[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings from the underworld! Someone named Sarah Jeong was hired by a newspaper to work on their editorial board. It turns out Sarah has some pretty woke tweets. Here’s a sample: Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants. Ha ha, that’s pretty good. Who hired her to write editorials? The Sweet Briar College student paper? No, it’s the New York Times! Earlier this year, the Times hired someone named Quinn Norton, then fired her on the same day because of what it called racial and anti-gay slurs. I don’t know exactly what Quinn Norton said but I’ll bet it wasn’t as provocative as dumbass fucking white people pissing on the internet like dogs! Look, I hate white men and white people in general as much as… Read more →
Teaching Computer Science: Next Year’s Teacher
I’m volunteering a couple mornings a week in an AP Computer Science Principles class for the upcoming school year . . . Schools are adding more CS classes and, almost without exception, retraining in-service teachers to teach them, rather than hiring people with knowledge and experience in the field. I met with the teacher today to do some upfront planning. At one point, he was calculating how many printouts we’d need for 6 groups of 4 students each . . . “Let’s see,” he said, “6 times 4 is 20 . . .” If you think that’s funny, guess what class he normally teaches: accounting. “Are you going to write that?” someone asks me. “Does he know you have a website?” “I don’t know what he knows or doesn’t know. Except he doesn’t know what 6 times 4 is.” Read more →
How to Not Get a Job Teaching Computer Science
She was a software engineer interviewing for a job teaching high school computer science. One of the interviewers read a question: XYZ School District is committed to effective learning for all students. Key in this work is improving the success of historically underrepresented, low-income and/or students of color. What are your experiences implementing instructional strategies shown to be most effective in increasing the success of these populations? She knew what the “right” answer looked like but after a momentary hesitation decided to answer honestly. “I think it’s probably counterproductive to single out groups of students as needing special handling to be up to the standards of the other students.” “We’re not saying that they’re not up to the standards of the other students,” the interviewer said. “Okay, let me say it another way. We have four labels available: ‘historically underrepresented,’ ‘low-income,’ ‘students of color’ and ‘none of the above.’ “From… Read more →
EppsNet Book Reviews; The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald
I can’t come up with a better synopsis than this article from the Boston Review: Each of these men suffers from memory and from the compulsion to obliterate it; from a mourning and melancholia so deep that it is almost unnamable; from the knowledge that he has survived while those he loved have not; from problems distinguishing dream and reality; from a profound sense of displacement. Highly recommended! Rating: Read more →
The Power of Prayer
A Facebook friend posts: Prayers for my mom. She’s in the ICU. I refrain from saying that a few months ago we were all praying for your dad and he died. 🙁 Read more →
And That’s the Truth: Held Back by History
[And That’s the Truth is a feature by our guest blogger, Sojourner Truth– PE] Black folks been treated very poorly over the years. Jews been killed and run out of almost every country on earth. Asians been slave labor, ostracized, put into prison camps. Now Jews and Asians are doing all right for theirselves. Why are black folks held back by history and other folks aren’t? Never been a Jewish president, never been an Asian president, maybe never will be. Politicians never helped nobody. They promise to give you this or that, or such and such a privilege, if you will give ’em your vote and your money, and when the time comes, they recollect nothing of the kind. Don’t wait for people to do things for you. Keep your families together and make sure your kids get a good education in school. And that’s the Truth! Read more →
Passing for Normal
The onset of the state of mind consisted in a loyalty to objects. She apologized to one egg for having boiled it, to another for not having selected it to boil. Since it was impossible to know with much precision whether an egg prefers to be boiled or not to, she was always in a state of indecision, followed, as soon as she had taken any action, by extreme remorse. Since this is not far from the predicament of most people of any sensitivity or conscience, she passed for normal. — Renata Adler, Speedboat Read more →
See You in Hell: Fake News Edition
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings from the Underworld, my friends and foes! I’m reading about a hostage situation, including a fatal shooting of one of the hostages, at a Trader Joe’s in Los Angeles over the weekend. It was covered nationally and even internationally. Here’s a photo from a British news site of the suspect being taken away: I looked at the major US news sites — CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC — and about a dozen smaller sites . . . no one mentioned the race of the suspect, no one gave the suspect’s name, and no one ran a photo. I could understand a media policy where, in reporting shootings, we consider race to always be relevant, or we consider race to never be relevant, but not a policy where race is only considered relevant when the victim is… Read more →
Only So Big a House You Can Have?
