Prolific Predestination and Elasticity

Arg! I just finished writing a 1 1/2 (real) page single-spaced email on predestination. It wasn't my fault! The guy specifically wanted a response to his questions about my earlier statement. Honest! It's for my Tolkien class. See, the professor set up a listserv so that we can discuss the issues we're talking about out of class. And all these people are raising questions, and I have so much to say, and you know I can never keep my mouth shut. . . (It was so hard to write, too, because I couldn't use italics at all. Really, I was quite handicapped.) Groan. . . I am hopeless.

Actually, the real thing this blog update is about is my Econ lab this morning. We played a "game" called "Elasticity Stretch," and we randomly split up into four teams. When I say "game," I mean "write down answers to questions about elasticity supply of demand." Oh, so fun!(voice drips with sarcasm) Still, the winning team got extra credit, so at least we were competing for something. The environment was hardly conducive to quick thinking: this is 9am on a friday morning in a warm room filled with yellow sunlight. Duh! Our first major challenge came when we were told to pick a name. The three other people in my group and I look at each with completely blank stares. "Come on," our TA told all of us, "Think of a fun name that has to do with Economics." That got a few raised eyebrows, at least. We muttered some halfhearted phrases to each other ("we could always go with 'demand'"), and then he asked the first group what their name was. "Supply" they said. He his expression clearly said you-can-do-better-than-that, and he said,"the next group had better not say "demand." Oops. There goes our one idea. We stare desperately at each other, and the other girl in my group says "Come back to us." The next group picked "George" (the name of our TA) and the other group picked "We supply the answers." Drat! It's back to us, and now we are starting to plan escape routes from the building. Without missing a beat, the TA writes our group name on the board "Come back to us." LOL. Whenever we had to write our name down we cracked up. At least I did. Oh, and all the groups tied and got the extra credit. But we had the coolest name.