Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

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InstaPundit
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As the Apple Turns
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Capitalist Lion
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12/17/2001 - 12/23/2001

Sunday, May 16, 2004
02:00 - The more things change	(top)
Well, I'm back. After making the drive from LA to San Jose in four hours and twenty-nine minutes, which is pretty dang respectable, I think, especially for not traveling any faster than traffic. The reunion was very cool, though. The ol' hovse is pretty much the way I remember it�with a few weird exceptions, like the fact that all the alleys have had their end walls bashed out and connected to each other, ostensibly for fire-code stuff. When I was living there, the Pasadena fire department was struggling to get us to stop building bonfires. Now, like the ACLU or the fat-police, they see they've got the upper hand and their quarry on the run, so they're busy eradicating even the merest hint of fire hazards from the building; they've removed the firepot from Ricketts house, and are pushing for a complete redesign and renovation of the South Houses to do away with their funky, 1930s, single-sex, no-elevators-or-handicapped-accessible-ramps nature. In other words, all their personality. If they get their way, all the character of these ancient houses will be stripped away from them, their charming asymmetry and fifteen different floors all offset from each other by knee-height and secret passageways through the crawl space will be a thing of the lamented past. But such is progress. Through one of the newly opened-up alley ends was one door with a printed flyer from Misleader.org; it reinforced my theory that no matter how bright your IQ tests and your SAT scores say you are, just because you can do contour integrals all day doesn't mean you're intelligent. It doesn't stop you from thinking that tacking a printout of a shallow and fact-free polemic to your door in hopes of appearing a Deep Thinker� will only serve in the opposite capacity. (But then, I guess it could be worse�over in Dabney House, the walls are covered with even more Chairman Mao quotations than I remember.) But the fact that this was such an exceptional thing in Blacker reminded me of something: Caltech is a very apolitical campus. I'd forgotten why this was, if I'd ever known it; but sitting in the lovnge by the fire, talking with a couple of guys from my class and a couple of current students, I discovered the answer: most students there, or at least a highly significant percentage, are destined for jobs at the Department of Defense. Or most of their graduate stipends come from the DoD. Or their livelihoods depend, in one way or another, on putting their technologically and scientifically oriented minds toward designing the aerospace and software and semiconductors and other such materi�l that will likely end up in Predator drones and the like. Seminar day keynote speech by AeroVironment, Inc. maven Paul McCready notwithstanding, the student body tends to have a very practical outlook on life. My class president, it turns out, served a stint in Baghdad, escorting VIPs from Baghdad to Basra. He's back now, and everybody in the lounge nodded sagely in relief at the news, and nary a snide comment was uttered. (Oh yes: at the reunion banquet at the Athenaeum on Friday night, when one of my classmates�we were seated at big round tables based on graduation year�said offhand that he couldn't wait for November so he could vote for Kerry, the whole rest of the table fell pointedly silent, much to the guy's consternation. I suggested that we not discuss politics at this event, so as to avoid needless bloodshed.) Anyway, the Tea was outstanding, and the campus appears to be in good hands. I got some pictures to help augment my visual memories, which after five years were beginning to fade. I also got to say hi to an old friend in the area, had several social lunches and dinners, saw some good seminars on the campus' architectural tradition and other topics, and checked a whole bunch of things off my mental to-do list. A weekend well spent, all around.