Entry tags:

pictures

UMass
The Portuguese summer program is going fairly well. I'm learning a fair bit, my instructors are good, the language and course is interesting, and while the book isn't great I'm not going to stress over it. Two of the five weeks are done and so far I think I'm doing okay. Though this course would have been a total killer if I hadn't have taken French and Spanish before. We're moving incredibly quickly.

I took a couple shots of the UMass Dartmouth campus, mostly because it amuses me with it's concrete esthetic. Wikipedia doesn't have a date for when the current campus was built, but I'm guessing the 60s. That strikes me as the logical time for an architect to think that the best way for a university to look is a ton of unpainted concrete. UCSD had a similarly inspired look. Though at least UMD has used the windows and similar design elements to make the buildings look a lot more interesting than, say, HSS (History and Social Science building, for those who didn't go to UCSD). Though how the architect thought that concrete spike (I guess it's a bell tower) was a good idea, I'll never know.

* * * * * * * * *
Completely unrelated:

This story makes me profoundly sad. Originally I wanted to write up a sarcastic post taking that sort of reasoning further, but honestly bigotry just depresses me enough that I don't want to attempt to be funny.