ENTERTAINMENT

The technical geek test
Are you a tehcnical geek?

Do you have a problem with overdoing your technical activities? Many do. Take the following test to see if you are compulsive. If you can relate to 2 of the items, you may have a problem with Techno-Dweeb. If you relate to 3 or more, you are definitely a Techno-Dweeb. Do not despair! There is help! You are not alone! Whenever you feel the urge to code in Assembler, call the number in the white pages of your phone book, and we will send somebody right over to cut out paper dolls with you until the feeling passes.

You know you are a tehcnical geek when . . .

When your friend tells you all about his Cressida V6 and you reply "Yeah, I had V5, and it was full of bugs!"

When driving you see a license plate with the letters DSR, and you feel compelled to touch your bumper to the other car to see if you can raise CD.

When you are counting objects "0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D...".

When you lay down in the afternoon for a short rest, end up sleeping 4 hours, and call it a "mega-nap".

When your friend is going to Essex for vacation and you tell her, "You really should go for the DX, it has the built in co-processor."

When you dream in 256 pallettes of 256 colors.

When asked about a bus schedule, you wonder if it is 16 or 32 bits.

When you convince yourself that Tetris really does improve eye-hand coordination.

When the radio traffic reporter talks about a backup caused by a crash, and you correct her that a backup is good protection in case of a crash.

When floppy drive applies more to your love life, and hard drive to your machines.

When you call "*.*" star-dot-star.

When you can do hexadecimal arithmatic in your head.

When your wife goes to the market for some macintosh apples, and you correct her, "No, dear, it's 'Apple Macintosh'."

When your wife says "If you don't turn off that stupid machine and come to bed, then I am going to divorce you!", and you chastise her for for omitting the else clause.

Impossible final exams
Instructions: Read each question carefully. Answer all questions.
Time limit: 2 hours. Begin immediately.

Art: Given one eight-count box of crayons and three sheets of notebook paper, recreate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Skin tones should be true to life.

Biology: Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had developed 500 million years earlier, with special attention to its probable effect on the English Parliamentary System circa 1750. Prove your thesis.

Chemistry: You must identify a poison sample which you will find at your lab table. All necessary equipment has been provided. There are two beakers at your desk, one of which holds the antidote. If the wrong substance is used, it causes instant death. You may begin as soon as the professor injects you with a sample of the poison. (We feel this will give you an incentive to find the correct answer.)

Civil Engineering: This is a practical test of your design and building skills. With the boxes of toothpicks and glue present, build a platform that will wupport your weight when you and your platform are suspended over a vat of nitric acid.

Computer Science: Write a fifth-generation computer language. Using this language, write a computer program to finish the rest of this exam for you.

Economics: Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt. Trace the possible effects of your plan in the following areas: Cubism, the Donatist Controversy and the Wave Theory of Light. Outline a method for preventing these effects. Criticize this method from all possible points of view. Point out the deficiencies in your point of view, as demonstrated in your answer to the last question.

Electrical Engineering: You will be placed in a nuclear reactor and given a partial copy of the electrical layout. The electrical system has been tampered with. You have seventeen minutes to find the problem and correct it before the reactor melts down.

Engineering: The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed on your desk. You will also find an instruction manual, printed in Swahili. In 10 minutes, a hungry bengal tiger will be admitted to the room. Take whatever action you feel necessary. Be prepared to justify your decision.

Epistemology: Take a position for or against truth. Prove the validity of your stand.

General Knowledge: Describe in detail. Be objective and specific.

History: Describe the history of the Papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its Europe, Asia, America and Africa. Be brief, concise and specific.

Mathematics: Derive the Euler-Cauchy equations using only a straightedge and compass. Discuss in detail the role these equations had on mathematical analysis in Europe during the 1800s.

Medicine: You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until you work has been inspected. You have fifteen minutes.

Metaphysics: Describe in detail the probably nature of life after death. Test your hypothesis.

