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Every year, during Campus Preview Weekend, the weather in Cambridge turns downright freakish. Last Wednesday, the night before the start of CPW, the weather report said that it would rain straight through the long weekend. As prefrosh began to arrive the following morning, the clouds literally began to part in their wake. Within hours of the moment the first prefrosh stepped foot on campus, the weather report had changed: four days of sunshine and warmth. It went from 40 degrees and rainy to Marathon Monday’s 84 and sunny. Madness.

Proposals have been made to capture several prefrosh and keep them on campus. We hypothesize that the CPW weather machine feeds off the positive energy emanated by these creatures. Unfortunately, their happiness wanes the longer they remain on campus, and so we will need to replenish our supply from time to time. I’ve got my people looking into ways of growing prefrosh in a vat. Results have been mixed: we got a sophomore and a really pissed-off fetus. Let’s talk about something else.

I ask you: Do beer companies have a responsibility to prevent kids from drinking underage? Answer: No. Let’s move on before I go into a rant about personal responsibility and make comparisons to the gun industry.

I’ll refrain from saying something like “you get what you give” in response to the McDonald’s CEO having a heart attack. Yup, not gonna say it. Instead, I’ll leave you with some geeky humor:

Two mathematicians, Joe and Richard, were having dinner in a restaurant in Portland, Oregon, arguing about the average mathematical knowledge of the American public. Richard claimed that this average was woefully inadequate while Joe maintained that it was surprisingly high.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Richard, “when I get back from the bathroom we’ll ask our waitress a simple calculus question. If she gets it right, I’ll pick up dinner. If not, you do. Okay?” They agreed, but once he’d left, Joe called the waitress over.

“When my friend comes back,” he told her, “he’s going to ask you a question. You should respond ‘one third x cubed’ no matter what the question is. Got that? There’s five bucks in it for you.” She happily agreed.

Richard returned from the men’s room and called the waitress over. “The food was wonderful,” he started, “Incidentally, do you know what the integral of x squared is?”

The waitress looked startled, then pensive, almost pained. She looked around the room, at her feet, made gurgling noises, (Joe was starting to sweat) and finally said, “Um, one third x cubed?”

Joe beamed in relief as an astonished Richard paid the check and an irritated waitress muttered under her breath, “…plus a constant.”

This entry was posted on Monday, April 19th, 2004 at 4:43 pm and is filed under School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.