Coffee Klatch

For those of you with finals approaching, here is an inside look at how professors grade their final exams:

Dept of Statistics:
All grades are fitted to a normal curve.

Dept of Psychology:
Students are asked to blot ink in their exam books, close them and turn them in. The professor opens the books and assigns the first grade that comes to mind.

Dept of History:
All students get the same grade they got last year.

Dept of Theology:
Grade is determined by God.

Dept of Philosophy:
What is a grade?

Law School:
Students are asked to defend their position of why they should receive an A when they really deserve an F.

Dept of Mathematics:
Grades are variable.

Dept of Computer Science:
Random number generator determines grade.

Music Department:
Each student must figure out his grade by listening to the instructor play the corresponding note (+ and - would be sharp and flat respectively). Tone-deaf students fail.

Dept of Physical Education:
Everybody gets an A.

Current music: Orchesographie, by Thoinot Arbeau

I read an interesting story today. It was from Wired Magazine and was called The Mac Guru of Damascus in the Case of the Missing Laptops. It’s an interesting story about an American journalist who was in Damascus, Syria, and got his computers stolen from his apartment. It ends well, is interesting and worth the read.

Indianapolis sure seems to have a LARGE number of potholes this year. It’s been bad before, but with the constant changes of temperature above and below freezing this year, I think it’s worse than usual.

Do you know of a pothole in your area of Indianapolis that needs to be repaired? (Granted, it’d be nice if more roads got totally resurfaced, but a patch will at least get us through the winter.) The city has been pretty good about repairing potholes once they KNOW about them. To notify the city and request a pothole fix, you need to notify the Mayor’s Action Center. You can call them at 317-327-4622 or you can fill out a simple online form at: http://www.indygov.org/eGov/Mayor/mac.htm

You can use this form to report any of the following:

• Abandoned/Inoperable Vehicles
• Dead Animals
• Drainage Problems
• Graffiti Removal
• High Weeds/Grass
• Illegal Dumping
• Illegal Signs
• Potholes/Asphalt Repair
• Street Signs
• Tree/Brush Removal

So help yourself and others by reporting those potholes when you find them. If you bookmark this link, it will just take you a minute and save some cars.

One of the programs I like to use for changing my computer wallpaper is WebShots. As a utility, it’s gotten much more stable than it was back in the early years of its existence, and now it doesn’t seem to be as much of a resource hog either.

I was looking for new pictures the other day and, being partial to “travel” pictures, was browsing through WebShots directories of pictures of various places I’ve either visited or would like to visit. I came across some photos of Halstatt, Austria, taken by someone who also had quite a few really nice pictures of Arizona and of Indianapolis, among other places. Visit http://community.webshots.com/user/richbell1 to browse through some of these excellent photos.

Current music: Bortnyansky: Sacred Choral Concertos, Vol. 4

When you write copy, you own the right of copyright to the copy you write, if the copy is right. If, however, your copy falls over, you must right your copy. If you write religious services, you write rite, and own the right of copyright to the rite you write.

Conservatives write Right copy, and own the right of copyright to the Right copy they write. A right-wing cleric would write Right rite, and owns the right of copyright to the Right rite he has the right to write. His editor has the job of making the Right rite copy right before the copyright can be right.

Should Reverend Jim Wright decide to write Right rite, then Wright would write right rite, to which Wright has the right of copyright. Duplicating his rite would be to copy Wright’s Right rite and violate copyright, to which Wright would have the right to right.

Right?

Looking for a cool Latin phrase? Maybe you’re designing a new coat of arms for your family or for a fictional persona. Maybe you’re playing Knighthood on Facebook. Well here’s one of the many excellent websites for looking up Latin phrases. I like this one in particular because the font’s not very big and they have loads on one page. It’s http://www.yuni.com/library/latin.html.

Enjoy! Utor vestri!

Today was our annual Library Staff Holiday Party, which ended with the traditional Duck Drop. That’s where we go up to the third floor and take turns dropping rubber ducks into the fountain down on the main floor (which is about 15′ by 10′). If you get it in the fountain at all, it’s 1 point, 5 points if you get it into the birdbath-looking bowl in the fountain, and 10 points if you get it into the various target rings set to float around the main fountain. Oh, and 25 points if you hit the big rubber duck with a target on his head and red rings all around his body, but people never really try for that one.

