What's Been and What's Ben

New photos from the KAUST campus during orientation. I hate waking up at 6 am.
I agree with myself when I got here that I didn’t need to shave until I moved into my apartment. I thought that would mean a few days. It turned out to mean over two weeks and counting. Rumor says two days from now, but after visiting my currently assigned apartment that seems unrealistic. The heat does not bother me much now. It was 97° F on Monday.

There are many things to say about KAUST that are awesome. I went to a friend’s future apartment today and it was awesome with running water, working AC, and an internet connection. It is the King’s vision – one that I am glad to be onboard with.

Today we were told constructive criticism was a key to science, so here goes. The downside is that nothing is full ready to be moved into yet, the IIE staff seem power-hungry, workers are often found sleeping in our apartments, they push endlessly for us to get PhDs for many who do not plan to get one, and they give us so little money to do our laundry that many of us to it in the sink with shampoo instead of paying the exorbitant prices the hotel charges (I get 395 SAR to eat a day and 250 SAR a week for laundry, 3.75 SAR = 1 USD). I feel guilty complaining, but saying that everything is okay is an overstretch. I also think that the campus was not designed with input from students. I hope they redesign KAUST over time and don’t remain with the status quo. They seemed to have asked school administrators about design – a group who know about as much about classroom life as the birds outside the window. Nowadays we sit through presentations that are redundantly boring and redundantly redundant. I was told today about what a hypothesis is and other things I learned in 7th grade. The library presentation was concise, but it was the exception in a sea of knowledge that would be more useful in a booklet of KAUST info than slowly read from powerpoint slides (a habit I would have been corrected on in 10th grade).

I have registered with the local embassy, have my passport back, and now have my iqama (green card). It is awesome, I can open a bank account and everything.

Nowadays all we do is bus to campus (1.5 hours each way) to watch slow powerpoint presentations. Someone asked today if we had the first amendment at KAUST. I laughed. Not as hards as when somebody said that a reported fire in the library was just the contractor burning things in a fire in the basement. Perhaps that is where all the books went.

In WWII we lost many bombers. We noticed the planes coming back had bullet holes mostly in certain places. So we reinforced those places hit. This was wrong because they were the planes that made it back and thus did not suffer a fatal impact. We should have reinforced the places returning bombers did not get hit because those are lethal wounds.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Went the firecracker in the crowded pedestrian tunnel in old Jeddah. Of course what went through my head for a second was the suicide bomber in Riyadh that tried to kill a prince earlier in the day. The relief came fast enough. But the group of us Westerners in a place that not many tourists go (or really any) sticks out a bit. Jeddah is a wonderful place that is hustling until late into the night. My local friends put me at ease, but when I hear loud noises it brings out my survival instinct. Of course once I got into the thobe store I cared way more about finding one with a cool pattern and not getting ripped off. The haggling system here is cool until you realize the time wasted and the guilt or arguing with a relatively very poor person over the equivalent of a dollar. I think some of the locals are surprised by how us Americans are not brand-conscious at all. The decadence here is astounding. Probably surpassing ancient Rome. There is no middle-class.

Yesterday we got on the buses at 6:30 am for a full day of activities that last until midnight – no room for sleep. On the buses were boxes that were about the size of a laptop box. The excitement was dwarfed by the reality of a lot of packaging that had at its core a sheet of paper about KAUST’s commitment being environmentally friendly – irony. There was also a phallic shaped USB drive to add to the collection. Also inside was a laptop sleeve that was twice as big as my netbook. I went home at 4:30 and fell asleep promptly. In the afternoon I went to my apartment. It was the large size as seen in the photographs we were shown! KAUST was vindicated, but the apartment still had some finished work left. I have noticed that the bathrooms (a key component) were usually the most unfinished part. A friend went to his apartment closer to campus than mine and it was finished and wonderful. The Mosque on campus is beautiful. There is also what appears to be a little prison on campus. There are a half dozen razor-wire fences between the outside and the campus buildings. The security guard at the front has a gun that looks like an RCP-90 for the goldeneye fans out there.

My fearless leader may be coming! This rumor came from a worker that talked with a student that though we was American when he asked in the President was coming. Remember that rumors are about all we talk about around here.

