edumacation

It's only my second day of school, and already I've learned a lot. To wit:

• History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty.
• Pursuing particular stories or types of problems, simply because they tickle the fancy, contributes to a rounded intellectual life.
• I will need a video camera to tape myself fighting off an attacker for my online Self-Defense class. I'm not really sure what to do about this yet, since I don't have a video camera or know anyone who has one I can borrow.
  
• Statistics is not a spectator sport. [Emphasis not mine.]
  

I've also written what I hope will be the first in a series of informative marginal notes for future users of my Freshman Composition textbook, Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. My first note reads: "Roland Barthes was killed by a laundry truck while walking home after a lunch party held by Francois Mitterand. LOL."

Lastly, this has nothing to do with school, but here's a meat robot.