OPLSS 2025 Info | University of Oregon

I'm not sure how the Pacific Northwest looks to people from other regions of the US and other countries.

Eugene is very low in terms of interpersonal crime, but higher in property crime. So, while none of my friends have ever been mugged, bikes left in the open on campus after 6PM are not safe.

Because of the mountainous nature of the Pacific Northwest, the rivers are well controlled by dams. The almost constant rain in winter can cause the ground to become unstable and trees to fall. Although there have been spectacular mudslides in the Pacific Northwest, they have generally been hundreds of miles from Eugene during the winter. We do not have hurricanes, but the wind can combine with the rain to cause trees to fall and knock out power lines. This really doesn't happen in summer, though. With global climate change, any sense of "normal" weather is a myth, but prior to 2000, it didn't rain in Oregon from June 21 to September 1. During OPLSS in 2009, this trend was broken when it rained at 8PM for about 30 seconds. Since then, it has rained several times during OPLSS, one year lasting all through the night.

Being mostly evergreen forest, the Pacific Northwest is subject to forest fires in the summer. In 2017, teenagers started a fire in the Columbia River Gorge (near Mount Hood by Portland) by setting off illegal fireworks. The fire was declared "contained" after three months, but wasn't fully extenguished until the next summer. About 150 hikers were trapped in the smoke overnight. The old Highway (a tourism experience you shouldn't miss) was closed for a year. A section of the Pacific Crest Trail (the western-most section of the Great Western Loop) was closed for a year. The air quality in Eugene, 150 miles away, was severely affected with residents advised to stay indoors for several weeks. The kid who started the fire was sentenced to 12 months of community service and a $36.6 million fine. In 2020, the Holiday Farm fire caused a shelter in place order for Eugene residents, followed by several weeks of stay indoors advisories. (The first morning, I woke at 4am thinking I had left the stove on and the house was on fire.) In general, OPLSS occurs too early in the summer to be affected by forest fire air quality issues.

Occasionally, we have very small earthquakes. They're so small that I usually don't notice until it's reported in the news. However, western Oregon is in the Cascadia Subduction Zone , which runs from Vancouver Island to Mendocino California , and makes up our local participation in the Ring of Fire . Each year, North America moves about 1 ½ inches to the left. This causes the Juan de Fuca Plate, which holds up the local bit of the Pacific Ocean, to be subducted under the North American Plate. Actually, it does not so much subduct as lock together and build up pressure. Then about every 500 years, a massive earthquake (about 9.0 magnitude with resulting North American/Asian tsunami) occurs and the plates slip past each other really fast only to lock up again. The last Cascadia earthquake happened on Jan 26, 1700 at 9PM, (we know the time even though there were no Europeans living here, because we know when the tsumani created devastation in Japan the next day) so your trip to Oregon will probably miss the destruction of the Pacific Northwest by about 30 years. I appologize for the lost tourism opportunity, but the next cascadia subduction event will be glorius when Vancouver, Portland and Seattle are destroyed in a massive fiery cataclysm.

In case you're worried about war, the last time Oregon was involved in local fighting was 1942 in World War II, when a Japanese submarine fired on the military base at the mouth of the Columbia River, but missed and destroyed a local sports field instead. The kids were not playing there at the time. The same submarine then launched a plane which dropped two incendiary bombs into the forest, igniting fires that were quickly extinguished.

Before the 1940's, war with Britain almost broke out in 1846 over the border. Prior to that time, the word "Oregon" was claimed by Europeans to be a Native American word referring to a large, fresh water lake in what is now southern British Columbia. Linguists find no credible word in the 300+ Native American dialects spoken here, and there is no such lake, but when no lake was found, the word came to refer to the area from what is now southern British Columbia down to what is now the California-Oregon border. Although most European occupants of that territory were French fur trappers who worked for the Hudson Bay Company, which labeled the area of what is now all of British Columbia down to what is now Eugene, Oregon as the Columbia Department of the Hudson Bay Company, eventually the word Oregon referred the United States loyalists who wanted to extend America to the Pacific Ocean. The Oregonians had the slogan "54-40 or Fight!". Setting the border at the 54.4^th parallel would have given Oregon most of what is now Canadian British Columbia. The purchase of Seward's Folly from Russia, along with extending Oregon up to the 54.4^th paralell would have given Britain only 200 miles of Pacfic coastline. The British wanted to extend British Columbia down to the 42^nd parallel, the top of what is now California, which was owned by Mexico at the time, thus denying the United States any Pacific coastline. The Treaty of Oregon set the border at the 49^th parallel , the current border, and nobody fought. In 1871, the border was clarified by Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, an impartial observer, after the Pig War, a war between the US and Britain.
When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the only UO Peace Studies major camped outside the University President's office in protest, thus closing the Peace Studies program due to war.

May 11, 2025

The website says you must pay your registration by May 19 to hold your place at OPLSS. Also you must arrange or cancel your housing by May 19 or be liable for the cost. If you have a fellowship and do not cancel by May 19, you will have to pay for cost if you do not attend, because our sponsors only pay for costs incurred by people who attend.

During OPLSS, you can use the UO guest wireless network or the eduroam wireless network. To use eduroam, your institution must be a member. Please consult your campus network administrator before arriving at OPLSS.

UO guest and eduroam will work well in your dorm or on other places on campus; however, the classroom is configured to have fewer than a dozen guests and fewer than a dozen eduroam users when classes are in session. So, you will have limited bandwidth. I suggest you take the following steps:

During lectures, use only text-based services on your laptop.
Download any software used by the lecturer before attending the lecture. Details of software used in the lectures are contained on the topics page under the entry for each lecturer.

May 5, 2022

Happy Cinco de Mayo.

