Academiana 101

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A thread for naming, discussing, searching and destroying those factoids and tidbits every university seems to learn in survey and non-major courses, the ones that get brought up in conversation and news features over and over again by people trying to sound like they know what they're talking about.

Search: The Dutch tulip craze -- seems pretty good for explaining speculative investing and also illustrating herd mentality.

Destroy: The "Tragedy of the Commons" -- overused, especially by libertarian nuts, to justify privatization of anything.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 18:34 (seventeen years ago) link

"every university student seems to learn..."

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 18:38 (seventeen years ago) link

I've learned the phrase laissez-faire in like eight classes and I still forget what it means.

The "frog sitting in water until it boils" thing, does that count?

― Abbott (Abbott), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 18:48 (seventeen years ago) link

http://www.oldkewgardens.com/kitty_genovese-001.html

― lord pooperton (ex machina), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 18:53 (seventeen years ago) link

Good one.

How about Kennedy losing the debate on the radio but winning on television because he looked better?

I read somewhere recently that that version of events was not exactly accurate but is just one of those catchy explanations that's stuck with people since the article in which it originated. I wish I could remember where I read that.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 18:57 (seventeen years ago) link

Broad things that people seem to believe:

- American Exceptionalism aka Puritan Work Ethic → US Hegemony

― lord pooperton (ex machina), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:03 (seventeen years ago) link

and plug Manifest Destiny in there somewhere

― kingfish du lac (kingfish 2.0), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:04 (seventeen years ago) link

I guess most of these factoids probably originated in academia (though not Kitty Genovese), but I think precollege education and "conversation and news features" play a much bigger role in actually propagating them. The only thing listed here that I actually encountered in a college course is the tragedy of the commons.

2xpost, sorry

― 31g (31g), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:13 (seventeen years ago) link

Was I the only one who got the story about Latinate/Germanic class distinctions in English? I.e., because of Norman elites conquering Anglo/Saxon peasants, Germanic words are considered blunt, crude, or vulgar (shit, fuck), while Latinate words are considered polite, elegant, or learned (excrement, intercourse). Also livestock gets Germanic names (cow, pig, sheep), whereas prepared dishes get French ones (beef, pork, mutton).

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:21 (seventeen years ago) link

I want Remy to post about Chaucer and "fuck"

― lord pooperton (ex machina), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:22 (seventeen years ago) link

(Pinning that on the Norman invasion might be a bit much, though -- that whole sweep of Euro history would seem to trend toward a narrative where Latinate things are the peak of civilization and Germanic things are for the barbarian hordes. Still, for English in particular, it seems to hold okay.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:23 (seventeen years ago) link

I've heard that one somewhere, but not in a class. But then there's also Orwell in "Politics and the English Language" who kind of flips that idea -- latinate words are indirect, euphemistic, and Anglo-Saxon/Germanic words are direct.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:23 (seventeen years ago) link

Same thing, different agenda!

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:29 (seventeen years ago) link

how about Chaucer and cunt/quaint?

― Damn, Atreyu! (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:38 (seventeen years ago) link

See also:

compulsory heterosexuality, schröedinger's cat, sisyphusian rock-pushing, plato's shadows on the cave wall, 'slippery slope', portmanteau words, pansexuality, orientalism, 'the transgressive allure', etc., etc., etc.

― Damn, Atreyu! (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:42 (seventeen years ago) link

- Apollo versus Dionysus
- Body Ritual Among the Nacirema
- "monkey" versus "ape" pedantry

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:47 (seventeen years ago) link

BASICALLY, THIS IS COLLEGE:

http://www.40ozmaltliquor.com/billandted02.jpg

LOCK THREAD

― lord pooperton (ex machina), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:52 (seventeen years ago) link

THE CIVIL WAR WAS TO FREE THE SLAVES
AMERICANS WENT WEST
BEETHOVEN COULDN'T HEAR OMG
NAPOLEON WAS BEATEN BY THE RUSSIAN WINTER... LIKE HITLER! ALSO TESTICLE PROBLEMS AND SHORT
ETC ETC

― lord pooperton (ex machina), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:53 (seventeen years ago) link

Those were all high school!

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:53 (seventeen years ago) link

YOU OVERESTIMATE THE QUALITY OF UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION. PARTICULARLY FOR... PSYCHOLOGY MAJORS

― lord pooperton (ex machina), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:56 (seventeen years ago) link

sign vs. signifier, linguistic slippage, 'post-modernism is difficult to define', 'the victor writes the history textbook,' how to look sober when you're drunk.

