I really do love Chicago. Yes, it has a certain grimness to it- the weather, the gang infested areas, the deep dish pizza; but where New York makes you feel like you are bothering it, Chicago is glad to see you.
We had all kinds of weather: from quite warm to cold and torrential rain. We ate a lot of red meat and truffle fries, and we saw as much Chico as we could.
I can report that the U Chicago parent body has an above average aggregate IQ. This was evident when we went to a class on exoplanets put on for the parents. The professor seemed young and slightly nervous, probably because of the large crowd. The room was full 20 minutes before the official start time, and such was the enthusiasm for the topic, people were turned away. Because she was so nice she said people could just jump in any time with questions. Hands shot up. Yes? A man in a turban wanted the exact dimensions of the Bary center of the star known as X#$DF&# in the Orneo galaxy. Then another one from France spoke in a language only the two of them could understand; this was followed by the class brown noser who asked a question every third minute. I mumbled to Thomas I just wanted to know if 9 planets was a lot or a little (I am very competitive about my solar system) and that of course was my super sly way of getting her take on the Pluto question without actually asking her.
By the end she looked frazzled and happy to be rid of us; my mother was euphoric announcing she not understand one word.
Anyway, U Chicago is a fun place to spend the day; it exudes a certain calm - a walled city offering a respite from the winds of stupid blowing around the country. Chicago police for example, who lost more officers to Covid than any other manner of death, are threatening to walk off the job if they have to get vaccinated. But at the University, one can rest one's weary head listening to the soothing words of foreign astronomy buffs.
F saw a list of FUN THINGS TO DO IN CHICAGO (or it might have been fun things to do in the midwest) and one was a behind an old abandoned lot on the campus were gamma ray detectors built by the University of Chicago and sent to space by Nasa in 1985. But apparently they didn't know what to do with them after, so they are just sitting there in the empty parking lot. I am sure you know where this is heading: Thomas wants them for the office (insert weird face emoji).
F is now called on to entertain us with dollops of his knowledge like a sort of bespectacled court jester. He was telling us about an exam question for which he received only partial credit, a ruling he felt was a bit nitpicky. It has something to do with a given subgroup of matrices of the Hilbert space…I think Frederick did not identify the subbest of groups. Or maybe he did. Who knows. Anyway Thomas dives in like an old timer with a few tricks still up his sleeve and ties this it all up somehow by droning a bit and then says "and of course this cannot be broken" which are the only words I understand, because they are my mantra.
Next post will include palm trees I promise!
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| Gamma Ray detector fun |
