Best joke I've read all day.

[essentialsaltes]

Sowing Atheism

If you get bored, the last line is the punchline.

Comments

[nephthys510.livejournal.com]

The NAS book-writers resort to illogic, enchantment, and outright deception in order to mislead and manipulate their readers.

That's some funny shit, right there.

[ladyeuthanasia.livejournal.com]

No kidding. That's what I was thinking!

[doctorray.livejournal.com]

Here's my favorite:

"Mr. Johnson, who holds a general science degree from West Point..."

Is that the same discipline The Professor had a PhD in in Gilligan's Island?

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

Probably.

Far be it from me to disparage our boys and girls in uniform (and with a commission), but "general science"? WTF

[doctorray.livejournal.com]

I'm tempted to call resume bullshit - or poor editing. I've seen a few resumes from West Pointers, and when talking about the institution formally it is *always* "The United States Military Academy", and never the informal "West Point". Saying "I have a degree from West Point" is like saying "I have a degree from New Haven" when you mean Yale.

I wonder if this snippet came off the author's own resume/web site... If so, I smell something rotten...

But I'm lazy and it's late, and I'm not working for any particular presidential candidate, so I'm filing this under "too good to check".

[ian-tiberius.livejournal.com]

Proper resumes are different beasts, of course, but I've never heard my grandfather refer to his alma mater as anything other than "West Point".

I found this: http://usmilitary.about.com/library/weekly/blaa020402.htm

which references an "Applied Science and Engineering Interdisciplinary Field of Study" and a "Basic Science Interdisciplinary Field of Study" as majors available at West Point. I can imagine one of those being corrupted into "general science", or even officially called "general science" at some point in the past.

[doctorray.livejournal.com]

You're right - my analogy was a bad one. But I've never seen 'West Point' used formally. Even the web site you link uses the formal USMA - admittedly with West Point in parentheses.

Perhaps a better analogy would be something like a nickname for a school. Most people I know who went to Cal say "Cal" or "Berkeley" in conversation, and I've never heard anybody say "University of California". But a the same time I'd expect to see "University of California, Berkeley" on a resume or CV, and it would sound a bit off to me to read in a formal news report something like "Mr. Johnson has a degree in applied protest studies from Cal".

But, boy, those majors sound like the West Point equivalent of the jock majors at the Nebraskas and Michigan States of the world - like "liberal studies".

[ian-tiberius.livejournal.com]

and it would sound a bit off to me to read in a formal news report something like "Mr. Johnson has a degree in applied protest studies from Cal".

Same here, but I doubt I'd bat an eye if I read "Mr. Johnson has a degree in applied protest studies from Berkeley." (Assuming I missed the "applied protest studies" part.)

[doctorray.livejournal.com]

For me, it would depend on how formal the source was. I wouldn't bat an eye in a blog posting, but in something like the NY Times, I'd think "there's one the editor missed!". But being from Boston, I know there's a Berkeley Conservatory there to be confused with the better-known UC Berkeley. If I saw "Mr Johnson has a degree... from UC Berkeley" I wouldn't bat an eye either.

But then I've been grading essays recently, so maybe my prose-meter is set a bit too far over to "formal"...

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

It's neither here nor there, but the music school is Berklee.