Large field trip budget needed

[msjen]

I found this sentence in one of our teacher's guides:

Explain to students, "You will meet with other experts on that planet or moon to discuss the conditions there."

Not saying which brilliant curriculum developer wrote that and didn't notice that it sounds like the kids will be sent to Mars for a meeting. Nope, not saying.

Comments

[doomkty]

where do I sign up for that class?

[0ntological]

Maybe they were so brilliant that they knew how it sounded and just wanted to attract more kids to the program......?

[msjen]

Um yeah, that was definitely what I was thinking when I wrote that at 3 AM.

[incorpore]

maybe it was meant to say "... experts *from* that planet or moon ..."

e.g., "today, class, we will be meeting experts from Venus. Please be advised in advance that, like all Venereans, they will be nekkid. And in love. And playing appropriate music by Holst. We can expect that they will spend some time discussing Venus' most prominent landform, the Mons Veneris. They may also explain their healthcare system, and the burden of dealing with the diseases common to the Venereans"

Oh, and the experts from Mars, scary! They are the only entities known to be able to march to a 5/4 beat. Viewing this has been known to break Earthlings' brains.

[jetspeaks]

You know, we had to perform a piece once that skipped from 7/8 to 5/4 to 3/4 to some other time every other bar. I got lost somewhere in the miserere, but no one noticed. Actually, I think the entire tenor section wandered off for coffee, and no one noticed.

So they re-wrote it in 4/4.

[incorpore]

That reminds me of another Holst piece, "Song of the Blacksmith", where the time signature also changes just about every other bar. The trick with that was to realize the beat remained steady through all the time changes, so just stick with the beat and ignore the time signature - much less confusing. Oh, then there's another piece from that same suite, "Fantasia on the the Dargason", which has simultaneous 4/4 and 3/4. Again, follow the beat (the beat being just the "1" in this case, since it's the only beat the 4/4 and 3/4 have in common) and ignore the time signature. I got to play the euphonium solo of "Greensleaves" in 3/4 over the saxes babbling this gurgling brook like sound in 4/4. It's actually quite beautiful when done correctly.

[msjen]

Sorry, guys, music has been cut from the curriculum. ;)