Cinco de Mayo is a US holiday to celebrate a Mexican victory against France. During the US Civil War, the breakaway Confederate States asked the French for assistance. During the American War of Independence, a kind of civil war, the French had assisted the Americans throw off British rule. (Of course, Louis XVI assisted the Americans, just before he was executed by Napoleon I. The confederation asked Napoleon III for assistance on the theory that anyone named Emperor Napolean would harbor resentment to the US.) In the meantime, Mexico had announced its intention to default on its foreign debt. While Britain and Spain renegotiated their terms with Mexico, France sent an invading army and quite successfully defeated the Mexicans at first. Eventually, on May 5, 1862 in the Battle of Puebla, the badly outnumbered Mexican army managed to defeat the more organized French troops. Even so, the French managed eventually to take Mexico City and install a French government, but the Battle of Puebla served as a rallying point for Mexican resistance forces who finally defeated the French in 1867. To the US, the Battle of Puebla left the French troops thinned and demoralized enough that they concentrated on battling the Mexican army, rather than Napolean's plan of using a subjagated Mexico as a base of operations to assist the Confederate States, as a start in the French take over of North America.

Except in Puebla, Cinco de Mayo is not generally celebrated in Mexico; however, it has become a huge celebration in the US. Immediately after the war, Mexican Americans (US citizens of Mexican heritage) living in California began celebrating the holiday as their contribution to ending slavery in the US. (California had only changed from Mexican to US rule 20 years earlier at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War) In the 1960's, the movement around Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union began celebrating Cinco de Mayo again as a holiday celebrating the contributions of Mexican Americans. Today it has become a major beer drinking holiday in the US, like St. Patrick's day or Oktoberfest, where everyone pretends to have ancestry that's not borne out by the facts.

The link between France and the Southern US states is deep. Only the US state of Louisiana and the Canadian Province of Quebec base their laws on the Nepoleanic Code rather than English Law. Lawyers are trained to either appear in Louisiana Courts, or anywhere else in the US, but not both.

Please don't pay for things that don't appear on your invoice! If you want to change your accomodations, please email me and I will send you a corrected invoice which you can pay. Make sure that the amount you pay is the total that says "pay this amount" It looks very bad to auditors if you pay more money than your invoice shows. If you have extra money lying around, book a trip to Trinidad and Tobago, but do not send it to me unless I have sent you an invoice that indicates that amount on the "Total Due" line. If this is not clear, please ask me before paying.

Things to bring to the summer school:

A laptop

For Foreign Participants:
If you are not from North America, bring a power converter for your laptop. US power outlets are 120 volts at 60 hertz. If you come here without a power adapter, it may take you a number of phone calls and missed lectures to figure out where to get one, so it is probably easier to obtain one from your local apothecary (or whoever sells them in your country) before coming. To operate at the lecture hall, power adapters must have a profile that allows you to plug into an outlet like the picture. Of course, other small appliances will also need an adapter.
Soap or shower gel, shampoo, toothpaste and other personal grooming items.
The dorm does not have hair dryers or irons. I think of these as "personal grooming items,". Hot plates. water kettles, and other cooking appliances are not allowed in your dorm room.
If you think you have a cold at OPLSS,
what you probably have is an allergy to grass pollen. Most people from Asian countries are quite unused to American grass pollen, and even people from parts of this country are often unused to the level of grass pollen in Eugene. An allergy to grass pollen usually manifests as:
- nasal congestion
- sinus pressure, which may cause facial pain
- runny nose
- itchy and watery or red and burning eyes
- scratchy throat
- cough
- swollen, bluish-colored skin beneath the eyes
- decreased sense of taste or smell
- increased asthmatic reactions — If you have asthma problems, please consult your physician before coming to the Willamette Valley.
There are various over-the-counter medications that are available at any Eugene supermarket. However, many drugs for pollen allergies take several days before they start working, and/or make you feel drowsy. Even over-the-counter medications can interact badly with other drugs you are taking — Please consult a physician or pharmacist before mixing medications. Here are some things to do to minimize your pollen exposure:
- Remain indoors with the windows closed as much as possible.
- When going outside, wear sunglasses and a breathing mask that covers your mouth and nose. Wear a hat or scarf to keep pollen out of your hair.
- After going outdoors, rinse your nasal cavity with saline solution (1/4 tsp of salt added to 4 oz of bottled water — do not use unfiltered tap water). Rinse your eyes with clear water. For burning eyes, place a wet washcloth over your eyes — Do not rub your eyes.
- Take a shower and wash your hair before bed. This will avoid the situation where you deposit pollen from your hair to your pillow, and then inhale it.
Typically, I tell everyone to bring allergy medication. The main agricultural products in the Willamette Valley are grass seed and mint, so if you are allergic to grass pollen, expect to feel the effects while you are here. Typically, the grass pollen count is worst in June, with the level tapering off as summer progresses. Some students travelling to OPLSS experience pollen allergies for the first time. You can see a complete pollen report at www.weather.com, zip code: 97403 (pay attention to the grass number). Pseudofed is a prescription drug in Oregon, so if you intend to purchase it here, either bring a prescription, or use one of the better, non-prescription alternatives.

I suggest you not bring your own sheets and towels since housekeeping will probably throw them in with the hall's linen when they change your room linens. In the past, this has lead to much consternation, especially if your linens are white, or slightly off-white as you look through the campus collection of laundry trying to find your sheets. If you do need to bring your own sheets, I suggest you put a sign on your door asking that your linens not be laundered. Also, talk to me so I will talk to the housekeeping staff.

I thought this would be obvious: the dorms have laundry facilities . Currently, laundry cost $1.50 and dryers are free. This price is subject to change when the contract is renewed at the beginning of summer, but should not be drastically different.

If you have a housing package, the meals will be served at the Cafeteria. The hours are:

Breakfast 7:00 AM - 10:00 AM
Lunch 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM
Dinner 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

If you are not staying in the OPLSS housing, you can pay at the cafeteria door and eat with the other participants. The item labels in the serving area contain markings for problematic food ingredients, including milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame seeds.

