I know, I know, I shouldn't be in this class

As I mentioned, I got my grammar midterm back yesterday and I did impressively well on it. Today I got my CSci midterm back, and it was ridiculous. I got 65/100, which is not the kind of score I'm used to seeing. At first I was sure I had gotten all the multiple choice questions wrong, because there was red lines and letters scrawled everywhere, but upon later inspection I realized that she writes the correct letters next to questions you get wrong, and "C" next to answers that are correct.

The truly annoying thing, though, was the short-answer section. She asked us "Who owns the Internet?" and I thought that was a really stupid question. It depends on how you define "Internet"--is it the hardware? the information? No single entity owns all that stuff, anyway. I ended up saying that nobody owns the Internet. The only thing she wrote was "So how does this work?" and she took off half the points the question was worth. How does what work? The Internet? The system of ownership? We never talked about any of this in class. I talked to one or two of the girls in our class who worry a lot and work hard (the antithesis of me, in other words) after the midterm and even they agreed that the test was crazy. This, I think, is evidenced by the fact that she told us she was grading on a curve and that everyone gets to add ten points to their score, so I have a C.

That's okay. But it's funny that, while feeling like I didn't study enough for either of them, I did quite well in grammar and rather badly in CSci.

True cause of dinosaurs' extinction discovered

MORRIS, MN--As long as there have been people, people have wondered about what happened to the dinosaurs. The fossil record clearly shows that these "terrible lizards" ruled the earth for millions of years--unless, of course, you believe the fossils are a conspiracy among Godless heathen scientists or artifically planted by a strange man named Slartibartfast--and their untimely demise, while just as clear, has never been satisfactorily explained.

The current theory posits that a large asteroid hit the Earth around sixty-five million years ago, causing earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions (which fill the air with smoke and ash, decreasing the amount of sunlight that reaches the biosphere), and other calamities, changing the dinosaurs' environment and driving them to extinction.

But amateur paleontologists at the University of Minnesota have come up with an astounding new theory: the dinorsaurs likely tickled each other to death.

This revelation was brought about by the lively Asha announcing to two of her roommates that her boyfriend, Aaron, once jumped up on a counter.

"Yep," Aaron concurred. "Vertical jump. No hands. I was being a velociraptor from Jurassic Park."

Upon hearing this, Asha's roommate Sarah was inspired to mimic the behaviors of the velociraptor, based upon her own viewings of the historical document Jurassic Park. Asha, temporarily distracted by setting up the coffee pot, turned around to see her boyfriend and her roommate acting like raptors. It brought her much mirth.

Later, when dinosaur activity had calmed down a bit, Aaron was stetched out over the couch, with his feet in the air and his head near the floor, which prompted Sarah to poke his stomach and inquire as to whether he was ticklish. He said no. Sarah herself happens to be quite ticklish, though, as her roommate Holly was happy to point out.

This is where the startling new revelation was ... well, revealed. Sarah proposed that the dinosaurs might well have acted in a similar fashion, tickling each other even unto death. Being severely ticklish herself, this "velociraptor" made the case look plausible. "They probably just fell over," she said, "and, once on their backs couldn't regain their vertical orientation ..."

"Ah, yes," Holly said. "As certain turtles are alleged to do, finding it difficult to right themselves if placed on their backs, as the shortness of their limbs do not give allow them the leverage necessary."

The amateur paleontologists stopped for a moment to consider the horrible fate of the dinosaurs, tickling each other to death.

Then, Aaron started tickling Sarah violently and even going so far as to take her scarf from her as she was preparing to leave her place of residence and whip her with said scarf. Asha tried to help, but to no avail.

Sarah did manage to make off with Aaron's glasses, which, according to Aaron looked nice on her. "They make you look ... French or something," he said, but this reporter is skeptical, as Aaron's vision was surely impaired at the time, as he was without his aforementioned glasses when he made this assertion.

The theory does seem to hold up--perhaps better than the last one. Scientists have not been able to locate a crater of the correct size and age to be responsible for this hypothetical catastrophe. If the extinction were due to tickling, there would of course be no physical evidence, such as the crater, to find.

Why the dinosaurs would want to tickle each other is a matter happily left to paleophilosophers.