Henry Imler May 29th, 2008

I absolutely love crazy and/or humorous things that happen in ancient texts.  I also love humorous lines written in textbooks.  The best example is Dr. Anthony Alioto’s A History of Western Science, one of my favorite books of all time.  Tony is able to work in his sarcastic humor in such a way that it adds to the narrative without becoming cumbersome or tired.  While I am talking about Alioto, he introduced me to my favorite pithy saying of all time, which encapsulates my approach to humor - “A bad joke is better than no joke at all.” Of course, adopting this as my motto has lead to the creation of another saying: “pulling a henry.”

I love the good Dr. Alioto, but this post is not about him nor his work.  It does concern itself with the exersisies found in German for Reading Knowledge.  I am working though the first five chapters because I’ll be on vacation when the class starts, so I need to work ahead.  While doing some exersises, I came across the following problem:

Der Geist ist willig, aber das Fleisch ist schwach. (The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.)

I think to myself, “Neat, I know that from the Bible!  Isn’t that just cool?”  Then I read the next line:

Der Student ist willig, aber er ist nicht sehr intelligent. (The student is willing, but he is not intellegent.)

Not quite as elegant, but very funny.

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