“Sifting and winnowing” is the UW term for the intellectual work we all do, which is supposed to be simultaneously in service to Truth and to The People Of Wisconsin. Today we got a rare chance. A guy called the math department in order to settle an argument with his girlfriend: is zero an even number, an odd number, or not a number?
His girlfriend won.
You only find a phrase like “sifting and winnowing” in agricultural place like WI.
If we combine this with Grothendiecks “Recoltes et Semailles”, we may soon construct a full intellectual analogue of the life cycle of a cereal grain.