Who's up for husking Prager's corn?

First, let me apologize for the title of this post. Second, I apologize that I didn't live up to my promise of updating with an "much more important and relevant post" tomorrow -- clearly tomorrow has come and gone, but that post is still coming (obviously, this isn't it).

But hey! This is newsworthy too! Us lucky Oxy students are being given the opportunity to try some corn, fresh from President Prager's farm near Sacramento. This is going on on Wednesday night, October 24. Fresh Presidential corn (that could be so misinterpreted) is going to be available in the marketplace that night at dinner.

Better yet though, we get the opportunity to husk it the corn ourselves. As the hand-out puts it: "Be a part of the farm to school experience and help prep the corn for dinner!".

Now, I know that there are many people out there who don't feel that corn husking is not exactly up their alley -- but, come on, how amusing is it going to be to see people spending their lunchtimes down in the quad husking their own corn? Many people might be surprised that there is more to food than driving to the supermarket.

This program is put on by UEPI and, obviously, President Prager as a "harvest festival". This seems like a good way for us Oxy students to find out more about our President, and to connect with her a little bit more. Even if it is over corn.

U.S. News rankings covered by the Weekly

The cover story of the Weekly this week is about Oxy's ranking in U.S. News and World Report, something that was blogged about here weeks ago (on September 30th). The Weekly's article is obviously far more in-depth and knowledgeable than this blog could ever hope to be, so if you're interested check it out here: http://media.www.oxyweekly.com/media/storage/paper1200/news/2007/10/19/Features/Much-Ado.About.Ranking-3042264.shtml

I think that this is a case where the paradigm between what this blog does (or hopes to do) and what the Oxy Weekly does is clearly demonstrated -- the blog will give you whatever I feel the interesting tidbit of the story is, and hopefully be far more timely than the newspaper can be (in this case, it was weeks earlier), but the newspaper will eventually follow it up with deeper coverage that will give you the full story (assuming it's something worth following up, and not stupid signs).

(By the way, yes, I co-authored the story on the rankings, so in a way this post is a little bit of self-promotion. Can you really blame me though?)

Some signs that maybe should never have been put up in the first place

Okay, it's taken me a while to get back to this blog, but I promise I will be more diligent about it in the future. This particular post is a little bit out-of-date, but it's still worthwhile (that is, if you like stupid...). Keep an eye out tomorrow for a much more important and relevant post.

There have been a couple of signs around Oxy recently that really make you doubt the intelligence of your fellow human beings. For example, take the one above. The above sign was hung in the Cooler for Coming Out Week last week. Clearly, judging from the neatness of the sign, its creator took a whole five minutes making it. Judging from its spelling... I don't even know what to say about that one. How do you spell "together" correctly once, but then spell it wrong the second time? Look, I don't mean to be critical, but if your sign is important enough to hang in the Cooler, and it is therefore of enough worth for someone to take a few moments of their time and read it, you have to care about it enough and put enough effort into it to warrant that. Though this sign may have a worthwhile message, the fact that whoever created it clearly didn't give a crap takes away any significance it might otherwise have. And the fact that nobody spell checked the sign before putting it up there for the world is just all-togher stupid.

Yes, I did say signs, plural. Here's a different sign, from the entrance to the library, that is of a somewhat different nature:
I'm sure there was an important reason for this sign, but I didn't see any live electrical wires anywhere. Were they talking about wires under the half-exposed carpet? If so, someone would have had to have actually gone down and worked their fingers though the seam in the carpet to get to the live wires. Do they really think that someone would do that? The other sign made us wonder how stupid its creator was; this one makes us wonder how stupid its creator thinks we are. Obviously, this sign isn't nearly as outrageous (or high-profile) as the last one, but it definitely falls under the "too alarmist?" category.