― Damn, Atreyu! (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 19:58 (seventeen years ago) link

search: the pareto principle (aka "the 20/80 rule") -- has applications outside its original socioeconomic context

destroy: game theory
prisoners' dilemna
the phrases "moveable feast" (lit. majors) and "rational expectations" (econ. majors)

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:07 (seventeen years ago) link

http://digg.com/gaming/You_Got_Game_Theory_It_was_fun_until_we_realized_that_no_business_uses_it.

― lord pooperton (ex machina), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:09 (seventeen years ago) link

the story that "sirloin" got termed such b/c some drunk english king actually knighted a loin of beef.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:10 (seventeen years ago) link

Okay, srsly? I just trotted out that Norman foods one earlier today and no one within earshot at my office had heard of it. So the standards set on this thread may be the teeniest bit high (meaning JW has it in one).

― Laurel (Laurel), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:11 (seventeen years ago) link

operant conditioning, regression to the mean, Nag Hammadi library, 'The Fly Is About AIDS', Dziga Vertov, Heisenberg principle.

― Damn, Atreyu! (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:13 (seventeen years ago) link

regression to the mean

this one is actually useful to know, though!

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:14 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah. And Jon? I think these

THE CIVIL WAR WAS TO FREE THE SLAVES
AMERICANS WENT WEST
BEETHOVEN COULDN'T HEAR OMG

most of us knew by sixth grade.

― Damn, Atreyu! (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:16 (seventeen years ago) link

In computer science:

C is fast, Java is slow.
Assembly language is fast, C is slow

― lord pooperton (ex machina), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:17 (seventeen years ago) link

I wager most adults wouldn't be able to explain the civil war beyond "ending slavery".

Also, SO-CRATRES AND FROOD were in Bill and Ted!

― lord pooperton (ex machina), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:18 (seventeen years ago) link

College words/phrases: spurious, hegemony, pluralism, avatar, correlation does not imply causation, deconstruction.

― Damn, Atreyu! (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:21 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, Laurel, that's why I cheated on the Normans and said "Was I the only one ..."

Better for lit majors would just be a list of short works always explicated in the same way. "Dover Beach" is about science! In The Metamorphosis it's actually the family that changes, not Gregor! (Plus ones you figure out on your own, like "Lolita is actually really cutting and funny!")

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:21 (seventeen years ago) link

I wager most adults wouldn't be able to explain the civil war beyond "ending slavery".

Maybe, but I think most college grads would at least give it a whirl?

― Damn, Atreyu! (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:22 (seventeen years ago) link

Seriously, though, nobody else's intro to anthro included a chunk of that Body Ritual Among the Nacirema thing?

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:24 (seventeen years ago) link

THE CIVIL WAR WAS TO FREE THE SLAVES

i got in an argument with some girl in my german class a couple years ago who heard me talking about the civil war with someone and suddenly blurted out "the civil war wasn't about slavery!" i say "so what was it about?" and she says "well, i don't remember, i just remember my teacher saying that it wasn't really about slavery." OH THE THINGS YOU LEARN IN SCHOOL.

it's funny because when you get into the real world you discover that the only ppl who think the civil war had nothing to do with slavery are libertarian extremists and neo-confederates who run "THE SOUTH WAS RIGHT!!" type websites.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:26 (seventeen years ago) link

Mine did. Also 'The Sacred Rac'. We also read a Yanamamo book and watched 'The Mission' except for the sex scenes, which were fast-forwarded. (xpost to nabisco)

― Damn, Atreyu! (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:27 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh, I can thank college for teaching me how to play killer badminton.

― Damn, Atreyu! (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:30 (seventeen years ago) link

correlation does not imply causation

Ha, try high school sciences

― lord pooperton (ex machina), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:31 (seventeen years ago) link

buy low sell high

― intensity in tent cities (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:34 (seventeen years ago) link

and leave a beautiful corpse

― intensity in tent cities (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:34 (seventeen years ago) link

college-speak for "correlation does not imply causation" is "post hoc, ergo propter hoc." or something like that.

other college phrases: "creative destruction," ceteris paribus.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:35 (seventeen years ago) link

cui bono

― horseshoe (horseshoe), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:37 (seventeen years ago) link

quo vadis
res ipsa loquitur
exclusio unius

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:37 (seventeen years ago) link

cf
nb

― lord pooperton (ex machina), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:38 (seventeen years ago) link

