Friday, January 31, 2014

What the F is up with Washington?

ESPN took a poll of users asking them to evaluate David Stern as NBA commissioner.

What the F is up with Washington State?


Maybe it has something to do with this.

(Technical point: The map shows the most common or model response, not the average [median] response. If it showed the average response then Washington State would give him a C and every other state would give him a B.)

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

The Following

I watched the first season of The Following over the weekend and the thing I kept coming back to was how the villain, Joe Caroll, isn' that bad of a guy.

We quickly find out that Joe is a former professor of English Literature who murdered 14 girls on his campus around 2003-2004, although that number is later revised to 12.

My question is: what English professor hasn't ruined at least 14 lives?

College is expensive. Young people are impressionable. English is easy. There is a real appeal to a short-sighted 19-year old  and English professors are known for seducing students into the major and then leaving them for dead when they graduate saddled with debt and without skills.

I'm obviously joking but it would be nice to see an article from someone defending majoring in the humanities where they emphasize responsibility to the students. You hear a lot about how lazy students are (they are) and about how the humanities are important because they train you to "be a good citizen" (wtf?), but I haven't heard a professor in the humanities pour his heart out talking about how he cares about his students and it pains him when he finds out they are deep in debt and unemployed. Everyone teaching in college for 10 years or more has students like that and English professors surely have more than the average.