Education Humor

An article in the Thursday, February 7 Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, VA) by Michael Zitz was about an undergraduate anthropology course examining episodes of Star Trek (TOS) for their anthropological relevance. The instructor, Professor Margaret Huber, had noticed that students who seemed bored and listless during a review session for physical anthropology perked up when she referred to an old Star Trek episode to make a point.
The course Anthropology 472: Anthology of Star Trek analyzes Star Trek as a mirror of contemporary American culture and American attitudes about other cultures. There is no dramatic criticism, film criticism, or literary criticism involved, the focus is to teach the class to look at the episodes with an anthropologist's eye. The 22 episodes chosen for this class all demonstrate how American popular culture has led to a mixture of fact and fiction. One example used is "The Paradise Syndrome", in which Captain Kirk is stranded on an Earth-like planet that has produced a civilization similar to that of Native Americans before the intrusion of the white man.
The anthropological point of this episode is that American popular culture portrays all Native Americans as Plains Indians, and that has resulted in a mish-mash of dwellings, dress, rites, and symbols in the Star Trek episode.
The instructor cautions that this is not a course for those students looking for an easy A but a real anthropology course that uses material that many of today's college students are already familiar with to examine anthropological theory.

• Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the organ of the species.
• Benjamin Franklin produced electricity by rubbing cats backwards.
• The theory of evolution was greatly objected to because it made man think.
• Three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, vanes and caterpillers.
• The dodo is a bird that is almost decent by now.
• To remove air from a flask, fill it with water, tip the water out, and put the cork in quick before the air can get back in.
• The process of turning steam back into water again is called conversation.
• A magnet is something you find crawling all over a dead cat.
• The Earth makes one resolution every 24 hours.
• The cuckoo bird does not lay his own eggs.
• To collect fumes of sulfur, hold a deacon over a flame in a test tube.
• Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.
• Algebraical symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about.
• Geometry teaches us to bisex angles.
• A circle is a line which meets its other end without ending.
• The pistol of a flower is its only protection against insects.
• The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader.
• An example of animal breeding is the farmer who mated a bull that gave a great deal of milk with a bull with good meat.
• We believe that the reptiles came from the amphibians by spontaneous generation and study of rocks.
• English sparrows and starlings eat the farmers grain and soil his corpse.
• By self-pollination, the farmer may get a flock of long-haired sheep.
• If conditions are not favorable, bacteria go into a period of adolescence.
• Dew is formed on leaves when the sun shines down on them and makes them perspire.
• Vegetative propagation is the process by which one individual manufactures another individual by accident.
• A super-saturated solution is one that holds more than it can hold.
• A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene triangle.
• Blood flows down one leg and up the other.
• A person should take a bath once in the summer, and not quite so often in the winter.
• The hookworm larvae enters the human body through the soul.
• When you haven't got enough iodine in your blood you get a glacier.
• It is a well-known fact that a deceased body harms the mind.
• Humans are more intelligent than beasts because the human branes have more convulsions.
• For fainting: rub the person's chest, or if a lady, rub her arm above the hand instead.
• For fractures: to see if the limb is broken, wiggle it gently back and forth.
• For dog bite: put the dog away for several days. If he has not recovered, then kill it.
• For nosebleed: put the nose much lower than the body.
• For drowning: climb on top of the person and move up and down to make artificial perspiration.
• To remove dust from the eye, pull the eye down over the nose.
• For head colds: use an agonizer to spray the nose until it drops in your throat.
• For snakebites: bleed the wound and rape the victim in a blanket for shock.
• For asphyxiation: apply artificial respiration until the patient is dead.
• Before giving a blood transfusion, find out if the blood is affirmative or negative.
• Bar magnets have north and south poles, horseshoe magnets have east and west poles.
• When water freezes you can walk on it. That is what Christ did long ago in wintertime.
• When you smell an odorless gas, it is probably carbon monoxide.

1. "Ladies and Gentlemen, please rise for the singing of our National Anthem."
