Rational Action

I just walked out of the bathroom to see a policeman banging on the elevator doorway, saying “Hello? Anyone there?”

The elevator is stuck, and they want to see if anyone is in it.

Two happenings in Lit Hum class today. I will start with some lighter fare:

For whatever reason prof wanted to talk about female orgasms. The subject had some slight relation to a story out of Boccaccio but without a doubt it was unnecessary. So here is the story he told us:

Zeus and Hera were arguing over which was better, the male or female orgasm. They consulted Tiresias, and turned him into a woman so he could experience both. Well, he finds out that it’s better for the girls and that they can do it over and over again. So Tiresias went around telling people this fact, and out of anger Hera struck him blind. (Note: The actual story seems to differ a bit from what he told us)

He then attempted to relate this story back to the lesson, but to be honest it didn’t have much to do with it. I think he just wanted to tell us how much better he thought the female orgasm was.

That was the first happening. Here is the second:

Two kids walked into Lit Hum wearing all black, sat down, and explained that in protest of recent racism on Columbia’s campus that they would not be talking in class today. The first problem? The “racism” consists of:

• An anti-affirmative action bake sale. At the bake sale the participants offered lower prices to blacks and hispanics. I thought it was a funny way of proving a point — they were making an analogue to the university’s admissions policies. It wasn’t just a bunch of white kids doing it, either. Being against affirmative action and being racist are not once and the same. Let’s not forget, many of the supposed benefitters of affirmative action find it degrading. (I say this although I support affirmative action)
• A horrendously offensive comic in the fed. For those of you who don’t know, the fed is supposedly Columbia’s humor publication. Alas, it’s not very funny. I’m not sure anyone really reads it. Yes, the comic was racist. But yes, we expect this crap from the fed. It’s not like the comic was printed in a publication that had any legitimacy.

Racism still exists and I support any effort to point that out. But when you protest, you should be making a sacrifice. For some reason whenever protesting coincides with academics, it lets the protesters avoid their work for a bit. So as a result, by protesting racism in Lit Hum class, the two didn’t have to say a word. At least one of them hasn’t read the texts for ages — so he got off the hook for one class. I don’t understand why they couldn’t have just made their announcement about the racism protest at the start of class, then gone on and let the teacher call on them.

Maybe the protest was a big sacrifice. Maybe they missed out on lots of fun stuff by taking part in it. But they told the teacher, effectively, “I shall remain silent for the rest of the class, so don’t call on me.” Is that really protesting, if protesting makes things easier for you? Sigh.

The pictures I took at the Woman’s Basketball game at UPenn on Friday night shall be in tomorrow’s Spectator. Three of them to be exact.

Did you know the Spec is New York City’s 7th most read daily newspaper. You didn’t? Why not? I’m in it.

I took the pictures with a digital camera. Wow, I really don’t like cameras that do things for you. I wanted to set the aperature at its widest, point, focus, and shoot. However, the Canon Digital Rebel that Frankie had found for me had a few intricacies that I couldn’t get used to.

• As with most autofocus cameras, the manual focus was lackluster. Real MF lenses have some nice characteristics that let you accurately focus on a certain point. First, it takes a slight amount of force to turn them (so the focus doesn’t jiggle about). Second, the focus range (e.g. from 1 meter to infinity) is covered by a maybe a half turn of the focus “ring” or whatever the thing you turn is called. The AF lens, in MF mode, had a “gearish” feel when I spun it, and the focus range was covered by such a small turn that I couldn’t set myself on one point accurately. A slight tap of the hand and I would be focused on something else.
• So with MF mode out of the question, I had to autofocus. But since there was so much motion, the camera had no idea where to focus. Almost all of the pictures I shot were blurry. And of course I had to wait for it to focus before it would let me shoot. Half the time it wasn’t “ready” for shooting when I actually hit the shutter — so the shutter never fired. There went another picture.
• To change the aperture I had to use the wheel on the top of the camera. It’s more intuitive (for me) to turn a ring on the front of the camera.
• The “sports mode” let the camera take pictures even when its focus wasn’t “ready”. But in sports mode I lost control of aperture, ISO and shutter settings. If I put it in MF mode, I had all the aforementioned manual focus problems. As a result everything in sports mode was blurry as hell

The truth is that I could have overcome many of these problems by learning the camera better. By the end of the game my pictures had already improved. At the same time, manual focus cameras have some great features that autofocus ones fail to replicate.

My personal favorite: manual focus camera that can do aperture and shutter priority (choose an aperture/shutter setting and the camera does the light metering itself). Shoot with a prime lens (one that can’t zoom in or out). With that equipment, you choose your aperture/shutter, focus, and shoot. Ahh.

A long time ago people wanted to travel long distances quickly and easily. They were sick and tired of walking or using mules or whatever, so they invented this ingeneous device called the train. Trains were wonderful, and everyone loved them.

Then someone really really smart invented the automobile, and the airplane, and the monorail, and the space shuttle. And they were all better than the train.

So why do we still have trains?

As I said yesterday: “It’s easy to forget that Amtrak sucks. Before you get on, you might think, ‘Oh, this isn’t going to suck.’ But then you get on the train and realize, ‘Yeah, Amtrak sucks.’”

We took the Amtrak train from NY-Penn Station to Philadelphia. It cost $52, one way. Taking SEPTA (PA Regional Rail) and NJ Transit on the way back, we spent $17, $34 for the both of us.

Oh, I forgot. Amtrak didn’t have seats for us on the way to Philly, so we had to stand (or, god forbid, sit) in the aisles.

Problems with my argument: Although Amtrak was expensive, all expenses were paid by the Columbia Spectator. And if trains suck so much, how come this entry is about how SEPTA/NJ Transit is better than Amtrak? They’re all train services.

Maybe I’m just trying to say Amtrak is a disaster?

I was just walking down the Furnald hallway when I heard a guy and a girl talking. Now normally this is no cause for concern; guys and girls talk all the time in Furnald. But they don’t normally talk together inside the Girls’ Bathroom.

When no one is looking, go in to the girl’s bathroom and put up all the seats. Beyond it being annoying for them, it would make no sense at all.