Wow, I'm starting to lose it. My wife, daughter, and I have no cell phones, but I assumed I was playing the Devil's Advocate when I ignored them. I often don't answer the phone in my classroom when it rings because my students seem to think it's the most important thing in the world! "They will come in if you don't answer." Whoop-de-dee! [No, they WON'T!]

Anyhow, not that you weren't way up there to me anyway, but you just went up two notches based on cell phones.

Favorite Weapon: Toe Nails.

Favorite Spielberg Flick...ha..ha..ha..ha!

quote:

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Originally posted by mark f:
Wow, I'm starting to lose it. My wife, daughter, and I have no cell phones, but I assumed I was playing the Devil's Advocate when I ignored them. I often don't answer the phone in my classroom when it rings because my students seem to think it's the most important thing in the world! "They will come in if you don't answer." Whoop-de-dee! [No, they WON'T!]

Anyhow, not that you weren't way up there to me anyway, but you just went up two notches based on cell phones.

Favorite Weapon: Toe Nails.

Favorite Spielberg Flick...ha..ha..ha..ha!

---

I have an explicit "no cell phones" policy in my classes. If you have them on in class, and they ring, you are excused for the day. If you leave to answer them, you're not welcome back that day. I've had students complain, and I've made exceptions (for students who had ill parents, etc) but I think it's a common social courtesy. It's hard enough to keep students attentive without having to compete with cell phones.

I'll answer my own:

FAVORITE VICE: a tie between drinking the occasional expensive bourbon and procrastination.

Which leaves:

Favorite place to go on vacation

and

Favorite Spielberg film

Me being the poor, lowly college student that I am, do not take many vacations. But I really love going to the beach, nice place to lay back and relax, or make an ass of myself attempting to surf.

I like many of Spielberg's movies but I especially love "Close Encounters of the third kind," the "Indiana Jones" series, and "Minority Report."

I didn't want to give too much of myself away, but why not? As far as vices go, I am a huge procrastinator and very unorganized (But what college student isn't?)

Favorite Ice Cream Flavor?

Pet peeve (yours)EDIT: I should add that it excludes cell-phones because those are annoying for everyone who has had to listen to some moronic conversation in a quite room.

Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: Baskin-Robbins' Chocolate Peanut Butter (I thought that was a given...)

Favorite Spielberg (forgive me, Mike) My ha..ha..ha..ha...meant "Jaws", the film I've gone off around here more than any other..ha..ha..ha..ha!

Favorite Artist?

or

Pet Peeve?

Megatron’s biggest pet peeve is people who don’t refuel the BioPod when it’s their turn (I’m looking at you, Colonel Clobbernaut!)

Next:

Favorite fission-based fuel source

OR

Favorite post-1980 guitar solo

Oh, Colonel Clobbernaut...what a character!

Favorite post-1980 guitar solo changes without warning, but Richard Thompson's wonderful solo on "Wall of Death" from Shoot Out the Lights is a favorite.

In honor of nearly two weeks of sustained lousy weather in Bloomington...

Favorite form of precipitation

AND

Least favorite form of precipitation

Now Playing: "My Baby's a Dick" The Elected Me First (Sub Pop)

Least favorite type of precipitation has to be hail. I don't think there is anything quite as unusual and painful as ice-cubes falling from the sky.

Favorite has to be rain, but not heavy rain just a light drizzle that can be quite refreshing.

Favorite type of adhesive

AND

Least favorite type of meat

Favorite adhesive has to be the ever-useful duct tape.

Least favorite meat? Veal. I won't eat it, if only because of the lives veal calves lead.

I'm currently watching Eurotrip on Cinemax, so let's go with:

Favorite Teen Sex Comedy Flick

and

Least Favorite Sex Symbol (or...the sex symbol who you think is the least sexy)

I would have to go with "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" but I also enjoy the "American Pie" series.

Least favorite "Sex Symbol" Cher. When was she ever attractive or talented?

Favorite Building

AND

Least favorite noise

My least favorite noise is the sound of foam being rubbed together. I know that may sound somewhat weird but I can't stand it.

Favorite Building?

Favorite Electronics Store?

I suppose that this is a Bestbuy vs. Circuit City question. I am a huge fan of Bestbuy. They have one of the most hands-on electronics stores in town. For the release of a recent game, the hooked it up to one of the big screens they had and let people play it on a lazy boy, very cool. I also like that they allow you to blast the stereo without some of the employees warning to kick you out.