Some common concerns:

Food Allergies: Gluten-Free

Many Americans think that gluten-free means high protein. Many say "gluten-free" when they mean "low-carb". This makes no sense, since gluten is a protien that displaces carbs and is not present in corn, the most common source of carbs in America. Gluten is chiefly found in wheat, barley and rye products. People who are genetically very british may have a condition called Celiac Disease which is an attempt by one's immune system to defend against gluten by destroying the small intestine. (That'll teach it!) The symptoms are extreme abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomitting when even small amounts of gluten are consumed. Although marking something gluten-free is chic in the US, it is not treated as a medical claim, as it is in England, Canada, and Australia, and therefore, not actually enforceable in law. Many things which people think of as gluten free, such as meatballs, may contain gluten in America. Because of this hidden gluten, it is better to ask for detailed sourcing information of foods if you have Celiac. (Many meat products and vegan products with the ingredient TVP may contain gluten, for example.)
Vegetarian/Vegan/Raw Foodist: If you are vegan or vegetarian, there should be no problem finding adequate hot and cold food in the cafeteria. If you are raw foodist, there is an extensive salad bar. There is also a large selection of fresh and once frozen fruit, although some frozen fruits may have been blanched (heated briefly) before being frozen.
Halal: As an official of the State of Oregon,
I cannot legally cooperate with US federal officials if they try to set up a religious registry, so any information you give me about your religion will not be shared with federal officials, or even other state officials except in aggregate. (For example, I could say to the cafeteria folks, "I have two sheik participants who are concerned about meat production in the United States" without giving a name.)

I do not know of any halal butchers in Eugene, and the cafeteria does not order halal meat. In general, my Muslim friends find plenty to eat at the cafeteria, by sticking to the vegetarian offerings.
Kosher: Kosher is tricky. This surprised me since I know many Jews in town. Talking to my friends and the Jewish Student Union and Hillel and several Rabbis, it seems to come down to "if you live in Eugene, you have to make compromises." It is certainly possible to observe a Jewish-American, not-very-strict, kind-of-kosher, by abstaining from certain foods. In the cafeteria, asking "Is it kosher" is probably not as good an idea as asking for the ingredients, which the chef will be happy to share with you. Anyway, the answer to "Is it kosher?" is always no, since the cooking utensils and serving vessels are not kosher.
Jhatka: Since the meat in the cafeteria is neither expressly halal nor kosher, it is unlikely to be Kutha, but American butchery practice is not guaranteed to be strictly Jhatka either. Chickens are often killed with much suffering, for example, having their feathers removed prior to death. Cows and pigs can suffer as a result of unintentional mechanical failures. If you have strong ethical beliefs, you might want stick to the vegetarian options. (This is a general observation about US meat production. Our facilities maintain best practices within the US system.)
Free-Roam/Cage-Free Livestock: In the 1980's,
the University of Oregon successfully brought criminal charges against a meat company for providing alleged USDA inspected lamb that was stamped on the fat by the Australian government inspectors. Since it is very difficult for animals to be simultaneously slaughtered in the US and Australia, the company owner went to prison for fraud. Since the University of Oregon does not have an investigation squad for the origins of our meat, the butcher might have gotten away with it, if the fraud had not been so obvious, and it weren't for those meddling kids (Elva Koepp).

Since US law does not specify what it means to raise livestock cage-free, and the University does not have resources to investigate the source of animal products past the USDA oversight at the packing plant, asking for cage-free animal products would just be an invitation for suppliers to lie. Therefore, the dining hall cannot independently certify that any animal products were or were not produced in cage-free environments.

May 1, 2023

Happy May Day!

Other Oregon firsts

Oregon was the first state in the United States to:

Ban CBN (2022)
Restrict Perspective, an herbicide that kills trees (2019)
Provide state-wide rent control (2019)
Provide 3 gender options on state identification (2017)
Provide a public retirement savings plan for all citizens not covered by their employer
First state to mandate ending coal-fired power. Oregon does not generate energy from coal, but Senate Bill 1547 mandates the utilitu companies stop buying electricity from out-of-state coal plants by 2030 (2016)
First State to introduce over-the-counter birth control for women, and require insurers to cover 12 months (2016)
First state to enact a motor voter law, a law which allows citizens to vote based on drivers license renewal (2016)
First state to legally recognize third gender option in the courts (2016)
Elect openly bisexual governor (2016)
Elect openly trangendered mayor (2008)
Elect first openly lesbian speaker of the state house (2006)
Require a prescription for Sudafed (2005)
Require all elections be held by mail (2000)
Hold a federal election by mail (1996)
Create the first wiki (wikiwikiweb by Ward Cunningham) (1994)
Legalize physician assisted suicide (1994)
Pass law prohibiting state police from assisting federal immigration officials (1987)
(I heard a radio program documenting a migrant family calling the Oregon police to make the Federal police stop threatening them.)
Elect the first Chinese-American to a state senate (1982)
Establish a state food bank (1979)
Elect an Arab governor (1978)
Ban fluorocarbon aerosol products (1977)
Establish urban growth boundaries (1973)
Decriminalize cannabis (1973)
Require soda cans/bottles be returnable (1971)
Dick Fosbury won the Olympic High Jump in Mexico and set a new record by using the revolutionary Fosbury Flop, jumping backwards over the bar, the technique in use today (1968)
First seal pup conceived and born in captivity at the Oregon Seaside Aquarium (1952)
Use spikeless track shoes. Bill Bowerman, the University of Oregon track coach, used a waffle iron to make track shoes that did not have medal spikes. His company, Blue Ribbon Sports, was eventually taken over by Phil Knight to become Nike (1970)
Linus Pauling, Oregon native — Only person to win two unshared Nobel Prizes, for Chemistry in 1954 and for Peace in 1962 (1954/1962)
University of Oregon wins the first Mens Basketball NCAA Tournament; at that time, the team was called "The Tall Firs" rather than "The Mighty Ducks" as they are presently known (1939)
First state to enact a gas tax to pay for roads (1919)
Have a presidential primary election in which ordinary citizens were allowed to vote (1910)
Have a female governor, Carrie Shelton (1909) — predated women's right to vote in the US by 3 years
Hire a female policewoman, Lola Baldwin (1908)(hired by City of Portland)
Enact a statewide labor day holiday (1887)
First Permanent US settlement on the Pacific Coast — John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company founded Fort Astoria on the site which is now the city of Astoria (1810)

I don't know whether this is a first or not; according to my father's law partner, more than 110 years ago, two women walked into the Registrar's Office in Oregon City, and said they wanted a marriage license. The clerk told them it would be $25. They said, "You noticed, we are both women, right?" The clerk said there was no discount, so the two women paid the $25 and became married. I have never been able to independently verify this story, and both my father and his partner have been dead for more than 20 years, so I can't ask for more details.

