There exists fish
Apr. 16th, 2005 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoyI saw on the side of a bus an ad for "Blind Justice" with the slogan: "He lost his sight, not his vision." ...huh?!
So as for where I was (yeah, yeah, you had no idea I was gone... wait, unless you're from BCA, in which case it's possible you noticed), I was visiting University of Chicago. Mom suggested I tell Ashley or Czolacz beforehand, but of course I never tell people what I'm about to do. :) Incidentally I did run into Christine Lim, who I don't really know but who did go to BCA.
My short stay there has failed to scare me off, so, it is decided. Now to fill out the form...
Ah! As for actually writing about my stay at the University of Shkoggo!
So of course I was looking at the list of classes I could go sit in on, and of course I turn to the math department, and I see... a calculus class. Um, no. I ask about this and the person there says I could go talk to the head of the math department, but I don't really want to do that (of course in reality I suppose I could have just gone to any other math class *anyway*, but that would require knowing whenwhere they are, so...), so I continue, and I turn to computer science. (OK, actually, I turned to CS first, because it's earlier alphabetically. But I like the story better this way.) And there is... lambda calculus! So I go to that. They're using an out-of-print textbook, and the professor has made copies for all his (4 or 5) students. So he just hands me a copy! Neatness!
Although, its author seems to be thinking of proof theory a bit too much. For instance, instead of defining "a reduces to b" as the smallest relation satisfying these properties, he defines that "a reduces to b" iff such can be deduced from the following axioms. And then later he inducts on the length of a proof! Ow...
I was assigned to a student named Akhil, who wasn't actually there most of the time as he was studying for something. Oh, I was in Burton-Judson, Mathews House (not a typo). So, not actually being a student and therefore not having any work to do, I just hung around in the lounge. Except when "The OC" was on. I am very bad at ignoring a TV. Later they had a thing for all the prospies, where a lot of the clubs put themselves on display, which was notable mainly for some video game club putting out a GameCube and an Xbox (an Xbox with a SNES emulator on it, at that) for us to play on. We had a remarkably hard time getting players for Halo 2. Very strange...
After that, back to the lounge, wherefrom a bunch of the students decided to take us to see the observatory, which was on the roof, and I was too scared to actually go from the ladder to the roof (not quite a simple transition)[0]. Oh well. And then back to the lounge where somebody put on a bunch of episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which was great.
Other than that, nothing really remarkable. The next day I sat in on one of the social sciences classes (one of the core classes?) where they were talking about Freud, and went on a tour of Pierce dorm.
Other stuff since I've been back:
Today at math team while I wasn't really thinking I just randomly wrote "∃ fish" on my paper. I don't know either.
I think there was something else, but I don't remember it.
-Sniffnoy
[0]Note also that my right shoelace is utterly, utterly shot. It is in threads, cannot be tied, and flops around. I was also afraid of it getting caught. And no, I could not go up without my shoes as the rungs on the ladder were pointed on the top.
So as for where I was (yeah, yeah, you had no idea I was gone... wait, unless you're from BCA, in which case it's possible you noticed), I was visiting University of Chicago. Mom suggested I tell Ashley or Czolacz beforehand, but of course I never tell people what I'm about to do. :) Incidentally I did run into Christine Lim, who I don't really know but who did go to BCA.
My short stay there has failed to scare me off, so, it is decided. Now to fill out the form...
Ah! As for actually writing about my stay at the University of Shkoggo!
So of course I was looking at the list of classes I could go sit in on, and of course I turn to the math department, and I see... a calculus class. Um, no. I ask about this and the person there says I could go talk to the head of the math department, but I don't really want to do that (of course in reality I suppose I could have just gone to any other math class *anyway*, but that would require knowing whenwhere they are, so...), so I continue, and I turn to computer science. (OK, actually, I turned to CS first, because it's earlier alphabetically. But I like the story better this way.) And there is... lambda calculus! So I go to that. They're using an out-of-print textbook, and the professor has made copies for all his (4 or 5) students. So he just hands me a copy! Neatness!
Although, its author seems to be thinking of proof theory a bit too much. For instance, instead of defining "a reduces to b" as the smallest relation satisfying these properties, he defines that "a reduces to b" iff such can be deduced from the following axioms. And then later he inducts on the length of a proof! Ow...
I was assigned to a student named Akhil, who wasn't actually there most of the time as he was studying for something. Oh, I was in Burton-Judson, Mathews House (not a typo). So, not actually being a student and therefore not having any work to do, I just hung around in the lounge. Except when "The OC" was on. I am very bad at ignoring a TV. Later they had a thing for all the prospies, where a lot of the clubs put themselves on display, which was notable mainly for some video game club putting out a GameCube and an Xbox (an Xbox with a SNES emulator on it, at that) for us to play on. We had a remarkably hard time getting players for Halo 2. Very strange...
After that, back to the lounge, wherefrom a bunch of the students decided to take us to see the observatory, which was on the roof, and I was too scared to actually go from the ladder to the roof (not quite a simple transition)[0]. Oh well. And then back to the lounge where somebody put on a bunch of episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which was great.
Other than that, nothing really remarkable. The next day I sat in on one of the social sciences classes (one of the core classes?) where they were talking about Freud, and went on a tour of Pierce dorm.
Other stuff since I've been back:
Today at math team while I wasn't really thinking I just randomly wrote "∃ fish" on my paper. I don't know either.
I think there was something else, but I don't remember it.
-Sniffnoy
[0]Note also that my right shoelace is utterly, utterly shot. It is in threads, cannot be tied, and flops around. I was also afraid of it getting caught. And no, I could not go up without my shoes as the rungs on the ladder were pointed on the top.
