Thursday Thirteen

Today is the first day back at school at Cornell University, where my momma goes to get her Ph.D. Now, I have never actually been to Cornell because, well, I'm a cat and I don't need no stinkin' degree to prove that I'm clever. But I thought I would share thirteen facts about Cornell just out of interest. I hope you like them:

1) Cornell University was founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and his buddy Andrew Dickson White. Ezra is a funny name.

2) Cornell is both a private and a public university: some colleges are Ivy League while some are state colleges. It is also the only Ivy League Land Grant university.

3) Forty Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Cornell as faculty or students (whoop-dee-doo. none of them were cats)

4) Ezra wrote to A.D. White in 1868 as they were creating the university, making this pledge: "I would found an institution where any person could find instruction in any study.” People make a big deal out of his inclusiveness but note the discrimination: "where any person..." Beans always overlook this blatant speciesism.

5) Ezra made lots and lots of money in the telegraph business, inventing ways to dig telegraph lines and insulate them. Nobody uses telegraphs anymore. Can you imagine a Cat Telegraph-Sphere? Ha ha ha!

6) Cornell has 14 schools and colleges: seven undergraduate schools/colleges; four graduate colleges in Ithaca; two medical colleges in New York City; and a medical college in Qatar. That's really, really far away.

7) Cornell offered America's first university degree in veterinary medicine. Its College of Veterinary Medicine is one of the leading veterinary science research centers in the world.

8) The Vet College has a Feline Health Center. This makes Cornell my favorite school.

9) Cornell's mascot is the Big Red Bear. People just call Cornell "Big Red."

10) Cornell offers 70 different undergraduate majors.

11) Cornell's library system includes 20 different libraries and has nearly 8 million printed books.

12) The main campus of Cornell is in Ithaca, New York, and the campus is on a plateau east of Cayuga Lake (one of the Finger Lakes), with big gorges with creeks at the bottom serving as the north and south borders of the campus. This is why Ithaca's motto is "Ithaca is Gorges." It is also why the Cornell alma mater starts out "Far above Cayuga's waters..."

13) Cornell has over 100 "interdisciplinary research organizations," which means centers, institutes, and programs outside of academic departments. These are my favorites: Cornell Electron Storage Ring (in case you need somewhere to store your electrons for a while); Information Assurance Institute (this assures you that you have information); and, the best: Transgenic Mouse Facility. Building better mice instead of better mousetraps. I hear they are working on a Nano-Mouse.