2. Charge 25 cents a cup for coffee.
3. "Charge the mound" when a professor beans you with a high fast question.
4. Describe parts of your thesis using interpretive dance.
5. "Musical accompaniment provided by..."
6. Stage your own death/suicide.
7. Lead the specators in a Wave.
8. Have a sing-a-long.
9. "You call THAT a question? How did they make you a professor?"
10. "Ladies and Gentlemen, as I dim the lights, please hold hands and concentrate so that we may channel the spirit of Lord Kelvin..."
11. Have bodyguards outside the room to "discourage" certain professors from sitting in.
12. Puppet show.
13. Group prayer.
14. Animal sacrifice to the god of the Underworld.
15. Sell T-shirts to recoup the cost of copying, binding, etc.
16. "I'm sorry, I can't hear you - there's a banana in my ear!"
17. Imitate Groucho Marx.
18. Mime.
19. Hold a Tupperware party.
20. Have a bikini-clad model be in charge of changing the overheads.
21. "Everybody rhumba!!"
22. "And it would have worked if it weren't for those meddling kids..."
23. Charge a cover and check for ID.
24. "In protest of our government's systematic and brutal opression of minorities..."
25. "Anybody else as drunk as I am?"
26. Smoke machines, dramatic lighting, pyrotechnics...
27. Use a Super Soaker to point at people.
28. Surreptitioulsy fill the room with laughing gas.
29. Door prizes and a raffle.
30. "Please phrase your question in the form of an answer..."
31. "And now, a word from our sponsor..."
32. Present your entire talk in iambic pentameter.
33. Whine piteously, beg, cry...
34. Switch halfway through your talk to Pig Latin. Or Finnish Pig Latin.
35. The Emperor's New Slides ("only fools can't see the writing...")
36. Table dance (you or an exotic dancer).
37. Fashion show.
38. "Yo, a smooth shout out to my homies..."
39. "I'd like to thank the Academy..."
40. Minstrel show (blackface, etc.).
41. Previews, cartoons, and the Jimmy Fund.
42. Pass the collection basket.
43. Two-drink minimum.
44. Black tie only.
45. "Which reminds me of a story - A Black guy, a Chinese guy, and a Jew walked into a bar..."
46. Incite a revolt.
47. Hire the Goodyear Blimp to circle the building.
48. Release a flock of doves.
49. Defense by proxy.
50. "And now a reading from the Book of Mormon..."
51. Leave Jehovah's Witness pamphlets scattered about.
52. "There will be a short quiz after my presentation..."
53. "Professor Robinson, will you marry me?"
54. Bring your pet boa.
55. Tell ghost stories.
56. Do a "show and tell".
57. Food fight.
58. Challenge a professor to a duel. Slapping him with a glove is optional.
59. Halftime show.
60. "Duck, duck, duck, duck... GOOSE!"
61. "OK - which one of you farted?"
62. Sell those big foam "We're number #1 (sic)" hands.
63. Pass out souvenier matchbooks.
64. 3-ring defense.
65. "Tag - you're it!"
66. Circulate a vicious rumor that the Dead will be opening, making sure that it gets on the radio stations, and escape during all the commotion.
67. Post signs: "Due to a computer error at the Registrar's Office, the original room is not available, and the defense has been relocated to (made-up non-existent room number)"
68. Hang a pinata over the table and have a strolling mariachi band.
69. Make each professor remove an item of clothing for each question he asks.
70. Rent a billboard on the highway proclaiming "Thanks for passing me Professors X,Y, and Z" - BEFORE your defense happens.
71. Have a make-your-own-sundae table during the defense.
72. Make committee members wear silly hats.
73. Simulate your experiment with a virtual reality system for the spectators.
74. Do a soft-shoe routine.
75. Throw a masquerade defense, complete with bobbing for apples and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.
76. Use a Greek Chorus to highlight important points.
77. "The responsorial psalm can be found on page 124 of the thesis..."
