Another Lesson in How to Speak "Big Dog"

The engineering building for my university is currently under construction, so all of the faculty are temporarily housed in cubicles in the basement of the 9-story women's dorm. It's not as bad as it sounds, except that one can hear everyone else's conversations.

There's an old cartoon. It has a big bulldog named Spike walking down the street. Another little dog hops around Spike saying, "What are we going to do today Spike, huh? Are we going to get us a cat today? Huh? Huh?" Spike doesn't say much.

Big dogs like Spike remind me of what I admire in so many of my academic heroes. They don't say much, but they have a presence in the room, and what little they do say is definitely heard.

From my cubicle this week, I overheard a big dog and a little dog chatting about an experiment. The little dog was racing,

"We could do this, then that, then that, which does this..."
And the big dog said, "woah... ... ... let's get some scratch paper."

Lesson: Big dogs still say, "I don't know."