Studying Abroad Forever, Telebears XVII–Anthropology
Anthropology always seemed like an interesting, low-maintenance, and even somewhat relevant type of major that the geek inside all of us appreciates. You get to learn about people, about culture, travel to exotic locations, meet the remaining indigenous tribes on Earth. As long as you don’t mind all the skeleton interaction and aren’t a necrophiliac, these might be cool classes to check out.
Here’s what students are saying about the professors of the fall classes.
Anthro 2AC, Introduction to Archeology
L Wilkie, MWF 11-12, 100 Lewis
“Keeps the class interesting and fun. She’ll tell you fun stories about mardi gras and armadillos… a great lecturer…swamped at office hours because she’s so loved by her students! Exams are straight-forward to boot”
And Mark Cuban Still Breathes
You know, if someone asked us who could come back from a 21 point deficit, we’d probably say the Phoenix Suns. If someone asked us who could blow a 9 point lead with about three and a half minutes left, we would probably say a Rick Adelman-coached team (trust us, we have plenty of experience with it). But if you do both of those things in the same game? Well, then you’re the Golden State Warriors, that’s who you are.
This game had the classic Dallas syndrome of domination and collapse (remember Game 3 of the Finals last year?). Golden State kept on creeping back and creeping back, and Dirk stopped driving to the rim, and the Warriors had that extra fire in the 2nd half that seemed to sense that they had their opponents on the ropes. Barnes played out of his mind, Richardson kicked himself into another gear, and Baron Davis was Mr. Steady, pushing them to the brink, taking them to 112-103 with 3 and a half to go.
The next thing we know, Dirk is nailing 3s and blocking shots, Davis is getting trapped for the first time in the series, the Warriors are taking horrendous jumpers with plenty of time on the shot clock, the Mavs are driving to the rim and getting their fouls, Davis gets a phantom sixth foul, Jackson’s getting ejected again, which could mean a Game 6 suspension (a suspension that would send Warrior Nation into conspiracy frenzy). And all of a sudden it’s 3-2 Golden State, with the pressure all back on the Warriors to close it out on their homecourt.
We find it amusing that it took a nine-point deficit, four minutes away from elimination to make the league’s likely MVP FINALLY act like an MVP. We guess that’s how an MVP is supposed to act, right? Anyone?
I guess I’m happy that this series goes longer, just because this series has been the only compelling thing to come out of a lackluster 2006-07 season, and the Warriors still hold the upper hand with that zealous crowd in Game 6 Thursday night. However, if Golden State ends up blowing this series, we’re not blaming Stern, or the refs, or Nelson, or even the Warriors for not adjusting to the situation. We’re blaming the Sports Guy for jinxing the Warriors two straight nights in a row, along with half the sports journalists in the country who don’t give a damn about the NBA drooling at the mouth at a Dallas upset. Have some goddamned patience. It’s not an upset until it’s over.
Nowitzki Brings Mavs Back From Brink in Game 5 [NBA]
(Image from Yahoo/AP)
What are Ethics? Telebears XVI–Philosophy
Philosophers used to be beings of greatness, counselors of judgment, of right and wrong, the classical intellectual heroes. Now with science having rendered their contributions to society useless, they now throw out useless hypotheticals to each other, like “If you’re moving in a speeding car at 30 mph, and there are children playing in a yard to your right and a helpless baby flailing on the road right in front of you, is it the ethical decision to dump yourself off on that cliff to the left, hurtling to your death?”Yeah, these guys will have all sorts of fun in law school. And drive every hard working man and woman to drink their woeful nights away. Their professors who led them down this path shouldn’t be too annoying though, right? Here’s what their students have to say.
At This Rate, Baron Davis Will be Our Next Governor
[youtube eqQiu4J1sms]
Baron Davis love has become contagious at this point in Northern California, but we can’t wrap up our posting today without showing you this lovely video of him taking a day to work at a local McDonalds, a la Mark Cuban at Dairy Queen. By the end of this video and certainly by the end of these playoffs, you will not only be convinced that Stephen Jackson needs a talk show at some point after basketball, but also that Davis will need to be his Triumph the Insult Comedy Dog.
NBA Life-Baron Davis [YouTube]
The French Care Only if They Pronounce The Words Properly, Telebears XV–Linguistics
The best way to start off the week is with a major no one ever thinks about when they enter college. Which is kinda sad, because we can’t imagine a cooler major to take for fun. Learn about random languages, phonetics, metaphor, imagery. It’s sort of like English, except less essays. Oh yeah, and you’ll probably get paid way less when you leave college, unless you go help out our lovely politician friends, like George Lakoff and his fantastic nosehairs to the left. So let the students shed the light behind the professors who look at the words, right after the jump.
(Have any memories about professors in this department for a class or in general? Leave them in the comments.)
Falling In Love All Over Again
(Special from your editor’s sports journal, Get Up Eight Times. This was written after Game 4.)
You know, it seems at every point in my life, a basketball team comes along at just the right time to rein me back into the NBA. In the American sports climate, basketball continues its steady decline into the second tier of sports, falling behind even golf and (gag) auto racing in popularity. It hasn’t even been easy for the diehard basketball fan in me to keep on watching, simply because I’m a drifter with no real allegiance to any team, going with the right group at the right moment.