Music: Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate and perform it with flute and drum. You will find a piano under your seat.

Philosophy: Sketch the development of human thought. Estimate its significance. Compare with the development of any other kind of thought.

Physchology: Based on your knowledge of their works, evaluate the emotional stability, degree of adjustment, and repressed frustrations of each of the following: Alexander of Aphrodisis, Rameses II, Hammuarabi. Support your evaluation with quotations from each man's work, making appropriate references. It is not necessary to translate.

Physics: Explain the nature of matter. Include in your answer an evaluation of the impact of the development of mathematics on science.

Political Science: There is a red telephone on the desk beside you. Start World War III. Report at length on its socio-political effects if any.

Public Speaking: 2500 riot-crazed aborigines are storming the classroom. Calm them. You may use any ancient language except Latin or Greek.

Religion: Perform a miracle. Creativity will be judged.

Sociology: Estimate the sociological problems which might accompany the end of the world. Construct an experiment to test your theory.

Extra Credit: Define the universe, and give three examples.

Student world history
Here is a collection of freshman history bloopers collected by a Canadian history professor (Anders Henrickson) over the years.

During the Middle Ages, everybody was middle aged. Church and state were cooperatic. Middle Evil society was made up of monks, lords and surfs. It is unfortunate that we do not have a medivel European laid out on a table before us, ready for dissection.

After a revival of infantile commerce slowly creeoed into Europe, merchants appeared. Some were sitters and some were drifters. They roamed from town to town exposing themselves and organized big fairies in the countryside.

Mideval people were violent. Murder during this Period was nothing. Everybody killed someone. England fought numerously for land in France and ended up wining and losing. The Crusades were a series of military expaditions made by Christians seeking to free the holy land (the "Home Town" of Christ) from the Islams.

In the 1400 hundreds most Englishmen were perpendicular. A class of yeowls arose. Finally Europe caught the Black Death. The bubonic plague is a social disease in the sense that it can be transmitted by intercourse and other etceteras. It was spread from port to port by infected rats. Victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. The plague also helped the emergance of the English language as the national language of England, France and Italy.

The Middle Ages slimpared to a halt. The renasence bolted in from the blue. Life reeked with joy. Italy became robust, and more individuals felt the value of their human being. Italy, of course, was much closer to the rest of the world thanks to Northern Europe. Man was determined to civilise himself and his brothers, even if heads had to roll! It became sheik to be educated. Art was on a more associated level. Europe was full of incredable churches with great art bulging out of their doors. Renaissance merchants were beautiful and almost lifelike.

The Reformnation happened when German nobles resented the idea that tithes were going to Papal France or the Pope, thus enriching Catholic coiffures. Traditions had become oppressive so they too were crushed in the wake of man's quest for ressurection above the not-just-social beast he had become. An angry Martin Luther nailed 95 theocrats to a church door. Theologically, Luthar was into reorientation mutation. Calvinism was the most convenient religion since the days of the ancients. Anabaptist services tended to be migratory. The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic. Monks went right on seeing themselves as worms. The last Jesuit priest died in the 19th century.

After the refirmation were wars both foreign and infernal. If the Spanish could gain the Netherlands they would have a stronghold throughout northern Europe which would include their posetions in Italy, Burgundy, central Europe and India thus serrounding France. The German Emperor's lower passage was blocked by the French for years and years.

Louise XIV became King of the Sun. He gave the people food and artillery. If he didn't like someone, he sent them to the gallows to row for the rest of their lives. Vauban was the royal minister of flirtation. In Russia the 17th century was known as the time of the bounding of the serfs. Russian nobles wore clothes only to humour Peter the Great. Peter filled his goverment with accidental people and built a new capital near the European boarder. Orthodox priests became government antennae.

The enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare wrote a book called Candy that got him into trouble with Frederick the Great. Philosophers were unknown as yet, and the fundamental stake was one of religious toleration slightly confused with defeatism. France was in a serious state. Taxation was a great drain on the state budget. The French revolution was accomplished before it happened. The revolution evolved through republican and tolarian phases until it catapulted into Napolean. Napoleon was ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained.

History, a record of things left behind by past generations, started in 1815. Throughout the comparatively radical years 1815-1870 the western European continent was undergoing a Rampant period of economic modification. Industrialisation was precipitating in England.

Problems were so complexicated that in Paris, out of a city population of 1 million people, 2 million able bodies were on the loose.

Great Brittian, the USA and other European countries had demicratic leanings. The middle class was tired and needed a rest. The old order could see the lid holding down new ideas beginning to shake. Among the goals of the chartists were universal suferage and anal parliment. Voting was to be done by ballad.

A new time zone of national unification roared over the horizon. Founder of the new Italy was Cavour, an intelligent Sardine from the north. Nationalism aided Itally because nationalism is the growth of an army. We can see that nationalism succeeded for Itally because of France's big army. Napoleam III-IV mounted the French thrown. One thinks of Napoleon III as a live extension of the late but great, Napoleon. Here too was the new Germany: loud, bold, vulgar and full of reality.

Culture fomented from Europe's tip to its top. Richard Strauss, who was violent but methodical like his wife made him, plunged into vicious and perverse plays. Dramatized were adventures in seduction and abortion. Music reeked with reality. Wagner was master of music, and people did not forget his contribution. When he died they labeled his seat "historical". Other countries had their own artists. France had Chekhov.

World War I broke out around 1912-1914. Germany was on one side of France and Russia was on the other. At war people get killed, and then they aren't people any more, but friends. Peace was proclaimed at Versigh, which was attended by George Loid, Primal Minister of England. President Wilson arrived with 14 pointers. In 1937 Lenin revolted Russia. Communism raged among the peasants, and the civil war 'team colours' were red and white.

Germany was displaced after WWI. This gave rise to Hitler. Germany was morbidly over-excited and unbalanced. Berlin became the decadent capital, where all forms of sexual deprivations were practised. A huge anti-semantic movement arose. Attractive slogans like "death to all Jews" were used by government groups. Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland over a squirmish between Germany and France.

The appeasers were blinded by the great red of the Soviets. Moosealini rested his foundations on 8 million bayonets and invaded Hi Lee Salasy. Germany invaded Poland, France invaded Belgium, and Russia invaded everybody. War screeched to an end when a nukuleer explosion was dropped on Heroshima. A whole generation had been wipe out in two world wars, and their forlorne families were left to pick up the peaces.

According to Fromm, individuation began historically in medieval times. This was a period of small childhood. There is increasing experience as adolescence experiences its life development. The last stage is us.

A new professor's diary
Jan 3rd, 1995
I have long heard of the lives of the privileged classes, and now I have prepared myself to experience life as a member. Tomorrow, I will don the the uniform of the academic and re-enter society, NOT as I once was, a worker and pawn of the educated classes, but as a peer of those very people. Tomorrow, I shall become an academic!

Jan 4th, 1995
Dressed in a pair of green slacks with shortened legs, red cardigan and egg-yolk-stained tee-shirt; sporting a scraggly beard and armed only with a pipe, I stepped onto the University Campus. Immediately upon mumbling some incomprehensible gibberish, I was greeted on with respect and awe by my fellow academia. Applying for tenure was simple. The questions were very direct:

They: Do you know what you're doing?
Me: This is Belgium, right?
They: You have a masters in English?
Me: I have a Red Volvo!
They: And you're applying for a position in the department of Physics?
Me: I think sometimes, therefore I am illogical!

I was appointed immediately and released to an unsuspecting student population.

Jan 5th, 1995
Today was my first as a lecturer. I prepared concientiously by drinking heavily, watching lots of television and going to bed very late the preceding night turning up at my lecture the prescribed 1 minute late, I spoke of Yeats and the passion of his poetry. The first year Physics students were left speechless.

