When one finds oneself participating in an endeavor that is entirely without merit, one withdraws.
Leopold, Kate & Leopold
Microsoft Launch 2010
I have no social skills
On Saturday I took my family to the local Museum of Nature and Science, an awesome place with a great Children’s museum. My son also loves the Nature building because of the “flying turtle”: a 20-foot long turtle-saur skeleton hanging from the ceiling.
This particular day my wife and son were doing an activity and I was playing on the floor with our daughter, and some people recognized me from college. This has been happening more recently over the last few months, and I can only imagine it’s a test from God. I failed this one.
Two things: I dread running into old acquaintances and meeting new people. Outside of certain contexts (basketball court, classroom, small church activities) it is painful to talk to people I don’t know well. My wife tells me I get a “get the h**l away from me” look. I don’t mean it, I promise. I just get so tense that I can’t control my facial expressions.
On this occasion the two people I was were friends of a friend from almost ten years ago, and I honestly couldn’t place them at first. But after I did remember, I did not do a good job of reflecting their enthusiasm. They seemed excited to see me, which makes sense; I was glad to see them, because it’s always great to see someone from college and someone from days that I can reminisce about.
But I tanked. I continued to look confused, my level of tension rose, and I couldn’t recover. When they walked away my wife called me over for a little “pep talk”: “You have to try again.”
So I did, I introduced my family, and tried to converse, but was wrangled by a needy three-year-old, and the opportunity slipped away again. I’ve been feeling horrible since, because I really did want to talk! I wanted to ask how they were doing, what they were up to, how long they’d been in town, and so on. But I never got the chance. I kept hoping we’d run into them again, but we ended up in the kid’s area, so it didn’t happen.
Maybe I’ll see them again, maybe not. But I resolve to not choke next time.
“Out of context”
Is this our default response to a challenge to a statement or action?
“You just machine-gunned a room full of people.”
“Uh, that was taken out of context…”
~Mark Davis
That was the response of a parent to the outrage about some young girls (7, 8 years old) doing - uh - creepy and inappropriate dance routines in creepy and inappropriate costumes.
I haven’t seen the video, because I don’t want to. I can live with the description. But let’s just say that this doesn’t need context.
Voters fed up with spendthrift Obama
“Spendthrift”? Yeah, I was confused at first, too.
For others, the problem points to the need to develop alternative forms of job training for people who aren’t academically inclined and are unlikely to finish college.
“We’re telling kids you’ll be a third-class citizen if you don’t go to college,” said Marty Nemko, an education policy consultant and author. “And colleges are taking kids who in previous generations would not have gone to college.”
Nemko favors an apprenticeship program similar to those offered in Finland, Japan and Germany.
Why Charter School's Fail the Test (and it's a good thing)
“This is just one of several evaluations of school choice programs that have failed to show major improvements in test scores, but the size and age of the Milwaukee program, combined with the rigor of the study, make these results hard to explain away.
So let’s not try to explain them away. Why not instead finally acknowledge that standardized test scores are a terrible way to decide whether one school is better than another? This is true whether the reform in question is vouchers, charter schools, increased school accountability, smaller class sizes, better pay for all teachers, bonuses for good teachers, firing of bad teachers — measured by changes in test scores, each has failed to live up to its hype.”
31. Jane Austen, according to Mark Twain (1898)
I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
Does anyone take these people seriously?
I try to keep up with the positions of people who I disagree with, because sometimes I’m wrong, and I like to know as soon as I can so I can, so I can return to my default of being right. I read some Huffington Post articles and Slate on occasion. But it’s getting more and more difficult to take any of them seriously.
I can’t remember a political column, op-ed, or supposed news piece in the last six weeks that didn’t accuse all conservatives of being violent bigots, and/or relate them to some violent dictator. Today I actually read an article that implied Tea Party activists love the movie V for Vendetta. I wonder if the writer actually watched it…because there’s no way you could reasonably say that a movie that liberal appeals to any group of conservatives. The Republican Governors did use “Remember November” in an ad, which apparently has nothing to do with election dates, and is only a call to violence.
So tell me, liberal friends, do you take these people seriously?
Why do they hate the new Google layout so much?
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=0c6f83325492ed66&hl=en
There’s a lot of whining about Google going mainstream, “chasing Microsoft”…and how “now it looks just like Bing.” I wonder if it occurred to any of these people that the reason that’s true is because Bing is a direct copy of the Google layout? They added some color to the header, and some suggested results in the side bar, but everything else—location of sponsored links, link colors, description layout and colors, url color, additional options—is an imitation of what Google pioneered.
So they added a sidebar, so what…you’ll get used to it, and it’ll be fine.
