Cocaine and sushi on the lower east side

In case you're wondering what graduate students do all day, here's a small taste of what goes on in academia.

Our department has an email listserv that sends emails out to everyone simultaneously when someone posts to it. Usually these emails consist of boring stuff, like announcements for the next snoozefest seminar, but it was put to good use yesterday. Two nights ago a storm passed through, so yesterday the air was very crisp and clear (unusual for this city). One of the professors went to the top of the parking garage and photographed the surrounding view. He sent them out for anyone who wanted to use them(I doubt he meant for my blog, but whatever). Here are some of the pictures he took:





His initial email started a flurry of other emails, talking about whether or not we could use these pictures for the department's web page. Without going into all the details of those, the result was two brilliantly photoshopped pictures put together by two different graduate students (at the suggestion of another professor). Here are those pictures:




As far as I'm concerned, you can never have too many pictures of oversized, fire-breathing rodents attacking Las Vegas casinos.