Weltschmerz
Weltanschuung
Götterdämmerung

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:39 (seventeen years ago) link

vis-a-vis, ergo, QED

― Damn, Atreyu! (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:40 (seventeen years ago) link

ars longa, vita brevis...that's high school English, though

― horseshoe (horseshoe), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:40 (seventeen years ago) link

(Weltschmerz was a semifinal word at the Scripps bee this year)

― Damn, Atreyu! (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:40 (seventeen years ago) link

that's high school English, though

― lord pooperton (ex machina), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:41 (seventeen years ago) link

in flagrante delicto

― intensity in tent cities (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 20:41 (seventeen years ago) link

Skipping 123 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

Many KDD systems incorporate an implicit or explicit preference for simpler models, but this use of “Occam’s razor” has been strongly criticized by several authors (e.g., Schaffer, 1993; Webb, 1996). This controversy arises partly because Occam’s razor has been interpreted in two quite different ways. The first interpretation (simplicity is a goal in itself) is essentially correct, but is at heart a preference for more comprehensible models. The second interpretation (simplicity leads to greater accuracy) is much more problematic. A critical review of the theoretical arguments for and against it shows that it is unfounded as a universal principle, and demonstrably false. A review of empirical evidence shows that it also fails as a practical heuristic.

http://foreigndispatches.typepad.com/dispatches/2006/03/is_occams_razor.html

― intensity in tent cities (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 01:44 (seventeen years ago) link

i forgot all about occam's razor -- it fits this thread PERFECTLY.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 01:50 (seventeen years ago) link

jaymc beat me to flaneur!

most of the ones i'd have posted were taken actually.

semiotics
"to-be-looked-at-ness"
"queering of the..."
phallo(go)centric
third worldIST
the imperial imaginary
geographies of spectatorship
the nature of the (insert medium of choice here)
systems of signification
the uncanny

― joseph (joseph), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 02:36 (seventeen years ago) link

Whoa, most of those are at least 200-level.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 02:37 (seventeen years ago) link

convergence, constructionism/essentialism, the digital divide, image politics cf. kennedy/nixon debate, "cf.".

― Roz (Roz), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 02:40 (seventeen years ago) link

"gendered"

― joseph (joseph), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 02:40 (seventeen years ago) link

Xtreme programming, ISO 7 layer model, tool of the patriach and the Jacobian matrix.

― Rufus 3000 (Mr Noodles), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 02:46 (seventeen years ago) link

diaspora
opportunity cost
beards

― Fonzie Scheme (Matt Chesnut), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 02:58 (seventeen years ago) link

John Cage's 4'33" (LOL THERE IS A SONG AND THERE IS NO MUSIC, THEY JUST SIT AT A PAINO BENCH FOR FOUR AND A HALF MINUTES)

― Fonzie Scheme (Matt Chesnut), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 03:15 (seventeen years ago) link

ANOVA, OMG

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 03:38 (seventeen years ago) link

Duchamp OMG ANYTHING IS ART!

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 03:39 (seventeen years ago) link

ihttp://www.ciudaddegijon.org/fotos/viesques%2005(jorge%20en%20meta).jpg

― The Giant Mechanical Ant (The Giant Mechanical Ant), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 03:57 (seventeen years ago) link

oh well. what if i just:

http://www.ciudaddegijon.org/fotos/viesques%2005(jorge%20en%20meta).jpg

― The Giant Mechanical Ant (The Giant Mechanical Ant), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 03:59 (seventeen years ago) link

whatever. paste away.

― The Giant Mechanical Ant (The Giant Mechanical Ant), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 04:00 (seventeen years ago) link

in any case,

http://www.christianhubert.com/hypertext/postmodernism1.jpeg

― The Giant Mechanical Ant (The Giant Mechanical Ant), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 04:03 (seventeen years ago) link

Stanford Prison Experiment otm
extreme programming otm

― lord pooperton (ex machina), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 05:19 (seventeen years ago) link

Students who will think that obscure theories have an amazing relevance over their own lives
Students who assume that their course is relevant to whatever anyone else is studying
How to deal with rich students on a day-to-day basis - the ones for whom, say, popping over to Switzerland for the skiing is a normal regular weekend activity - without wanting to stab them

Actual academic things as per the original point of the thread:
Viking Sagas were neither history nor fiction
Strindberg was a bit of a misogenist
There's no such thing as "prehistoric Celts", unless you're talking about the Alps (this is a particularly good one for winding up hippies)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 07:30 (seventeen years ago) link

By the time I finished college I had dozens of those Barbara Krueger postcards. A great many of these caca-demic flourishes were introduced to me in high school, or by record store clerks at the time.