Jan 6th, 1995
I did not go to work today, due to my thinking it was Saturday.

Jan 7th, 1995
I did not go to work today, due to my thinking it was a Wednesday.

Jan 8th, 1995
I went to work today and was distressed at the lack of attendance.

Jan 9th, 1995
Being conscientious in the maintenance of my diary, I take a well deserved holiday knowing that in three more days I will be eligible for a six month sebattical.

Jan 12th, 1995
My lecture this morning was a landmark effort. I launched into the explanation of the right-hand-rule, then, remembering that I was an academic, subverted myself into discussing of the right-hand-rule of hitch-hiking, the dangers of hitchhiking, the dangers of hitching in South America, my Holiday in South America, the woman I met in South America, the place she worked at, their physics department, then to finish off, what their physics department said about the right-hand-rule. I think I was well received

Jan 13th, 1995
A minor peice of confusion here in that I brought my Telephone book instead of my lecture notes. I improvised the basic electrical safety section of the course with the aid of two paper clips, a student and a handy power point. I feel sure the class now appreciates the dangers of electricity. Attendance dropped by one.

Jan 14th, 1995
Being a Friday, I decide to excite my first year pupils with an experiment in wave theory. I walked into the lab, waved, and left. I'm sure my students appreciated the humourous content.

Jan 16th, 1995
Having now mastered when weekends occur, I turned up to receive confirmation of my sebattical, taking it, on full pay, immediately.

Jul 17th, 1995
Back from sebattical I realise that I did not make arrangements for a stand-in lecturer. In an attempt to catch up for the lost time, I set the students some homework, pages 1-375, read and do all exercises.

Jul 18th, 1995
Attendance was exceptionally low today with only one student in class. When I asked him how his homework was going as his entire coursework depended on it. He screamed and left. I marked him absent and informed the grants department that no-one was attending my courses.

Jul 21st, 1995
My students are all back having received the letter informing them that grants are only paid to attending students. Scholarship students, with a far harsher attendance policy, are openly weeping.

Jul 24th, 1995
I am now eligible for three months extra-curricular sebattical, which I decide to take immediately, warning my students that the exam will be held the day I return, covering all aspects of the course, including the last minute addition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica to the Book List. I expect all students to have a copy.

Oct 24th, 1995
Exam day.
Having no preparation time, I use last years exam and substitute different values for the equation. I randomly appoint a student from another class to work out the answers and mark the exams.

Oct 27th, 1995
I receive the results of the exam which indicate that 89% of the class passed the exam. Lauded as an academic genius, I am awarded 6 months further paid sebbatical to study the effects of alcohol on the mind. Starting the third day of term next year. I think I'm on a winner here.

The homework schedule
Here is an explanation of the school homework policy for the average student. Students should not spend more than ninety minutes per night. This time should be budgeted in the following manner if the student desires to achieve moderate to good grades in his/her classes.

15 minutes looking for assignment.

11 minutes calling a friend for the assignment.

23 minutes explaining why the teacher is mean and just does not like children.

8 minutes in the bathroom.

10 minutes getting a snack.

7 minutes checking the TV Guide.

6 minutes telling parents that the teacher never explained the assignment.

10 minutes sitting at the kitchen table waiting for Mom or Dad to do the assignment.

A lecture about English
A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class one day. "In English," he said, "A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."

A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."

Try to bribe a professor
A professor was giving a big test one day to his students. He handed out all of the tests and went back to his desk to wait. Once the test was over, the students all handed the tests back in. The professor noticed that one of the students had attached a $100 bill to his test with a note saying "A dollar per point." The next class the professor handed the tests back out. This student got back his test and $56 change.

Fun on first day of class
This is for entertainment purposes only. We do not advise that you do any of these things on the first day of class or for that matter, on any day of class.

