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B Students of the World Unite!

Scott Adams

This thoughtful column by Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) offers the best advice I could have used back in the day (Tennessee Technological University – 3.0 GPA).

Adams writes:

Why do we make B students sit through these same classes [physics, chemistry, calculus]? That’s like trying to train your cat to do your taxes—a waste of time and money. Wouldn’t it make more sense to teach B students something useful, like entrepreneurship?

Adams offers a few teaching ideas for curriculum starters in such a class:

Fail Forward. If you’re taking risks, and you probably should, you can find yourself failing 90% of the time. The trick is to get paid while you’re doing the failing and to use the experience to gain skills that will be useful later.

If only I had read that 20 years ago…

In a blog post expanding on his WSJ column, Adams makes a provocative statement:

Today, life is more complicated than school. That means the best way to expand a student’s mind is by teaching more about the practical complexities of the real world and less about, for example, the history of Europe, or trigonometry.

He qualifies the rather startling statement with:

I’ll pause here to acknowledge that both history and trigonometry are useful for students who plan to become historians or rocket scientists. For the other 99.9% of the world, little from those classes will be retained.

Whether you agree with his model or not, it’s a least a starting point for a broader discussion about how we can move from what I call the “Testing, Testing 1-2-3 Model” to a reformed “Welcome to the Real World Model.”

Sippy Cup, Shaken Not Stirred

Personally, I think Olive Garden should use this incident as a marketing tool.

“Olive Garden: Unlimited Breadsticks, Salad and Sleepy Kids. Quality dining experience”

According to the report:

Jill VanHeest says she took her 2-year-old son Nikolai to the hospital after his eyes turned red and dilated and he began acting up.

So, is it Olive Garden’s fault that her kid is a mean drunk instead of a mellow, sleepy one?   Side Note: I’d love to know the details of his “acting up.” Where’s YouTube when you need it?  Did he sing “Don’t Stop Believing” off key?

Call me callous but, honestly, how many of you parents never gave your kids a shot of Benadryl when they had the “sniffles” (read: wouldn’t go to sleep). In my parents’ day, babies used to be given a little whiskey in their milk when they had a cold.

Remember: Friends don’t let friends play pick-a-boo drunk. True story.


From Freakonomics:

Last year, the computer program True Knowledge concluded that the most boring day in human history occurred, 57 years ago today. Using algorithms that used weighted values for more than three million facts including historical events, birthdays of significant people, etc., it determined that April 11, 1954, was really, really uneventful.


A Place to Hang Out?

The following story needs no commentary from me..I’ll just let it hang there.

In life, Pall Arason sought attention. In death, he is getting it: The 95-year-old Icelander’s pickled penis will be the main attraction in one of his country’s most bizarre museums.


Burka Brouhaha

So, Europe is in an economic tailspin and yet the French government still has time to repress individual freedom and religious expression. Parlez vous stupidity?

“France’s new ban on Islamic face veils was met with a burst of defiance Monday, as several women appeared veiled in front of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral and two were detained for taking part in an unauthorized protest.”

We’re With Stupid——>>

Imagine you pay an accountant/financial manager a six-figure annual income to maximize your finances….set up a reasonable budget, pay bills, keep you out of debt, etc.

Now imagine this mythical bean counter called you today and said:

“Great news! Even though I’ve had all year to prepare your budget, I’m only getting it done at the 11th hour and it’s only good forhalf a year.

Oh and by the way, with this budget, you’ll still keep falling deeper into debt for the next decade but you’ll feel good about it for at least a year.

So, $33 billion and $40 billion amounts to 0.23% and 0.28% of the total federal deficit. Even with these cuts, the deficit will grow because they’re not even close to the amount of spending reduction we need to actually get back in the black.

These numbers should tell you that the federal government has nothing but a token intention to reduce deficit spending. (The Street.com)

And remember how I said we would cut all this unnecessary household expenses. Yeah, turns out we’re gonna spend more on the most unnecessary ones. Yeah, that’s greeaaat.”

“HOW DID THIS HAPPEN!” you exclaim, grabbing the number cruncher by his paisley tie.

“Well, it wasn’t my fault. It was the other guys in my firm!”

“This is indefensible, and everyone should be outraged,” Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor. “The Republican House leadership have only a couple of hours to look in the mirror, snap out of it and realize how truly shameful they have been.”

In a terse statement of his own to reporters, Mr. Boehner said there was “only one reason we do not have an agreement yet, and that is spending.” He asked, “When will the White House and when will Senate Democrats get serious about cutting spending?”



How long would it be before you told the bean counter to yeahh..go ahead and ummm …. leave.  And yet, we keep paying our supposed budget gatekeepers more and expect behavior no better than school children (except school children generally don’t hold press conferences to show off their childishness).