By Benjamin Franklin
Two beggars traveling along,
One blind, the other lame.
Pick'd up an oyster on the way,
To which they both laid claim:
The matter rose so high, that they
Resolv'd to go to law,
As often richer fools have done,
Who quarrel for a straw.
A lawyer took it straight in hand,
Who knew his business was
To mind nor one nor t'other side,
But make the best o' the cause,
As always in the law's the case;
So he his judgment gave,
And lawyer-like he thus resolv'd
What each of them should have;
Blind plaintif, lame defendant, share
The friendly laws impartial care,
A shell for him, a shell for thee,
The middle is the lawyer's fee.
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I don't know whether I ate something yesterday or I picked up a 24-hour flu bug somewhere, but I felt terrible for most of Wednesday and actually took a nap around lunchtime since I couldn't face being downstairs where people were eating. So I have very little to report -- the most exciting thing I did all day was fold laundry while watching A.I. with the kids (older son had seen it in an English class at school discussing dystopias, younger son hadn't seen it before, both thought it was interesting and we had a discussion about what the ending means, other than that humans pretty much suck -- I think it's Spielberg's saddest movie by far, though I suppose Brian Aldiss should get much of the blame for that).
I was still feeling queasy at dinnertime, though I was able to eat Paul's blueberry pancakes (made from scratch, thus denying the kids the opportunity to go around saying "You ain't got no pancake mix!" as they did at the mall yesterday). Since older son will be working on his summer research project on Thursday, we watched Next Gen tonight -- a terrible, terrible episode named "Liaisons" that I don't remember ever seeing before. It aired in Chicago the day older son was born, and I suspect that I was so out of it when I watched it that I then blocked out all the bad parts, which were pretty much every second of the episode. Afterward, since the kids were picking on Star Trek, I put on a Deep Space Nine episode to impress them.
A sticker on the door of Penn's robotics lab warns of the dangers of working with robots ("Robots have been known to rise up and rebel against their human masters...never gaze upon or covet their power supply").
Not that that stopped students from building this award-winning robotic dog, a sophisticated K-9.
This sculpture of the Addams Family resides outside Charles Addams Fine Arts Hall, which was Penn's faculty club when I was a student but was rededicated in honor of Addams, who attended Penn (though I don't believe he graduated).
The Mad Mex menu offers such specialties as werewolf enchiladas, salad harvested from Farmville, and iPad ice cream (two scoops of vanilla served on a 32GB iPad, $732 when in stock).
Van Pelt Library has a collection of rare, early illustrated books on display, including Johann Geiler von Keysersberg's Nauicula Penitentie with this artwork by Hans Burgkmair.
Signs in the Perelman Quad explain the history of Houston Hall -- the first student union -- and its traditions as well as information about the university, such as Penn's establishment of the Bachelor of Science degree, allowing a student to graduate without having to pass examinations in classical languages.
Any college campus worth visiting has lots of fearless friendly squirrels looking for handouts or at least dropped potato chips.
I really love Robert Indiana's Love, so here is one more photo of it.
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