So I’m sitting here at Stanford University for the second day, listening to the Dean of Carnegie Melon’s Silicon Valley campus talk (he’s one of the creators of the AFS system that the conference is about).

In walking in to the building today, I was surprised at the amount of the open space around the campus…almost everywhere you turn there are quads, courtyards, small parks, athletic fields, etc. If this was ASU, they’d have paved it over and put a building (with a “Your Name Here for a Small Fee” sign on it). The other thing that strikes me is that the internal roads (which ASU would have turned into “malls” with no non-ASU vehicles allowed) are still mostly open to traffic (some are restricted to shuttles, etc).

Then one of the locals explained the Mandatory Earthquake Instructions: move to the designated open space and wait for emergency services as necessary.

Duh. Arizona doesn’t have earthquakes.

Edit: Finally figured out how to get rid of the Drop Capitals at each paragraph. One is nice, 4 is just silly looking! Special thanks to my employee Zach for showing me how to find the css element in Firebug.