language (CSS) in an attempt to get things exactly the way I want them. Edit: yes, I do in fact need to learn a little CSS to get this thing working. Bear with me people, this could result in some really strange things if I screw up. It might be a while before something sticks and I stop messing with it. See something you like? Have an idea? E-mail me and I'll see what I can do.
Any idea when you'll be done?
Haven't the foggiest. I'm sure the changes will slow down when I get home, simply because the internet speed there is a tenth of what  it is here. I miss home, but not that part. Additionally, something final will probably happen by the end of the summer, because I will have a lot more important things to do when I get back to school.
Uh-huh. Well, have fun with that.
Oh don't worry, I will.

The Varied and Exciting Adventures of Andrea and the New Shoes

Today, I did something unbelievably stupid: I wore new shoes. While this by itself isn't terribly stupid, what is stupid is wearing a new pair of shoes on a day you will be doing a lot of walking. Which for me is everyday. So, wearing new shoes was a bit of a bad move. Which resulted in an interesting day.

1. The shoes
I got a box in the mail from home yesterday. Within: a new pair of shorts (yay!) and a new pair of shoes. The shoes were somewhat unexpected; my mom bought them for me because she thought I'd like them, and I do. They are white canvas, sort of a cross between a sneaker and a ballet flat. Comfortable sneaker footbed, cute ballet flat scoop. What's not to love?

2. The walk
I walk to class everyday. It takes around 15 minutes for me to get from my dorm to class. While ASU is, to me anyway, an enormous campus, this is roughly equivalent to me walking from my Scripps dorm to my computer science class at the north end of Pomona. Except for the heat, it's rather a nice walk. After class, I walk to the student union to grab lunch. This takes about 10 minutes if I'm going slowly, which I tend to be. After lunch, I walk back to my dorm, another 10 minutes or so. Significant walking? Not really, but it's not exactly short either.

3. The problem
So, walking to class in new shoes. After about the first hundred feet or so, I noticed that the shoes were rubbing on the back of my heel. After another hundred feet, that rubbing was starting to get painful. Unfortunately, I had to keep going in order to get to class on time. When I sat down in class, I pulled my shoes off; I already had blisters the size of quarters on the back of both heels. During my break, I stuffed some toilet paper in the heel of my shoes in an attempt to cushion them. It didn't work. The toilet paper just ended up stuffed under my foot.

4. The walk again
So here I am in class with blisters, and I need to walk to lunch and then back to my room. I figured the walk to the student union wouldn't be too awful if I walked briskly, instead of strolling as I usually did. I was wrong. Sitting down to eat was fantastic, it meant I didn't have to walk. After lunch, with the prospect of another walk ahead of me, I did the logical thing: took my shoes off and started walking back barefoot. What could possibly go wrong?

5. And you thought this would be obvious.
New thing I learned today: if the air is hot, the ground is probably hot too. Being the swarthy Alaskan I am (who am I kidding?), I like walking around barefoot. In the summer, I don't put on shoes unless I have too. Like, for example, when it's 70 degrees outside and the back deck is too hot to walk on. Clearly, I should have realized that when it's 100 degrees outside, the ground would be even hotter. Nah. And so, half way down a flight of outdoor stairs, I start hopping up and down like a crazy person and rush to the modest shade provided by a trash can. The bottoms of my feet (under a healthy layer of dirt) were bright pink, bordering on red. I had just successfully burned the bottoms of my feet on pavement.

6. The walk, continued
Big 'ole blisters, check. Burned feet, check. A decent walk back to my room, check. And so, I folded down the back of my new shoes and wore them like slides, shuffling home. It hurt.

7. The conclusion
Did I do something extremely stupid today? Why yes, yes I did. Did I learn my lesson? I sure as heck hope so.

Armed with neosporin, band aids, and thick socks, I have mostly solved the problems I caused today. Do my feet still hurt? Absolutely, but it's my own fault. The exciting bit will be walking to class tomorrow. I can tell you one thing: I won't be wearing my new shoes.

collegate improvisation

Roses! yet, alas,
I have no vase for them. To
Save the day? Nalgene!

Feminism, sheminism

Feminism talks
Reveal age gaps in thoughts, ideas
Generations change?

For my womens' studies class today, we had a slightly strange assignment: ask three people what the first three words that think of when the hear the word "feminist." Just for background, this class is conducted online, so there is only asynchronous communication in a forum. I got my answers last night, and wrote up my forum post before heading off to my other class this morning. When I had a chance to look at the other posts this afternoon, I was genuinely surprised. There was a very clear distinction between positive and negative reactions amongst my classmates, but the breakdown wasn't what you would think. Instead of there being an opposition between genders, there was a very strong opposition between generations*.

Those of the older group, especially the women, had negative thoughts about feminism. One mentioned something her brother said about all feminists being lesbians and man haters, and agreed with him. Another woman mentioned that she was all for equality "but absolutely not a feminist." To me, that is exactly what a feminist is; someone who believes in equality between men and women. I was more than a little surprised by the obvious discomfort these older women had with the term "feminist."

Among the younger posters, including the men**, were much more genial opinions. One was positively shocked that his brother-in-law used the word "dyke" to describe femininists, another was horified that his younger sister (who he mentioned was in middle school) said something about angry man eaters. One of the men acknowledged that he was a feminist, and received some rather negative feedback from some of the older female posters.