Obama: “Right now I'm actually surprised by how much money I got. And let me tell you something, I don't have half as much as most of these folks… There's only so much you can eat. There's only so big a house you can have. There's only so many nice trips you can take." pic.twitter.com/LALI5TCA0i — CBS News (@CBSNews) July 17, 2018 In other news, the former president and his wife bought an 8,200-square-foot house with 9 bedrooms and 8-1/2 bathrooms in Washington, D.C. for $8.1 million. In fairness, he did say there’s only so big a house YOU can have. He didn’t say there’s only so big a house HE can have. Read more →
Animal House Tax Policy
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland sued the federal government over the Republican-led tax overhaul Tuesday, alleging the new law championed by President Donald Trump unfairly singles out high-tax blue states. — wsaz.com I thought this was noteworthy in that I can’t remember ever in my life hearing a Democrat say anything about people in high tax brackets other than they are not paying their “fair share.” If a Democrat has ever before said that people in high tax brackets are being singled out unfairly, I can’t remember it. The new federal tax law passed last year caps the deduction for state and local taxes at $10,000, meaning that residents of high-tax states like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland — and California, where I currently live — will see big increases in their federal tax bill. It reminds me of a scene from… Read more →
See You in Hell, Champions of Diversity
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] I love diversity and inclusion and equity. Why do I love diversity and inclusion and equity? Because they make everyone hate each other even more than they already do. On one side, you have the people thinking “Look, life’s not a fucking fairy tale for anybody. I’ve been eating a shit sandwich every day of my adult life to stay alive in this profession and these narcissistic pricks want to coattail their way in on a ‘diversity’ exemption.” And on the other side: “The numbers prove that these privileged cocksuckers aren’t giving us a fair shake. Fuck ’em. Their time is over.” In fact, “love” is too weak a word for what I feel. I luuurve it! I loave it! I luff it, two F’s, yes I have to invent! Hell is open borders. Heaven has… Read more →
Be Thankful That You’re Miserable
I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That’s the two categories. The horrible are like, I don’t know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don’t know how they get through life. It’s amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you’re miserable, because that’s very lucky, to be miserable. — Alvy Singer Read more →
Competitive Programming: CodeSignal – footballGroupStatictics (A World Cup SQL Challenge)
Description You are creating a website that will help you and your friends keep track of the results of soccer games from all around the world. You store all results of one group in a table, results. You want to sort the teams in a complex way – first by points, then by total goal differences, and then by total goals. If all of these parameters are equal, sort the teams alphabetically. The results table contains the following columns: first_team – the name of the first team; second_team – the name of the second team; first_team_score – the number of goals scored by the first team; second_team_score – the number of goals scored by the second team. Here the primary key is the pair (first_team, second_team). Return the list of team names sorted in the way described above. Note: see three points for a win to understand how points are… Read more →
A Tolerant and Diverse Society
11,000 New Computer Science Teachers Considered Harmful?
Here’s the start of an email I got from Code.org: We’re kicking off our summer workshops to prepare 11,000 new CS teachers. Last month we welcomed over 600 teachers, facilitators, and Regional Partners to Atlanta, GA for our largest TeacherCon ever. On top of TeacherCon, we also have 350 K-5 workshops and 167 workshops for middle and high school teachers planned this summer, where we expect an additional 10,000 teachers who plan to begin teaching computer science for the first time this fall! This is heralded with an exclamation point, like it’s exciting news, but as a computer science person, I can’t get excited about it. Why do we want kids to be taught computer science by 11,000 teachers who know little or nothing about computer science? How can someone teach something that they themselves don’t do? See if you can get excited about any of the following possibilities: 11,000… Read more →
Competitive Programming: CodeSignal – canScore (A World Cup Challenge)
Description Your friend is a soccer fan and you were watching some World Cup matches with him. You liked this game, but the rules are very complicated for you, so you decided just to try to guess whether the given attack will end with a goal or not. In the beginning, the ball is in the attacking team’s goalkeeper’s hands. On the attacking team, there’s a very talented goalscorer, who is waiting for his chance at the other end of the field. His teammates want to give him the ball so he can score. They can move the ball by passing it one to another along a straight line, but the defender can steal the pass if he is closer than d to the ball at any point throughout the pass. Now you want to know if the attacking team can score or not. Formally, you are given the coordinates… Read more →
Thomas Jefferson: Why I Don’t Wear a MAGA Hat
Folks mad that I said kid who lost his MAGA cap and a drink thrown on him got off easy. I just think he learned a valuable lesson in personal responsibility. You want to offend, be prepared to face the consequences. — Mike Stuchbery ?? (@MikeStuchbery_) July 6, 2018 My fellow Americans — This is why we fought a war to get away from the goddamn Brits. I would personally not wear a MAGA hat in public for the reason cited, i.e., Trump opponents seem to be violent and easily triggered. That said, if your idea of a good time is to steal a kid’s hat and throw a soda in his face, you should probably shut up about the tolerance and mental stability of others until you get your own shit together. As for lessons in personal responsibility, the drink thrower is now in jail. He who laughs last,… Read more →
End of the World Poll
Musical question: What is a good song to play when the nukes start falling? We’ll Meet Again What a Wonderful World Eve of Destruction We’ll All Go Together When We Go Always Look on the Bright Side of Life Clair de Lune Something short Read more →
Doesn’t Tell Me What I Need to Know
A co-worker is telling another co-worker that you have to make sure day care providers are insured and bonded. Actually, being insured and bonded is no guarantee that I want you taking care of my child . . . “Mr. So-and-so, your son wouldn’t stop crying so we taped his mouth shut. The bad news is: he died. The good news is we’re insured and bonded!” Read more →
Competitive Programming: POJ 3281- Dining
Description Cows are such finicky eaters. Each cow has a preference for certain foods and drinks, and she will consume no others. Farmer John has cooked fabulous meals for his cows, but he forgot to check his menu against their preferences. Although he might not be able to stuff everybody, he wants to give a complete meal of both food and drink to as many cows as possible. Farmer John has cooked F (1 <= F <= 100) types of foods and prepared D (1 <= D <= 100) types of drinks. Each of his N (1 <= N <= 100) cows has decided whether she is willing to eat a particular food or drink a particular drink. Farmer John must assign a food type and a drink type to each cow to maximize the number of cows who get both. Each dish or drink can only be consumed by… Read more →