Did you know? The functioning of printers is directly affected by their proximity to the survivors of recent car accidents

Student:

"Sorry that I did not print my paper out before class started this morning. My roommate got in a bad car accident last night."

Note: This same roommate's bout of swine flu earlier in the semester showed that the functioning of printers is also adversely affected by their proximity to swine flu.

No additional headline needed

(Thanks to Kid Showbusiness.)

Chalk butt

Sometimes I turn around from writing on the board and people on the right side of my class are laughing amongst themselves. This is when I am teaching.

For the past year I've attributed this to my own (substantial) paranoia, until about an hour ago when after my lecture a student tapped me on the shoulder and said, "You have chalk on your butt."

I waited until most of my students were gone, then I craned my neck around and had a look at my butt. It had a big white line across one cheek. This line could only be from me sitting on the chalk ledge--the part of the blackboard where you store chalk.

At that moment, gazing at my own butt, I realized: I sometimes "rest" on the chalk ledge when I'm teaching. I hadn't consciously considered this before--it's just something I do without thinking while I teach. I feel tired, so I perch or lean on whatever is handy.

But when I perch on the chalk ledge: white line across butt.

Winter goal achieved

I achieved my winter goal, which was to see an icicle growing from the roof of a house all the way to the ground.

It only took me one week to achieve this goal!

Winter holiday math

3 glasses of white wine (2 riesling, 1 sauvignon blanc)
13 final exams left to grade
2 and one half hours before grades are due via online submission
At least 1 more college football--er--game coming on TV tonight

Cats?!: The Musical

This is a prototype song for our musical currently in development, "Cats?!: The Musical," which is about two women who fall in love and write a bilingual Broadway musical about cats.

This song, "Boîte au Chat/Cat Box," is from act one of the musical-within-a-musical, which purports to be a musical about the actual lives and concerns of real cats, rather than a romaticized and metaphorical treatment of cats on stage like some other musicals about cats.



We are in the process of recruiting backers to support the development of the musical. If you are interested, please get in touch.

Lying experiment: results!

So, to sum up the lying experiment, which I think only I find interesting: I did not lie that much during one week. At least, I did not lie that much given how I defined "lying."

(I recall that I had another lie that week that I hadn't reported. It was that I told my Dad that some of the many articles he had my Mom mail me had not yet arrived; in reality, they had arrived, but I had not read them.)

What does it all mean? Hmm, who knows? In practice, it likely means that I will hop on my high horse without qualms next time it prances by, and continue to trot around the paddock judging others. Maybe I should do the world more of a service and keep track of that behavior.