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[mkt42]

An international observation about student riots:  when I was in China several years ago, I noticed that every university campus was surrounded by a wall or at least a substantial fence.  Although these are common features at colleges in the US, an American expat who'd been living there several years said that those walls were not to preserve the ivory tower, but rather to make it easier for the police to seal off the campus.

Also, the universities in Shanghai were in the process of having their campuses consolidated, wherein about four separate universities were physically located into a single large location that the students there translated as a "university city".  If it had been the US my first guess at a reason would've been cost-cutting; the American expat's guess was that in China it was once again a way of concentrating the student body and making it easier to control.

[zookers]

Speaking of riot control, a recent speaker claimed that interstate freeway system was built through concentrated population centers with raised roads so that in the event of an uprising, the military could control the chaos by taking over the roads and shooting down into the crowds below. 

Right....  Typical conspiracy-theorist bulls***.  Did the speaker also make mention of the massive for-profit prison system being built around the country designed to lock up dissenters during the Fascist takeover?

[macaroon]

Add me to the Steam Tunnelers Society!

My undergraduate school had an enormous network of them.  A couple of friends and I used to wait until 3AM and pop up the manhole covers.  Down we'd go!  I don't know why we thought it was so much fun.  Oh wait - because it's breaking and entering and breaking and entering is fun.

My current Uni (I'm on the tenure track) has steam tunnels.  I carry a pry bar in my trunk.  It's tempting...

[caesura]

I had a college boyfriend part of whose seduction technique was to take a girl on a tour of weird things about campus.  I remember an old-fashioned elevator that consisted of only a floor that moved up and down, some tunnels, and a rooftop that housed a lot of monkeys in cages.  By the way, it worked!  :)