Daily Connotations

Daily Connotations

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You don't have to push the boundaries when you set the standards.

Connotation. 1. a. The configuration of suggestive or associative implications consitiuting the general sense of an abstract espression beyond its literal, explicit sense. b. A secondary meaning suggested by a word in addition to its literal meaning. 3. Logic The total of the attributes constituting the meaning of a term.

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Disclaimer: Any opinions contained on this page are those of, well, we don't really know who. Any offense taken to anything present should be directed to Sven, who will file and ignore your comments. Praise or compliments can be directed to either Dr. N, Dr. What, or Dr. Olga. All plagarized material has been tested and deemed satisfactory according to the esteemed code of Lehrer, version 2.3.
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Things We Like

Sven Bjorn Borg: Sven has been with d-con since its humble beginnings, and is responsible for punctuating, finances, guarding the office from rabid dogs and loud noises, and acting as mediator amongst the other members. Dr. Borge is well-known as the world's foremost (and perhaps only) underwater-basket-weaving expert. Sven has recently published no less than 3 books, Klingon Grammar and Vocabulary for humans, Life among the Grapes, and Escher, Bach, Gödel: A gigantic elastic bungalow. In it's copious spare time, the Sven enjoys playing the harpsichord and diagramming sentences. Sven is Chief of Staff and Director of Intelligence in the UPICN,LLC.
Dr. Bob William "The Orange" Lavoisier a.k.a. Dr. Henry Parsons: Dr. N, as we like to call him, is officially the initiator of the Daily Connotations Company, and also holds important Offices in the VVIIPP society of America and The Department of Redundancy Department, which is a place where he holds an important office in the department of redundancy. Henry also spent a good deal of his life studying the behavior of Walruses (Walri?) in the wild, inspired by a long-running correspondence with Mr. J. Lennon, who, in fact, convinced "The Orange" that he was, in fact, a walrus. Dr. Parsons' curriculum vitae is rounded out by his extensive family history (including a brother, Alan), and double Ph.D. honors in Botany and the Study of Scandinavian Languages. Recently, Dr. Henry Parsons was elected president of the UPICN,LLC
The Doctor a.k.a. Dr. What??: Dr. What joins us now as a member of d-Con in very good standing. It is important that the doctor not be confused with his slightly-more-popular brother, Doctor Who, who has carved a niche for himself in the field of time travel. Dr. What never developed the talent for time travel, and has the ability to visit only two distinct temporal locations: The beheading of John the Baptist and that one time when Stanley met Livingstone (or was it Livingstone met Stanley?) Consequently, he spends much of his time knitting (the scarves, natch) on the planet Gallifrey whilst (and at the same time) contemplating Nietzschean philosophies and memorizing much of Immanuel Kant's work, both in the original German.
Dr. Phelealabean: Dr. Phelealabean also uses the alias Dr. Olga Olathe Parsons-Uhlmer. Dr. Parsons-Uhlmer is a sister to Henry and Alan. She has a dual honorary doctorate in Arabian Literature and Language. She also has teaching experience at the University of Rekjavik which was held in a small grass-covered hut. She iswidowed after an incident involving her husband and abandonment which she is not allowed to discuss pending criminal charges. Now that she is alone, she enjoys spending summers with her brother, Henry, in his summer home, The Parsonon.

9.09.2005

Aargh..

This week has been short on sleep, and this weekend has been long in coming.

The academic atmosphere is intense, but exciting; the social life ("night life", if you will), is marvelous. So if Grinnell were all about the friends and the homework, I don't think that it would too stressful. But that's not the only part - there's also the politics.

All the political maneuvering that goes on around here sort of takes it out of me. It's a little bit the democrat/republican/libertarian/anarchist/etc. groups on campus, and a little bit SGA and the college adminstration and such. I'd much rather think about semiotics, or Russian literature, or, I don't know, fishing or something.

Also, today I when I was answering a first year about my major, I had to argue quite a while to convince him that computer science was in fact a valid part of cognitive science. (And not just "cognitive scientists don't study computer science" - but he actually told me that comp.sci was completely irrelevant..."I just don't think there's really a connection there.") I am used to explaining my major - and am more than happy to do so, to people that don't know and are interested. But when someone first asks for a definition and then proceeds to talk as if they know more than I do about the field, it makes me sad. I know that I'm not that far advanced, but I've invested a lot of time and energy in this "little project" - developing a list of required classes, finding advisors (both official and peripheral), researching what cog.sci programs look like at schools where they do offer undergrad degrees in the field, planning individual research projects, talking to the one other indie cog.sci major that is here, and even looking at after-graduation options (grad school? research? move to montana and raise rutabagas?).
So, dear person, what are you majoring in? Political "Science"? Sociology? ART HISTORY!?!? What background do you have to tell me everything that I don't know about MY subject?
I don't get a chance to shine any too often. Let me have this one - I think I've worked for it.

I don't know why I got so worked up over that one...
(I suppose I could switch to English. Will I need computer science for that one?)

--Posted by s. on Friday, September 09, 2005.