Bwog humbly presents part two in this semester’s anthology of professors’ opening remarks. 

Alfred MacAdam, Latin American Literature in Translation

While talking about the mysterious fourth floor of Barnard’s Milbank Hall

“I don’t know what they do with all those mirrors up there. Reminds me of Mae West – do you guys know who she was? She was a famous sex figure in the days of yore, and she had these mirrors on the ceiling of her bedroom, I guess to watch herself in action. I don’t really know how that would work.

Mimics moving head

‘Hey you, move your head, you’re blocking my view!’ Like that?”

Alan Franklin Segal, Life After Death

“I’m not contagious unless you want to put your finger in my belly button.”

Andrew Nathan, Chinese Foreign Policy

“This room doesn’t appear to have a blackboard. Unless this is one.

Looks behind him.

Shall I write on it?



Tries writing, gingerly.

It works!”

Richard Bulliet, Nobility and Civility II

In a discussion ostensibly about Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origins of Inequality:

James Mirollo: “Why did people settle on rivers anyway? There can’t be a practical reason!”

Richard Buillet: “It’s all about the fish! All about the fish!” (belly laughs)

More Buillet: “So we should all just come into class every day and all touch our foreheads and chant ‘Nobility and Civility’ and then after we’ve gotten through that we can just talk about pretty much anything we want.”