I want to come up with a good recipe to, uh, serve man. (don’t ask why)
I’m thinking that we ought to taste like pork, given the medical similarities. It’s been pointed out to me that even if our meat is similar at birth, that we eat way more meat. The problem is that animals like bears are very gamey compared to humans. What I need is a good cooking technique to bring out the flavour of carnivorous animals, that doesn’t involve real over-cooking.
I’m hoping for a sort of new-American sort of thing, with some French touches.
Any ideas?
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/the-last-professor/?em
Alarming, really. Hopefully this sentiment will change now that we have a Philosopher-King as president.
Tomorrow at noon we get a new president. You guys gonna watch? Any thoughts? Historically, inaugurations tend to be dull, long speech about how the nation is doing and where we are going to go under X president. Only a few are remember, like JFK’s and Lincon’s second inaugration.
In my Jeep!? Well apparently I’m not the only one:
Canada geese, a frequent visitor to golf courses and open spaces in the metropolitan New York area during the winter, pose a particular danger to planes because of their size. The impact of a 12 pound bird hitting a plane traveling at 150 miles per hour is equal to that of a 1,000 pound weight dropped from a height of 10 feet, according to experts on bird strikes.
totally random, but i was thinking of a few recently, so:
- buttoning the bottom button of a jacket (unless it’s a one-button jacket)
- saying “the hoi polloi” – “hoi polloi” already means “the masses”, thanks
- standing on the left side of an escalator
- talking when class is five minutes from being done
- using a group blog to vent. uh, right.
If you check out today’s boston.com they talk about D&D and how the D&D community is still going strong. In fact, a lot of people are playing past college AND are using the internet to find new people to play. They also talk about the nerdy stereotype that pushes people to keep their D&D playing a secret while trying to discredit that stereotype.
There is also a question here about nerd and geek culture going mainstream. Video games, once relegated to the few have become more popular as time goes on. The article mentions that Vin Diesel is a D&D player, Curt Schilling (former Boston Red Sox) is an avid Everquest player, and I am sure there is countless other people I am forgetting who like WoW or something nerdy. It seems as time is going on, things considered nerdy become less nerdy and more accepted by the culture. Who knows, maybe it will swing back at some point but for now nerdy has gone mainstream.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned to all of you guys that I started volunteering to do alumni interviews with kids applying to go to my alma mater, the University of Chicago.
Recently, in a Facebook status (pictured) and then later, in a blog post, Jennie, another U of C alum, has been considering the topic of email etiquette.
She’s of the opinion that there is a level of decorum to be maintained in initiating and continuing communications between interviewer and interviewee, while I am of the opinion that this is stodgy and unnecessary.
Absent specific instruction regarding the level of formality expected, I got the impression that interviews between alumni and prospective students are not regarded as especially formal. The guidance given instructs interviewers to “Please make every effort to put the prospective student at ease and keep the tone of the interview conversational.” This is referring to the interview itself, however I would imagine that setting the tone begins with the first communications and if my emails start off stiff and encumbered by etiquette I would not expect that to engender chummy conversation. The implied informality of the alumni interview process is reinforced when in the “Tips from Experienced Interviewers” section, one person is quoted, “I always tell applicants in my first correspondence that the interview will be informal”.
What is the importance of upholding this level of decorum? Am I trying to be artificially selective on the basis of what greeting somebody uses in their email? Am I trying to maintain some inflated sense of self importance or remind them of some supposed power dynamic?
Has my sense of impropriety been damaged in a serious way by time spent in China? I suspect not, but given my difference of opinions with these people, I do wonder a little. I think that all those people who would prefer honorifics or some other deferential behavior are a bunch of prudes. Whether or not I feel that I am deserving of respect from them (I do) because I graduated from this college (just not for this reason) and they haven’t (yet), I don’t feel like the interview process is made easier or more informative by clinging to formality.
Year in review:
-Employment. To echo Tyo’s statements in a different field, legal services is taking a big hit this year.
-Amazing new girlfriend.
-Moving into various places in Massachusttes (Falmouth, Waltham, and finally Malden).
-Helping a state senate campaign.
-An endless presidential election with the public choosing the right guy for the job (hopefully).
All and all a fun year, even if the money I have invested evaporated with the econonmy tanking. Here is to an amazing 2009.
