Students in my undergrad writing class were to write descriptive essays about people they know. A lot of people wrote about their boyfriends or girlfriends, especially confessing secret desires to marry them. One of the most interesting lines was in an essay a boy wrote about his secret love for a friend of his who lives in Seoul. Singing her praises at great length, he wrote, I don’t know if all these things are true, but I believe they are true, and I want them to be true. That’s young love for you, isn’t it? Quite a wonderful line, I …

A long time ago I read chunks of a book by Douglas Hofstadter titled Metamagical Themas which has a section on how we manage to see the same letters represented in what are, in fact, many different ways. He uses the example of Chinese characters as an illuminating example because, while to us Chinese characters in different fonts often look startlingly different, to a native Chinese reader they’re instantaneously recognizable as the same character. But it’s the same with fonts. It seems that there are a wide range of things that are highly variable in a written character’s (read: “letter’s”) …

A few minutes after I’ve entered the room, and greetedthe students, there’s a substantial number of them still chatting among themselves. No, scratch that, it’s not the chatting that pisses me off. It’s the fact that they’re ignoring me, rather rudely. I’ve repeated my question to them a few times: “How are you?” trying to be friendly although I am, at this point in the term, and especially after their atrocious exam, disgusted with this particular class. They’re my outright worst class, hands down, and even the best students in this group are kind of dragged down into mediocrity by …

Over at Katolik Shinja, some linguistic jokes. They’re pretty good. In my opinion, anyway.

Two of my classes today were wonderful; students joking but doing as part of their work, studying hard and trying to get things right, as well as pass the time in a pleasant way. I love classes like this. They’re usually mostly girls, but in these two cases, the boys in the class are all quite good-natured and eager as well. In a couple of cases, the boys aren’t so eager but their girlfriends (who happen to be fellow students) encourage them and they get into it and realize they can have fun in class. It’s so cute to watch …