Re: Musings about the Cambrian Explosion
- From: "g" <gillawton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 21:23:00 -0400 (EDT)
"Perplexed in Peoria" <jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:di0sod$2eeh$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Ah... I apologize. When you wrote "Stop me if I'm wrong", you meant that
> ironically. Now I know how those and similar punctuational phrases should
> be interpreted. My mistake. I should have known.
Irony was not the intent of my, "Stop me if I am wrong." The intent was the
usual colloquial one (colloquial to the area in which I live, at least)
which, if literally defined might translate into something of the nature of
an invitation to others to add correction, value, dimension ... which is
pretty much what you did do.
Where things went wrong, I now assess, is where I made a lame attempt at
humor in reference to your compliance with that meaning. So, let me thank
you for getting it right the first time, and assure you that if any apology
is due it is not from you, but from me.
Perhaps I might be able to redeem myself by trying once again to make a
joke -- this time asking you, sincerely, to critique the draft of it below.
The point of the story IS ABOUT the subject of sbe, but I will not say
how.
Draft begins:
Dr. Neuendenker taught only one course at a great university: "Creative
Thinking, 301." It was a
not-for-credit course, offered primarily for students planning on going on
to graduate school, and was scheduled only at 9:30 A.M., T-Th, each
semester, in a small room in the basement of the science building. Yet the
class was so popular that too many students applied for it every semester;
and a clamor resulted that played havoc with enrollments in other course
registrations until the first-come-first-served students had filled Dr. N's
classroom seating capacity, and the rest of the students -- then knowing
they had no chance of getting into the Creative Thinking class that
semester -- had no reason to try to schedule their other courses around it's
allotted times. The Dean to whom Dr. N reported administratively asked Dr.
N. if he had any idea how the veritable registration traffic jam might be
alleviated. "Why, yes," exclaimed the bearded old professor with white
eyebrows raised, "I have been thinking about that very issue just recently,
and about another issue that an even more salient one, and I believe I have
thought of a solution to both. Allow me to suggest that double solution.
With your permission I would change the name of the course to "Innovative
Variable Management Controls in Hypothecatory Synthesis Derivation." That,
I am convinced, would reduce enrollment immediately by discouraging students
who would be thrown of by the sound of it. And. at the same time, it would
resolve the issue of attracting the students who need it the most -- those
who think they know already what creative thinking if all about, and who
don't have a clue.
End of draft.
.
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