I'm a teaching assistant for a course in computer graphics, and this term, the prof teaching the course happens to be my thesis supervisor as well. Steve is well aware of my obsession with ferrets and had done his best to make sure the class knows as well. he's coming to visit the ferrets again next week :). anyways, just want to mention a few things he'd done to promote ferrets and some student reactions, in case anybody gets a kick out of this. so, along with stuff about computer graphics, rembrandt, mozart, claustrophobia, the class also learned a few facts about ferrets, among them that ferrets aren't rodents. to make sure the class knows this, he added a bonus no bonus true/false section to the midterm, one of the questions being "a ferret is a rodent". about 3/4 of the people who answered got it right. (he warned people that this is a dangerous question to get wrong, and if they aren't sure it is best to leave it unanswered, and also refused to give me the list of students who got it wrong!). when reviewing for the exam, he asked the class if a ferret was a rodent, and most of the class answered NO. There was one disbeliever who still insist otherwise, so Steve pointed out that ferrets have canines, something rodents don't, converting the last of a class of 37. other funny incidents. I draw ferrets in various poses on the whiteboard in Steve's office, and he usually leaves them where they are and writes around them. One student came in to ask him a question, and to illustrate his points, took up the eraser and in one sweep erase the head of a standing ferret. the student realize in mid sweep what he had done, even as Steve told him "you just failed the course"... to his credit, he did a half decent job of drawing the head back, but I have his name, just in case.. most of the class knows I'm the one with the ferrets (all their names are in my signature, after all!), and have attempted various things to suck up. one tried to make a ferret puppet for his puppet assignment and gave up (it is hard to make a ferret out of spheres), two included an attempt at a ferret model in their final project (I saw it and warned them modelling ferrets is dangerous grounds, since if it didn't look like a ferret.), one in his motocross project included a banner that says "A ferret is not a rodent", and the disbeliever had little cubes with a ferret head textured map on it that was eaten by a shark, definitely NOT the way to suck up to your TA... this is probably not entirely related to the ferrets, but at least 3 students have called me the mean TA to my face.. also, for anybody interested in computer graphics, there is a ferret friendly professor at the university of waterloo. have a warm and fuzzy day. // *********************************************** // Selina, Birch, Dief, Sprite, Storm, Sand & Bear // http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~ssiu [Posted in FML issue 3262]