evolution

it started on thursday morning after my calculus class. i drove home to eudora and met up with my dad, who had taken half of thursday off. we left for the kansas city airport three and a half hours before our flight was to leave, intending to get something to eat along the way. we didn’t, so we were about two and a half hours early. the northwest airlines ticket agent, however, offered to get us an earlier flight, one that was to leave in half an hour, so we jumped on it. we lost one of those hours due to bad weather in minneapolis (where we were to connect to indianapolis) and another navigating the confusing (at least to a neophyte) one-way streets of west lafayette.

we actually rolled into west lafayette at around 10:00pm, and in the process of getting lost we managed to see most of campus (albeit at night). purdue has many large buildings located closely together, and nearly all of the buildings are built of the same dark red brick, a la a new york city brownstone. the campus as a whole was very well-kept, and nearly a self-contained unit - purdue has an airport and a hotel right on campus. our room was quite nice (and cost us $12 for two nights - the only reason it cost that much was the fact that dad was with me, nearly all of my needs were taken care of on the purdue math department’s dime).

the town itself is actually an amalgam of two towns - lafayette and west lafayette. west lafayette is basically purdue university’s campus, with some apartment buildings and businesses thrown in for good measure, while lafayette actually predates purdue university’s foundation (under the same land grant act by which k-state was founded). both are neat old communities with a lot to offer, and similar in nature to the places i’ve lived. unlike manhattan, however, lafayette has a well-developed bus system. the city gets a cut of the student privilege fee so that purdue students may use the bus at no additional charge.

the mathematics department at purdue is generally excellent. the faculty seem to get very involved in the educations of their students, and they demand quite a lot of them as well. of course, the student is expected to provide most of the motivation for his or her education, but the faculty seem to recognize those who do and they seem to do a good job of guiding them along. the department’s building is old but well-kept, and there seems to be enough space for everyone.

all in all, i really liked the city, the campus, and especially the department and its faculty. i am thinking of accepting their offer, but i will wait a few days to be sure i am not contacted by anyone else. i doubt anyone will make an offer that can match what purdue offers.

i (finally) got a letter from penn state today. they rejected my application.

as for the three remaining schools, the clock is ticking at t-minus 48 hours.

yes, that’s right. i am blowing off my lesson plan tomorrow to talk to you all. it turns out that you are just as responsive as my calculus class is, as evidenced by the “0 comments” line after each post. (and to be fair to my calculus class, they were improving before the break. we’ll see what has atrophied, besides me, in the time off.)

i am this much closer to committing to purdue. each day that passes without contact from the four remaining schools to which i applied makes me less inclined to attend them, and makes the generous offer from purdue look even more attractive. purdue is one of the finest schools in the land, and i can’t wait to visit it later this week.

you might get a laugh out of this. one of my former students (incidentally, he is a combat veteran of gulf war I) hailed me in the hallway, and in our conversation he called my office mate tim and i “knowledge warehouses”. it was all i could do to suppress a laugh. i have never thought of myself as a “knowledge warehouse”, nor all that especially intelligent. i know many people who are far more learned than myself, and are more learned than most people ever dream of.

sometimes things happen to remind you that you suck. sometimes those things pass you by in the hallway.

i hope my cable is back on.

my grandfather decided randomly to have a turkey dinner this evening, so that is what my mom, stepdad, niece and i did this evening - ate turkey. my grandma has multiple sclerosis and can hardly move anymore, so my grandpa does all of the cooking now, under her direction of course. he’s a pretty good cook. sometimes he misses having the big weekend dinners they always had, so he will take it upon himself to empty the deep freeze of any frozen birds. we had turkey, dressing, potatoes and gravy, and cole slaw - good stuff.

my two-year-old niece is with us. two-year-olds are like coke addicts - they tear around indiscriminately destroying things all day, and then they crash all of a sudden.

she just remarked that while pat (my stepdad) and gramma (my mom) were playing with her that “pat tickled gramma’s boobie”. if that isn’t the most disgusting thought you have heard all day, be sure to let me know.

my dad and i bought our plane tickets to indianapolis yesterday for the purpose of making a visit to purdue university. as faithful readers of this blog (if they exist) know, i have been accepted into purdue university to study for a ph.d. in mathematics, but i have not yet decided whether i will actually go there yet (although such a decision is imminent).

my nieces are growing fast. raven is 13 months old and now walking around. kailey is two and a half years old, and she will be here at my mother’s house in lawrence tomorrow. i haven’t seen her since we watched her while keith and amie went on their honeymoon.

as soon as i get back to manhattan and my nice photo-editing software, i will have many pictures to share with you.

more politics and world events: watching my country’s military begin to take apart saddam’s regime with blinding speed, and hearing the reports of events via fox news, cnn, and the bbc on digital cable (note to all americans: do not get your news from just one source) and the worldwide reaction to them, i began to think.

i think that one day in my lifetime, my country will have to defend herself from a foriegn invasion by a “coalition of the willing” - willing to knock us off the top of the mountain. at least that seems to be the prevailing attitudes of our enemies france and germany, and “friendly” rivals china and russia. i must say i am much more scared of these nations than i ever was of the soviet union. i hope that our relationship with china will grow into a similar sort of thing, without all of the covert actions in countries around the world. unless things take a very dark turn indeed, i do not believe china and america will ever be true enemies - there is simply too much opportunity for gain by both nations to ever risk such a thing. but some of these nations - and many others which i have not named - believe we are too powerful, and seek to undermine us at every turn. i think that the french and germans would fall out of their chairs laughing if iraq managed to start an american bloodbath in the streets of baghdad, all while hiding the deadly weapons everyone knows it has. i think a line is forming behind us to stab us in the back.

but that does not change my belief that saddam must go. it is clear to me that military action is the only action by which this can be accomplished. i ardently hope that there is a minimum of lives lost - both american and iraqi lives - and that this action is over very soon. then we can set about the true work here - reconstituting iraq as a free, democratic, and prosperous nation - which is a responsibility america has taken on now that it has decided to invade, and which it must see through to completion. through this work i hope that we can forge some new, hopefully more reliable friendships in the world.

by the way, if you want something to think about, read this site. it’s written by a fellow who lives in baghdad, and (of course) has a different view from mine on recent events. i found it to be a real thought-provoker.

we are off to war. i promised i would go back away from politics and back into my uninteresting life story and the indulgence of my slightly philosophical bent, and i will stick to that promise. however, i have a topic about the upcoming war left to discuss.

one is that i believe that these efforts to remove saddam from power are necessary, and that war is the only effective means to do so. but is it the right thing? only time will tell. if this (hopefully short) war is not followed by a dedicated, prolonged reconstruction and humanitarian effort, then the american and iraqi lives spent in the war will be for naught. america and her allies can step up to the plate on this - it has done so before. the last time i checked, germany and japan - which were devastated by the allies in world war II - are today world powers with successful economies. (yes, i know, i am old enough to remember communist east germany.) iraq, if the effort is made, could achieve the same.

the hard part of this is not the war, it’s the day after. i hope our government will see it through properly, just as it is determined to remove saddam hussein.