Why are academics so poorly dressed?

Particularly, why can't they shift clothing registers with ease?

It's true, on your usual day in the academy, whether you are a man or a woman, you wear pants and a sweater, unless you are more vain or a bigger hobo than most.   It's not especially fancy, but it gets the job done and you probably look like a functional adult human being.

You may feel that this is not appropriate garb for a major conference.  Which is fair, although you could wear slightly nicer pants and a slightly nicer sweater and be home free.  Maybe make sure you're wearing a collared shirt, or a necklace, depending on gender or other preferences.

It is not necessary to look as though you are going to a wedding, and it is certainly not necessary to look as though you are working a street corner.  Heels are fine, but only if you can walk in them, and for the love of Pete, the sessions start at 8:30 in the morning.  That neckline is not appropriate until cocktail hour.

Come on.  Buy one good blazer in your life, and you're golden.  You can wear it with jeans and look charmingly relaxed, or with good trousers and look charmingly put together.  It's not hard!

Why are people pretentious and inconsistent in their pronunciation of Greek-derived words?

You've heard someone say "aesthetic" as if the H were not there.  They do this because they believe, with a certain amount of justice, that this is more "correct," or closer to the classical pronunciation.  (They forget that one must disambiguate a theta from a tau in some way, though.)  Fair enough.  And the sequence "sth" is not the easiest to enunciate, so fair enough there, too.

But.  I have never heard an English speaker do the same thing with either "anaesthetic" or "anaesthesia."  Which I find interesting, because these words are from the same Greek root (αἴσθησις, if you're wondering).

Perhaps they feel that "anaesthesia" is a pedestrian word, connected only with such indelicate things as medicine, whereas "aesthetics" are things discussed over expensive wine in one's salon.  Words that are insufficiently fancy do not deserve higher consideration, or a display of what they consider to be their elevated linguistic training.

But that's stupid, so I'm going to demand consistency.

Why is Kat such a useless Viper pilot?

Look, honey, everyone pisses Starbuck off and makes her sad.  It's practically the Fleet pastime.  If you're not bringing anything else to the party (Lee brings looks, Tigh brings cantankerousness, Leoben brings superb creep), you can go home and take your stupid attitude with you.  It's not fooling anyone.

Yeah, yeah, you were so goddamn touching and illuminating in Xena's piece on the Fleet.  Stop being an embarrassment to your superior officers and die in a fire.

Why isn't the Rose Bowl today?

It is the first of January, right?  Am I missing something?

This is garbage.

Edited:  Oh, wow, Wes has totally blown up my self-righteousness.  If you look in the comments, you will see that the Rose Bowl hasn't been on a Sunday since 1893, because back then we weren't godless heathens.  Gosh!  Thanks, Wes, and sorry, Rose Bowl folks.

(I love my Ducks.)