This brings up several questions for me. While I don't actually know anyone's age, why is it that the seemingly older posters have a negative reaction to feminism? Why are we accepting of the negative reactions of older men, and unhappy with the positive reactions of the younger? This generation gap puzzles me. Aren't these older posters part of an enlightened and liberated generation of women?

I will be happy to say that I am a feminist. As a female scientist, I dislike the portrayals of scientists as men. How many people know that Rosaline Franklin took the first pictures of DNA and that her lab partners, Watson and Crick, stole her work? As a student at a womens' college, I find it particularly aggravating that I, as a scientist, am not taken seriously by the faculty and administrators at my own college. As a physicist, I resent the snide comments I get from the more socially acceptable female chem and bio majors.

So my big question is, what happened here?

When did we stop caring, and when did we start again?

When will no one care about gender anymore?

*This is of course, entirely based on speculation. Those who mention children or nieces or "my 80 year-old mother" I assume are of at least one generation previous to mine. The same is true of the guy who mentioned he's a resident at a hospital and the woman who used the phrase "back when I graduated."

**Again, some speculation. Some first names are obviously masculine, so I assume they're men. There's also the mysterious Terry, who I haven't decided on yet...

A tragedy of food

Tikka Masala,
Six twenty-seven, but I
Have only six dollars.

Registration sucks

"Permission denied"
Can't get into class I need
Registration fail

Warning, Danger, Alarm! (or not)

This morning, at about 11:15, I was shot by a masked man who had broken into the building on Pomona where I was working.

Well, almost.

Well, not really.

I guess I should explain.

This morning, when I got out of class, I went directly to the Computer Science lounge to work on my assignment, which is due at midnight. The CS lounge is a lovely room with large glass walls and lots of computers and white boards. There happened to be about six or seven other people with me in the lounge at the time, and suddenly, their phones all went off. Then they got up and left the room. Dominick, who's in my class, stuck his head around the door frame and asked "Are you coming?"

At this point, I was understandably a bit confused. Several phones just rang all at once, and everyone but me left. And then I was being asked to go somewhere. Where were we going, and why did we need to go there?

The answer came to me a few seconds later as the network manager for the CS department came out of his office and said to me "well, if you keep sitting there, you're going to get shot, and it won't be my problem at that point."

Apparently, Pomona was having a lock down. A lock down drill, to be exact, but they were giving citations to anyone found outside a designated safe room. As I followed a small, ragtag group of professors and students into the "safe room" in that building, I pondered how incredibly fractured the campus notification system is. If I had been alone, and this had been a real lock down, I would be dead by now.

The problem is both easy and understandable. Despite our designation as "The Claremont Colleges" run by the "Claremont University Consortium," we're still one big campus split up into five different colleges (seven, if Claremont Graduate University and Keck Graduate Institute are included). Each of the colleges runs their own affairs without much interference from any of the other colleges. The only shared resources are the library, campus safety, student health, and the office of the chaplains. Among the services not shared are the registrar's offices, the grounds departments, the catering departments, and the campus notification systems.

At last, the sticking point. There are five (or seven) colleges, each with their own notification system. Being a Scripps student, I am registered on the Scripps emergency notification system. If there is a lock down, or an earth quake drill, or any other situation, I get a text message relaying that information. This is great when I'm on campus, but it has one major flaw: there are five colleges, and I could be on any given campus at any given time.

From this, two scenarios arise. The first is pretty harmless: a Scripps only drill happens, and I'm not on Scripps. No problem, it doesn't effect me. The second scenario, though, is potentially much more dangerous: I'm not on Scripps, and something happens on the campus I'm on. The students around me will get text messages and phone calls, but, just like this morning, I'll be out of the loop. Or another scenario: something happens on Pomona's north campus, but students in the CMC dorms just across the street will have no idea that there is any danger.

There is, clearly, a simple solution for this: make one, big emergency notification list with all students from all five schools on it. Problem solved. Having a lock down drill on Pomona? Send all students the message "lock down drill, Pomona" or something of the sort. Those who are on Pomona at the time will know, those who aren't on Pomona will know, but won't care. Problem solved.

For know though, I have to settle for what I can get. So thank you, Dominick, for making sure I wasn't shot. If you're ever on Scripps, I'll return the favor.

State of Existence

It's a census year. We all know that. Everywhere, there are signs and posters telling us that the census is a "portrait of America" and that "everyone counts." It's the way that the government keeps count of how many people are in the country. And of course, the census is also how the government decides to divvy up the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where I have a problem.

I am a resident of the state of Alaska. I am registered to vote in the state of Alaska. I receive my credit card bill in the state of Alaska. I receive my PFD every year because of the fact that I live in the state of Alaska. I currently attend school in the state of California. However, this school has listed my permanent address as being in the state of Alaska. So clearly, when I fill out the census, I should be counted as a resident of Alaska when it comes time to hand out those 435 seats, right?

Wrong.

As I was told (with a straight face) by the census worker I asked, the census is "a snapshot of America on April first," census day. And because of this, since I was in the state of California on April first, I am considered a resident of California and will be counted as such when it comes time to hand out seats. So too, I learned, would international students attending college in California. When I asked why, the census worker (after proudly showing off some sort of badge that meant he got to answer my questions) began to explain to me the origins of the census, and that it is administered by the federal government because states could exaggerate the number of residents they had in order to get more Representatives. Which, of course, was not the answer to the question I asked.

As a resident of the state of Alaska, I will happily stand up and be counted.

But not, as it seems, in Alaska.