[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE]
John Lennon lyrics are now Catholic doctrine!
See you in Hell!
See You in Hell . . . if There Is a Hell
Overheard
“I thought that went out with zithers and tarot cards.”
“I still use tarot cards.”
“OK, I thought it went out with bread baking and Russian civilization . . . do you bake bread?”
“I could bake bread.”
Terrifying Xanax Resurgence!
You know what’s good when you’re terrified? Xanax!
If You Act Like an Idiot, I’ll Kill You
When my son was growing up, I found a lot of opportunities to point to someone else’s kid and say, “You see what he just did? Don’t do that.”
When I saw a kid acting like an idiot, I assumed the parents were idiots . . . the kid either learned it from the parents or the parents allowed it to happen.
So if my kid were to act like an idiot, I assume other people would think I’m an idiot.
A friend of mine recently shared some advice he got from his dad growing up. I’ve paraphrased it as the title of this post.
Of course killing your own children is going too far, but in a figurative sense, I believe this is good advice and I endorse it . . .
Though Much is Taken, Much Abides
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Oh by the Way, Doc . . .
I walked by a TV playing a pharmaceutical advertisement . . .
Before taking [drug name], be sure to tell your doctor if you’ve had a liver transplant.
Shouldn’t your doctor know if you’ve had a liver transplant?
Teaching Computer Science: How to Get Top-Notch Teachers in the Classroom
I read something every day where educators and/or elected officials are talking about the importance for our kids, our country, our future, etc., of teaching computer science, the sticking point being an extreme shortage of qualified teachers.
A person entering the workforce with a computer science degree is unlikely to go into teaching because of the opportunity cost: they can earn a lot more money as a software engineer.
The likelihood of getting a mid-career tech industry professional to switch into teaching is even lower. Teacher salaries are based in large part on years of service. A mid-career person switching into teaching is not going to get a mid-career teacher’s salary, they are going to get a first-year teacher’s salary.
So here’s the idea:
Give CS professionals the opportunity to apply their years in industry to years of service as a teacher.
It’s still a pay cut going from software engineering to teaching but it’s on a scale that people may be willing to take if they’re looking for a new direction in life. It’s not a pay cut to back when you were 22 years old and right out of college.
What’s the alternative? Schools can’t attract qualified CS teachers so they’re taking in-service teachers and sending them to a workshop for a few days to learn to be computer science teachers.
It’s like hiring music teachers who aren’t musicians, or Spanish teachers who don’t speak Spanish.
Are you going to have a good CS program if it’s run by someone whose only connection to the subject is a five-day workshop? No. Are kids going to get excited about computer science? No. How could they? The teacher isn’t even excited about computer science.
How can these teachers know if what they’re teaching is valuable, or how well they’re teaching it?
Programming is difficult, there’s no way around that. The first programming class I took in college had a 75 percent drop rate.
The essential difficulty is that we’re used to giving instructions to other humans. If our instructions are less than perfect and we leave out some details, people can still probably figure out what to do. If we send a text or an email with a grammatical error or a typo, the recipient can figure it out.
Computers can’t figure it out. If you’re giving instructions to a computer, everything has to be perfect and you can’t leave anything out. It’s not a natural mindset, operating at that level of detail.
UC Berkeley offers a CS class, intended for non-majors, called The Beauty and Joy of Computing, the idea being that yes, programming is hard, but it also opens up new ways for people to connect, design, research, play, create and express themselves, to translate ideas into code.
You can’t get the beauty and joy and challenge and fun of computing across to students via teachers who just learned programming at a week-long workshop last summer. The only thing that comes across is how difficult it is.
Introducing kids to computer science and programming in this way may be worse than not teaching CS at all. Kids decide pretty quickly that programming is too hard, it’s boring, they’re not smart enough, they don’t have the right aptitude, their efforts are not rewarded and they don’t want to have anything to do with it because it makes them feel bad about themselves.
