November 20, 2004

• Yea but what does Calvin think?
• ramix, thanks!! the second link has caused some internal rupturing, which I consider the perfect way to start the weekend...
• I love these things, except that they infect your writing, and you find yourself unwittingly constructing appalling sentences. My personal favorite: "Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world in a 100-foot clipper."
• Pascal makes it clear that though we have an understanding of infinity, we don't understand it. Socrates believed that the most important part of the body was the psyche. Amusing.
• Yup, that's how I always read Hobbes. And now, let us all "fall victim to revelry"!
• This sort of thing falls off my back like a duck's water. And I'm unanimous in that.
• Actually, Homer was not written by Homer, but by another man of that name. Very nice.
• Did y'all know that Magellan circumsized the glob?
• Funnily enough I just read the phrase "nasty, British and short" in an article (I think it was in the Independent) about British eating habits. I thought it was very clever.
• Some of these are classics in the genre. Some of them reveal a tragic lack of understanding on the part of the students, though. I wish there were some names attached -- I suspect some of these people are trying their hardest to run the world.
• "Hobbes understands the fact that people, even under a contract, would try to break it for self-fish reasons." My mind is wide open. People keep putting images into it. Good? (Odd that teachers so often keep lists of the embarrassing mistakes made by their students. It can't reflect well on them as teachers, surely? I mean, do doctors keep lists of the amusing deaths suffered by their patients? Yes, they do. Answered my own question there, sorry. Carry on.) "Nasty. British. Short" used to be the tagline of the NTK newsletter, by the by.
• Can't say it's only brits that do this, but when you are 6'4" and you go out to a bar, you tend to attract smallish fellows who want to prove themselves in a fight, especially after a few cocktails. So, when I go to pubs, life is nasty British and short.
• Actually flashboy, I think it's inevitable. When you're marking (20-40 5 page papers, in my case) and going a little stircrazy, those lines jump out at you as absolutely hilarious. I got this line, about Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, – "It was a time marked by considerable ups and downs for both Henry and Catherine, but was highlighted by the fact that she could not bear him a son." In fact, he decided to throw a party - and invited the pope and St Thomas More along!
• So, when I go to pubs, life is nasty British and short. Let us bow our heads and thank the British for adding the verb "glass" to the drinking vocabulary; as in, "It was rather impolite of this chap to call me a daft poof, perchance should I glass the upstart ruffian and put the boot in?"
• You taking the piss? I'll fucking bottle you, pal.
• People, some respect please. These college students essayists are future republican voters.
• These college students essayists are future republican voters. I guess grade inflation breeds expectation of vote inflation.
• More howlers, although there are about a gazillion sites like this. The early Britons made their houses of mud, and there was rough mating on the floor.