Irregular Student Quotes

I propose that English poetry and biology should be taught as usual, but that at irregular intervals, poetry students should find dogfishes on their desks and biology students should find Shakespeare sonnets on their dissecting boards. I am serious in declaring that a Sarah Lawrence English major who began poking about in a dogfish with a bobby pin would learn more in thirty minutes than a biology major in a whole semester; and that the latter upon reading on her dissecting board That time of year Thou may’st in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold— Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang. might catch fire at the beauty of it.

For the student of war, the Horn of Africa offers a cornucopia of violence and destruction. It has interstate wars and civil wars; international military interventions and maritime piracy; genocidal massacres and non-violent popular uprisings; conventional wars fought in trenches and irregular wars fought by jihadists and followers of a messianic cult.

I think it's hilarious how school administrators think making kids dress alike for school will force them to view each other as equals. It is the furthest from the truth. Uniforms inspire students to be more creative, to really dig deep and search hard for character flaws and other irregularities worthy of potential abuse.

Cambridge? No, not really. I spent most of my years as a student pretty much blackout drunk, which, considering I’m Irish, is saying quite a lot. And teaching didn’t suit me.

In the end, the word fractal came to stand for a way of describing, calculating, and thinking about shapes that are irregular and fragmented, jagged and broken-up—shapes from the crystalline curves of snowflakes to the discontinuous dusts of galaxies. A fractal curve implies an organizing structure that lies hidden among the hideous complication of such shapes. High school students could understand fractals and play with them; they were as primary as the elements of Euclid. Simple computer programs to draw fractal pictures made the rounds of personal computer hobbyists.