I have noticed that many of you refer to Stanford as "Stanfurd" or "Furd." Is there any significance behind that? Enlighten me, please.
Dark Reverie;842490838 said:
I have noticed that many of you refer to Stanford as "Stanfurd" or "Furd." Is there any significance behind that? Enlighten me, please.
liverflukes;842490925 said:
Lindsey Vonn just dumped furd alum Tiger Woods.
So Sad:
http://news.yahoo.com/vonn-says-relationship-woods-over-190245690--spt.html
bearsandgiants;842490927 said:
They're both kinda sad, though.
liverflukes;842490925 said:
Lindsey Vonn just dumped furd alum Tiger Woods.
Dark Reverie;842490838 said:
I have noticed that many of you refer to Stanford as "Stanfurd" or "Furd."
CaliforniaGoldenBear;842490943 said:
He was just using her to promote the vapid idea golf was a real sport. Vonn is an athlete for the ages.
Dark Reverie;842490838 said:
I have noticed that many of you refer to Stanford as "Stanfurd" or "Furd." Is there any significance behind that? Enlighten me, please.
BearBoarBlarney;842491011 said:
I think a little history lesson is in order for our friend by way of Tennessee and Kentucky.
Stanford University was founded in 1891 by a lecherous NY merchant named Leland Stanford who came out to California and proceeded to make his millions on the backs of exploited immigrant Irish and Chinese. If you re-arrange the letters in the name Leland Stanford you'll see that it is actually an anagram for "Whore of the Big Four." Speaking of the Big-4, Leland Stanford was one of the big four Sacramento "robber barons" who helped bring the trancontinental railroad to fruition. To this day, at the museum on the Stanford campus there is a replica of the famous Golden Spike that was driven into the track at Promontory Point, Utah, where the Union Pacific line from the east met the Southern Pacific line from the west. To make a long story short, Leland married some broad named Jane Latham, they had a kid named Leland Jr who went overseas and contracted Typhoid Fever or Malaria and died. Leland Sr. then created "Leland Stanford Junior University" to honor his son, which is why it is alternately referred to as a "junior university" and "Dead Kid U." by Cal affiliates.
Rising from a shaky start and some near-bankruptcy years early on, Stanford proceeded to carve out a name for itself as a fairly decent private school filled with extremely ugly coeds and abjectly dorky male students. This model kept Stanford afloat through the 1940s, and then the early harbingers of Stanford's innate ability as an institution to whore itself out to industry started to take place in the 1950 with the creation of the Stanford Research Institute. SRI was a think-tank, but it was also a sanctioned place where Stanford could do a lot of its crazy-@ssed research without getting too much flak from the ivory tower types. Over time, the SRI model proved lucrative, and that willingness to partner with industry has continued right up to modern times with the tight links between Stanford, Google, Sun Micro, Cisco, Yahoo, and so forth. "Partner with industry" is actually just a euphemism that Stanford folks like to use to describe the fact that the institution likes to wear garters and high heels to bed when industry comes a-knockin for some action.
In recent times, for reasons I can't quite fathom, Stanford has become the nation's "it" school. It now accepts only 5% of the ugliest, dorkiest specimens you have ever seen, and then proceeds to treat these cavepigs as something special so that 96% of them graduate and go on to stellar lives of driving Volvos to youth soccer games in Mountain View. The irony of ironies is that Stanford folks like to refer to Cal students and graduates as "weenies." Yes, you heard correctly: there is a whole class of modern day college students who still use the word "weenie" to describe anything. I know, it's ludicrous, but that's considered sacred tradition on the Farm. Oh yes, the Farm -- that is the term of affection that Stanford folks like to use to refer to their huge campus, as it was initially Leland Stanford's stock farm before he decided to honor his dead son by building a campus in the middle of his sh!t encrusted land. As for Cal fans referring to it as "furd," I have no idea, although it does rhyme with turd and there was a whole lot of that on old Leland's stock farm. E-I-E-I-O.
One last thing, the motto of Stanford University is "Die Luft der Freiheit weht," which is German for something like "The wind of freedom blows." There is a lot of hot air blowing around Stanford, so the motto seems somewhat apropos. And if you've ever seen the Stanford coeds, you'd know that hot air is the only thing you'd ever want to be blown by down on the farm. I hope this little history lesson proves helpful should you one day make the decision to do all that is good and right in this universe and come to the University of California. As you now know, there's only one Cal, and it's in Berkeley. And there's only one Stanford, and thank heavens for that.
BearBoarBlarney;842491011 said:
I think a little history lesson is in order for our friend by way of Tennessee and Kentucky.
