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What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

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Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One Rhonda Sollberger is fairly easily found on Facebook via Google (different last name currently). The others are trickier.

Stop that, please. Some things are genuinely better left as is. Is it just me, or is anyone else upset that mystery just can't exist anymore. Everything has to have a connection. It's just depressing.

Also, this may not be a memory that Rhonda wants dug up.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One Rhonda Sollberger is fairly easily found on Facebook via Google (different last name currently). The others are trickier.

Stop that, please. Some things are genuinely better left as is. Is it just me, or is anyone else upset that mystery just can't exist anymore. Everything has to have a connection. It's just depressing.

I don't think the people in the story would be upset at being shown a note from a (presumably long gone) friend?

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#443
In an introductory Russian book, a note in Russian that had been left by a cleaner in a hotel room, who was delighted to see that someone was studying Russian.

In a German book, some tickets to a movie theater, and a clipping about the more or less covert revival of university dueling societies in the 1950s.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#444

I once took a critical thinking course and bought the textbook 2nd hand from the college bookstore. A week or two in, I noticed half of a sentence written in the margin. As the professor started teaching the topic from that page, he rhetorically asked a question, did not get an answer, and then answered himself with the sentence from the book. I filliped ahead and found that the entire book was annotated with all of…

In a similar vein, I also found a 1950's guide to a happy marriage that had been thoroughly annotated by the husband. He was so honest that it was like finding someone's therapy session notes at a thrift store. The inside cover had a pro-con table, with 'appearance' as the first entry in the con section. Inside the back cover was a game-plan that seemed to indicate that he wanted to strengthen his marriage, so I gues…

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Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#445

I once took a critical thinking course and bought the textbook 2nd hand from the college bookstore. A week or two in, I noticed half of a sentence written in the margin. As the professor started teaching the topic from that page, he rhetorically asked a question, did not get an answer, and then answered himself with the sentence from the book. I filliped ahead and found that the entire book was annotated with all of…

Reminds me of a geology professor I had in college. She had a fully photographic memory and recited the entire book, word for word, front to back during class without anything at her lectern. As impressive as that was, it's also what made me skip her class except for tests, because what's the point?

Yeah, once I figured out a professor was teaching straight out of the textbook I’d just skip class and read the book before the tests. Was always the general ed classes nobody cared about, including the instructor, so no harm done.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#447
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They go through some pretty extreme lengths to get you to waste money on buying books from them. The English classes my university published a new "reader textbook" ever quarter. It was just a crappy bounded letter paper book with section from various novels that they change up every quarter so you couldn't use an old one. The on campus copy center and nearby kinkos/staples/officemax/officedepot wouldn't photocopy it…

Years ago at the university, we had to buy straightup photocopies of articles and such out of books/magazines/whatever that the class would be taught off of at the campus bookstore at prices much higher than per-page copy. Something about paying the source for licensing and distribution was the reason given.

I had this one class on Picasso where the professor absolutely refused to use the only real book on the subject because the author didn’t properly give him credit from his thesis research so he handed out a folder of articles we passed around to make copies of. No licensing and distribution fees involved.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#449
post #424
post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not entirely trivial, it takes work. If you are simply changing the number but ask the inverse of x mod y every time you didn't win the game. 2 out of 3 times changes nothing. I had the most fun with multiple choice tests. I took the average A,B,C and D answers from previous tests. The teacher not paranoid would have a lot of B, slightly less A and C and below average D answers. The paranoid teacher would have p…

Am I understanding this comment correctly that you were administering tests and rigging them to cause people to fail and then charging people money to get the rigged answers for the tests so they could pass? If so, this is some real unethical and criminal behavior. But I'm inclined to think it's all made up considering the first part of the comment seems to imply that you were doing well on tests simply by guessing t…

> Am I understanding this comment correctly that you were administering tests and rigging them to cause people to fail

They got many answers wrong on the test but I adjusted their grades later. The grades do have to be credible for the show to continue.

> and then charging people money to get the rigged answers for the tests so they could pass?

People who didn't bother to study purchased the answers but if they always had low grades they would forever have low grades.

> If so, this is some real unethical and criminal behavior.

The only thing that really bothered me was this: Modifying the log files left a log entry with a terminal number in the log. I provided the teaches with a fair clue by changing the test answers and indeed eventually they smelled a rat. The cat and mouse game couldn't go on forever, eventually they would figure it out. I picked a scapegoat, a girl who couldn't hurt a fly. It couldn't have happened to a nicer person.

The teachers ganged up around her pointed and shouted then suspended her for a week.

I thought they acted ridiculous so I erased everything from the server and arranged for backups to be formatted when attached.

A few years later I ran into her and apologized but she didn't recall the event.

The teachers were very happy to return to paper based tests.

> unethical and criminal behavior

Ah yes, was I ever that young? We got computers in school and all we were allowed to do was tests. I assure you I've learned quite a lot. For example: Backups should have write protect implemented in hardware. Who in their right mind....

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, with a slight twist, a prof I had used to recommend we read the entire text book, not just the chapters required for the class. It was an open book exam so people figured they could annotate the pages or whatever and didn't bother to follow his adcice. He would often say, 'everything [we] ever want to know is in that book!' He was right. The final exam was verbatim the practice exam given at the end of the…

I had an exam once where we were told to read the entire question paper first. At the end it told you to ignore all previous questions and just do this one. 2nd favourite exam question after an economics multiple choice exam where we had to calculate the probability of passing the exam just by guessing.

I once had a sociology professor whose final was multiple choice and every answer (out of 50) was a B, except for the last, which was a C.
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