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In This Issue

• Dino-Battle Site Un-Earthed on Philosophy Lawn
• Columbia Bioengineers Make Über-Children for a Brighter West Harlem
• How Thinking Hurts America
• Columbia Makes Valuable Contributions to World
• Letters to the Editor
• North Korea: Major Source of Diabetes
• Frontiers of Soul-Crushing Disappointment... and Science
• If I Don't Get Good Housing, People Are Going to Die
• CS Class For The English Lass
• Science Update
• Poetry 4 Physicists
• Porn Older Than Nana
• Fed Science Fair: Cigarettes Are Bad for Kids and Animals
• Wacky Fun Whitey!
• How Many Licks...
• How to: E-Z Bake Thermonuclear Warhead
• Variations of a Sheep
• Marauding Interviewer
• How Many Licks, Vol. II
• The Staff of 20.6
• THEY Watch

Russell Spitzer

Find the Fed operative in this SEAS class!

Ted Holden

Jamie.employmentOpportunities = null

Remember high school science class? Neither do I. Some time during the reefer madness days of my youth, between vandalizing things, getting my lower back tattooed, and crying alone in my room, the memory of my math and science courses all seems to fade. So at college, I decided to take only crazy humanities classes like "Women's Studies" and "English." I shrugged off that pesky science requirement with a little thing called Psychology... using advanced Scientologist techniques, I hypnotized the registrar to add Frontiers in Ass to my schedule at the end of my first semester. With skills like that, who needs a well-balanced education?

Nevertheless, having been raised by a New Age hippie mom, I suffer from the common baby-boomlet delusion that I can do anything I put my mind to. With this in mind, I decided to attend one of the classes of a future-job-holding, corporate sellout friend of mine, or in other words, a member of the school we call SEAS.

My first observation upon entering the room was the uneven demographics of the class. I was one of three females in a packed lecture space, which may explain the quizzical glances I got. Alternatively, it may have been that I was unwittingly projecting "I'm-so-clever-I-can-do-anything-but-I-choose-the-high-road-by-reading-useless-novels-about-the-human-condition" rays (hereby dubbed "human-a-rays"), but no one would sit within two seats of me. It may also have been that these fellows' scientific research had informed them that as a member of the female race, I am almost definitely an infectious carrier of cooties.

Whatever the reason, my hopes of meeting an employable husband were dashed pretty quickly. This was unfortunate, for a quick scan of the room revealed to me a surprisingly sexy array of haircuts, from the classic buzz, to the highly suggestive "penis cut," and even an astounding number of comb-overs. How old were these people? Never mind, maturity is hot. One guy was even sporting an ever-so-chic camouflage headband, which turned me on because it reminded me of war, and war is manly.

Once the actual class started, I was dazzled by the array of strange terms flying at me from every inconceivable angle. The teacher started off by saying he was going to talk about "simple stuff, like identifiers," and then began writing many familiar letters and symbols on the board, but in the strangest combinations. "*[A-zo-3][A-Za-30-a]*J!" quoth he, and I knew not how to respond. My first hypothesis: you had to be a robot to understand it.
At this point in time, my mind began to wander, but I decided I should make a concerted effort to decode what was going on. Suddenly, it all fell into place-he was giving us Screen Scramblers! Those are fun, and I'm pretty damn good at them, so I quickly set about finding all the anagrams I could for the letters up on the board: BASS, BOSE, BOISE, BOOB(S), BOOBIE (S), and SARS were the ones that I came up with before everything got erased.

When I looked up from my handiwork, he was writing down and extolling the virtues of a bunch of things called "stacks," "input," and "strings," and there were little dollar signs strewn about everywhere. Liberal arts translation: engineers are interested in "stacks" of "$", which they will "input" into "strings" of world-control operations (possibly involving "SARS"), in order to gain access to "BOOBIES" and other power perks. I had cracked the SEAS code! All their fancy alterna-"grammar" was no match for my human-a-rays!

After this, the rest of the class was cake. I found even more anagrams, which I think should give me the code to where the SEAS folk keep their biological weapons. I also made a superior table-tron ala the prof's instructions to "create a table and fill it up with grammar symbols until you can't add anymore": period, comma, gerund, horseshoe, I bet I know more grammar than all these freaks combined!

They also spewed out a whole lot of parentheses, which aren't really parts of grammar, and they don't even pronounce them right. "Prens" sounds like something out of 1984, which gives me even more reason to keep an eye on these shady individuals.

Looking back on today, I'm really glad I attended the computer-whatsawhosit class. I learned so much about the engineers and their engines, and also their plans for the world-future. How you ask, did I do this with my puny Lit-Hum background? I'll let you in on a little secret: much like exposure to radiation, reading Foucault gives you special powers. SEAS destroyer-trons had best watch their backs, ‘cause I am the human-a-ray king, and I can do anything.