Friday, June 13, 2008

Rendering

In my course on language and social interaction, we embarked on an in-depth exploration of cross-cultural miscommunication. People from different cultures can interpret the same language so differently that communication breakdown, misunderstandings, and even prejudice ensue.

Well, yesterday we discovered that you don't need two different cultures for such communication breakdown to occur--all you need are two different majors. I got such a laugh out of this conversation between my husband, an architecture student, and our good friend Bruce, who is working on his PhD in Dairy Science.

The background: We've been discussing laptops since Bruce and Brittney are thinking about getting a new computer.

Jason: My computer's a little fancier than you probably need because of all of my architecture programs. You don't need your computer to do renderings, do you?
Bruce: What do you mean?
Jason: You know, when you shoot photons through a 3D computer model to make it photo-realistic.
Bruce: In my field, rendering means that when a cow dies, you try to salvage as much meat as possible.

Can your computer render?

1 comment:

tweedlediva said...

In my field, rendering means drawing up sketches of sets, costumes, make-up designs, etc. So funny how we all have our own technical languages.