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Below the Curve
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| French? Polish? Radioactive. |
You know about Bell Curve. It's a column full of current-eventsy straightlines followed by one or several joke lines.
This week, we had this straightline:
Leaders of the state's public universities place a moratorium on low-enrollment degree programs, like physics and French, because of budget cuts.
Followed by this little, uh, one-act play as the joke:
"Zat ees an outrage," says the ghost of Marie Curie.
"I agree with vous," says the ghost of André-Marie Ampère.
"Who zee hell are vous?" asks Curie.
"Enchante, madame! I am anozzer French physiciste!" replies Ampère.
"Zen, for a kiss about my bozom, vous may have zom of my frites!" says Curie.
Now, Bell Curve doesn't know much about Curie and it knows even less about Ampère, so it Googled some things before writing the joke. Ass covered, right? Well, we got this anonymous letter:
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"'Bell Curve' is best part of C.P., but , sorry, Marie Sk?odowska Curie was Polish, not French! (But the humor still works because she spoke French.)" |
First off: Thank you for writing, anonymous snail mailer. Bell Curve is flattered. And the letter came today. The paper only came out yesterday! We think that's wonderful.
Second of all: the Kate Smith stamp? Great choice.
Thirdly: I don't wish to quibble, but according to Wikipedia, the web site of record, Curie spent most of her life in Paris and became a French citizen, so there's also an argument to be made that while she was born and raised in Poland, she was, on some philosophical level, French. (And, on a physiological level, irradiated.) Anonymous, we will just have to agree that she was kinda sorta Polish AND French, or go our separate ways.
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