By: Hannah Kazemi, Staff Writer, SMRT
- What is the difference between Plato and Socrates’ definitions of utopia?
As two of the most famous philosophers, Plato and Socrates actually focus on the material world. Plato’s utopia is one in which all plates aren’t actually plates. Plato means “plate,” but he’s known to favour bowl-shaped plates because they’re extremely versatile and more fun to eat out of. Socrates’ utopia is one where all socks match all the time and washing machines never eat them. If you ask me, this is actually a dystopia because matching socks are boring. What if I want my socks to be funky and mismatched?? What then, Socrates?!
2. Explain what a homunculus is in three sentences or less.
A homunculus is a really big cloud that starts to rain right as you walk out the door in shorts for the first time in May. Homun = massive or huge and Culus = cloud because, like, cumulus or whatever? This cloud absolutely dominates the sky and laughs in BDE when other clouds try to compete.
3. In what scenario could a heuristic be considered admissible but not consistent in an A* search?
One where my dog makes the laws: 1+1 equals window, and movie theatres stop charging $8 for popcorn.
4. What are contemporary problems in Roman architecture?
Most people don’t actually know that most historical Roman architecture was made out of stickers and straws. The Romans would stick stickers on groupings of straws to form posts, then stick more stickers on more straws to make walls and roofs. This was how they held the whole thing together. The Colosseum is all straws. That’s why there are so many fountains in Rome; they’re all made of straws so the water just flows through them super easily.
They would use scratch ‘n’ sniff stickers in the bathroom so that you could scratch one to cover up the smell, and they would put a dog sticker on top of the window sticker so that it looked like there was a guard dog living there. Though creative and beautiful, the biggest flaw of this sticker-straw method is that the stickers lose their stickiness really fast due to the intense summer heat, leading to collapsed houses. Those, of course, had to be rebuilt with more straws and stickers.
5. In court, what does it mean to establish actus reus and mens rea?
Actus reus refers to when you’re a kid in a play at school and the teacher gives you the role of “sun.” Mens rea is when you sneeze every time you’re in the presence of a man because you’re allergic to the audacity they store deep in their cores. You can only establish actus reus and mens rea at the same time if you’re watching your cousin’s kindergarten spring production, and if there are cringy dads in the audience.
