0 0 " i 6B The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, November 19, 2008 Wednesday, November 19, 2008 - The Michigan Daily QUOTES OF THE WEEK . M BULLSH ITTI NG I touched her hand and she smelled like cherries." - DYLAN MCAFEE, Georgetown Day School second grader, about Michelle Obama after the future first lady toured McAfee's school last week.-Obama has been touring private schools in the Washington D.C-area to decide which the first children will attend "I'm suggesting that they have sex for seven straight days. And my wife and I are looking forward to it." - ED YOUNG, pastor and founder of Fellowship Church in Texas, explaining his call for all married couples in his congregation to have sex for seven consecutive days. He says the initiative is meant to promote safe sex and celebrate it as a way to strengthen marriages Bulishitting is an art form. Do it right and you'll score an A and a place in your professors' good graces. Do it wrong and everyone will know that you're an asshole - or you'll cross the line into cheating. REGISTERING FOR CLASSES Look for discussion-based classes where you can just talk about yourself. Often in American culture classes, so many people will talk about how their grandparents were immi- grants that the professor won't have a chance to get to the readings. - For every distribution requirement, there is a bullshitty way to satisfy it. For foreign language, take Ojibwa. For natu- ral science, stack up the minicourses. E Don't take Ratemyprofessor.com rankings at face value. Read the comments thoroughly. It could be that a professor's "easy" ranking came from students who took his freshman class, while the few commenters who took his 400-level course you're looking at thought he was a hard ass. If you can't find a professor on RateMyProfessor.com, it could mean she's a visiting professor or a graduate student instructor - and that's a good thing. These people only teach for a semester or two to pay the bills and forward their per- sonal research. What they often lack in delivering coherent and engaging lectures, they make up for with lax attendance policies and lenient grading. Read the class description closely - figure out the book list and how many graded assignments would be due. Then take the rules in the next section and apply them to the course description. Can the full textof all thebooks be found online? How well does Wikipedia cover the subject? Here's how to do it right. Stay true to your class discussion identity. Some students speak up every seven minutes, others make occasional com- ments between diligently taking notes and the rest of the class just stares or sleeps. To safeguard your participation grade and win your GSI's favor, don't be the latter. But being one of the most talkative means that it will be conspicuous if don't say a word one class. Amateurbullshitters might be bet- ter suited to the middle group. Take notes. Make eye contact. Smile. Nod. Stay alert. Remember the rule of old comment plus an older com- ment equals insightful new comment (OC + OC2= INC). It's a common trick to piggyback off of what another student said. Master bullshitters make their point sound original by apply- ing another student's comment and to something discussed in a previous class. "Katie makes a good point. It reminds me of what we saw in chapter 23 with..." It doesn't matter if you didn't read chapter 23 - if you're quick, you can recall a similar point made about earlier material. Now you're doing a "multi-text reading." To most lecturers, comprehensive questions are just as good as comprehensive answers. If it's asking too much to draft an argument out of thin air, take the last tip and put it in question form. "Katie makes a good point, butI wonder how that idea might be applied to chapter 23?" Every 20-page article can be understood in three pages. Read the introduction until you get to a thesis. Skip the author's self-serving exposition. Skim the first and last para- graphs of every new section. Read the last few pages until the conclusion. For bonus points, make sure to get a handle on one big quote or important source in the article to bring up in class. Something toward the end will tell your GSI you read the entire piece. Remember, the key to good bullshit is a good detail. GOING UNPREPARED TO SECTION TALKING POINTS Three things you can talk about this week: 1. Secretary of State Clinton 2. Political Science Prof. Lawrence Greene 3. Fidel Castro's new book And three things you can't: 1. Diane Sawyer on Ashley Dupre 2. Martin Eisenstadt 3. The pregnant man 99 BY T HE NUMBERS Number of children who have been abandoned at hospitals in Nebraska under the state's "safe haven" law Number of the abandoned children who are infants. The state "safe haven" law intended to allow parents to give up their newborns anonymously does not specify an age limit. Number of