‘Twas the Night before Finals

‘Twas the night before Finals, and all through the towns
Not a student was drinking, not even an ounce!
The tables in libraries were covered with care
By books of all sizes and looks of despair.
Trying hard, in the night, to recall the semester
A student pored through all the things they would test her.
“There’s too much to study, [...]

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write a song of ithaca

“Write a song of Ithaca,
Write a song today!”
“What is there to write about?
How oft the skies are gray?”
“Write a song of Ithaca,
Write of the leaves that fall.”
“Walt won’t have written “Leaves of Grass”
If he had to sweep them all!”
“Write a song of Ithaca,
Write of the fallow deer!”
“Of fallow deer? My fellow men
Would laugh at me, [...]

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warning: not for diabetics, lactose-intolerants and persons allergic to nuts

Just some of the sweetest, cheesiest lyrics in our reading list. May contain traces of nuttiness! (and naughtiness, too!)
The premise of it all:

Life is a song, let’s sing it together.
Let’s take our hearts and dip them in rhyme.
Let’s learn the words, learn the music together,
Hoping the song lasts for a long, long time.
Why can’t I [...]

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prufrock blues

The result of my blues poem writing assignment:
(Based on The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock by T.S. Eliot (the man born in St. Louis), and blues tune along the lines of Empty Bed Blues)

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i sympathize with dr. suess

Here’s my very first French essay! We’re supposed to write a story based on 2 characters in our textbook, a certain pupil named Hamlet, and his teacher. We have to introduce both characters, introduce a conflict, resolve that conflict in a humorous/ironic/philosophical/political manner. And due to linguistic limitations, we can only use words and phrases [...]

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You know the person showering in the cubicle next to you is a girl if…

You hear a deeeep low singing voice.

0.001% chance of it being a girl. I don’t want to consider the alternative.

You don’t see the top of a short-haired head over the cubicle wall

20%. It may just be a short guy.

You smell a strong, sweet scent of shampoo

40%. Some guys want to smell nice, too.

You DO see [...]

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Armstrong’s song, Aldrin’s din

What the men on the moon might have sung, post Apollo 11:
(a.k.a. the dark side of the moon landing)
courtesy of Elton John, Harry Nilsson and (yes) Ernie! I think Ernie says it the best, and says much more, too

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the guitar is hard again

So I’ve just restrung HY’s guitar.
The pristine white bass strings and the crystal clear treble strings beckon to be played, to channel a love song, or a Bach piece, or a bluesy chord progression. And I’m very inclined to oblige.
There’s just one problem: It’s a left-handed guitar, and I’m not sinister (in the original sense [...]

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crypto nuts

Cryptographers have a sense of humour.
Or maybe they’re just nuts.
Read the following excerpts from peer reviewed papers and judge for yourself.
Inspired by Carter and Wegman, we use simple primitives which we call NUT (for “n-Universal Transformation”) since they are so cheap to implement. We propose construction methods for block ciphers that we call COCONUT (for [...]

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mmddyy

Happy “mm * dd = yy” day!
Oh, and a belated “mm ^ dd = yy” day, too!
Edit: Thanks GGY for the poem! Happened to learn LaTeX today, so here’s the equation for the poem:

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