Friday, May 09, 2008

Type-A, Type-B and Type-O

Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists Everywhere,

A little finals week humor this weekend. I've been grading mounds and mounds of papers (speaking of mounds -- I've always wondered why Almond Joy's got nuts, Mounds don't -- what is Joy doing with the nuts, shouldn't she have the mounds?) and given enough typed words, even really good students will come along with really good typos.

Now, I'm not busting on these folks. I've made more than my share of typos, even recently. But there are some that go beyond the oops to the sublime and I've had two this year that are truly magnificent. They are the sort that slip through the spel chek, and end up expressing propositions perhaps never before intended in the history of human thought.

In a paper on the Manhattan Project, a student was expressing the concern of the times about a possible A bomb in the hands of the Nazis,

"The War had been going on as it had, but rumor stirred about a supper weapon in Western Europe."
Talk about a Wurst Kase scenario... Adds a whole new dimension to nuclear subs. When you can't brush, a trident missile after meals helps keep down the plaque that causes gingivitis.

But a real keeper came in a discussion of the sociologist of science Robert K. Merton,
"Merton states that in order to anal size the rise of modern science 'we must consider the scope and bearing of the contemporary religious convictions, since the might have been related, in one way or another, to the upsurge of science.'"
You can't make this stuff up, folks.

So, your favorite typos?

Live, laugh, and love,

Irreverend Steve