Oregon was the first US state to create a day honoring labor, although it was in June. There are links on the Venue page about the other great May Day tradition: Morris Dancing.

Acceptance has been established and grant funding has been allocated. You should have received a letter of invitation and an invoice from me. The letter of invitation has specific language for the US State Department during your visa interview, and specific language for the US Customs and Border Protection officers. Whether you go for a visa interview or obtain clearance through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, you should have the letter of invitation ready at the border, and pay attention to my March 15 remarks about what not to say during a visa interview and at the border.

Also, your registration charge is determined by me and listed on your invoice. When you go to the payment site, you need to pay the amount of money shown on your invoice. Do not pay for things that add up to more than your invoice shows you owe.

April 20, 2025

Happy Easter

Easter is the day of the year that Christians celebrate the resurrection of the Christ. Unlike Christmas, which is simply a joyous holiday, Easter is a holiday of mixed emotions which recalls when the Christ was tortured and killed so that he could resurect and thus cleanse the World of sin. Christians believe that Jesus so loved them to suffer such great sacrifice. So, the day is characterized by both sadness and joy.

Because the Christian world is separated into the Western part, which uses Pope Gregory's calendrical reforms, and the Orthodox part, which uses the older Julius Ceasar calendrical reforms, Easter can sometimes fall on different days for different denominations. In both systems, Easter occurs as the first Sunday after the first full moon of Spring. However, the Gregorian calendrical reform was instituted to account for the often astronomically wrong date of the Julian calendar beginning of Spring.

For the first 300 years of the Roman Empire, the date of Easter was set by the Pope to occur one week after the Jewish Passover, which is the timing recounted in the Christian Bible, but 300 years into the Roman Empire, things had so deteriorated that reliable communication was not possible throughout the Empire. Thus, the church had to resort to a way of calculating the date of Easter independent of the Jewish calendar (the church at that time had become very antisemitic), and mass communication, thus the formula. This year, as is uncommon, Western and Orthodox Easter occur on the same day.

Secularly, Easter is typically celebrated by giving children copious amounts of chocolate, a large family meal, and an Easter egg hunt where the adults hide brightly colored eggs around the yard and the children seek them out. This year, because of the high price of eggs, and the fact that most colored eggs, although boiled to preserve them through the hunt, end up wasted, many families are resorting to coloring potatoes for the children to find.

Anyone who applied for OPLSS should have received an email from me telling them of the acceptance status. If you have not heard from me, please email summerschool@cs.uoregon.edu to tell me I have lost your application.

April 12, 2025

Chag Pesach Sameach

Pesach or Passover is celebrated in the Jewish religion to commemorate the Exodus of the enslaved Hebrew people from Egypt. Unlike the Gregorian Calendar which begins a new day in the middle of the night, the Jewish Calendar marks days from sundown to sundown, so, although Pesach officially begins on the Gregorian Calendar on April 13, April 13 begins on the Jewish Calendar at sundown on April 12 on the Gregorian Calendar.

Pesach is mostly a festival for extended family. The family joins together in the ritual purification of the house, and celebrates a ritual meal which recalls the biblical story of the exodus through the Haggadah in fulfillment of the Torah requirement that Jews remember the Exodus.

Pesach is also the ritual culmination of the annual Spring cleaning that all Jewish families perform. Yeast, a microorganism that grows on grains such as wheat or barley, consumes the complex carbohydrates of the grain and excretes carbon dioxide and alcohol. Gluten is a protein primarily in wheat, barley and rye, which when mixed with water creates an elastic membrane. When the yeast metabolism process happens in gluten-rich environments, the dough traps the carbon dioxide in pockets of gluten which gives the dough a light, airy texture. Before commercial yeast was sold, all bread was made through a sourdough process, in which the yeast naturally growning on the grain was allowed many days to multiply into a carbon dioxide manufacturing machine. However, this process is problematic at best, because other organisms on the grain are also being allowed to multiply, and some of these are not good for humans. In the Jewish tradition, the house must be cleared of all yeast products annually, thus removing any extra impurities.

I was at my sister's mother-in-law's house for a dinner, and she had managed to spill the sauce from her scalloped potatoes into the oven door vent, coating the inside glass with cheese sauce. She was complaining about having to call a repair man just to clean the inside of the door, and I showed her how to lift the door out and clean it. She wanted to know how I knew that her brand of oven would allow the door to be so easily cleaned. I said it was because all ovens do that — they want to sell to Jewish women. This started me on the whole explanation of Pesach requirements for Spring cleaning, Chametz, involving children in Bedikat Chametz, etc. It surprised me how little my family seemed to know of Judaism. At Catholic school, we had celebrated the Catholic rite of the Seder meal, which is pretty close to the Haggadah, but in English.

Modern archilogoists believe that the Exodus is not a true telling of the events surrounding the creation of the Jewish identity in Canaan. Evidence suggests that Jerico was burned down from the inside, rather than attacked from the outside. Archilogists beleive that during the Bronze age, the leisure class was on the rise. That is, the Agricultural Revolution allowed farmers to produce more than substistance levels of agriculture. Thus, although some people remained farmers and herders, many people moved to cities where they became lawyers, legislators, and police. In Canaan, it is believed that the farmers and herders became largely repressed by this new leisure class, culminating in the revolt against Jerico, the capital city. The city was destroyed and a new Jewish culture was formed, with principles that nobody should ever try to repress another group, and aid should always be given to the less fortunate. This is also why Sukkot is a major festival in Judaism, to remind the people that they may live in a city, but they are not of the city.

