The Gaming Den

Grek wrote:Introductory geology labs are fun as hell. Take one.

For the real fun, TA one. You get to invite freshmen to lick the halite. All the time.

Maxus wrote:halite

I definitely had to look that up. If I had my professor tell me to lick halite without knowing what it is, it would probably make my day when I realize what it is.

cthulhu wrote:The classes are the ones with good lecturers. Rage spoilered below.

However, he was great mates with the faculty dean and despite 5 student petitions to remove him in the 5 years I was there.. he is still there.

What an absolute tool.

In Australia there are two ways that unis actually generate money:
1. OS students
2. Research.
If the guys passes OS students and contributes to research, they couldn't care less whatever else he does or doesn't do. (to a certain extent. Praising nazis/pedos, etc. puts pressure on a uni)


FWIW My favourite class was a Russian History subject (I think it was on the first half of Stalin's reign) taken over summer, and we had a couple of refugees from the USSR taking the class with us. They certainly gave a perspective I would have otherwise missed. And could drink us under the table.

ubernoob wrote:

Maxus wrote:halite

I definitely had to look that up. If I had my professor tell me to like halite without knowing what it is, it would probably make my day when I realize what it is.

It's table salt.

Only in the GY 111 lab I TA'd (for some reason, the basic Geology class is given the designation 111 instead of 101), there was a block of it about an inch thick and wider and longer than the palm of my hand. It was a vaguely cloudy gray and if the weather was humid enough and the lab windows open (not uncommon), smelled like table salt.

Safe to lick, too. Generally the salt and your saliva mix and kill the germs.

Sylvite can also be identified from a lick test. It's potassium chloride and tastes stronger and more bitter than the halite. But, then it tends to be reddish so it isn't as confused.

But as TA, during the study sessions my job was to make the rounds and accost freshmen with a mineral sample in my hand and tell them to identify it and list how they could tell. Halite looks like a couple of other things so the quickest way is to give them a lick if you're not sure.

Edit: Oh yeah. The first lab every semester, the professor--a five-foot-three middle-aged chubby lady with curly hair and glasses, very sweet-looking lady--talks about cleavage and how the cleavage and fracture stems from the mineral's chemical formula and therefore its structure. She says there's a mineral called Galena which breaks into very small cubes when struck.

Then she holds up a bit of galena--which tends to show a lot of right angles even on a large scale and points that you can see the right angles even on a hand-sized specimen.

She sets the galena aside on the table and talks about how three different directions a unit of galena can fracture is what makes it break into cubes. In the middle of the mini-lecture, the TA hands her a big conglomerate sample (conglomerate is when you get round river rocks in a small-grained background) and she smashes the galena a couple of times. And wakes the class up.

Then takes the cube-shaped dust and passes a bit out to each person, with an admonition to wash their hands because galena is lead sulphide and while it's safer to handle than most lead-based stuff, it's still lead.

My favorite classes turned out to be a lot of the ones I was forced to take for "outside your division" requirements.

"Reason and Passions", basically a class in French history and literature.

"Arthurian Romance", which was exactly what it says on the tin.

"From Empire to Superpower", about America from 1900-2000 and basically why it is the way it is. With a professor whose prints are on file with the FBI solely because he was a hippie during that era.

My favorite lecturer was Boris Shekhtman, he made advanced calculus 2 fascinating (granted, this was coming off the previous instructor, who was basically drunk). His tests were gibberish, however...but awesome lectures.

Oh, I'm taking Archery right now for general ed requirements, which is an awesome way to start the day. There isn't really anything particularly special about it, the usual stereotypical PE teacher, the field sucks, but as far as PE classes go, I'd rather take it than just about anything else there.

I really enjoyed the Classical Physics class I took my freshman year. The professor had this near-religious enthusiasm for how every single bit of physics connected together to form this big overarching universe. Considering that my highschool physics teacher was a total tool and I took the college class pretty much solely for manpoints, my prof is probably the reason I'm a physics major now.

My physics professor had a sore throat today, so he decided to pass the baton to Richard Feynman via recordings of the Messenger series of lectures.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/col ... ynman.aspx
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tool ... 3%7C%7C%7C

My opinion of Microsoft just went up a bit.

Probably the best classes I took that were outside my area of focus were Wave Phenomena, Astronomy, Sculpture, and Intro to Theater (mostly because of the snide British man as the professor).

Coincidentally, I found that taking 300-level Physics classes (Wave Phenomena, in this case) when you aren't a Physics major confuses the professor. But it was probably the most informative and interesting class I took outside my major.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Introduction to Programming (because I got to learn how to code in assembly)

x86 Assembler in Intro to Programming? That's hardcore.

echo

I enjoyed music theory, particularly Schenkerian analysis. A couple of philosophy of mind classes were cool as well, and I learned a lot in acoustics and independent coursework in ethnomusicology.