I still worry about the Saudi Firewall here, the fact that I don’t have my passport, and the feeling that the phrase Insha’Allah (god willing) really means that it will only happen if god directly intervenes. Many of us students are thinking about going abroad the week of the official opening because we don’t get to go to the opening ceremony. Don’t worry, the Saudi Aramco employees who failed to build this place in time will get to go!

Wait a few months, like November (October 22, technically). Windows 7 and some cool (literal) new intel processors are coming out. Many people have been asking me about building a computer because I recently built a sweet computer that I will detail later. But these are the things you need to know:

• You better have a good reason for spending over 1000 dollars. 500 is enough for most people.
• Your money is best spent on a nice monitor if you plan to watch TV/movies rather that redundantly fast hardware. A good keyboard and mouse are important investments, even for laptops.
• Trackballs don’t give you carpel-tunnel and take up less space than a mouse.
• Buy a laptop, you can always leave it permanently docked. Unless you have a special desk area for a desktop set aside and already have a laptop.
• If you want a desktop I suggest you do some legwork (google) and build one yourself, it saves a lot of money and is fun. Start here at Ars Technica.
• Wait until windows 7 is released because manufactures are waiting for that until they release cool new hardware. It is a very good operating system.
• Netbooks are all most people need. They have no CD/DVD drive, have small 10 inch screens, don’t have redundant processing power, and are cheaper. I use one and probably use my computer more than you. Buy a 25 dollar USB external CD/DVD burner if you want.
• Don’t be afraid of ubuntu (linux) instead of Windows, especially if you are on a budget. Still wait a until late November for new hardware and holiday-time deals.
• Don’t buy microsoft office, just download open office, it does the same thing and is supported by Sun microsystems (a very large hardware manufacturer).
• Macs are overpriced 20-40%, but do instantly make you cool and popular. They “just work”, but so does everything else now.
• Computers are surprisingly hazardous to the environment to make, so invest in a good one if you can.
• Dell, HP, Lenovo (IBM), and Asus are generally good brands.

Here are two good New York Times Articles:

Deficits are not bad and are mostly a political issue. Not spending Money and having the economy crash would be worse.

How to be a push a partisan agenda while not being partisan. Ted Kennedy was far left but compromised over decades to move his ideas forward pragmatically.

America has become too much of a country that aims for the middle and the lowest common denominator. It will destroy our society. Reading Rainbow, the third longest running PBS children’s program, has been cancelled. PBS claims that it does not teach basic reading skills, instead focusing on inspiring children to want to read. Television is not a place to teach basic skills. I see this as one in a series of actions taken in recent years to ensure  that we aim low in education.

We can all agree that having everybody be literate is a good thing. No Child Left Behind is a good idea for some. But it means that smart kids sit in place and spin their wheels. The bar is lowered so that everybody passes while providing no higher standard for those capable. This will erode us into the society of Idiocracy where as long as you can jump (or just not trip) over a low standard of education you can move along. History and science is abandoned in an effort to ensure overly simplistic goals in reading and math are met. Music programs are thrown away. The gifted/talented programs that made me who I am are cut below the low levels that already existed. The capabilities of a generation are wasted. I will repeat a concept I mentioned a week ago: no society has ever been harmed by an increase in educational spending. The GI bill created the post WWII boom that created the society we enjoy today.

I believe it is just as unfair to not teach reading to an illiterate child than to not teach advanced studies to gifted students. Why must these children wait until college to have their abilities flourish where they will then be behind in their studies from what they could be. We need a pragmatic approach to education where we do not try to shove poetry down the throats of kids who will hate education because of it and probably skill class anyway. A more German system is needed with trade schools that teach real-world skills to students who are not college bound. A diverse exposure is still needed, but when it comes to preparing our children for the world we need to allow self-interest to drive where their skill training takes place. Human potential is a horrible thing to waste.

I spent tonight eating dinner with three fellow students from Wisconsin, England, and Syria (axis of evil). We talked for a few hours about everything from how Minnesota is way better than Wisconsin to conspiracy theories about 9/11. We then went to a local supermarket to get bottles of pop (soda) for 1 riyal (a quarter). Afterwards we went shopping where I got really cheap clothing like a 3 dollar shirt. Saudi Arabian outlet stores are a treasure trove of ironic clothing. After that we went to McDonalds and ate rare ethnic cuisine like french fries and quarter-pounders with cheese (I thought they had the metric system?). I was told I missed a very rare August rain (as in water from the sky) when many people went horseback riding two nights ago.