If you have a housing package and want to share a room with a roommate, please let me know by May 19^th.

The State of Oregon does not have laws determining a person's gender identity, aside from what the person reports. Thus, there is no particular law enforcement authority to determine who should be using which bathroom; although, lewd, sexually motivated or harrassing behavior in the bathrooms or anywhere else is prohibited by Oregon law and University policy.

April 1, 2023

Happy April Fools Day.

April 1 is generally known as April Fools Day, on which people generally say outlandish things. Since everyone knows it is April Fools Day, nobody believes the jokes, but there are always people who forget what day it is, and take your statements as true.

In 1957, the BBC broadcast the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest, showing farm workers picking strands of pasta from a spaghetti tree. In 2005, US National Public Radio did a story about how New England maple trees, normally tapped for maple syrup, can explode into maple syrup geysers if left untapped. In 2012, Google announced a new Android that instead of requiring a clumbsy keyboard for input, would send email composed by tapping Morse Code on the case. In 2022, the UK's National Trust announced a program to replace paintings that must be taken off public display for cleaning or restoration by live people dressed as the missing art pieces; outfitter Moosejaw announced its plans to reduce paper consumption by not giving receipts, but instead shouting out your purchases in a really loud voice, and HyperX announced its new keyboard, with a lawn planted on each key, so when you are composing conspiracy tweets, you can touch grass. Last year, RFC 9564 Faster Than Light Speed Protocol (FLIP) was added to the Internet Engineering Task Force RFC database.

Scholars are not sure when the tradition of April Fools began, but it probably has to do with a law passed in 1564 France when the year was officially declared to begin on January 1. Prior to that time, it was common to either begin the year on January 1, or on March 25 with a celebration of Spring that ended on April 1. After the law, rural people continued to have the Spring celebration. The city folks refered to the country folks as "April Fools." Lisa Simpson, on The Simpsons, characterized this as a cultural conflict between Pagan Romans and Christians, (She also confused Baal, a Phoenician God or possibly a generic name for foreign gods in the Bible, with Jupiter, the chief God of the Romans. Phoenician pagans couldn't have conflicted with Christians, since the Phoenicians were long gone before Jesus was born.), but it was probably a much later cultural conflict between rural populations and urban populations. The Islamic folk tale that April Fools celebrates the Christian defeat of the Moors on April 1 by first addicting them to tabacco to make them foolish, is not possible, since the Christians defeated the Moors on January 2, 1492, and tobacco, a New World plant, was unknown to the Europeans at that time. Later, in the summer of 1492, when a starving Christopher Columbus accidentally ran into the Americas while trying to find an ocean route to Japan, he was given fruit and tobacco by the Native Americans. He ate the fruit and threw the tobacco away, since it tasted bad and Europeans had no idea you were supposed to smoke it. I'm not sure who was more foolish, the people who didn't know how to smoke it, or the people who did.

There are many outdoor activities to do in Eugene. Within a 30 minute walk from the dorms are

Pre's Trail and running paths
UO Student Recreation Center Check out the facilities on the website, then ask me about obtaining a pass.
fishing in the Willamette River — requires a license; bring equipment
a disk golf course ($3.00)
the Columns rock climbing area — bring equipment
a covered skate park — bring equipment
tennis courts — bring equipment
other city parks

Sunday, June 29

On Sunday during OPLSS, we won't have any lectures, so participants are free to find something to do. In the past, groups have done various things (listed below). If you want to lead one of these activities, please let me know, and I will give you the particulars (where to go, etc) and list you as the person others should contact if they are interested.

Hike the ridgeline trail, 4 miles along city streets and running path, and 3 miles in forest to Spencer Butte peak.
- Walk back 7 miles
- Walk 3 miles and take city bus
- Continue on for 5 miles in forest and 4½ miles on city streets
Bus to Cascades Raptor Center. Admission is $13; before hours guided tours $40. Normal hours: 10am-5pm.
Bike Ride 16 miles to Swimming Area Renting a bike is about $15 to $90.
Mountain Biking in the Cascades Mountains
$55-$80 rental plus $35 shuttle to trail. Hikers need only pay shuttle, but may not have time to complete trail.
White Water Rafting
$75 (3 hours); minimum 4 people, maximum 48 people (more can be arranged before OPLSS begins)
Climbing gym
$17 to $25.
read a book
Other ideas

If you are interested in outdoor pursuits, and are not from around here, talk to me about bear and cougar safety. There have been very few cougar and bear attacks in oregon, but there have been many cougar and bear sightings. At present, local cougars and bears do not associate humans with food. Keep it that way! Do not leave garbage along the trails, and do not feed wild animals. When wild animals start to associate humans with food, they must be killed. So, if you leave garbage along the trail, you are killing our bears.

The general safety tip is to talk about your research while you are moving through the forest. The cougars and bears will hear you coming and move away.

March 31, 2025

As you make payments, I will send you a receipt. The receipt contains a line for each payment with the date, transaction type, and reference number. The dates are written in the American way. For example, the line
03/31/2025 credit card #999191111 $1000
means that on March 31, I received a credit card payment to your account for $1000. 999191111 is not the number on your credit card. It is illegal for me to ever know your credit card information. Do not tell me your credit card number in person, over the phone, or via email, unless you want the FBI to come and arrest me, in which case, my heirs will hunt you down like a dog. When you conducted your credit card transaction over the secure website, you should have received a receipt from the website. 999191111 is the confirmation number the website should have listed on that receipt. If there is a problem, this number allows me to query the credit card website without learning your credit card information.

March 20, 2025

Happy Nowruz.

