Thursday, February 7, 2008

G(r)eek Humor

While I was looking through the latest Rice alumni magazine, which had an article about the college system (JIBA!), I mentioned to Robert, as a continuation of a conversation started many days ago about factors that motivated him and me to attend, that I liked the fact that Rice had colleges rather than frats and sororities. I have found it strange how prominent these groups are at Bobcat High and have not totally gotten used to seeing people walking around wearing shirts, backpacks, flip flops (cringe), etc., emblazened with their letters.

Sally: "Well, at least it does mean that they know what some of the Greek letters are. They probably know them better than most of the rest of us do."

Robert: "Yeah. They are all--" (puts on a bimboesque voice) "Sigma Epsilon is zero!"

Robert's college girl voice was uncanny, and the idea of a Bobcat High sorority girl making a statistics joke* in the guise of putting down girls in a rival sorority slayed me.

* The G(r)eek girl is alluding to the fact that in regression, the sum of the errors is zero.

For the sake of clarity, however, I should point out that Sigma Epsilon is totally zero.

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