1. Smoke a pipe and respond to each point the professor makes by waving it and saying, "Quite right, old bean!"

2. Wear X-Ray Specs. Every few minutes, ask the professor to focus the overhead projector.

3. Sit in the front row and spend the lecture filing your teeth into sharp points.

4. Sit in the front and color in your textbook.

5. When the professor calls your name in roll, respond "that's my name, don't wear it out!"

6. Introduce yourself to the class as the "master of the pan flute".

7. Give the professor a copy of The Watchtower. Ask him where his soul would go if he died tomorrow.

8. Wear earmuffs. Every few minutes, ask the professor to speak louder.

9. Leave permanent markers by the dry-erase board.

10. Squint thoughtfully while giving the professor strange looks. In the middle of lecture, tell him he looks familiar and ask whether he was ever in an episode of Starsky and Hutch.

11. Ask whether the first chapter will be on the test. If the professor says no, rip the pages out of your textbook.

12. Become entranced with your first physics lecture, and declare your intention to pursue a career in measurements and units.

13. Sing your questions.

14. Speak only in rhymes and hum the Underdog theme.

15. When the professor calls roll, after each name scream "THAT'S MEEEEE! Oh, no, sorry."

16. Insist in a Southern drawl that your name really is Wuchen Li. If you actually are Chinese, insist that your name is Vladimir Fernandez O'Reilly.

17. Page through the textbook scratching each picture and sniffing it.

18. Wear your pajamas. Pretend not to notice that you've done so.

19. Hold up a piece of paper that says in large letters "CHECK YOUR FLY".

20. Inform the class that you are Belgian royalty, and have a friend bang cymbals together whenever your name is spoken.

21. Stare continually at the professor's crotch. Occassionally lick your lips.

22. Address the professor as "your excellency".

23. Sit in the front, sniff suspiciously, and ask the professor if he's been drinking.

24. Shout "WOW!" after every sentence of the lecture.

25. Bring a mirror and spend the lecture writing Bible verses on your face.

26. Ask whether you have to come to class.

27. Present the professor with a large fruit basket.

28. Bring a "seeing eye rooster" to class.

29. Feign an unintelligible accent and repeatedly ask, "Vet ozzle haffen dee henvay?" Become aggitated when the professor can't understand you.

30. Relive your Junior High days by leaving chalk stuffed in the chalkboard erasers.

31. Watch the professor through binoculars.

32. Start a "wave" in a large lecture hall.

33. Ask to introduce your "invisible friend" in the empty seat beside you, and ask for one extra copy of each handout.

34. When the professor turns on his laser pointer, scream "AAAGH! MY EYES!"

35. Correct the professor at least ten times on the pronunciation of your name, even it's Smith. Claim that the i is silent.

36. Sit in the front row reading the professor's graduate thesis and snickering.

37. As soon as the first bell rings, volunteer to put a problem on the board. Ignore the professor's reply and proceed to do so anyway.

38. Claim that you wrote the class text book.

39. Claim to be the teaching assistant. If the real one objects, jump up and scream "IMPOSTER!"

40. Spend the lecture blowing kisses to other students.

41. Every few minutes, take a sheet of notebook paper, write "Signup Sheet #5" at the top, and start passing it around the room.

42. Stand to ask questions. Bow deeply before taking your seat after the professor answers.

43. Wear a cape with a big S on it. Inform classmates that the S stands for "stud".

44. Interrupt every few minutes to ask the professor, "Can you spell that?"

45. Disassemble your pen. "Accidently" propel pieces across the room while playing with the spring. Go on furtive expeditions to retrieve the pieces. Repeat.

46. Wink at the professor every few minutes.

47. In the middle of lecture, ask your professor whether he believes in ghosts.

48. Laugh heartily at everything the professor says. Snort when you laugh.

49. Wear a black hooded cloak to class and ring a bell.

50. Ask your math professor to pull the roll chart above the blackboard of ancient Greek trade routes down farther because you can't see Macedonia.

This above was written by Alan Meiss, ameiss@indiana.edu