Cougar sighting
 

I wouldn't have. The idea that absolutely everyone is supposed to be matched off in pairs is actually a fairly modern one. The marriage rate increased quickly during the middle of the last century, aparrently topping out sometime in the 1980s, and is now slowly declining back to 19th century levels.

Anyhow, based on my highly scientific google search which turned up census info, in 1997, 27% of men and 20% of women over 18 had never married, and in 1998 35% of all people between 25 and 34 had never married (so far). That's "never married," not widowed or divorced.

BR(it is a surprising pain in the ass to find statistics that exclude children and formerly-marrieds)C

TV Guide
 

When is the Bachelro on and when is it rerun?

I have a long night out ahead of me, is there any good reality tv that I will be missing?

and are any of the other new tv shows any good?

and what heppened on survivor last week? I missed it.

Style note: cigarette cases
 

http://www.msnbc.com/news/973842.asp?0sl=-12

[spree: the French discover that cigarette packs with health warnings all over them are ugly, and "invent" cardboard covers to make them look better. Will somebody get these people some friggin cigarette cases, please?]

TV Guide
 

Oh, please. You're going to be a one-stroke reality-TV bore here simply because of one post that you (I think mistakenly) took as insulting? That makes no sense. When did you become thin-skinned?

Style note: cigarette cases
 

Well, in fairness, they have a long history of disguising unpleasant reality.

Cue the cheesey music!
 

Yeh, I hear ya. I never flunked a course in my whole life and graduated with an enviable average... not fantastic, but enviable, and for my bahavior, pretty damn surprising. But I've always had a good bit of dicsipline. I knew enough not to drink the kool aid the night before the exam. That's the survival instinct that separates the partiers from the casualties. You have to work a little bit at times...

The cut-throats crack me up to this day because they're still trying to leverage themselves upward through the corp world by creating these silly barriers to entry. My favorite fake barrier to entry is "industry-speak", i.e., buzzords that those "in the know" who "pay attention" recognize. I deal with these nitwits using buzzwords at meetings to keep the lowly litigator confused and look inportant - like they know something I don't. I could do the same thing to them by using legal terms in my presentations, but what do I have to gain by making things tough on people? My job is to help them understand, not confuse them and make myself look smart. In the end, most of what everyone does is uncomplicated and dull, and if we really sat back and stripped away from it all the industry-speak and politics, we'd see that we need about 15% of the current workforce to actually do what needs to be done. We're all on stage all day, justifying our pay with inumerable silly constructions aimed to complicate things. The reason is because there's many of us, and we need to do something lest we starve. The ct throats love this environment becuase it allows them to maximize their best skills - memo writing, hyper-analysis and ass licking.

Its really comedy when you think about it - by college, we're all pretty much the people we will be for the rest of our lives.

Lapse in judgment indeed
 

DALLAS, Sept. 30 — A Texas high school has apologized after the school band waved a Nazi flag during a performance on Friday, the start of the Jewish New Year holiday of Rosh Hashana. “We had an error in judgment,” band director Charles Grissom told the Dallas Morning News. DURING A HALF-TIME show, a student from Paris High School went running across the field waving a Nazi flag.
The director said the musicians didn’t anticipate the reaction of the crowd at Hillcrest High School. “We were booed,” he told the newspaper on Monday. “We had things thrown at us. We were cursed.” Now, Grisson said the show will only include the American flag. “The kids and myself, we caused a reaction, and we certainly didn’t mean to,” he told the Morning News. “We’ll use it as a learning situation.”

So was this an overreaction to a simple "show about WWII" or was this guy an idiot?

New perfume
 

Yum

Cue the cheesey music!
 

So I'm a C minus student with a drinking problem, a tendancy towards anorexia, and a bit of a slut?...

Oh yeah, that's right......

TV Guide
 

Not thinskinned. Just a reality check that there are two kinds of posters- those that post something that contributes to the community, and those who sit in the audience and heckle . I have decided not to be the entertainment anymore bc there are too many freeriders who arent returning the favor. I am going to channel my energies into far more rewarding arenas, like the law, so that someday, I might too be a partner with a flabby, average looking spouse and a house in the suburbs.

I used to think the world was divided into two kinds of people. People who took acid and those who didnt. Now I realize it is divided between the entertainers and the hecklers from the audiecne (actually there is a third group, the plain old audience, but they dont actulaly post so are not on my radar). Until entertainers get paid, this is just an open mic night and I would be better off watching reality tv. or reading about the law.

Style note: cigarette cases
 

No doubt. My boggle is that they apparently think this is a new problem, and the solution they come up with - crappy cardboard covers - is vastly inferior to the longstanding solution of which they appear totally ignorant.

This is on par with solving the problem "paper tissues are a dissolving, revolting mess" by deciding to "put the plastic-wrap kleenex case into a crappy chintz holder, which might even coordinate with your makeup bag" but ignoring the option of handkerchieves.

TV Guide
 

Balls. You get paid every day. You can't just selectively ignore whole categories of currency.