Because of my constant movement around the country and my birthplace in roundball-less Buffalo, I’ve never really had a basketball team to root for, instead drifting from team to team depending on location or the brand of basketball they brought to the floor. I loved the movement and flow that this league contained, and latched onto it from the moment Paxson sank that 3 in Phoenix. At that time, nothing seemed more exciting than NBA basketball.
Unluckiest Pass in the World
We wonder why God seems to outright despise the MacArthur Maze. 18 years after heavy seismic retrofits from Loma Prieta, his Almighty decides that outright tanker fire is what’s needed to do the job.
Huge leaping flames from an exploding gasoline tanker melted the steel underbelly of a highway overpass in the East Bay’s MacArthur Maze early this morning, causing it to collapse onto the roadway below and virtually ensuring major traffic problems for weeks to come.
The elevated roadway that fell carried eastbound traffic from the Bay Bridge onto Interstates 580 and 980 and state Highway 24. It draped like a blanket over a roadway below, a connector from southbound I-80 to I-880 that also was severely damaged.
The single-vehicle crash occurred on the lower roadway when the tanker, loaded with 8,600 gallons of unleaded gasoline and heading from a refinery in Benicia to a gas station on Hegenberger Road in Oakland, hit a guardrail at 3:41 a.m.
Engineers said the green steel frame of the I-580 overpass and the bolts holding the frame together began to melt and bend in the intense heat– and that movement pulled the roadbed off its supports.
Didn’t those college dropout geniuses who made Loose Change already prove that heat can’t burn steel? Clearly the government has it out for the liberal blue states. That has to be it. But no, not even the lefties are going to bring out the real story. We’re just going to have to make our own hipster video with loose facts and logical fallacies. The media, always making us poor idiot students do all the truth-seeking.
Tanker fire destroys part of MacArthur Maze [SF Chronicle]
(Image from SF Chronicle)
The Waitlists! They are Broken!
Just in case you’re uber-stressed about having to get into your Chem 3A 5 PM Lab, and you’re about, well, congrats chaps, your more fortunate friends are going to have to do it all over again! As far as we can tell, Telebears has crashed the classes you couldn’t get into. Cal Patriot and the Berkeley Livejournal blog have reported such difficulties entering the system, so we’re guessing you need to start over in some regards.
Well never fear. If you don’t want to go back and reanalyze all the crappy, hopeless selections you have to make for your annoying but required 250 student lectures, you can just click on our schedules category right here and peruse any of the subjects we have covered over the past few weeks. We’re shameless in our promotion of ourselves, we know. But it’ll make the processing easier rather than slogging through RateMyProfessors
This will be our last week of coverage before finals, before we give our best/worst professor ratings the week after.
Subjects this week
Monday: Linguistics
Tuesday: Philosophy
Wednesday: Anthropology
Thursday: Sociology
Fall 2007 Scheduling on Telebears
Wait, where is the list? [California Patriot Blog]
Telebears, arhgghghg [Berkeley Livejournal]
(Image from Life on the Wicked Stage)
He Isn’t Exactly the Minister of Defense
It’s a late pick and probably the last Bear going to the pros in this draft (only Tim Mixon is left), but hey, we’ll take what we can get–Cal rarely gets this many people out in one year.
With the 192nd pick overall in the 6th round, Ted Thompson grabbed Cal linebacker Desmond Bishop. He has been called “The Pulse” of the Cal defense on his way to leading the Pac-10 in tackles. He played middle linebacker in college but with Nick Barnett and Abdul Hodge at that position he’ll move to the outside in Green Bay.
It looks like Hughes, Lynch and Bishop will all see considerable time next year, so we should see early how well these players transition into the NFL.
Packers take two Linebackers in the 6th [Wisconsin Radio Network]
(Image from Seattle PI)
The Bears Are Whimpering
Well, we promised you a draft update when a Bear got drafted…and, about eight hours later, we deliver. Two more Bears are heading to the next level, one overvalued, one seemingly undervalued.
With the 85th pick in the third round, the Seattle Seahawks select Cal defensive tackle Brandon Mebane (6’1â€, 305 pounds). Filling a desperate need with the unknown post-microfracture status of Marcus Tubbs, Mebane can stop the run and penetrate offense lines to pressure quarterbacks. Mebane stood out at the Senior Bowl, and started 31 of his 41 games at Cal…
Colts selected California CB Daymeion Hughes with the No. 94 overall pick in the NFL Draft. Hughes, who had eight INTs and 19 pass breakups to lead the Pac Ten in 2006, is a perfect fit in Indy’s Tampa 2. He fell due to a lack of great athleticism, but plays fast enough in games and has ideal ball skills. Hughes could push to start immediately. This is exactly why Indianapolis let Jason David walk; Tampa 2 corners can be had later on in drafts.
We saw Mebane this year with his impressive…emotions; despite his statistical shortcomings, we’re sure he’ll bring something to the Seahawks that they might need–other than pot of course. As for Hughes, he’s immediately placed in a no-lose situation with a dead-last defense that just won a Super Bowl, so he’ll probably see as much time as Marshawn. Not quite sure what type of NFL player he’ll be, but he did get burned by USC, so that’s worrisome. But it looks like he’ll fit well into the system.
That’s it for tonight. See ya tomorrow.
Seahawks 2007 Draft: As It Happens! [Scout.com]
Colts select Hughes after he plummets [Rotoworld.com]
(Image from CNN)
