[ale] Just another reason to purchase a mac

[Jeff Lightner]

Once in college a professor asked "If a tree falls in the forest and no
one is there to hear it does it make a sound?"  My response was that it
depended on how you defined "sound".   That is to say in physics sound
is vibration through a medium so it would certainly make a sound
(assuming of course the forest is on earth and comet hadn't ripped away
our atmosphere).  However, to a physician sound is vibration on the
eardrum so of course there is no sound if no one is there to hear it.

The professor however took one or the other points of view and stated it
as an absolute pretty much shutting me down.   This annoyed me so I went
and found 3 references (pre-internet mind you) including a quote in an
old science book that said essentially the same thing I had.  I wrote up
a 1 page discussion and attached a 1 page bibliography.  He was quite
impressed and took it to the Dean of Students "to show what he had to
put with".  :-)

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim
Kinney
Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 5:29 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
Subject: Re: [ale] Just another reason to purchase a mac

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 5:03 PM, Devnull<devnull at iamdevnull.info> wrote:
> 2009/6/30 Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com>:
>
> I love how your entire email is 5 sentences and 3 paragraphs. (:

As an exercise to amuse myself while writing a term paper, I crafted a
single page that was a single paragraph that was a single sentence
that contained 27 commas. And it was totally grammatically correct.
The entire premise of my paper was a total farce and I knew it. My
instructor stopped me in the hall before he handed it back in class to
tell me he completely disagreed with my thesis but I almost convinced
him. He awarded me 1 point shy of a perfect score because he "always
leaves room for improvement". I ran into him about 5-6 years later
totally out of context of the school and he remembered me and the
paper and recalled it as one of the three top undergrad papers he had
ever seen in 20+ years of teaching. I never had the heart to tell him
I didn't read one of the books in the report. I only pulled quotes
from it to support my thesis.
>
> --
> -
> /dev/null
> We are the Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. You will be
approximated.
> _______________________________________________
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> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>



-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
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