78. Tap dance.
79. Vaudeville.
80. "I'm sorry Professor Smith, I didn't say 'SIMON SAYS any questions?'. You're out."
81. Flex and show off those massive pecs.
82. Dress in top hat and tails.
83. Hold a pre-defense pep rally, complete with cheerleaders, pep band, and a bonfire.
84. Detonate a small nuclear device in the room. Or threaten to.
85. Shadow puppets.
86. Show slides of your last vacation.
87. Put your overheads on a film strip. Designate a professor to be in charge of turning the strip when the tape recording beeps.
88. Same as above, but instead of a tape recorder, go around the room making a different person read the pre-written text for each picture.
89. "OK, everybody - heads down on the desk until you show me you can behave."
90. Call your advisor "sweetie".
91. Have everyone pose for a group photo.
92. Instant replay.
93. Laugh maniacally.
94. Talk with your mouth full.
95. Start speaking in tongues.
96. Explode.
97. Implode.
98. Spontaneously combust.
99. Answer every question with a question.
100. Moon everyone in the room after you are done.
101. "Laugh, will you? Well, they laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein."
102. Hand out 3-D glasses.
103. "I'm rubber, you're glue..."
104. Go into labor (especially for men).
105. Give your entire speech in a "Marvin Martian" accent.
106. "I don't know - I didn't write this."
107. Before your defense, build trapdoors underneath all the seats.
108. Swing in through the window, yelling a la Tarzan.
109. Lock the department head and his secretary out of the defense room. And the coffee lounge, the department office, the copy room, and the mail room. Heck, lock them out of the building. And refuse to sell them stamps.
110. Roll credits at the end. Include a "key grip", and a "best boy".
111. Hang a disco ball in the center of the room. John Travolta pose optional.
112. Invite the homeless.
113. "I could answer that, but then I'd have to kill you"
114. Hide.
115. Get a friend to ask the first question. Draw a blank-loaded gun and "shoot" him. Have him make a great scene of dying (fake blood helps). Turn to the stunned audience and ask "any other comments?"
116. Same as above, except use real bullets.
117. "Well, I saw it on the internet, so I figured it might be a good idea..."
118. Wear clown makeup, a clown wig, clown shoes, and a clown nose. And nothing else.
119. Use the words "marginalized", "empowerment", and "patriarchy".
120. Play Thesis Mad Libs.
121. Try to use normal printed paper on the overhead projector.
122. Do your entire defense operatically.
123. Invite your parents. Especially if they are fond of fawning over you. ("We always knew he was such an intelligent child")
124. Flash "APPLAUSE" and "LAUGHTER" signs.
125. Mosh pit.
126. Have cheerleaders. ("Gimme an 'A'!!")
127. Bring Howard Cosell out of retirement to do color commentary.
128. "I say Hallelujah, brothers and sisters!"
129. Claim political asylum.
130. Traffic reports every 10 minutes on the 1's.
131. Introduce the "Eyewitness Thesis Team". Near the end of your talk, cut to Jim with sports and Alison with the weather.
132. Live radio and TV coverage.
133. Hang a sign that says "Thank you for not asking questions"
134. Bring a microphone. Point it at the questioner, talk-show style.
135. Use a TelePromTer
136. "Take my wife - please!"
137. Refuse to answer questions unless they phrase the question as a limerick.
138. Have everyone bring wine glasses. When they clink the glasses with a spoon, you have to kiss your thesis. Or your advisor.
139. Offer a toast.
140. Firewalk.
141. Start giving your presentation 15 minutes early.
142. Play drinking thesis games. Drink for each overhead. Drink for each question. Chug for each awkward pause. This goes for the audience as well.
143. Swoop in with a cape and tights, Superman style.
144. "By the power of Greyskull..."
145. Use any past or present Saturday Night Live catchphrase. Not.
146. Stand on the table.
147. "You think this defense was bad? Let me read this list to show you what I COULD have done..."