More pearls of college wisdom

I'm making some extra cash by rating State of Georgia standardized tests to assess college students' writing.  Some hilarious insights from these young minds:

"In the early 1400s nobody had a clue what smoking did to their bodies."

"Before Hillary other women had not run for the 'Master and Commander' position in the U.S."

And my favourite so far:

"Some well-established families have children who eventually become gothic."

Hey Neil, nice backpack!

I know I need to stop being shocked by this sort of thing and just operate on the assumption that my students have same level of historical knowledge as newborn infants, but a student who is writing a paper about a photograph taken on the Moon asked me if there is any television footage of the Apollo 11 lunar landing.  Huh?  I may be arranging a screening on Monday to get everyone caught up on the 20th Century.  

Of course, this is the same student who didn't know what "backpacking" was. 

Monumental Confusion

Today in class we were talking about images from the Hubble Telescope. I had asked the students to listen to an online lecture by an Art Historian friend of mine, where she explains that the scientists who create the much-publicized Hubble images draw inspiration from 19th century American landscape paintings. They have those traditions in mind when they are making decisions about colors (will Hydrogen be red or green?), orientation (since there is no up or down in space), and framing (where do you put the frame on an object that is 100 million miles across?). To demonstrate her points, she explains the connections between the Eagle Nebula image, with its "towering" structures, and images of Monument Valley. When I showed photos of Monument Valley to my students, only one of them knew what they were, and only because he had been there on a family vacation. It was Greek to the rest of them. This confuses me. How does one get through life without seeing images of Monument Valley? What have these young Americans been doing with their eyes?

Mollie's Graduation

Mollie completed her obedience course today.  Here she is in her mortar board.  Next stop, therapy dog assessment.  

This photo session proved to be quite hilarious.  Those of you who have met Mollie know that she sneezes a lot, particularly when she's excited and happy.  The thrill of graduation provoked a fair bit of sneezing, which would make the hat fly off her head.  Our slapstick routine got laughs from human passersby, which only made Mollie sneeze more.  

Now that I think about it, maybe this was Mollie's interpretation of throwing one's cap in the air at the end of the graduation ceremony.  Clever dog.

If I had a camera...

If I had a digital camera, I could have made a visual document of the giant sculpture of Eddie Murphy's head that was being driven around my neighbourhood last night. The minivan-sized head was mounted on the back of a moving billboard advertising his upcoming film Meet Dave. I gather that in the movie, Murphy is a humanoid spaceship inhabited by lilliputian aliens. The giant head is clearly meant to make its observer feel like a tiny alien, or something.

I should get a camera, because then I could let you decide.

Punk'd

This week I started teaching a class on rhetoric and space exploration. Today's class was devoted to JFK's use of pathos in his 1961 appeal to Congress to beat the Reds to the Moon. Part of our discussion was to focus on Kennedy's verbal delivery, so I had them listen to an archival recording of JFK speaking. When I got to class, I turned on the projector and speakers to give the audio file a test-run, as the technology in my classroom is famously unreliable. Everything seemed ok until I tried to make the speech turn off - every time I clicked on something, another speech would start playing, until the classroom sounded like some kind of installation art piece involving the overlapping voices of American presidents. I kept turning things on and off to make it stop, but to no avail. This went on for some minutes, until a student confessed that they were playing the speech from their laptops. Little monsters. I stormed out of the room in jest, and told them that they are all meanies.

I'm telling myself that this is their way of saying they like me.

Creatures Great and Small

I had a visit from my Dad this week, and we had many interesting animal experiences, from the sublime to the ridiculous.  

Six Legs

Shortly after moving to my new place, I discovered that Mollie and I have a great many six-legged roommates, none of whom have offered to pay rent.  So, I have thrown my tree-hugging principles to the wind and acquired quantities of toxic chemicals in all physical states - gas (foggers), liquid (sprays) and solid (bait).  After the initial massacre (the body count was impressive) I have noticed far fewer interlopers.  Either they are dead or have learned to be more discreet.

Four Legs

Mollie has made a full recovery from her tooth extraction, and is back to eating with great gusto.  She is doing well at her therapy dog training, and is now working on cute tricks like "catch the treat", "shake a paw" and if we're lucky, "speak".  Make em laugh!

Two Legs

Mockingbirds rule the neighbourhood. They love to tell me, Mollie, and all the local cats who's boss.  They flick their tails around and make whatever noises they think you'll find threatening. What a bunch of divas.  

Legs are for Landlubbers

Dad and I took in one of Atlanta's great attractions, the Georgia Aquarium.  While I take issue with some of their practices (like the scuba-diving with Whale Sharks, who keep dying in captivity) the aquarium is truly remarkable.  We were thrilled to see the Sea Dragons, who are among the world's most improbable creatures.  We noticed that one of them had eggs all over his tail, at which point a docent came up to say that it was indeed a pregnant male who is "due" in a couple of months.  You can watch their webcam here.

The other highlight was the antics of the Moray Eel.  Morays like to spend their time in holes in the rock, peeking out now and then to grab a snack.  We were therefore amazed to see one emerge and swim around the tank with great excitement.  As it turns out, he knew that it was feeding time, and lo, a long metal arm reached in and handed the Moray a nice fish.  Yum.