Favorite Building

Least favorite vegetable

quote:

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Originally posted by Mike:
Least favorite vegetable

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Asparagus....yuck!

Favorite Trashy Television Show...?

Under many people's standards, "South Park" is trashy so that would be my pick. I don't really pay attention to many actual tv shows but I enjoy "South Park" a lot.

Favorite building

Favorite drum solo ever

Favorite Building: From the outside, I'll go with the Taj Mahal. I haven't been inside THAT, so from the inside, Hearst Castle.

Favorite Drum solo and/or Least Favorite Drum Solo!

quote:

---

Originally posted by mark f:
Favorite Building: From the outside, I'll go with the Taj Mahal. I haven't been inside THAT, so from the inside, Hearst Castle.

Favorite Drum solo and/or Least Favorite Drum Solo!

---

I'm not a big fan of the drum solo. I can't honestly think of a drum SOLO that I love (or hate, for that matter) but there's one drumbeat that I've always loved...the tribal "Bo Diddley" beat that is used to maximum effect at the beginning of the Bow Wow Wow remake of "I Want Candy."

How about:

Favorite Breed of Dog

and

Least Favorite Animal You'd Find at the Zoo

Favorite dog-Mexican Hairless!
Least Favorite Zoo Animal-Polar Bears, especially the very sad and lonely one here at the Vancouver Zoo and Aquarium.

Favorite Relative(and why)
or
Least Favorite Relative(and why)

Least Favorite Relative: An unnamed "brother". I have a twisted family tree due to the fact that I'm related to the only mother I ever knew, yet I didn't learn she wasn't my biological mom until she was dead and I was over 30 years old. My older brother felt a little "threatened" one time and tried to "re-establish" some kind of position in the family by telling me who my "real" mom was and then proclaiming that his legitamacy could not be questioned...soap opera over.

Continuing in the lighter vein:

Favorite Memory

and/or

Scariest Real-Life Incident

Favorite Memory: I have never been able to determine if this actually happened or not, but I have a vivid impression of lying on my back in a sled and being pulled around this very spacious 'scape while it snowed fat flakes from a deep, purple sky. I must have been around four. Who it was that could have been pulling me, I don't know, which is why I have my suspicions as to the nature of the memory. Either way, thats my rosebud. ... I have another memory that could have contended for favorite if not for that damn gun. Maybe i'll post it over in the creative writing thread.

Scariest Moment: Although I have had a few close calls with death, by far the scariest thing that has happened to me was when I first experimented with psychoactives: 4 grams of mushrooms by myself. I remember running home, vomiting, falling in a puddle, and incessantly repeating: You've really gone and done it this time', positive I had done irrepairable harm and that I was doomed to almost-insanity. Fortunately or UN, ordinary reality had much too firm a grip on my psyche, and by morning I was again fit for society.


Favorite Philosopher:
Least Favorite Composer:
Or vice versa

Thanks for bringing back the thread Ayman, I was just about to do that.

Favorite Philosopher-I should let PE answer this (Which he can do anyway) but I have this thing about Socrates. I find myself using the Socratic Method far too often, and I have always respected his idea that "All he knows, is that he doesn't know anything" and try to keep that one in my thoughts.

Favorite Composer?

Favorite and least favorite professional football team?

(And feel free to mention your favorite philosopher PE)

Composer: I really like Wagner, despite the anti-Semitic stuff about him. Big and powerful music.

Favorite football team: the Minnesota Vikings

Least favorite football team: Dallas Cowboys

My favorite philosopher is a tough one. There are a lot of them whose influence I've found important to me...Aristotle, Hume, Aquinas, Hobbes, Cicero, A.J. Ayer, Nelson Goodman. I would probably pick, as my single favorite, G.E.M. Anscombe. While I disagree with much of what she says (her odd mixture of Catholicism and analytic philosophy leads to strange positions) I am always happy to read or re-read her works. And her take on intentions is heavily influential on my own philosophical work. Bernard Williams is a close second, with Tom Nagel third.

I can't really say that I have a LEAST favorite philosopher...but I find Descartes to be profoundly overrated. Other than Mediations 1-6, I don't find much of teaching quality in his work. Even the Discourse on Method, which I once liked, now seems a little soft.