Why did the chicken cross the road?

I take attendance by having students answer a question.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Two traditional people went for "to get to the other side."
Others made it bird- or chicken- specific:

• to beat the egg
• because it's a bird.
• to avoid being dinner
• to become dinner
• to escape the farm
• to get hit by a car
• Chipotle > Chick-Fil-A

Many people tried to make this question class-specific:

• to study algorithms
• to get to the other side in constant time
• the algorithm told it to
• to study the runtime of doing so
• to find its friend on the trail
• to add this class (from the waitlist)
• I'm tired. & trying to pay attention to what we're doing in class

... ouch. I try to make the class fun, engaging, and interesting, but I guess there can be such a thing as too many attention-grabbing events. I'll try to rein it in.

Others went off on in various directions:

• deep question...
• for cookiez
• cuz it was bored
• to do what it was destined to do
• because it had a reason to do so.
• to look at the sparkly thing
• It's a mobius strip.
• entropy?
• It forgot its phone.
• because it did
• so that it could be right (it was on the left side)

The teacher's favorite award goes to "motion is an illusion." I'm thrilled to hear it!


This post's theme word is dégustation, "the careful, appreciative tasting of various foods, focusing on the gustatory system, the senses, high culinary art and good company; more likely to involve sampling small portions of all of a chef's signature dishes in one sitting." (This was one of the specific French vocabulary words I only acquired after subtly translating with my phone under the restaurant table.) Welcome to our cheese dégustation! I recommend you start at this end of the table.