I'm on the third floor of the computer center (aka the CIT) where the computer science department has just completed amazing renovations. The third floor used to be all offices and belong to the IT people. Now the CS department has taken over, and built such a fantastic space for studying and hanging out and working that students from all departments seem to have found it and made it their study nook. On the whiteboard covering the wall to my left, a large diagram describes the structure of a "Weird Detective Story," with sections like, "Other Characters: Woman, a god, Theodore Roosevelt's ghost, a corpse," and "Context: Several dimensions - in the physical, not time-travel sense. Resurrection of old social movements? Underground and cabalistic." The whiteboard in front of me has a careful top-down view of a string of railroad cars negotiating an s-curve, paired with what appears to be the face of a seal: round and whiskered, but without ears. Do seals have ears? Off to my right is a diagram of the evolution of animals; most of it is too small to read, but the diagram is capped with a manga-ish drawing of a creature with a big belly, labeled "Placental Mammal: Long Live Toro the Forest Spirit!!!"

Brown is... special. I'd like to know which book the lit-crit kids were analyzing... and I bet there's a story behind Toro the Forest Spirit. Mostly I have to congratulate the CS department on creating such a beautiful, usable space. For my last weeks at Brown, I think I'll make this my home.