I always took classes that had hot girls: literature, psychology, and philosophy, in that order.

K wrote:I always took classes that had hot girls: literature, psychology, and philosophy, in that order.

You found hot girls in philosophy? I always found a 4:1 guy to girl ratio in those classes. The girls who did show up were generally pretty attractive though.

I only took two philosophy classes, and I remember them being pretty evenly mixed, although they were the 101 and 102 classes, so intro classes might have a different distribution.

I'll have to talk to my old roommate who was a philosophy major to see what his experiences were.

Neeeek wrote:

K wrote:I always took classes that had hot girls: literature, psychology, and philosophy, in that order.

You found hot girls in philosophy? I always found a 4:1 guy to girl ratio in those classes. The girls who did show up were generally pretty attractive though.

I went to UCSC, which I believe might be some kind of alternate hot-girl universe.

Micro and Macroeconomics. Both classes were taught by a professor who was crazier than a shithouse rat strung out on Drano.

K wrote:

Neeeek wrote:

K wrote:I always took classes that had hot girls: literature, psychology, and philosophy, in that order.

You found hot girls in philosophy? I always found a 4:1 guy to girl ratio in those classes. The girls who did show up were generally pretty attractive though.

I went to UCSC, which I believe might be some kind of alternate hot-girl universe.

Ooooh. Right.

On a related note, it seems that the chick who stands to inherit the Red Room (and the Red, the 515 and a couple other places) was a phil major at UCSC, is currently(well, on hiatus) a law student at Santa Clara and is absolutely gorgeous.

Well I finished my undergrad degree not so long ago, so my recollections are pretty fresh. I particularly enjoyed -

Post-Kantian Philosophy (Nietzsche and Schopenhauer). There's a lot of misinformation and misinterpretation of Nietzsche out there, and it was good to study him under someone who knew what they were doing.

Comparative Government, for helping me realise how weird and archaic many aspects of the British and American political systems are. First-past-the-post is a pile of shit.

Politics in Latin America. There are big things happening in this region, and it deserves more attention.

Nicomachean Ethics. I'm a virtue ethicist at heart, for a pretty fringe value of 'virtue ethicist'. Also Aristotle is filled with unexpected moments of hilarity.

Social Policy, because fuck people who think the state shouldn't be providing healthcare and education. You fucks can go enjoy your delicious infant mortality and social stratification; I'll be over here actually helping to make things happen.

Gnosticism Is A Hoot wrote: Politics in Latin America. There are big things happening in this region, and it deserves more attention.

My curiosity is piqued. Could you give a brief summary of what these big things are?

Neeeek wrote:

K wrote:

Neeeek wrote:
You found hot girls in philosophy? I always found a 4:1 guy to girl ratio in those classes. The girls who did show up were generally pretty attractive though.

I went to UCSC, which I believe might be some kind of alternate hot-girl universe.

Ooooh. Right.

On a related note, it seems that the chick who stands to inherit the Red Room (and the Red, the 515 and a couple other places) was a phil major at UCSC, is currently(well, on hiatus) a law student at Santa Clara and is absolutely gorgeous.

I think Santa Clara might also be an alternate hot-girl universe. I keep hearing about this "hot for law school" standard and just feeling confusion because the women there are stupidly hot in general. Like, the single ugly one in your classes still beer-goggles bone-able.

I would like to meet this woman, though. Sounds like an interesting one.

Learn a new language!

I'd love to learn Russian but it's not offered by any college I know of within the nearest few hundred miles, and fuck online classes.

I did a Spanish last semester but the teacher was verbal-only. He never wrote on the board.
And the book was both ancient and lacking in answers to the assigned questions so I had to use both online resources and other books just to understand the class book.
All in all, it could have been better, but I didn't finish. Just audited, tried to deal with the strange situation, and eventually just stopped showing up by the end.
Not like I need the credits any more, I just wanted to learn Spanish.

K wrote:I keep hearing about this "hot for law school" standard and just feeling confusion because the women there are stupidly hot in general. Like, the single ugly one in your classes still beer-goggles bone-able.

+1

Some of my favorite courses have also been in psych, phil, and lit (in that order.)

Freud was wrong -- This was a one-off capstone course offered at my college by an awesome guest professor. IN the first session of the course, he said that his original proposal for the course name was "Freud was an idiot and needs to be ignored." This was apparently rejected.

Popular culture and psychology - was another capstone course that combined literature, psych, and modern philosophy.

Logic - was a great philosophy course on, well, logic. Unfortunately, I seem to have forgotten most of it.

All the female lawyers I've met have been extraordinarily attractive. They also all made Kaelik look like Mother Fucking Theresa, I have never met more emasculating and unpleasant women in my life. (Let that sink in, especially that I'm the one who said it).