Thu 12 Oct 2006
Diana Davis writes on heroism.
Today math colloquium went brilliantly for the first 15 minutes. Around the 16th or 17th minute, a drilling noise began. It wasn’t that it drowned out the speaker; to the contrary, I could hear everything perfectly. The problem was that it was loud enough to be a significant noise in the room, and thereby was very distracting. I had heard the practice talk, and therefore knew that the part of the talk occurring now was key, as it linked the first and second halves together, and I was not able to focus whatsoever on what the speaker was saying, even though I knew the material, so I knew it must be even worse for the others.
I tolerated a few minutes of the drilling noise, glancing around, expecting a professor to do something about it. After it was clear that no one was going to do something, I decided that I had to do something. I weighed the relative interruptiveness of the noise versus my getting up and leaving the room, and decided that the noise was going on long enough that I needed to make it stop. So I got up, walked out the exterior door, put my glasses case in the door so that it wouldn’t lock, and sprinted away in search of the source of the noise.
Read the whole thing. Too many Williams students think that making the world a better place means something like working on global warning. Instead, they (and the world) would be better served if they just tried to help out those around them. Ask yourself: What Would Diana Do?
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4 Responses to “Hero”
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Anonymous says:
Too many posts on Ephblog make connections between ‘all things Eph’ and climate change skepticism.
Investigating this further would be a poor senior thesis topic!
October 12th, 2006 at 4:24 pmephmom says:
Too many irrelevant posts on Ephblog are made by a person apparently so ashamed of his/her lack of respect that s/he fails to use even a nom de plume.
October 13th, 2006 at 12:30 amPinkCommieEph says:
Very well, I dub myself ‘Pinko Commie Eph’.
As Kripke would be quick to point out, my chosen name doesn’t actaully mean anything, it’s just a tag. So don’t get too excited, it’s not like my name is ‘MarxLover’ or anything (Amherst version of course). And in fact, this object is actually closer to the center than it appears. I just find myself always taking a lefter-than-thou position on this blog.
October 13th, 2006 at 12:37 amfrank uible says:
Of course, use of one’s common name indicates the user’s possible or actual civility, courage, responsibility, gravity, sincerity and candor in a way which is not present in use of a pen name or anonymity. But who would be so foolish as to aspire to embodiment of any of those outmoded and counterproductive qualities?
October 13th, 2006 at 6:45 am