Meeting Other Grad Students (1 of 2): Biologist.

I was at a reception the other day with grad students from different divisions, and I happened to be with some biologists.

Someone asked me what I studied, so I gave them the one sentence version, so then they asked more and then someone else asked more, and the next thing you know I had this big long speech.

After that was done, I asked the first (white) guy what he studied.

"Bird skulls," he was like.

I then asked him for his most favorite and least favorite bird skulls, and why.

(I also made a Jeffrey Dahmer joke, about how he probably got into it by killing small animals and then playing with their decomposing carcasses, but he didn't get it, or laugh.)

He said it was the woodcock, because their eyes have such an odd position on the skull that they look like an alien.

Somehow, someone asked something else, and he started saying how hummingbirds have really interesting skulls, since they have the longest beak of any bird, relative to their skull size.

"And you know what bird has the shortest beak?", I was like.

At that, everyone paused, and just looked at me.

"Uhhh," someone was like, "You're the wrong guy to be asking that question."

Without even acknowledging that, I was like, "A factory chicken.  You know, where they chop its beak off real close to its head and stuff."

The first guy then started saying something about pigeons bred to have really close-cut beaks, but then I said that I highly doubted their beaks would be proportionally shorter than a factory chicken's.

"They cut them off real close, you know," I was like.