Saturday, May 19, 2007

Home again, home again

Finals are over. I've finished doing all the grading for my lab. Grades are submitted and I'm back home in St. Louis.

A few thoughts from the conclusion of the semester:

1. A note to administrators: It is utterly inhumane to schedule a final for a class that doesn't meet until 10:00am, at 7:30am on a Monday morning. Especially so when that class is quantum physics.

2. A note to students: If you have an assignment in which you must occasionally observe the sunrise or sunset over the course of the semester and decide to fabricate your data because you didn't actually make your observations, don't say that you made observations every Wednesday for the full semester. This is Kansas. We go without seeing blue sky for 2-3 weeks on end.

3. Additionally, don't say you started taking data a week before the assignment was even given.

4. The big fiberglass cow on I-70 about an hour outside St. Louis looks very angry. Fear him.

Now to continue unpacking the ton of things I brought home.

6 comments:

TheBrummell said...

The big fiberglass cow on I-70 about an hour outside St. Louis looks very angry. Fear him.

Perhaps this cow is angry over others' gender confusion regarding bovines?

All COWS are female, regardless of which large mammal we happen to be discussing.

mollishka said...

Seriously, wtf? There isn't any gender neutral noun for referring to animals of the domesticated bovine nature; "cow" may be gender-specific when referring to members of other species, but in this case, not so much. Get off it already.

TheBrummell said...

There isn't any gender neutral noun for referring to animals of the domesticated bovine nature

Huh, I seem to have been mistaken earlier - a check at Wikipedia reveals that "cow" is common usage for individuals of either sex of Bos taurus.

Wikilink: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_%28disambiguation%29

I still maintain that it's jarring to see the word "him" used in close association with the word "cow".

Get off it already.

Why the hostility?

Jon Voisey said...

Why the hostility?

Perhaps she's trying to steal my identity...

mollishka said...

Why the hostility?

Some combination of not being able to discern tone over the int0rweb and it merely coming naturally.

mollishka said...

Why the hostility?

Some combination of not being able to discern tone over the int0rweb and it merely coming naturally.