TV Guide
 

I only accept cash, direct deposit, credit, tapes of reality shows I missed, cocktails, pot, shrooms (thanks SD!), club sponsorships and burned CDs of my favorite bands live. If you know someone I might be especially compatible with, I might accept a setup but probably not. Is what you speak of one of these? bc I dont think the check has hit my mailbox yet.

when is the bachelor on? for real. and a survivor recap would be nice.

TV Guide
 

Wed., at 9, ABC (7 in DC)

Style note: cigarette cases
 

I have mixed feelings about the handkerchief. A French Jesuit missionary wrote that the "savages" in the Huron tribe in the 1500s were disgusted by the Europeans' use of handkerchiefs: "They say, we place what is unclean in a fine white piece of linen, and put it away in our pockets as something very precious, while they throw it upon the ground."

The Huron would agree that a revolting mess of tissue paper is probably a quantum leap forward in santiation, though, admittedly, a handkerchief looks cooler and more gallant to whip out when one has made a woman to cry.

Style note: cigarette cases
 

Did DS do that thing that amoebas do when they become two? It's double the Claven.

Style note: cigarette cases
 

You do me great honor, ma'am.

Your affleck update
 

Yay! Less of Ben.

Sept. 30 — Will Ben Affleck’s spy character get shot down? The hunky actor has replaced Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan in the flicks based on Tom Clancy thrillers, but the word is that he may be on his way out. PARAMOUNT IS SAID to be in the early stages of making the next flick in the series, and the buzz in the film biz is that the moviemakers are “seriously reconsidering” casting Affleck in the role.
“It’s not been a good year for him,” says one source. “His star has fallen considerably since ‘Sum of All Fears’ — and ‘Gigli’ — needless to say — did not help.”
Paramount denies the story, insisting that they’re not looking to replace Affleck. When asked if he would definitely star in the next Jack Ryan film, however, a Paramount spokeswoman said she wasn’t sure.
http://a799.g.akamai.net/3/799/388/f...ws/2027312.jpg

Cue the cheesey music!
 

One of my best friends had a higher BAC for his DUI than his GPA that semester.

He would also go to class only on exam days (usually three a semester), get one of the best scores in the class* on the exam, and receive a final grade of D from the teacher for lack of participation.

*graduate level finance courses

Cue the cheesey music!
 

It was kind of this way for me the first 7 1/2 years.

Cue the cheesey music!
 

double blind testing took away the whole participation problem, but you do have to show for the tests. my act almost crashed last term. I missed a test completely, no make up possible. I needed to get a 3. on this project (diff one) to pass the class. he didn't grade them on time, and the day before graduation I had to tell my proud 'rents, I maybe wasn't graduating. believe me, that kind of thing can take the luster off the graduation dinner.

Cue the cheesey music!
 

I have a bunch of friends that got their Ph.Ds and are junior professors who get stuck with the intro classes, and their stories are pretty funny. Papers that are taken straight from the internet. Kids who "forget" that there are exams or quizes. Kids who complain that stuff that was talked about in class but not part of the reading was on the exam. People who were never seen in class before who show up for the exams. All sorts of ridiculous pleas for extensions or extra credit or whatever.

One of my friends has been plugging random phrases from papers into google to see what comes up. Half the time she finds an identical paper. She's taken to terrorizing her students at the beginning of the semester by telling them that she knows more low down dirty tricks than they do (she teaches classes on new media) and can find pretty much anything on the web.

So this is a nice poll question: What's the best trick you pulled in college / grad school / law school? Me, I told a professor (truthfully) that I couldn't turn in a paper because a bomb had gone off in Istanbul.

Nostalgia
 

Ohmigod, that totally reminds me of the time I skipped an advanced language class for like 6 weeks, and then finally went to the prof. and acted all contrite and then got a little weepy (sincerely, it wasn't an act, because I hate to be chastised by purported authority figures), and she gave me this very stern lecture that she just couldn't imagine how I could get higher than a C- in the course because I couldn't possibly catch up, and then I got a B+.

Good times!

Cue the cheesey music!
 

My school took pity on me, or maybe they just didn't want to have to put up with me for any longer, so they sort of pushed me through.

I almost never went to class, I showed up for exams but I hadn't prepared at all. I got every grade you can possibly get.

When I got my first report card, which contained both an A and an F, I thought my parents were going to kill me. Fortunately, or unfortunately, since I was paying for my own education and living on my own by then, there wasn't much they could do but yell a lot.

I made sure they didn't get any report cards after that. I also didn't get any more Fs.


I don't have any good excuse stories, I never asked for extensions or anything. The funny (as in peculiar) thing is that my habits weren't all that different in law school. Never mind studying for the bar exam.

I did have a student in law school who all but plagiarized and I did find it on google. I also scared the shit out of him, poor boy was practically in tears. Somehow I doubt he will ever do it again. He was damn lucky I'm nice.

Nostalgia
 

Oopsie.

Cue the cheesey music!
 

I failed micro economics twice in undergrad. I finally passed it at community college over a summer term.

Several years later, while getting my MBA, I was terrified at the prospect of having to take micro economics again. To my surprise, it was quite easy. What's up with that?

I guess school's a lot easier if you actually go to class....

Cue the cheesey music!
 

