Posts by Dr. Boli

ASK DR. BOLI.

Posted by on . One comment.

Dear Dr. Boli: How can you tell an “authentic French beignet” from a jelly doughnut? —Sincerely, A man standing at the bakery counter at Whole Foods.

Dear sir: Look at the price tag. “Beignet” means a number of things in France, but in the United States, according to FDA labeling standards, an authentic French beignet is a jelly doughnut with a price multiplier of 5.

IMPORTANT PRODUCT SAFETY INSTRUCTIONS.

Posted by on . 3 comments.

Purchase product from licensed resellers only.

Keep these safety instructions with product at all times. Make sure they are posted where product can see them.

Do not inhale product except under the supervision of a licensed shaman.

Product may be hot if set on fire.

Product may be slippery if frozen.

Apply product in smooth, even strokes, without making any sudden movements.

Product distance from wall may impact product performance. Refer to logarithmic distance tables in Appendix H for more information.

Be aware that product has strong opinions on popular music.

Do not remain within 300m radius of product when product is ticking.

Keep out of reach of children. This has nothing to do with product, but it is never a good idea to be where children can reach you.

Store product in a cool dry place at least ⅝ furlong from the nearest mayonnaise.

If you let product read Sartre, you have no one but yourself to blame.

Do not remove thorns from product. They are there for a reason.

Do not speak product’s name. Ever.

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.

Posted by on . One comment.

On this day two hundred years ago, Augustin-Jean Fresnel reported to the French Academy of Sciences that his experiment had proved that photoelasticity is stress-induced birefringence. In the ensuing Refraction Riots that rocked Paris, much of the 14th Arrondissement was reduced to charred rubble.

SOLVE ALL YOUR EXISTENTIAL PROBLEMS.

Posted by on . 5 comments.

We found this in a little hole-in-the-wall lunch counter in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. It is exactly what you need, and everyone you know needs it as well: a whole crate of Void Filler, to fill the howling emptiness at the core of your being. It will not surprise you to hear that it was a French lunch counter: the French have considered these existential questions more deeply than the rest of us.

AN OBSERVATION PROVOKED BY GOOGLE FONTS.

Posted by on . 5 comments.

At last count, there were 221 font families in the “Handwriting” category in the Google Fonts collection. This betrays a certain assumption among graphic designers: that the way to produce text that looks as if it has been written by hand is to set it in type with a font that imitates handwriting. But can you think of any other way to produce text that looks as if it has been written by hand?

Anybody?

Oh well.

MEMORANDUM TO STUDENTS.

Posted by on . 2 comments.

Hi! This is your friendly Freshman Literature professor, Dr. Threadneedle, and since we’re doing this class remotely I thought I’d send a memo to everyone to explain a little of what you’ll need to know to succeed.

First of all, I know a lot of you have had some exposure to “literature” in high school, but you should be aware that English teachers in high school are kind of dumb compared to college professors. I mean, there’s a reason they’re not teaching at the college level, you know? So a lot of your teachers in high school probably thought there was some sort of “canon” of literature, like a bunch of books that are more important than other books and you should know about them because they’re so important. What goobers! The first thing you have to know to succeed in my class is that there is no canon of literature. I don’t know where that idea came from, but it’s pretty obvious that it’s kept alive by the people at Penguin Classics, because their jobs depend on the idea that there’s such a thing as a “classic.” I mean, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? So anyway, if you had the idea in your head that there was such a thing as a “canon” of literature, then the first thing you need to do is get it out of there if you want to succeed in this course.

Second, please remember that the only text approved for this class is Approved Literature 14th Edition. I don’t want to hear about anything in the thirteenth edition or the ninth edition or whatever. Only the fourteenth edition has the correct selection of non-canonical texts that all enlightened professors of literature have agreed to teach. There ought to be a word for the list of literature that everyone agrees is worth teaching, and maybe there is, but I can’t think of it at the moment. But anyway, remember, fourteenth edition. The others have some of the wrong stuff in them. I don’t know how it got in there.

Anyway, that’s it for now. I think you can find the reading for tomorrow’s class on the class page on the college site. If you can, maybe one of you can email me and tell me what it is, because I could never figure that site out. See you all on screen tomorrow!