Darwin Award nominees

We've had family unexpectedly come into town, and have been extremely busy dealing with them. So no blogging lately. Here's a quick update, and a little humor.

Last Friday I turned in my seminar paper. It wasn't good, but it was done, and it's enough to graduate. Let's hope that the professor doesn't read it. (I don't think he will. I think he'll scan it, so I made sure that the headings looked good.) Yesterday I cleared out my locker and study carrell, the latter of which had over 20 pounds of paper in it. Most of it I threw out, although some of it is for ongoing research for a pro bono project, so I had to hold onto it. More junk on my computer desk at home.

Yesterday I also finished up a some paperwork and miscellaneous tasks for a few clubs. So I'm officially done with all of my student duties. Not that I won't be back -- I'm actually hoping to come back to school and help out with an career exploration program we started last year. But I'm basically done being a student.

Even though it's sort of lame and uncool, I still host this blog through Blogger. I still hate some things about it, but it works nicely with some of the other Google-owned services. They just updated Google Docs to allow embedding of presentations, so I thought I'd try it out and post a funny little presentation I found a few years ago. This is what you would call lazy blogging, but hey, at least I'm posting.

I have a brief story to accompany that little slide show. As most of you know, I used to live in Venezuela. One evening I was walking from a bus stop to a friend's house, and I saw some guys on the side of the road doing some repair work on a bus.¹ They had removed the gas tank, and were carrying it over to a work bench. The tank was open on the top and I could hear that there was still some gasoline in it sloshing around. That's when I realized that one of the guys was smoking.

I was still shaking my head at their stupidity when I heard a voice above me call out for some more wire. I looked up to see a guy who had climbed an electrical pole and was hooking up his house to the electric wires himself.² He was barefoot, wearing nothing but jean shorts, and he was trying to be careful not to cross wires or touch the big cables, which weren't insulated at all. I decided to walk a little faster; I didn't want to be near the bus or the electrical pole if something went drastically wrong. Things like that are part of why women in Venezuela live more than 6 years more than men, on average.
_______________
¹ This was actually a pretty common sight. Most public transportation in Venezuela at the time was privately owned and only loosely regulated, if it was regulated at all. Most buses always needed some work, so the bus drivers or owners would work on them in the evenings when the temperatures dropped. The cigarette/gas tank combo was not a frequent sight, thankfully, although stuff like that happened all the time.
² The vast majority of people in Venezuela steal electricity. They just run wires up to the electric poles and tap in. It's especially common in slums, where nothing is regulated, but you see it more organized parts of the city too. I would hope that most people wear rubber gloves when the do it, however. Or at least shoes.