My freshman year roommate had a photographic memory. We had the same class second semester, but I had it in the evening. So he took the exams in the afternoon, and I took them later on. They were usually 50 question exams. He would get back to the dorm and repeat, in order and verbatim, each question asked on the exam. He would possibly forget one or two questions. I got an A obviously, but only b/c the Prof was an idiot* for not changing the exams.

*oh right, and b/c I cheated.

Cue the cheesey music!
 

It got easier because you already understood the concepts by then.

Personally, I find sitting in a classroom listening to someone drone on at me about whatever about as physically painful as I imagine the 9th circle of hell to be. I can't stand it. The reason I spoke in class in law school was because I was so fucking bored I thought I was going to die.

I think that is why when I do teach I do everything I can to make it interesting, which includes showing clips from TV shows and movies and whatever else.

When I lecture at CLE programs I throw candy at people when they ask questions, tell jokes, heck I would stand on my head if I thought it would make it more interesting.

Cue the cheesey music!
 

Funny how that works. I had a semester that I forgot to show up to. Fifteen hours of 0.00. Didn't really seem to hurt me in the long run, and it was a fun semester.

Cue the cheesey music!
 

Not really a dirty trick, but I spent the week after spring break of my freshman year (which happened to be midterms week) in the hospital. Didn't have to make up a couple of the tests (guess teachers felt bad or were too lazy to make up make-up exams). One of those classes was an art history class and the prof had given a crazy hard midterm. I got to use the much easier final exam as my entire grade, thus angering my roommate whose grade was lowered by at least a letter grade by the freakishly hard midterm.

I also got out of the final for calculus when I was taking it the summer before college at the local u because my dad died. Also not much of a dirty trick, but it did keep me from having to learn integrals. I had aced derivatives, so I got an A. Never understood integrals though. Probably cut my math career short.

Cue the cheesey music!
 

Me too. Two years ago, after hearing tales from one about the class and after helping grade some quizzes, I suffered a huge crisis of faith in humanity, which my acquaintanceship still refers to as my "do stupid people have souls?" phase. I am helping said friend grade papers again this year (what the hell, it keeps me on my toes), so stay tuned.
I will have to check this out for my friend. He said his students were baffled at the idea that they would be asked to write essay exams, not to mention turn in a paper of more than 3 pages in length.
Especially when the lecture is prefaced with "this is not in your book, and will be on the exam." A variant: finding stuff from the book regurgitated on exams when the students have been told explicitly in class "your book is wrong." And on that thought, goddamnit, I don't remember textbooks being as incredibly crap as the college textbooks I've seen recently.
I had a class like this. 6 of us regularly showed up for lectures. 65 showed for the exam. All but the 6 of us left before the 1/2 way mark. Our reward was to stay after the exam while the prof read random samplings of the exams of our peers. Then we all laughed our asses off and went out and got drunk together.

Cue the cheesey music!
 

Other than boinking the prof?

Your affleck update
 

[Even though I liked Chasing Amy, does he really deserve a career after such stunning thuds as:

Reindeer Games
Bounce
Forces of Nature
Armageddon
Pearl Harbor

TV Guide
 

Bachelor is Wednesdays.

Survivor has been pretty good so far. Summary of last week is that weak link Ryan S. went home even though Osten whined the whole show about wanting to go home because he might catch pneumonia, when his real issue is he doesn't like to lose and he is a poor swimmer.

Which leads to the new Road Rules/Real World challenge, where the biggest guy was sent home because he sucked in the first challenge because he can't swim. Now I know it is a stereotype, but it is one apparently with some semblance of truth - African Americans don't swim as well as the rest of us. I didn't catch the exact number, but about 5 of the first 6 out of the treading water competition were black (as is Osten).

Barely_legal says Joe Schmoe rocks. I never got into it because I was on vacation.

Cue the cheesey music!
 

That is my most recurring school-related nightmare (only occurred while I was in school). It usually only involved one class that I totally forgot that I enrolled for and learned that I was still in it an hour before the final exam.

My undergrad did not count freshman grades in the final gpa (a scam, I know but it worked out for my benefit, so I did not complain), so we all took alcohol poisoning 101 and related courses. That was the year that I learned the secret to a good philosophy paper -- alcohol and recreational drugs.

Cue the cheesey music!
 

I attended a really, really tiny school where there was nowhere to hide. People with excuses transferred to easier schools like University of Chicago.

I did once ask for additional time to revise a thesis chapter because the Soviet Empire had collapsed the night before and I needed to adjust my analysis. Fortunately, it was an informal deadline and my thesis advisor was very understanding.

Oh, and I graduated in 4 years of college and went straight through law school.

Cue the cheesey music!
 

I have this dream NOW.

Cue the cheesey music!
 

The whole concept of "recreational drugs" just bothers me.

It implies that one can be an amateur about the whole subject. That's just wrong. It needs to be approached with method, and dedication.

Cue the cheesey music!
 

Must you always be the exception?

Cue the cheesey music!
 

That would have been a godsend for me. Let's just say my parents weren't thrilled when they saw that first semester's grades. I believe the words "I hope you had a good time" were uttered many times over that Christmas break.