Cathexis
Memes
Reification
Postmodernism*
Game theory

*famously dismissed by me as "oh, stuff that reminds you of other stuff, with extra added imaginary nostalgia...and they want 10 pages on something THAT obvious?"

― suzy (suzy), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 07:44 (seventeen years ago) link

thick description close reading
logical positivism verificationism
epistemé author-effect
objet petit a Dasein
sinthome/symptom commodity fetishism
reification repression, sublimation
false consciousness "Whig history"
ontic/ontological long dureé
reductio ad absurdum abjection
Aufhebung l'informe
negative dialectics subjectivity/intersubjectivity
différance "subjectivity effects"
the trace pharmakon
the subaltern screen memory
performativity the Law of the Father
symbolic, real, imaginary alienation
suture ostranenie
"the male gaze" hylé
the archive base materialism
simulacra/simulation naive realism
aura ideological state appartuses (ISAs)
introjection/incorporation heterology
abreaction, transference chora
the fold the culture industry
the body without organs tautology
ressentimment totality
rhizome fort/da
jouissance the primal scene
techné phallus, phallogocentrism
the Other the jesuve
langue/parole "the accursed share"
essentialism speech acts/illocutionary force
"hailing" "thrown-ness"
post-(x) detournement

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 07:47 (seventeen years ago) link

uh oh, the text above was supposed to be two separate columns- now it's all jumbled together, as if by some gobbledygook generator . . . (hey wait a minute . . . )

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 07:50 (seventeen years ago) link

Holy hairy Jesus fuck, Drew, that's a Sarah Lawrence module on Irigaray, isn't it?

― suzy (suzy), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 08:03 (seventeen years ago) link

damn, for some reason i think she's a hottie:

http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/4094/irigarayfoto5yb.jpg

― jinx hijinks (sanskrit), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 15:35 (seventeen years ago) link

(xxpost) Someone just finished a dissertation. :-D

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 15:39 (seventeen years ago) link

drew's smashed-together list is AWESOME.

― teeny (teeny), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 16:20 (seventeen years ago) link

It was a handout I made for an "Intro to Theory" class I taught- it just said "HAVE YOU SEEN ME?" on the top- it was for grad students at an art school. The point was that people have intimidating theory buzzwords thrown at them and it's alienating and spooky. But the terms do mean something, and they don't have to be used as firecrackers.

All jumbled together it sort of looks like a poem, or some lyrics for a particularly arty band or something.

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 16:26 (seventeen years ago) link

I believe that was the b-side of Scritti Politti's fourth single, actually.

The intimidation factor of theory-words seems seriously diminished now that wikipedia exists. (Same goes for the extent to which people understand the ideas at any significant depth, but that's coming from a guy who can't seem to resist those Oxford UP Very Short Introduction to ... Wittgenstein books at the front counter.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 16:47 (seventeen years ago) link

VSI: Actually, these really are way cool, when it comes down to it -- especially considering the main previous competition was from those horrible overillustrated pastel-colored cartoony introduction-to-theory/philosophy/science books. The VSIs aren't quite as confused about your intelligence level and aren't trying so hard to entertain you, because they assume that if you picked the book up, then you're already sufficiently interested in the topic -- they just come off like a mid-level professor at a decent university was asked to write the text for an intro-level class on a given topic (which is precisely what they are).

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 16:53 (seventeen years ago) link

Yep, I read the one about Hegel and was glad I did.

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 16:58 (seventeen years ago) link

drew's post reminded me of another one: la chose en soi.

another: (a) undergrads pretending that they can make any damn sense out of heidegger; (b) professors wringing their hands when some smart ass points out that heidegger was a nazi (who nonetheless schtupped a hot young jewess [hannah arendt]).

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 18:03 (seventeen years ago) link

One for the civil engineers out there... The Tacoma Narrows Bridge

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/wonder/structure/images/narrows1_bridge_1.jpg

― LOL Thomas (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 18:07 (seventeen years ago) link

we saw that footage in HS physics! it never stops being fun!

― kingfish du lac (kingfish 2.0), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 18:18 (seventeen years ago) link

Is that Tacoma Narrows Bridge footage in Bruce Conner's A Movie?