children from other states, including Michigan and Florida, who have been abandoned in Nebraska hospitals Source: CNN "It looked like lava coming down a volcano." - LESLIE HOLLIS LOPEZ, a resident of Santa Barbara, California, commenting on television images of houses burning because of wildfires raging across southern.parts of the state. Some firefighters have estimated that as many as 500 houses may have burned. Last Friday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency YOUTU BE VIDEO OF THE WEEK Flawed anatomical metaphors For many rappers, metaphors are a vivid way to get their point across. But of course, such literary devices are- only effective if they actually make sense. That's precisely this rap- per's problem. In this video, a young producer is recording the rapper's new "hot" track, which deals with something near and dear to the pugnacious rap-' per: his penis. In order to illustrate the size and, perhaps, desirability of his penis, the rapper uses some metaphors that don't quite make sense. This leadsto intermittent squabbling between the two characters, with each disputing the applicability of the metaphor. During his first take, the rapper insists that his "dick gets more work than the cast of 'Friends.' " At which point, the producer stops the music and argues that the cast of "Friends" really doesn't get that much work. An intense debate about the popularity of the cast ensues. The rapper then says that his penis is as popular as President Bush, whose current approval rating is about 17 percent. His penis is also, apparently, "fatter than Jared from Subway." When the producer suggests a dif- ferent metaphor for the girth of his penis, the rapper says that it wouldn't rhyme with "bitch buffet." -BRIAN TENGEL See this and other YouTube videos of the week at youtube.com/user/michigandaily CRAMMING FOR FINALS Call your GSI's bluff. Your GSI has a good idea of what is going to be on the exam. He's not going to tell you, but he's not not going to tell you. It's like poker, so go to office hours with your poker face on - earnest, hard working, but dumb - and prepare to ask "do we need to know this" many times. By monitoring your GSI's irises and tone of voice you can discern what the main focus of the exam will be. Or if you act dumb and desperate enough, he might just tell you. Praise Google. Again. Google is in the process of uploading every volume in the University's library system. The best part of the Google Books search, though, is that these free, online- accessible, full-text copies include internal term search. Writing a paper on a secondary character? Geta list of every page she appears on. Forgot to take notes on a crucial section of your textbook? Type in the few words you remember. e Go ahead, ask for an extension. Most professors have few qualms about granting extensions for papers. You might run into trouble with some young bucks who still take their syl- labi seriously, but seasoned professors have made so many exceptions over the years that your case needs little plead- ing. If you want to e-mail with a specific excuse, blame some extracurricular activity or say you came down with the grue- some flu that's going around. Really, you could say a dog ate your research and it wouldn't matter. THEME PARTY SUGGESTION 007 martini hour - "Quantum of Solace," the 22nd installment in the James Bond series, opened last Friday. Before you see the film, gather some friends and watch the preceding 21 movies continuously. Bathroom and food breaks are acceptable, but noth- ing else. No sleep, no homework. Before you begin this Bond odyssey, go to Meijer and load up on pop- corn, caffeinated soda and an array of candy. You know you're having fun when the headaches start. Throwing this party? Let us know. TheStotement@umich.edu STUDY OF THE WEEK Sexual content on TV impacts teen pregnancy rates Sexual content on television strongly correlates with rates of teen pregnancy, according to a study published in this month's issue of the journal Pediatrics by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit organization. For the study, the researchers examined the results of three surveys from 2001 to 2004 that included 2,000 adolescents ages 12 to 17. In par- ticular, the researchers looked at 700 teens across the nation who had engaged in sex by the time of the third survey. The researchers questioned the group about an array of dramas, ani- mated and reality shows and sitcoms, all of which were deemed to be laden with sexual content. Adolescents with high levels of exposure to television shows with a lot of sexual content were twice as likely to become pregnant or impreg- nate someone than those who watched fewer of these programs overthe three-year course of the study. While the findings may not be surprising, researchers said, it is the first time this association has been shown. - BRIAN TENGEL 4 I