Cambridge Entrance Exam
Thursday, March 22, 1900. 1--3½.
ENGLISH ESSAY.
Write an English Essay on one of the following subjects:
- English country life in the 18th century.
- The battle of Blenheim.
- The character of Rachel Lady Castlewood.
- Duelling.
To be fair, I'd rather write an essay on dueling than whatever bullshit prompts the College Board dream up. Just for good measure, here's a copy of Harvard's 1869 entrance exam. How times change...
How to Get a Real Education at College
My college days were full of entrepreneurial stories of this sort. When my friends and I couldn't get the gym to give us space for our informal games of indoor soccer, we considered our options. The gym's rule was that only organized groups could reserve time. A few days later we took another run at it, but this time we were an organized soccer club, and I was the president. My executive duties included filling out a form to register the club and remembering to bring the ball.
By the time I graduated, I had mastered the strange art of transforming nothing into something. Every good thing that has happened to me as an adult can be traced back to that training.
The creator of Dilbert on learning outside the box.
I like big butts and I cannot lie, but is there some evolutionary reason as to why?
When a girl walks in with an itty-bitty waist and a round thing in your face you get vital evolutionary information that acts as a fairly accurate indicator of overall health.
And sprung. You also get sprung.
A better song parody than biology lesson, but hilarious all the same.
moviebarcode
These are pretty sweet – every frame of a movie compressed into a couple inches. It's surprising to me how distinctive some of the strips are.
Supersize Me
Maru slightly nods at me and I bow to Barber. We squat in the middle of the ring, and I stare calmly into my opponent’s round, goateed face. In ten seconds, I will slam violently into his belly and demonstrate that being fat is a state of mind.
A skinny white boy's very entertaining account of his quest to wrestle in the US Sumo Open.
Matt Ridley on Angry Birds and the Evolution of Man
To play Angry Birds, you must use a catapult to lob little birds at structures in the hope of knocking them down on pigs. It's the verb "lob" that intrigues me. There is something much more satisfactory about an object tracing a parabolic ballistic trajectory through space towards its target than either following a straight line or propelling itself.
Humans love parabolic trajectories, and therefore love Angry Birds. Evolutionary biology to the rescue! How else do you explain this game's popularity?
