I passed!

I passed my Qualifying Exam!

For those of you who don't know, the qualifier (at Dartmouth) is a 10 page written proposal and an oral exam in which three professors grill you for 3 hours until you feel like you have been hit by a truck. It was pretty much the most miserable experience of my life, but I survived.

I am celebrating by drinking a Thomas Hooker Imperial Porter (yes, that's my review at the top), which is a delicious 7.8% ABV porter that comes in a 1 liter bottle. And that won't be the last beer I have tonight.

Now I can await the birth of baby Morrill with no worries!

Survivor

The new season of survivor decided to spice things up a bit. They've already divided things up by sex, so they couldn't do that again. The Apprentice did the whole street smarts/book smarts thing. So, they took it to the next illogical step: teams divided up by race. I'll let that sink in for a moment.

I know I'm not the only one that thinks this is a horrible idea. They say they eliminated any racists in casting, so we shouldn't expect the teams to be shouting racial slurs at one another. But what about the people at home? Obviously there are a lot of racists out there, and they'll be looking to the show to reinforce any stereotypes that they have. Already Rush Limbaugh is fanning the flames.

Now I know we don't live in a colorblind society, and race most definitely still matters. But the fact that CBS would exploit racism to up the ratings of a tired reality show is pretty sad.

Puns with cheese

The French word tomme refers to a round cheese or a cheese in the shape of a wheel. Tomme de Savoie is probably the most well known variety avaiable in the US. Tonight, we saw two new cheeses with great names.

This one made us smile:
And this one's even better:

Wikipedia

Lately I've been messing around with Wikipedia, putting in some small changes here and there. Well, tonight I wrote my first new article: M cells. While I'm pretty happy with that article, the contribution I'm most proud of is the addition I made to the Derek Jeter article. Scroll down to trivia, and check out the item that starts "Was voted the most..." That's all me.