Nowruz is the first day of Spring, and the first day in the Hijri calendar used in Iran and Afghanistan. Although Nowruz is part of the secular calendar, it's origins are from Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Persian Empire that still gets a reserved seat in the Iranian Parliament. (Three seats are reserved for Christians, one for Jews, and one for Zoroastrians.) Nowruz is celebrated in Parsi communities in India, and other Iranian peoples throughout the world. In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly recognized Nowruz as an international holiday. The Gregorian date of Nowruz varies slighly each year to coincide with the Spring Equinox, the day in the Northern Hemisphere when the short days of Winter transition to the long days of Summer. One of two days throughout the globe each year when the length of night is equal to the length of day. (ie equi-nox) Both Noruz and the equinox are 24 hours beginning at 2:01am in our timezone.

Zoroastrianism, believed to be the first monotheist religion, was founded by Zarathustra, (as in Thus Spake Zarathustra, the music by Richard Strauss played in the movie 2001: a Space Odessy when humans become sentient.) The religion survives today in minority communities such as the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq. (In Turkey, the letters Q, W and X were illegal until 2013 in an attempt to eradicate Kurdish culture.) From the time when both Christianity and Zoroastrianism were "underground" religions in the Roman Empire, Christianity borrowed the concept of a devil, a celestial being working against God's purposes, a concept unknown in Judaism, from Zoroastrianism, which sees the world as the battleground between two forces: Ahura Mazda (the creator) and Angra Mainyu (the destroyer), with victory for Ahura Mazda at the end of the World. From this influence, Christianity got Satan, and by transitivity, Islam got Iblis.

At the same time that the Persians were celebrating Nowruz, the Romans were also celebrating the Spring Equinox. The original Roman calendar began on the Spring Equinox, but the calendar did not have the months January and February. Those were added to the beginning of the year in about 700 BC. (It never made sense to me that the 9^th, 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th months were clearly named 7 (septem), 8 (octo), 9 (novem), and 10 (decem) until I learned this.) So, the year started in the Winter, instead of on the equinox. This is why Italian refers to Spring as Primavera, although it is clearly seconda not prima in the Gregorian calendar. The Julian caladar, introduced by Julius Ceasar in 45 BC, had enough calculation error that the Spring Equinox in the 14^th century was three days earlier than the calendar said. So, Pope Gregory XIII adopted a proposal by the University of Salamanca in 1582 to begin the Gregorian calendar. Even with the reforms of 45 BC and 1582 CE, the calendar we use in the West is less accurate than the Iranian Hijri calendar; hence the date of the equinox must be adjusted each year.

If you completed the registration material before March 14, by the end of today, you will receive an email from me informing you of acceptance (or not) to OPLSS. In most cases, attached to the email will be some documents. If you do not get any additional documents, it is explained in the email. If you have any questions, or do not get an email from me by tomorrow morning, (Hey, you in Austalia and Singapore, tomorrow morning means 6/21 AM to me, not you. I don't have any idea how your timezones work, or anything else.) email me and I will see what happened.

In the email, I will tell you how I intend to write your name on "official documents." In particular, if you are using the document to enter the US, please make sure that the name I list matches the name on your passport, as the border guards may want to see both, and the letter I send you will only be accepted if it matches your passport.

You should see as you arrange travel, that it is usually much cheaper to fly to Portland and then take a train to Eugene. The cost of a train from Portland to Eugene is approximately the same as the cost of a taxi from the Eugene airport to campus, but book the train when you book your flight, because people have been stuck overnight in Portland, because the train was full. If you are sharing the taxi, of course it will be cheaper for you, but you should find that although it takes a few extra hours to fly to Portland and take a train down, it will save you money.

March 17, 2025

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

Saint Patrick's Day is a holiday in the US ostensively celebrating the cultural contributions of Irish Americans. There is a huge and sometimes controversial parade in New York City, a 263-year-old tradition (a long time here, since the USA is only 236 years old). and smaller parades elsewhere. The holiday is mostly celebrated locally, however, by requiring everybody wear green (people can be freely pinched by passers-by if they wear no green), copius beer drinking, and people wearing stickers of a four-leaf clover with the words, "Kiss me, I'm Irish" although those people are not usually Irish, and the four-leaf clover is neither botanically nor symbolically related to the shamrocks symbolizing Ireland.

Saint Patrick, although not officially a saint in the Catholic Church, is credited with bringing Catholicism to Ireland while casting out the snakes. He was Romano-British, speaking Latin and Gaelic, born in Britain in the 5th Century at a time when mostly what is now England was still Roman and the English were confined to Kent and Anglia, and before there was a formal system for declaring saints. He purportedly used the three-leaf shamrock to explain the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity — One God who is composed of three parts: the Creator, the Saviour, and the Holy Spirit infused in the Corpus Cristi. The shamrock, a species of clover that always has three leaves, has since become a symbol of Hibernia.

Portland hosts a leprechaun colony headed by Patrick O'Toole who claims it is the only leprechaun colony West of Ireland. They appear to be the happy, drunken kind of American leprechaun, rather than the Irish leipreachán, a kind of daoine beaga ag déanamh bróga agus mischief.

While you are in the US, you may need either a US State issued driver's license, or a passport as personal identification. In particular, if you go to any establishment that dispenses alcohol, they will want to see your identification showning you are at least 21 years old. In most states, including Oregon, each tavern, bar and restaraunt owner is required to inspect the identification of every customer (at restaraunts, only if they are buying alcohol), and credibly believe that the identification is valid and issued to that person. Unfortunately, this may mean that whatever identification you are using is unfamiliar to the bartender and therefore, rejected. A tavern, bar or restaraunt can lose its ability to serve alcohol if they do not comply with this requirement. Undercover police often enter taverns to see if they get carded, and if not, they shut the tavern down. For example, I am over 60 years old, and I must show identification to gain access to a tavern. If I were friendly with the bartender, it wouldn't make a difference, unless I'm OK with my friends being unemployed. An attendee of OPLSS once said, "It's my right as an Englishman to get drunk," and I pointed out that English Rights don't extend to America (c.f. 1776).

Febuary 28, 2025

The Month of Ramadan probably begins Today.

