Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Three of the five elevators here in U.C. Berkeley's Evans Hall have been out of operation for... it seems like an eternity.

There are consequences:

1. We economists on the sixth floor have never been in better shape...
2. I, at least, have gained a surprisingly detailed knowledge of the genes that code for hemoglobin while staring at posters on the fourth floor--I pretend, you see, to be intellectually raptured while I catch my breath, and some knowledge does leak across...
3. I have never been more conscious that we are actually on the eighth floor. The first floor, you see, is called "G," and the third floor is missing--the second floor lobby (which calls itself the first floor) is two stories high...
4. Attendance at office hours is still noticeably down (although not as far down as the year when chunks of concrete were falling off the skin of the building onto passers-by below)...
5. Deferred maintenance is a real bitch...
6. I wonder what's going on up on the tenth floor, where the Math department lives (actually the twelfth floor). We must by now have the buffest math department ever...