Best Billboard I Saw Today

15 April 2008 at 11:20 pm Peter G. Klein 3 comments

| Peter Klein |

OK, I didn’t see the actual billboard, just a photo of it. My colleague Peter Sukovsky, a professor of animal science at MU and a specialist in reproductive physiology, gave a presentation on his startup company AndroLogika at the University of Missouri’s Life Sciences Week. Peter concluded by showing us this picture, helping to illustrate that Missouri is a particularly good state for doing reproductive research. Where else would you find a summer festival like this? (In case you’re wondering, it’s a food festival; you can see examples of the cuisine here. It ain’t Guo-li-zhuang, but in the same genre.)

Entry filed under: - Klein -, Ephemera.

Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics Aoki on North

3 Comments Add your own

1. Rafe Champion | 16 April 2008 at 12:24 am

Balls!
2. David Hoopes | 16 April 2008 at 11:58 pm

So, in another life I worked on a farm in Iowa (near where I went to college). Also, in this other life I tended to hang out in redneck bars and drink astonishing amounts of beer. Gentle readers, imagine that your body is twisted with the regrets of bad decisions, little sleep, dehydration. Only the foolish vigor of youth has allowed you (and your co-worker call him, Dan) to be at work by 7:00am washing the two tons of acorn squash you picked the previous afternoon. Only the cool morning and the blessing of the pig-pen’s being downwind allow your stomach any semblance of peace. Then, out of the house comes Wilma. Honestly, like her husband and her oldest son, Wilma has a decidedly porcine look about her. Still, she is a dear and hard working woman.

“I thought you boys might like something to eat,” she says carrying a pie plate. Dan and I glance at each other warily: bacon, eggs, white bread soaked with margarine, whatever it is, it will not look good. But wait, fried oval shaped sausages? We glance at the hog-pen to notice the fresh cuts each hog sports.

Hog nuts! With white bread soaked in margarine. MMMMM.

“Go ahead boys!” “Thanks Wilma.”

There’s a liberal education for you.
3. REW | 17 April 2008 at 9:36 am

Great story, David! As a bona fide aggie, I appreciate this biographical note on several levels.

My favorite testicle story has no gustatory elements. While at McGill, I met an animal scientist who was a specialist in reproductive physiology. (He measured rams’ testicles. I’m certain there was more to it than this, but certainly this was salient from an economist’s perspective.) Eventually, professional and personal lives entwined and he elected sexual reassignment. This was rather badly received by her colleagues in animal science, though they were proudly able to claim they had recruited a female faculty member to what had been all-male for 40 years.