The Month of Ramadan is the Muslim month of daytime fasting and increased vigilance of Jihad, the eternal struggle that humans experience between the weaknesses of the flesh and spiritual purity. Although Iftar, the meal with friends and family after sunset to break the day's fast, is a joyous celebration, the month is meant to be spent in religious contemplation. In muslim tradition, Ramadan is the time when Allah gave the Torah to Moses, Allah gave the Psalms to King David, Allah gave the Gospel to Jesus, and Allah gave the Quran to Muhammad.

The Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar, so it is eleven days shorter than the Gregorian solar calendar. This causes the Islamic months to come earlier each year on the Western calendar. In particular, a month begins when the first quarter moon "appears in the sky." Some Muslims take this to be the calculated day of the first quarter moon, either based on their position on the Earth or Saudi Arabia, some take this to be the day that they personally see the first quarter moon, and some take this to be the day that a committee in Saudi Arabia reports they were able to see the first quarter moon. Even scheduled first quarter moons happen on different days in different locations because of the position of the sun and moon in the sky as it passes over that location. Thus, the beginning of Ramamdan (or any other lunar month) may vary by as much as a day depending on the meaning of when a month begins, and celestial and weather conditions.

To be clear: Housing on campus is arranged through me. When I tell you you have been accepted to OPLSS, I will tell you I have reserved housing in the dorm for you, and ask you to tell me if you do not want it before May 19, 2025. Some people will pay through the credit card website, some people will pay through wire transfers, and some people will obtain a fellowship that pays for housing, so the credit card website is in no way linked to obtaining housing. Going to the credit card website and paying for housing does not guarantee housing is available. You have housing reserved for you when I tell you I have reserved housing for you, and send you an invoice with housing listed. Similarly, not paying for housing does not cancel the housing I have reserved for you. Telling me to cancel your housing will cancel your housing, and if you cancel housing, I will send you an invoice that shows you do not have to pay for housing.

If I tell you I have reserved housing for you, please let me know by May 19, 2025 if you do not want housing. On May 19, I must tell the housing authority how many rooms OPLSS will be occupying, and the housing authority will charge OPLSS for the number of rooms I say, regardless of whether they are occupied. In particular, if you accept a fellowship from one of our sponsors, you must cancel the fellowship by May 19, if you do not want to use it. Sponsors will not pay for empty rooms; although, housing will charge us for empty rooms. Thus paradoxically, you must pay for an empty room not cancelled by May 19, even if the room is free to you if you occupy it.

February 24, 2025

Happy Maha Shivaratri

Maha Shivaratri is the annual Hindu festival to honor Shiva, and commemorate Shiva performing the Divine Dance. It is a celebration of overcoming darkness and ignorance, and is usually spent in all-night meditation on ethics.

In Catholic School, we were taught that the four major gods in Hinduism were Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, and Kali, and we had to learn the aspects of each. In brief, Shiva is the God of Death, Dance, Destruction and Rebirth. Since Hinduism has the transmigration of souls as a foundation, death and rebirth are seen as the same thing, as are destruction and rebuilding. Thus, when Grandma dies, if she led a good life, she is reborn as something better. On the other hand, if she led a bad life, she must be reborn at a lower level and work her way back up. "Pay attention to your dharma or be subject to your karma" is what we were taught in Catholic school. Shiva, who oversees this process, is thus very powerful.

In US popular culture, however, the main deity in Hinduism is generally portrayed as Ganesh, the son of Shiva, shown as a four-armed elphant-headed being. The worship of Ganesh, is very widespread in Hinduism, as well as Jainism and Buddhism, religions we also studied in Catholic schools, but with no mention of Ganesha. Ganesh is largely worshipped because of his apsects as the remover of obstacles, and imbuer of intellegence.

Some random points of trivia:

Hindu culture arose when the Europeans who had settled in Iran and formed the basis of Aryan culture there migrated into the Indian subcontinent and mixed with the Dravidians about 3500 years ago.
To include the Vedic and Persian languages, is why European languages and culture are called Indo-European.
Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, was from a group of more recent migrants of Zoroastrians from Iran to India called the Parsi, who migrated for religious freedom after the islamic conquest of Persia in the 7^th century.
The Roma, mistakenly called Gypsies, who speak Romani, represent the migration of Vedic speaking peoples from the Indian subcontinent back to the European pennisula.
We think that Indo-European culture originated in Ukraine, and spread west to the European pennisula. From the European pennisula, it spread southeast to Iran and further east to India. In the process, Estonia, Finland, and Hungary were left out, and are part of the Uralic culture. Türkiye (Turkey) stopped being Indo-European when the central asian Turks migrated there 1000 years ago.

The housing authority has not yet identified the residence hall we will be occupying, but the room layout for the dorm will be either "double" or "single" here. If you have a double room, there will be two beds, but you will be the only occupant. There is one communal bathroom for women and one for men. The showers have a small, private disrobing area next to the private shower, and the toilets are in individual metal privacy stalls.

If you need to stay an extra day, or arrive a day early, it would behoove you to tell me as soon as possible.

In the past, very few participants have chosen to stay elsewhere during OPLSS. The dorms are not deluxe accommodations, but there is usually lots of discussion that goes on in the dorm, and participants who stay off-campus have felt isolated from this. However, if you want a hotel room near campus, here are a few options that are within a couple of blocks of the lecture hall.

There are, of course, more housing options in Eugene including AirBnB, but the above hotels are within easy walking distance of OPLSS.

January 24, 2025 — For Foreign Participants:

It is never too early to work on obtaining travel papers to the US. The following are the guidelines I have offered successfully in the past.

OPLSS is a Conference, not a Course of Study
You are coming here on business to attend a scientific conference. OPLSS does not grant academic credit. Although OPLSS takes place on a university campus, it is not a course of study. You need to be clear that you are looking for a B1 business visa. Do not under any circumstances say or agree that you need a student visa. Once you say that you want a student visa or that you want to "study in the US", you will never be allowed to come to the US unless you have been accepted into a US degree-granting program.