― C0L1N B... (C0L1N B...), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 18:39 (seventeen years ago) link

HELLO I AM SUBCOMANDANTE MARCOS. LEARN ABOUT ME AND OTHERS AT TEH COLLEGE.

― themountainswillscreamsforthebloodoftheblindvultureswhoflybeforethepeople'ssun! , Wednesday, 14 June 2006 19:25 (seventeen years ago) link

OMG, all people are from Africa, not just the blacks!

― like murderinging (modestmickey), Thursday, 15 June 2006 02:47 (seventeen years ago) link

"Yo, do you like The Rite of Spring?
"Fuck yeah man, it caused riots!"

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Thursday, 15 June 2006 02:49 (seventeen years ago) link

ecriture feminine
semiotic chora
the abject
schizoanalysis!
deterritorialization!
dialogics
polyphony
carnival

OMG awesome Propp fairy tale generator

― dar1a g (daria g), Thursday, 15 June 2006 03:07 (seventeen years ago) link

are there no science and engineering majors on this whole goddamn thread? Death to Liberal Arts!

― geeta (geeta), Thursday, 15 June 2006 03:36 (seventeen years ago) link

Integration by parts?

― Sons Of The Redd Desert (Ken L), Thursday, 15 June 2006 03:37 (seventeen years ago) link

The Jordan form?

― Sons Of The Redd Desert (Ken L), Thursday, 15 June 2006 03:38 (seventeen years ago) link

Separation of variables?

― Sons Of The Redd Desert (Ken L), Thursday, 15 June 2006 03:45 (seventeen years ago) link

The Dining Philosophers?

― Sons Of The Redd Desert (Ken L), Thursday, 15 June 2006 03:46 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost: "The Cyborg: Where Science and the Arts Join Forces"

http://isaacschlueter.com/images/laforge.gif

"IN SPACE!"

― The Giant Mechanical Ant (The Giant Mechanical Ant), Thursday, 15 June 2006 03:50 (seventeen years ago) link

This brings back a lot of memories, such as:

free indirect discourse, which sounds a bit dirty
pastiche was also a term they loved bandying about
heteronormativity
totalitarianism - and how Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union really were v. different
docile bodies
false consciousness
base/superstructure
hybridity was one of the favourites of favourites
mimicry and ambivalence
white man's burden
binary oppositions!
metonymy
The Enlightenment as a catchcry for all liberal thinking after the French Revolution
auteur
Epicurus and how he is really misunderstood; the guy was all about moderation
hyper-reality
the copy
defamiliarisation
the spectacle
lowbrow culture is actually really cool!
inscription
return of the repressed
celebration of the irrational - which means all academics can get away with writing rubbish
the novum
diachronic/synchronic
language does not mirror reality but rather creates reality
paradigms!
discourse!

Some of these concepts are useful, but in many cases they seem to be like a secret language that suggests elite membership to make others feel less intelligent. The great irony is when these terms are misunderstood and then taken over by the masses

― salexandra (salexander), Thursday, 15 June 2006 04:26 (seventeen years ago) link

I haven't noticed anything being mentioned yet that I (first) learnt at uni, but the one thing that I can think of that I did first hear at uni was the word "Pedagogy". I hate that word. Yuk.

― miele kitty (miele), Thursday, 15 June 2006 06:09 (seventeen years ago) link

harold innis and staples theory
the turner thesis
equalisation payments + resource revenues
foreign direct investment and the branch plant economy
the keynesian welfare state (KWS)
the caudillo complex
the waffle!

― derrick (derrick), Thursday, 15 June 2006 09:00 (seventeen years ago) link

four weeks pass...

american colleges sound awful

― sunny successor (katharine), Friday, 14 July 2006 15:31 (seventeen years ago) link

i shouldn't have majored in math, everyone else got to learn more interesting things than i did :(

― caitlin oh no (caitxa1), Friday, 14 July 2006 17:15 (seventeen years ago) link

i feel u caitlin

― Machibuse '80 (ex machina), Friday, 14 July 2006 17:19 (seventeen years ago) link

fifteen years pass...

vis-a-vis, ergo, QED

A non-native speaker asked me about vis-à-vis. I told him I tend not to use it, or use it only as a special effect, to sound elevated and most likely humorous. Search of the archives seems to confirm my suspicion, but I dunno.

― Duck and Sally Can’t Dance (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 30 November 2021 19:45 (two years ago) link

TS Lou Reed vis-à-vis John Cale

― Duck and Sally Can’t Dance (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 30 November 2021 19:56 (two years ago) link

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