Finland is an exotic, far-away country in the eyes of Americans; a nation we erroneously classify as Scandinavian and imagine as bedecked with reindeer. Beyond this, we know two things about the Finns: they invented Nokia, and they have the world’s best schools. Well, you know, except for the Asians, but they’re in their own…
Category: Education
How Chocolate Milk Epitomizes Corruption in Academia
Academia is absolutely rife with corruption, and it’s a dirty, disgusting secret I’d love to let you in on. Somewhere along the lines, a maternal authority figure should have advised you against crying over spilled milk. It’s a great little aphorism of stoicism, but in the case of an incident at the University of Maryland,…
Order of Operations is a Lie
If you know anyone over 40 on the internet, you have probably come across some image with literally hundreds of thousands of likes/comments/tweets/whatever: What is 2 x 2 + 3 x 4 ? 99% of people won’t get this! There are only 5 actual comments, made tends of thousands of times over: 40 28 16…
Most Kids Are Too Busy to Destroy Society
The Kids These Days TM are making demands on their colleges. They use a lot of hashtags, so it ends up circulating through to the media. From there, we go on to judge the opinions of 18-22 year olds and come up shocked when not all of them seem to be completely well thought out….
You Know How College Costs A Ton of Money…
You know how college costs a ton of money, and you need a bachelor’s and 3 years of experience to work some piece of shit job, and how a lot of young people seem to be delaying major “adult” purchases because they’re strapped for cash? It’s because the economy is doing well. Sic. That is…
When Are We Ever Going to Use This? Probably Never, TBH.
“When are we ever going to use this?” asks a beleaguered middle schooler as she stares morosely at her algebra homework drowning in a sea of red ink. There are any number of canned responses to give to this question, an inevitability in the classroom. I sigh as I look over her sheet. We’ve covered…
What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
This is a question asked by adults to children everywhere, without the slightest realization of how completely insane that is. Most people, let alone children, have no idea what they want for dinner. But what they plan on doing for 40 or so years of their life day-in and day-out is apparently an easy question….
Millennials to Blame for Incompetent Universities, Apparently
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/nation-wimps/201510/where-did-colleges-go-wrong The author of a book title A Nation of Wimps and the author of an Atlantic article entitled The Coddling of the American Mind had a conversation bitching about young people in academia and put it in Psychology Today. That probably suffices as a tl;dr of the article, actually. I wonder how long I…
I Fucking Love Phrenology
“Uh, sir, phrenology was dismissed as quackery a hundred-sixty years ago.” – Mr. Smithers “Of course you’d say that; you have the brainpan of stagecoach-tilter.” – Mr. Burns To get to the part where I talk about phrenology, skip the first 1,600 words or so. On the off chance someone over 30 stumbled upon this,…