Neither electronic pre-approval nor a visa guarantee that you are actually allowed in the US. On the day you arrive, a US border guard will decide whether you are allowed in the US. For that interview, the invitation letter I send will be useful.

For non-citizens of the US, you will need the following:

Travel papers to leave your country
Most governments do not care if you leave their country, but you should check whether your government requires you to file any papers.
Travel papers to enter the United States
It is illegal for us to issue you an I-20 or any other SEVIS document, because you will receive no academic credit from the University of Oregon. These are only required for a student visa. If you are asked for these documents, be very clear that you want a B-1 visa. You will not be able to attend OPLSS on a student visa. If some other institution gave you a SEVIS document, and you will be using it to enter the US, please ask the entity that gave you the SEVIS document about your visa limitations. If necessary, direct them to this page for clarification. When you arrive, be careful which words you use at the border. One participant was interogated for hours at the border because she used the word "school."

I would suggest that you use "OPLSS" without saying what the individual letters are for, or say you are attending a conference on Types, Logic, and Formal Methods. The name "Summer School" is long entrenched as a name for a conference, but it is unfortunate for the government regulations about travelling to the US.

The US has a Visa Waiver Program with many countries. The Visa Waiver Program does not apply to all citizens of Visa Waiver Program countries.
- Travel to the United States under the Visa Waiver Program
  - A Passport from your country of citizenship
    To enter the US, your country of citizenship must issue you a passport. Also, you may need your passport as identification while here.
  - Electronic pre-approval from the US
    When you fill out the electronic pre-approval form, and when questioned at the border, be clear that you are coming here for a scientific conference. Even though you will have to say University of Oregon and OPLSS, you want to emphasize that it is business purpose. Do not write school, study or student. Education purposes require a visa, even from visa waiver countries, and OPLSS cannot supply you with the required paperwork to obtain a student visa.
- Travel to the United States without the Visa Waiver Program
  - A Passport from your country of citizenship
    To enter the US, your country of citizenship must issue you a passport Also, you may need your passport as identification while here.
  - A business visa from the US State Department.
    The decision to grant a visa is left up to the US ambassador to your country and there is no appeal, so be prepared. Talk to others from your country who have attended conferences in the US. Different Ambassadors require different levels of evidence. The University of Oregon has no influence with the US ambassador to your country. If your interview goes badly, and you are asked to do another interview, plan to bring more evidence. If you have no more evidence, then there is no point in another interview.
    
    Be prepared for your visa interview. Do not have anything sent directly to the embassy. Bring all materials with you to the interview. If some piece of evidence is not in English or not in the interviewer's language (the locally spoken language of that embassy), it must be translated by a certified translator. This means, if you are studying in a country which speaks a language other than your native language, documents from your country of citizenship must be translated. Here are the things you may need at your interview at the US embassy:
    - DS-160 Visa Application Form Complete the form online, but bring the confirmation page showing you completed the form and paid the $185 application fee.
    - A valid passport issued by your country of citizenship
    - A photo (a copy of the photo you uploaded as part of the DS-160 application
    - Be prepared to submit all details of social media that you use.
    - Bank statements or other evidence that you will be able to pay all the costs of the trip.
    - Letters or printed social media showing you will not overstay your visa. This is very important. The interviewer must be assured that you are not a "risk to emigrate to the US". Evidence of this type can be communications with local relatives and friends showing they are dependent on your return and\or communications from your employer or academic advisor showing it would be more advantageous for you to remain in your country/program than relocate to the US. All things being equal, the interviewer will believe that it is advantageous for you to remain in the US, So, you must bring evidence to the contrary.
      It is not useful to bring evidence of relatives or friends currently living in the US, as this indicates you may be a risk to emigrate to the US.
    - I will issue a letter of invitation which you may also take to your visa interview, but it is not requried. The letter of invitation is used when arrive in the US.
    - I will issue an invoice which may be useful to you in showing what your expenses will be along with evidence of how you will cover your expenses, including letters from your institution or other source of funds you will use.
Travel papers to return to your country
Before you leave your country, make sure you have any papers necessary to return to your country, probably, a passport.

Address for Visa Documents

When you get here, the building you will be staying in is:

1410 Agate Street
Eugene OR  97403

The contact information for visa applications is

Zena Ariola
University of Oregon
Department of Computer and Information Science
1477 E. 13th Avenue
Eugene OR  97403
541-346-4448
ariola@cs.uoregon.edu

January 1, 2025

Here, I will be posting updates on registration deadlines, when you should expect to be notified, how to get here, what to bring, etc.

If you apply (with a recommendation, if required) before March 14, you should hear back from us by March 21. If not, please send email to summerschool@cs.uoregon.edu asking what happened to your application.

What to expect when you apply

When you fill out the registration form and hit apply,

Your browser will look over the form and make sure you haven't left anything blank or included a Letter of Motivation that is longer than 1MB. It will prompt you to fix that, if necessary. If there are no blanks, clicking submit should result in your browser showing a webpage from our server.
- If our server is running normally, your browser will say you have successfully submitted your application.
- If there is a problem with our server, your browser will say there is a problem with our server and you should email the information to us.
You should immediately receive an automated email to the account you gave us.
- If you do not receive such an email, it probably means you mistyped your email address; so, you should immediately send an email to summerschool@cs.uoregon.edu telling us you submitted an application but did not receive a reply.
- An error encountered on our server will result in you receiving an email indicating an error occured. You should email summerschool@cs.uoregon.edu with the information about the error, so we can fix it.
In the reply email, it may indicate that your advisor must send a Letter of Recommendation. If so, please make sure your advisor sends this to summerschool@cs.uoregon.edu before the registration deadline.

You should not hear further from us until about two weeks after the application deadline. However, you can send email to summerschool@cs.uoregon.edu to inquire about your status or modify your application.

Oregon Programming Languages Summer School

Types, Logic, and Formal Methods

June 23-July 5, 2025

Jim's OPLSS Blog

Sponsors

Diamond

Platinum