The Simpsons - Comments about PhDs and Grad Students.
(Source: youtube.com)
Saideman's Semi-Spew: Political Science: The Store
What a “Political Science” store (a la Anthropologie) would sell.
The Animaniacs perform “U.N. Me”
The Duck of Minerva: The APSA Drinking Game
It might be wiser to turn this into ISA BINGO for Montreal, but count me in at any rate.
Saved by the Bell: The Grad School Years | McSweeney's Internet Tendency
(SCREECH crawls out from under a mountain of library books, simultaneously reading an academic book on leeches and a heavily dog-eared copy of Gravity’s Rainbow.)
SCREECH: Hey, is someone talking about me?!
(A loud, impatient knock at the door.)
ZACK: Here’s an Austinian performative utterance: “Come in!”
SCREECH: Technically, “I am coming in” would be the performative utterance, or illocutionary act.
(SLATER smacks SCREECH on the head.)
SLATER: “I am hitting you.” How’s that for an illocutionary act?
SCREECH: According to the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, pretty accurate … and hard!
Chicken and the Military: A Joke
Setting: Aboard a ship. The captain is engaged in a heated debate via the ship’s radio.
Captain: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.
Operator: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to South to avoid a collision.
Captain: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.
Operator: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.
Captain: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER ENTERPRISE, WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!
Operator: This is a lighthouse. Your call.
Chomsky: One of the problems with the perspective offered by the Man-Elf coalition is that you have to try so hard to get at the truth of the conflict, at what is really going on; it’s so obscured by their propaganda and relentless militarism. I mean, here we have swords being distributed to the Hobbits by Strider so they can protect themselves against these “evil creatures.” Now, in this case, it’s probably warranted, though the “evil creatures” are looking for the ring in their own individual self-interest. They’re behaving in a purely rational way.
Zinn: The Nazgul have been ordered to get the ring. So, that’s what they’re doing.
Chomsky: There are conflicts in rationality as well. Sometimes valid rationality is forced into conflict because of the structures of culture. But working through those cultural differences is where the peace lies. It doesn’t lie in destroying some magical ring. This takes me back to the media’s involvement in all this, and the way the media is being controlled by Gandalf, such as when he covers Saruman’s palantir in Orthanc. This is the stone that allows one to see, and thus communicate with, different cultures.
Unused Audio Commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky for the Fellowship of the Ring DVD | McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
Bored with Football Stats? Introducing Fantasy Geopolitics | The Boston Globe
Via Alex Montgomery. What’s particularly amusing is that I’ve been neglecting my two fantasy football teams to an unheard of amount this season, primarily because I’ve been paying attention to geopolitics.