Everyone who scores above the median goes on to the second round. Same for the third and fourth rounds. Each round, though, involves dropping the ducks from a different side of the atrium, getting farther from the easier targets.

This year I won again! For the second year in a row, successfully defending my title! Woo-hoo!! And this honor also allows me to keep the King Duck in my office for another year. I *had* been telling people how much he loved staying in my office, so it’s only right that he gets to stay where he feels comfortable.

He’s a Rubba brand duck that’s really hard to find any more. His official model name is P.King Duck. You can still find him at RubbaDucks, though, which is nice. I’ve included his picture in this post.

Here are some other good Rubber Duck links. Who’d have thought there were so many varieties??

Rubba Ducks (there are ALL KINDS of really WEIRD ones too!)
RubberDuckShop
Rubber Bath Ducks
Lara’s Duck Collection

So I found out while listening to NPR on the way home today that today is Ninja Day! Who’d have thought it? I knew about Talk Like A Pirate Day (Sept. 19), but Ninja Day? Leave it to NPR’s “All Things Considered” to inform me about that.

So on NPR they combined the special theme of the day with finding a solution to a current problem in the news today. They asked “the Ninja” of AskANinja.com to offer some advice to help the Hollywood writers who are on strike. It was SO FUNNY that I was crying and almost had to pull over to the side of the road, since the laughter was so debilitating. If you didn’t hear it, you simply MUST: ‘Ninja Got Answers’ for Hollywood Writers on Strike (click on Listen Now–it’s less than three minutes long)

On a related note, I had another weird and funny radio thing happen right after that. I finished listening to “the Ninja” and marveling at his wisdom, audacity, and humor, then I turned the station to WKLU 101.9, which recently changed its format from Classic Rock to Oldies (”music from the 60s and 70s” (although I think they throw in some 80s)). The first song I heard was “Rocketman,” by Elton John. What made that so funny is that JUST LAST NIGHT I’d taken the advice of a friend and watched William Shatner’s version of “Rocketman,” which he did at the 1978 SciFi Awards show. I mean, what are the chances?? I’ve embedded it below.

A couple days ago I was driving to work going down 38th Street on the near north side of Indianapolis and was facing the usual elements of busy streets, stoopid drivers, and increasing stress. While stopped at a light I caught some movement outside my car from the corner of my eye. I turned and saw that the wind had suddenly sprung up and stirred some pink flowers that had been planted in between the sidewalk and the curb. When they reconstructed 38th Street they added some of these areas right in the sidewalk where flowers could be planted.

I stopped for a second and just looked at it (the light was still red). It wasn’t much, just some little bushy kinds of plants that had several pink flowers on the ends of some of the little “branches.” But in the midst of rude people and stressful driving, that momentary image of a few little pink flowers was like a pocket of beauty that radically changed my frame of mind. I drove the rest of the way to work with that image in my mind and a calmness and a more aesthetic sense in my heart.

It doesn’t take much for us to be distracted by busyness and speed and activity, but even so, it also only takes a moment to stop when the opportunity arises and take in a little of the beauty of God’s creation and get our perspectives back in line. If we’ll only notice and look.

Do you get Pfitz’s Pfunnies? It’s an email-based mailing list that I manage, where I send out a “funny,” whether joke, story, riddle, or whatever, every workday. The jokes are tasteful (usually) and clean, so you don’t have to worry about being offended unless you’re overly sensitive. I’ve been running the mailing list for about 7 years, first as a Yahoo! Group and then as of June 2006 as a Google Group.

If you don’t subscribe to Pfitz’s Pfunnies yet, there are a few easy ways to do it.

1. Send a blank email to pfunnies-subscribe@googlegroups.com
2. Visit http://groups.google.com/group/pfunnies/subscribe
3. Add my RSS Feed to your aggregator.

Current music: More, by The Raleigh Ringers