Dismantle the Nuclear reactor? I had no idea we even had one

So it seems that Dalhousie has a nuclear reactor. The reactor is located in the Life Sciences Center, which is the building next to the Hicks building, which is where I spend most of my time on campus.

I learned that there is a nuclear reactor on campus when I read a story from CBC about the fact that they are planning on dismantling it. I guess I am just a little surprised as it isn't something that you normally think of as being part of a thriving university community (Come for our students, our faculty and staff, and stay for our nuclear reactor). I presume that now that the news about it being dismantled (and that it exists) is in the public domain we can expect the usual assortment of student protesters (though I don't know what they would be protesting).

Another thing I recently learned about at Dalhousie is their Aquatron. While I still don't really know what this is, it does have a pretty impressive name and place on campus.

A Few Quick Notes 354

-Today, like the past few days, seems to be turning out quite nicely. Though it has cooled off a bit this evening, I would still go so far as to say it is pretty nice, though it definitely feels as though we are approaching, if not in the midst of, fall.

-Today I had to head to school to attend an orientation session for the new students in the Political Science Department. Though many of the new students were likely attending to learn about the department and what would be required of them in the coming year, I was primarily attending to meet the new students and get a sense of who I might be attending class alongside in the coming weeks. I didn't end up sticking around much past the introductions as I really didn't need to hear about what is involved in preparing an MA thesis, which was much of what was to be discussed during the rest of the session.

Later in the afternoon I made my way across campus for my first class of the semester, which technically occurred the day before the semester was officially to begin. The most notable outcome of the class was that I have assigned a paper/commentary for next week. Fortunately, I have been able to collect all of the readings, and have already, though only just, tried to start read them.

-A few weeks or days ago Neil and I were talking about the SMS text service provided by Google Voice and the strangeness of the fact that it was not possible to forward text messages to one's email account. It seems that other thought that this was a strange omission as well, as earlier today I noticed that the Google Voice Blog announced that they have now introduced a few new features relating to text messages, one of which is the ability to have them forwarded to email addresses.

-I wish all first year students were like this.

A Few Quick Notes 346

-It seems that for the first time in a few days we have had a maximum temperature of less than 30. The other thing of note is that the thunderstorms that had been forecast for the past few days have not had the courtesy to show up. Now it seems that they are off of the forecast, at least for the time being.

-Yesterday Neil was kind enough to let me know that Google Voice is now offering free calls to Canada. This is great as both Neil and I have accounts. For those of you that don't yet have accounts with Google Voice, such accounts might be looking into, especially if you want free long distance and texting.

-In other Google related news, yesterday I read a blog post from Google about their ability to predict search trends. In the post they also mentioned Google Insights for Search, a product I had not previously heard of (though I had heard of Google Trends and Google Zeitgeist). Anyway, Google seems to be doing some neat things on the searching front, some of which may have some interesting implications.

-Over the past few days I have heard about a number of incidents involving people openly carrying guns at Obama-related events. While it seems clear that no laws are being broken, I do find the behaviour both dangerously aggressive and strange. While one may legally be able to do this, I really don't see how it helps the situation, even for the people with the guns. If this grows more popular it certainly could lead to a situation with disastrous consequences. (More original, Montifax only content).

-Yesterday Neil, Rebecca and I were talking about this year's crop of incoming university students. What was most striking about these students is that are the second cohort from the 1990s, something that was making us all feel relatively old. Today I came across the Mindset List, which outlines a number of things that have been true for duration of these students' lives, and that weren't true even a few years before. For instance, for those born in 1991 the Cold War and the Iron Curtain are historical facts rather than things that they were alive to experience. Anyway, I had fun browsing the list, though it also made me feel old.