Thursday, April 2, 2009

Classifying Systems

In class today, I had my students group words together in "like" categories as a pre-reading strategy. They came up with some pretty funny group headings:
1. Stuff that hasn't made me mad yet
2. Names that could be street drugs
3. Words that Bush probably can't pronounce

It reminded me of this classification system that Jorge Luis Borges devised:
A certain Chinese encyclopedia divided animals into:
a. Belonging to the Emperor
b. Embalmed
c. Tame
d. Sucking pigs
e. Sirens
f. Fabulous
g. Stray dogs
h. Included in the present classification
i. Frenzied
j. Innumerable
k. Drawn with a very fine camel-hair brush
l. Et cetera
m. Having just broken the water pitcher
n. That from a long way off look like flies.

3 comments:

GrandT said...

I don't get it.

stoner said...

I wonder which animals met the criteria of "That from a long way off look like flies..." Things that make you go hmmm......

Whoever composed that list smoked their lunch.... :D

Perfectly Imperfect said...

That comment is RICH coming from someone who named herself "stoner"! And I have to say that all animals look like flies if you are far enough away!