There are times when I'm simply amazed that I'm in grad school, given the anti-intellectualism of the environment in which I grew up. My family wasn't so bad; they mostly valued education. It was the religion. It was at church that I first heard these two jokes:
BS means exactly what it says. MS means "more of same." And PhD means "piled higher and deeper."
If x signifies the unknown, and "spurt" is a drip under pressure, then an expert is an unknown drip under pressure.
I mention these by way of setting up the fun news that Jorge Cham of PhD Comix was here last night. Cham was pretty damn hilarious, but then he's had a chance to polish the talk up pretty well. Being in a crowd of about a hundred PhD students was...strange. Cham was funny, yes, but the jokes were geek jokes of the first order (sample line, "And everybody knows you can't deny F=ma." Big laugh). Again, the talk was funny, but in the most astoundingly narrow-cast way. This was a talk for us. And we felt the love. On the other hand, given that these were graduate students, there was quite a bit of audience chatting. People kept leaning over to remind each other of their own experiences--at inappropriate volumes. Such smart people, so socially awkward. Still, if he's coming to a campus near you, check him out. It's stand-up for the conference-paper-set.
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