Wednesday, December 15, 2010

UNM After Dark


Turns out we have a smart alec microwave oven. I put a measuring cup of coffee in it this morning and pushed the minute button 4 times really fast. It got confused, locked up, and left a message on the display that looked something like "US:UK". I fiddled with the keys, unplugging it and plugging it back in, but it still read "US:UK". After unplugging it for the third time, and letting it set for a minute, it decided to go back to normal when I plugged it back in. I'll bet the specs are for it to read something like "ER:OR" when it gets confused, but it was probably built on a Friday and the programmer was bored.

We attended the Friends of Medieval Studies holiday reception at UNM tonight. We had a great time, and the talk on the Bestiaries was delightful. Bestiaries were illustrated compendiums of beasts written in the 12th and 13th centuries; however, the descriptions, stories and legends of the beasts illustrated in each volume came from a long tradition of oral and written traditions. Only 100 bestiaries have survived. Shakespeare drew on the bestiaries in many of his plays, and sayings like, "licking something into shape" came from bestiary legends about bears. Bears were said to have 30 day gestation periods, the cubs were born without form, and the momma bear would licked them into shape to form bear shaped cubs. An excellent facsimile of the MS Bodley 764 bestiary is available, but it's not cheap.

Walking across campus on my way back to the car afforded many photo ops that I couldn't pass up. Tonight's photos where all taken between the SUB in the middle of campus and T parking on the corner of Lomas and University.




2 comments:

  1. The first one is one of those "so New Mexico" pics, while the others are interesting for other reasons. The colors in the last one are fascinating.

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  2. It's not every day your microwave tells you "You suck!"

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