Stanford University was founded in 1891 by a lecherous NY merchant named Leland Stanford who came out to California and proceeded to make his millions on the backs of exploited immigrant Irish and Chinese. If you re-arrange the letters in the name Leland Stanford you'll see that it is actually an anagram for "Whore of the Big Four." Speaking of the Big-4, Leland Stanford was one of the big four Sacramento "robber barons" who helped bring the trancontinental railroad to fruition. To this day, at the museum on the Stanford campus there is a replica of the famous Golden Spike that was driven into the track at Promontory Point, Utah, where the Union Pacific line from the east met the Southern Pacific line from the west. To make a long story short, Leland married some broad named Jane Latham, they had a kid named Leland Jr who went overseas and contracted Typhoid Fever or Malaria and died. Leland Sr. then created "Leland Stanford Junior University" to honor his son, which is why it is alternately referred to as a "junior university" and "Dead Kid U." by Cal affiliates.
Rising from a shaky start and some near-bankruptcy years early on, Stanford proceeded to carve out a name for itself as a fairly decent private school filled with extremely ugly coeds and abjectly dorky male students. This model kept Stanford afloat through the 1940s, and then the early harbingers of Stanford's innate ability as an institution to whore itself out to industry started to take place in the 1950 with the creation of the Stanford Research Institute. SRI was a think-tank, but it was also a sanctioned place where Stanford could do a lot of its crazy-@ssed research without getting too much flak from the ivory tower types. Over time, the SRI model proved lucrative, and that willingness to partner with industry has continued right up to modern times with the tight links between Stanford, Google, Sun Micro, Cisco, Yahoo, and so forth. "Partner with industry" is actually just a euphemism that Stanford folks like to use to describe the fact that the institution likes to wear garters and high heels to bed when industry comes a-knockin for some action.
In recent times, for reasons I can't quite fathom, Stanford has become the nation's "it" school. It now accepts only 5% of the ugliest, dorkiest specimens you have ever seen, and then proceeds to treat these cavepigs as something special so that 96% of them graduate and go on to stellar lives of driving Volvos to youth soccer games in Mountain View. The irony of ironies is that Stanford folks like to refer to Cal students and graduates as "weenies." Yes, you heard correctly: there is a whole class of modern day college students who still use the word "weenie" to describe anything. I know, it's ludicrous, but that's considered sacred tradition on the Farm. Oh yes, the Farm -- that is the term of affection that Stanford folks like to use to refer to their huge campus, as it was initially Leland Stanford's stock farm before he decided to honor his dead son by building a campus in the middle of his sh!t encrusted land. As for Cal fans referring to it as "furd," I have no idea, although it does rhyme with turd and there was a whole lot of that on old Leland's stock farm. E-I-E-I-O.
One last thing, the motto of Stanford University is "Die Luft der Freiheit weht," which is German for something like "The wind of freedom blows." There is a lot of hot air blowing around Stanford, so the motto seems somewhat apropos. And if you've ever seen the Stanford coeds, you'd know that hot air is the only thing you'd ever want to be blown by down on the farm. I hope this little history lesson proves helpful should you one day make the decision to do all that is good and right in this universe and come to the University of California. As you now know, there's only one Cal, and it's in Berkeley. And there's only one Stanford, and thank heavens for that.
Sebastabear;842490892 said:
Personally I try not to do it (although admittedly they occasionally do something so Furd-like that one will just slip out).
Them calling us "Kal" or ""Low APR U" or "the 59ers" and us calling them "Stanfurd" seems juvenile - but admittiedly i have thousands of posts on a message board devoted to a game involving an inflated pig bladder so I guess I am in fact juvenile.
Of course the dislike is quite real and appropriate. Death to the Furd!!!
dhuang32;842491022 said:
Nearly in tears with laughter... Hilarious! Go Bears!!!
Dark Reverie;842491031 said:
Don't sugarcoat it. Tell me how you really feel. 😂
OldBlue1999;842491057 said:
Well, he was a bit reserved. He politely omitted furds long and storied history of quitting when things don't go their way.
OldBlue1999;842491057 said:
Well, he was a bit reserved. He politely omitted furds long and storied history of quitting when things don't go their way. A tradition that started at the inaugural Rose Bowl game when, down by 40 or 50 points to Michigan, they refused to take the field for the second half. Otherwise he nailed it.
BearBoarBlarney;842491077 said:
I was trying to be balanced in my presentation.
For the record, none of what I said earlier applies to the spouse of our esteemed poster "wifeisafurd." I have never met either WIAF or Mrs. WIAF, but given wifeisafurd's street cred, I can only assume his spouse is the exception to the rule re: Stanford's cavepigs, excuse me, coeds.