Ok, people, the phrase is “worse comes to worst,” not “worst comes to worst.” It’s a progression of bad to even more bad. If you start at ‘worst,’ it can’t really get any more bad from there. It’s already the worst it can possibly be. Let’s get it right, ok?
Posts Tagged ‘Rants’
Ostrich Syndrome, Anyone?
June 25, 2008 – 1:01 pm
Ok, I’m sorry – but our President and his administration are a bunch of idiots. [via: Scalzi]
We Need Better Leaders
April 29, 2008 – 5:53 pm
It’s incidents like this one that demonstrate to me that there is a general sense of paranoia in American culture these days that borders on insanity. In the article linked above, you have a father who mistakenly ordered a hard lemonade for his 7-year-old son, followed by the hysteria of the ballpark guard and the local judicial system. This case is demonstrative of the fact that parents are considered villains until proven innocent, at least in the eyes of our legal system.
Having worked briefly in the social services system, I know there are parents out there who are either negligent or deliberately abusive (and sometimes both); so the existence of a social services system is both justified and necessary. But what I think the current set of laws forgets is that parents are human and sometimes make genuine, honest mistakes – as the father in this case seems to have done. But rather than deal with this as a mistake, the courts overreacted and demonized the father, immediately assuming the worst and raised his case to a ridiculous level that seems, to me, to be completely unnecessary.
This sort of thing goes right along with the current trend of political correctness in our society that people are now afraid of making smart and right decisions in favor of making stupid, politically correct decisions that will, in theory, offend the least number of people. It makes me wonder at how such people ever got to be our leaders, and it frightens me not a little bit that we’ve given them so much power over our day-to-day lives. Common sense, critical thinking, and wisdom seem to be skills lost on the vast majority of people in power nowadays, and what we’re left with are spineless puppets who would rather cater to poll numbers and public opinion1. It makes me afraid, very afraid.
1 Don’t get me wrong – I do want our leaders to pay attention to what the people want, to an extent. We do, after all, elect the leaders that we hope will have our best interests in mind. But when you end up with leaders who are faced with the kind of foolishness presented in this case, and who won’t act on with a certain level of wisdom, then I question whether said leader should be sitting in that particular seat of power.
Superfluity in Capitalism
April 18, 2008 – 10:16 am
I will never cease to be amazed by the amount of crap goods out there for sale, as for example, this mustache comb necklace. In sterling silver. For $120. And that people will actually waste their money and buy these things. We truly live in a luxurious economy where 1) someone would even conceive of a concept like this as a viable product, and 2) where consumers could look at that product and say to themselves, “Hey, I really want that. In fact, I think I need it. And hey, look! Here’s a fat wad of cash I don’t need for, say, food or utilities or whatever. Must. Buy. Stupid, ridiculous. Lip-ferret comb.” And they then adopt that thousand-yard zombie stare of the hopeless consumer slave.
I hope I’m not the only person who’s disgusted by the wastefulness of this growing trend in American consumerism.
Who?
February 5, 2008 – 1:53 pm
Is it just me, or does the Qualified Candidate pool get smaller, shallow, and more stagnant with every election cycle?
IQ Tests That Really Aren’t
February 1, 2008 – 11:26 am
I’m kind of annoyed by all the so-called intelligence tests that keep popping up on Facebook. Most of these tests cover topics like celebrities, TV shows and movies, music, etc. – essentially topics involving entertainment and popular media in US culture. There are several things about these ‘tests’ that annoy me:
- Entertainment is a stupid metric for an intelligence test. The only thing that entertainment surveys actually measure is how much of your time is spent watching TV, listening to music radio stations, or reading celebrity gossip. There are a number of high IQ societies that serve up an IQ test that covers all areas of knowledge, ranging across math, science, literature, history, current events, and yes, even entertainment. But the entertainment questions are just a small subset of the total test. Most of the weight is placed on all the other areas of the test. So, ‘IQ tests’ that use entertainment as the sole field for testing one’s intelligence are just plain stupid.
- On the technical side of survey design, all of these ‘IQ tests’ on Facebook are way too short. A good survey will run anywhere from 50-300 questions, depending on the scope of the data needed. Generally speaking, the more questions you have, the greater the level of accuracy you will get. Very few of these Facebook tests go beyond 20 questions (and most barely break 10).
- True intelligence tests also go through a rigorous set of reliability and validity tests. The reliability tests help ensure that the test consistently measures what it’s supposed to and that it is internally consistent. Validity tests check to see if the survey generalizes to the survey population, that it actually gathers useful and accurate information. You can bet that none of these Facebook IQ tests have undergone that sort of process.
I know, I know – most people just take these tests because they’re fun to do, and I’m probably over-analyzing things. I guess, as someone from a field of study where surveys are part of what I do, I get a little bit bugged by these casual IQ tests that don’t actually measure anything useful, primarily because most of the people who take them actually think that they are IQ tests and take the final scores at least somewhat seriously. It’s misleading, and I find that mildly irritating. Call them what they really are – quizzes that test your knowledge about popular entertainment.
Care Less or More?
October 29, 2007 – 1:56 pm
Ack! People, people – it’s “I couldn’t care less,” not “I could care less.” The former states that there is no more care to be given, that you really don’t care at all and that you can’t possible care any less than you do because you are already completely devoid of care. The latter says that there is still some care there, that it is possible to care less than you currently do by saying that you could care less. See the difference?
Yeah, yeah, losing battle, yada yada. I’ll shut up now.
Verbs!
October 2, 2007 – 1:35 pm
Wow…. folks, pay attention to your verb tenses when you write. Please, for the love of all that’s good and pure (and for the sake of my sanity). Here’s a hint: plural verb tenses go with multiple subjects. Singular verb tenses go with single subjects. And if I used any words here that you don’t understand, the dictionary’s always a good reference point.
Deathly Hallowed
July 21, 2007 – 7:19 am
I can’t wait to get my own copy of Deathly Hallows. It’s going to be difficult and annoying trying to avoid spoilers of the book until I do. I think it’s really quite rude and aggravating when people who are able to rush out and grab the book and read it immediately then proceed to post as many spoilers as they can within hours of the book’s release. It makes it much harder for those of us who wish to find out what happens on our own to keep the ending a surprise. At least, though, all the spoilers I’ve noticed have had the spoiler warning in the title so I’ve been able to skip right past.
Captcha Hate
July 10, 2007 – 7:23 am
Y’know, I really abhor image verification utilities that don’t respect field margins so that, for instance, you can’t determine whether the letter is an ‘E’ or an ‘F’ because it’s dropped off the bottom edge of the field.