Reflections on Caltech My parents convinced me to have my photo taken a couple months after I graduated from high school, when I still thought I was pretty smart. Now I only bother to get dressed when I get home, where I can be pampered by my parents. Here at Caltech, I'm usually slightly emaciated (they don't bother feeding the techs here on weekends) with a more tired complexion (sleep? What is this "sleep"?). I also tend to look a little more shaggy, as haircuts are quite rare for many Scurve Technicians. I like other people to think that I am part of a multifaceted cultural elite. My life is a superfetation of high culture: I like classical music that drives normal human beings crazy (Floe by Glass by Glassworks, for example); I would be the first to pay millions for the senseless scribbles of a preschooler; I make an appointment with those enigmatic European films that people go to with the sole purpose of appearing cultured; and my talk of the untapped potential of the information superhighway will bore even Al Gore. Of course, my crassness and uncouth ways probably automatically disqualify me from any elite group of which I wish to be a member; but this, obviously, apodictically identifies me as a cultural poser. It doesn't end here. While I'm not all that white, I'm still male, heterosexual, Christian (even Protestant), fairly conservative, and non-vegetarian (note all the wrong groups). Having been quite thoroughly corrupted into submission to Western indoctrination (MTV and all), I have been rightly criticized for oppressing more than my fair share of underrepresented cultures: women, atheists, liberals, gays... I've probably oppressed you too, if you happen to be in any way different from me. Or maybe I'm the victim. When someone gets to the point where they're willing to give up 5,000 years of cultural tradition just to listen to the insidious cackles of Beavis and Butthead, we can't really say who has been victimized. Or at least, that's what we all say. These things should bother me constantly (I'm the kind of person who thinks more about how I should think/feel than how I actually think/feel), but I manage the boredom by numbing my senses with my favorite opiate: studying physics as a sophomore at Caltech. (This is strange, since I've noticed that I probably waste more energy playing computers.