Craziness

Well, actually only theology was crazy.
Math this morning was really cool, because Paula did the Death Star. Mary Rose thinks Mr Wodzinski picked her because he knew she was too sweet for any of the rest of us to kill. :P But she did it very well, and at the end I played the Imperial Death March on my speakers and computer hidden under the table. Mr. Wodzinski was highly amused by that, but after he found out it wasn't Duffy he couldn't guess who it was.

Theology was pretty crazy though. Mr. Paietta began by reading some choice excerts from the Infancy Gospel of St Thomas, to show us why the Church had made a canon of inspired scripture. Some of the stories about Jesus as a child were especially funny.
"II. 1 This little child Jesus when he was five years old was playing at the ford of a brook: and he gathered together the waters that flowed there into pools, and made them straightway clean, and commanded them by his word alone. 2 And having made soft clay, he fashioned thereof twelve sparrows. And it was the Sabbath when he did these things (or made them). And there were also many other little children playing with him.
3 And a certain Jew when he saw what Jesus did, playing upon the Sabbath day, departed straightway and told his father Joseph: Lo, thy child is at the brook, and he hath taken clay and fashioned twelve little birds, and hath polluted the Sabbath day. 4 And Joseph came to the place and saw: and cried out to him, saying: Wherefore doest thou these things on the Sabbath, which it is not lawful to do? But Jesus clapped his hands together and cried out to the sparrows and said to them: Go! and the sparrows took their flight and went away chirping. 5 And when the Jews saw it they were amazed, and departed and told their chief men that which they had seen Jesus do.
III. 1 But the son of Annas the scribe was standing there with Joseph; and he took a branch of a willow and dispersed the waters which Jesus had gathered together. 2 And when Jesus saw what was done, he was wroth and said unto him: O evil, ungodly, and foolish one, what hurt did the pools and the waters do thee? behold, now also thou shalt be withered like a tree, and shalt not bear leaves, neither root, nor fruit. 3 And straightway that lad withered up wholly, but Jesus departed and went unto Joseph's house. But the parents of him that was withered took him up, bewailing his youth, and brought him to Joseph, and accused him 'for that thou hast such a child which doeth such deeds.'
IV. 1 After that again he went through the village, and a child ran and dashed against his shoulder. And Jesus was provoked and said unto him: Thou shalt not finish thy course (lit. go all thy way). And immediately he fell down and died. But certain when they saw what was done said: Whence was this young child born, for that every word of his is an accomplished work? And the parents of him that was dead came unto Joseph, and blamed him, saying: Thou that hast such a child canst not dwell with us in the village: or do thou teach him to bless and not to curse: for he slayeth our children.
V. 1 And Joseph called the young child apart and admonished him, saying: Wherefore doest thou such things, that these suffer and hate us and persecute us? But Jesus said: I know that these thy words are not thine: nevertheless for thy sake I will hold my peace: but they shall bear their punishment. And straightway they that accused him were smitten with blindness. 2 And they that saw it were sore afraid and perplexed, and said concerning him that every word which he spake whether it were good or bad, was a deed, and became a marvel. And when they (he ?) saw that Jesus had so done, Joseph arose and took hold upon his ear and wrung it sore. 3 And the young child was wroth and said unto him: It sufficeth thee (or them) to seek and not to find, and verily thou hast done unwisely: knowest thou not that I am thine? vex me not."

Mr Paietta's comment was, "When I say they didn't make the cut, I didn't say it was close."

Later we were talking about sacrifices and somehow it came up that only things that were worth stuff to man, either to use, such as oxen, or to eat, such as doves, were offered up as sacrifices, and that they nerver sacrificed stuff like cats. Kitty was somewhat traumatized for the next 15 minutes as we discussed the relative merits of to sacrifice cats or not to sacrifice cats.
So yeah, Theology was not as boring as usual.

Today

I got up at 5:50 to go collect stuff from the grab table in the commons, which was going up for grabs today, but the commons was still locked, so I went back to my room, changed, and went for my morning run. Then I went *back* to the commons, and found out that some people had already been there, but I still got most of the books, thus saving a good amount of next year's book prices. Go me.
After Mass I studied my math props for a bit, sent a couple emails from the library after it opened, and headed to math class.
Today in Math we were doing props 10, 11, and 16 from book XII. Prop 16 was fairly short, so Mr Wodzinski had Nels do it first, and thn asked Kitty (of all people) to do prop 10, which was very complicated and 2.5 pages long. Predictably, she declined. As usually happens after a prop is declined, a hush descended over the room. The Mr Wodzinski asked Paula if she could do it. When Paula declined, almmost the entire room was shocked, because she was one of the 5 people in our section who had never declined a prop before.
I think at this point Mr. Wodzinski gave up inside, because he'd never had two people decline the same prop before, and he asked for volunteers.
Usually, when there's a call for volunteers, Dom, Lisa, Paula, Hannah and I all raise our hands, but this time, everyone only glanced nervously at eachother.
Mr. Wodzinski started suggesting that the entire class could just read through the prop while someone demonstrated it at the board, when I cautiously volunteered to do it. I had only had 10-15 minutes to study it before class, but I had the method figured out, and I worked out the smaller kinks as I went through the prop, trying hard to explain the theory to the class, since it was a fairly complicated one.
I did it fairly well, and got a nice round of applause at the end. :)
So maybe I'll get to do the Death Star on Monday as a reward.

Philosophy class was full of funny quote, like when Dominic was trying to explain induction, and Mr. Richard said "I'm not saying you're not right, I'm saying you have no clue what you're talking about. (pause) And that goes for the rest of you for the whole year too." (laughter). Mr Richard has a very good, yet very dry wit.
There was a quote from the Aristotle we're reading, "But let us say again what was just said, but not clearly." Mr Richard's comment was "He didn't say he was going to say it clearly, he said he'd say it again."
Very dry.

Random quote:
"Dude, I don't know what a teraflop is, it sounds like a mutated fish." ~Zach in the computer lab

Cafeteria Catholics:
The Cafeteria is closed.
No soup for you!

Habemus papam...ergo, bibimus!

Last night we had a gerat party to celebrate the election of the new pope.
After seminar there was a wine*, cheese, crackers, chocolate, and brownies celebration in the commons, and at 9:30 they replayed the video of the annoucnment and his first words, and at 9:45 we went into the chapel to pray the rosary.


*the college rules were revised last year so that only students over 21 can have wine. :(

Te deum!

The last few days have eebn pretty cool at TAC. Henry Teichert set up his laptop in Father Michael's room (which is right next to mine) with a constant webcam of the Vatican and updating nes reports, so we had full coverage. Then, after math today, as I was walking with my section to philosophy, Hannah Russell cam up and said they had seen white smoke at the Vatican 5 minutes ago, so I skipped the first half hour of philosophy, first to go to the computer lab, but most of the servers for the news sites were overloaded, so a group of us headed over to Father's Borden's (who has the only TV tuner on campus). There were about 50 students jammed into his living, but it was great, and we were all cheering when the announcment "Habemus Papam," was made, and again when Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger came out and announced himself as Benedict the Sixteenth.
After about half n hour I went and cought the rest of my philosophy class. Of course, almost everyone in the class looked inquisitively at me the moment I entered the room (except for Dr. Richard) so I passed a couple notes around the table with the info, which satiated their curiousity.
At the Mad Tea Party we made two toasts to the new pope, each followed by drinking good tea.
And I just got back from the chapel, where about half the students on campus crammed in at lunchtime to chant a joyful "Te Deum!"

Viva el Papa!

HABEMUS PAPAM!

Long live Benedict XVI!!!

Although I still nailed the prop. :)