A Spork in the Drawer

Math Is Hard!

The Barbie™ ethos in action.

Oy.

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Annals Of Idiocy - Florida Edition

Just...I mean, just...

Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.

But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land 'O Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.

"I get a call the middle of the day from head of supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, 'Jim, we have a huge issue, you can't take any more assignments you need to come in right away,'" he said.

When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell and went much farther than he'd hoped.

"I said, 'Well Pat, can you explain this to me?' 'You've been accused of wizardry,' [he said]. Wizardry?" he asked.

First they came for David Blaine and I did nothing...

[Via PZ]

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Reading Is Fundamentalist

Randroids:

The charitable arm of BB&T Corp., a banking company, pledged $1 million to the University of North Carolina Charlotte in 2005 and obtained an agreement that [Ayn] Rand's novel ``Atlas Shrugged'' would become required reading for students. Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, say they also took grants and agreed to teach Rand.

While it's hard to complain about exposing students to a range of ideas it helps if those ideas are, y'know, somewhat grounded in reality. One would hope that students are also exposed to Karl Marx's critiques of capitalism but I suspect that's given short shrift.

Says one critic:

Scholars scoff at the Rand bounty, saying her ideas are too shallow to build courses around her.

``Rand could not write her way out of a paper bag,'' said Harold Bloom, a professor of the humanities and English at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Bloom, 77, is the author of ``The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages'' (Harcourt, 1994), an examination of the most important works in Western literature. Rand isn't on the list.

It should be noted that Bloom is no liberal. And it should be further noted that one of Rand's great disciples is former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan.

How's that working out?

Disclaimer: I last read Rand maybe 25 years ago and have since (mostly) successfully blotted the pain of it from my memory.

[Via The Shrill One.]

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McEducation

This will wash up on our shores soon enough, no doubt:

McDonald's employees trained in skills needed to run outlets for the fast-food chain can get credit toward high school diplomas, the British government announced Monday.

Along with two other large companies, McDonald's Corp. was given the power to award the equivalent of advanced high-school qualifications as part of a plan to improve young people's skills, said the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, a government education regulator.

From the Guardian:

Speaking on GMTV, [Prime Minister Gordon] Brown said: "You have got to do a pretty intensive course to get that qualification. It's not that standards are going to fall. It's going to be a tough course. Once you've got that qualification you can go anywhere."

Don't laugh. McDonald's has already tried to weasel into our school system:

McDonald's has decided to stop branding report card envelopes in a program that gave kids in Florida free food as a reward for good grades after a backlash from parents concerned about exploitive marketing. Teport (sic) cards came in an envelope...telling kids to check their grades and redeem a free Happy Meal if they got all A's and B's or got good marks in "Citizenship" or attendance. The jacket also showed a smiling Ronald McDonald and mentioned McDonald's several times.

Perhaps a course based on being a WalMart "Greeter" would be desirable.

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The Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad

Whenever I see crap like this:

These days, nearly every piece of a school is available for "donor recognition" during many capital campaigns. While it hasn't quite gotten down to the level of the "John Q. Alumni Memorial Electric Socket," naming opportunities are getting increasingly specific.

[…]

Colleges have long offered opportunities for naming buildings, stadiums and scholarships. But more recent campaigns are moving to high schools and elementary schools -- and come closer to naming desk chairs than endowed chairs.

...I’m reminded of David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest which takes place in a dystopian near future. Rather than years being numbered (e.g., 2007), naming rights are sold to corporations. The story takes place in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. Some previous years include the Year of the Whopper and the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad.

While irony may not be dead (pace Graydon Carter), satire is rapidly becoming indistinguishable from fact.

Hell of a country we live in.

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