But why would a zombie want to eat a human?

last night the Professor insisted on dressing up for the crew of friends that came over to optimize costumes, enjoy Thai, and discuss the temperaments of dog breeds (weimaraners are apparently the dicks of the dog world). needless to say, the excitement of the evening was a bit too much for him and he passed out con bowtie.

the lesson to finish off the week was a delightful one. we are currently studying kinetic energy and potential energy, so i wanted to figure out a way to incorporate those concepts and halloween terror. this resulted in : 1- finishing off the daily math race by blasting the kids in the face with strobe lights; and 2- watching Night of the Living Dead and determining the kinetic energy of Barbra's car as it is coasting downhill in the graveyard, the potential energy of the half-eaten head at the top of the stairs, and the kinetic energy of zombies of varying masses. we discussed how Barbra might increase her kinetic energy in the car, either by increasing her velocity OR increasing the mass of the car. one of my students remarked that if the zombie jumped on top of her car the mass of the car would be increased. "yes", i replied, "but then you find yourself in the situation where you have a zombie on top of your car. although, it's better than having a zombie inside your car because they have terrible taste in music and always want to control the radio." i then spent the next few minutes reassuring students that i have never had a real zombie in my car.

and man did my students hate Barbra. every class erupted in cheers when Ben punched Barbra in the face, a scene i had kind of forgot about. there were also comments about how "there's always a shotgun in the closet." um.... ok. i even had a couple kids stay after school to finish watching the movie. so great... i'm just hoping that wasn't because their parents don't let them watch scary stuff and now i'm enabling them. but i'm ok with that. we also got into a rousing debate on why zombies aren't technically dead, but they're also not alive either. soren didn't buy it. the discussion went something like this:

soren: so zombies are alive.
me: no... they're not exactly alive, but they're not dead either. they're the undead.
soren: but they're moving around like they're alive like humans. they're using energy.
nathan (other student watching the film): but humans are alive and they aren't zombies.
soren: yah, but pigs aren't zombies either and they're alive. (he then started laughing super hard)

soren also could not get over why zombies would want to eat humans and not each other. i gently reminded him that if anything, zombies are persistent, but not necessarily intelligent. he just shook his head, genuinely frustrated by the whole zombie population. hopefully the conundrums inherent in zombie livelihood won't keep him tossing and turning all weekend.