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    “Now the Sith have returned to wage a new war against good in the university.”

    My six year old Thomas is reading Star Wars books designed for six year olds. He's actually very good at it, but he does consistently misread the word "universe" as "university." Since it occurs quite a lot in these books, he's constantly telling me things like the following:

    My name is Qui-Gon Jinn.

    I am a Jedi.

    The Jedi are a very special group of beings.

    For many thousands of years, we have worked to promote peace and justice in the university.

    This explains quite a bit (cf. Eric's post of earlier today).

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    4 responses to ““Now the Sith have returned to wage a new war against good in the university.””

    1. Neil Sinhababu Avatar
      Neil Sinhababu

      You’ve got to give him an astronomy book, so he can read about how the university began with the Big Bang and has been expanding ever since.

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    2. bzfgt Avatar
      bzfgt

      Maybe the university’s trying to tell you something.

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    3. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      I tried explaining to Thomas the other night how the universities’ death (big freeze, big crunch, big bounce, etc.) was in part a function of its overall shape, how much dark energy it contains, and on the equation of state which determines how the dark energy density responds to the expansion of the university.*
      The weird thing is that he totally gets these things when we generalize from two to three dimensions (e.g. the university as a two dimensional object seen to be an inflating balloon when embedded into a three dimensional space), but he has a very difficult time conceptualizing analogous claims about the university with respect to three and four dimensions.
      I tell him not to get too frustrated, because this stuff is hard, that Daddy doesn’t really understand the university that well either.
      [Note:
      *Plagiarized word for word from Wikipedia. I only note this in a lightening rod-like attempt to redirect David Wallace’s godlike wrath away from myself. Or maybe it’s like one of those marshal arts that is very philosophically pleasing but never actually does that well in cage fighting. . . I don’t know.]

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    4. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      And let us not forget Flash Gordon, whom the immortal Freddie Mercury tells us in the very first verse of their eponymous song is, “Savior of the University.” You can watch it HERE .*
      [Notes:
      *Obviously not Queen’s best, but still among the canon. That is if it gets stuck in your head all day you then everything you do will just be that much more awesome.]

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