Computer science is not unique in this respect, but it’s less about presenting “material” and more about conveying a way of thinking. Teachers can’t convey a way of thinking when they don’t genuinely think that way.
If teaching CS is important, provide an incentive to get qualified teachers in the classroom, who can teach what they do, teach something that is part of their life, teach something that is personal and valuable to them, and pass on their own insights and experience.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
More Words and Phrases I’m Sick Unto Death Of: Work Hard, Play Hard
You work hard? Is that a boast? Maybe you have to work hard because you lack talent and finesse.
You play hard? Are you a bad loser? Are you an even worse winner? How do those two words even go together — “play” and “hard”?
An Atheist Falls Into a Swamp . . .
[David Hume] once fell into a swamp near the house he was building in Edinburgh. Owing to his reputation among the locals as an atheist, a woman refused to pull him out of it until he recited the Lord’s Prayer and the Belief, which, being practical-minded, he did. But not before he argued with her about whether Christians were obligated to help their enemies.
How I Married My Mother
Oklahoma mom who once married her son will now go to jail for marrying her daughter — Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Mom is being jailed for felony incest. I think we can all agree that marrying the son was a wrong thing to do, but I thought incest requires sexual intercourse.
The two women are adults, there’s no child abuse, there are no reproductive issues to consider, so if you happen to hit it off with your mom in that way, why not?
Look, they even have matching outfits!
A Story-Telling Mothman
To Be a Believer
You probably seem to yourself to be a believer, even if you are a believer in disbelief.
But you cannot really believe in anything until you are aware of the process by which you arrived at your position.
Before you do this you must be ready to postulate that all your beliefs may be wrong, that what you think to be belief may only be a variety of prejudice caused by your surroundings — including the bequest of your ancestors for whom you may have a sentiment.
True belief belongs to the realm of real knowledge.
Until you have knowledge, belief is mere coalesced opinions, however it may seem to you.
Coalesced opinions serve for ordinary living. Real belief enables higher studies to be made.
More Words and Phrases I’m Sick Unto Death Of: Manterrupting
I’ve only heard it once and I’m already sick of it. According to the person who said it, it means a man interrupting a woman.
Is there a word for a woman allowing herself to be interrupted? I mean, men interrupt other men too, we just decide whether or not we’re going to allow it . . .
More Words and Phrases I’m Sick Unto Death Of: Signage
Like most words, the plural of “sign” is formed by adding an “s” on the end, not by adding “age.”
Someone must have figured out that “signage” sounds more impressive to the clientele.
“That’s a lot of money just to put up some signs.”
“We’re not putting up signs, we’re putting up signage.”
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of: High School Gun Experts
I’m burned out on the high school gun “experts” for a couple of reasons:
- They’re rude.
- It’s too obvious that someone or a collection of someones is scripting their talking points.
I heard one of the kids raising an obscure point about record-keeping requirements at the ATF. Most gun control advocates are not even familiar with the basic mechanisms and terminology of guns, let alone with ATF policy minutiae. That’s something a gun control lobbyist would know about, but it’s not something a high school kid knows about, unless it’s scripted out for him.
I don’t object to the anti-gun message, although I disagree with most of it . . . I object to being treated like the kind of rube who can’t tell when a high school student is plagiarizing someone else’s ideas.
Also: these kids have a platform, not based on their own merits, but because 17 other people died and they didn’t. They’re not policy experts. Under the circumstances, maybe tone down the arrogance and be respectful.
Turning Away Wrath
There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.
She Never Even Knew It
Chapter XXII of George Eliot’s Middlemarch starts with an epigraph from Alfred de Musset:
Nous câusames longtemps; elle était simple et bonne.
Ne sachant pas le mal, elle faisait le bien;
Des richesses du coeur elle me fit l’aumône,
Et tout en écoutant comme le coeur se donne,
Sans oser y penser je lui donnai le mien;
Elle emporta ma vie, et n’en sut jamais rien.
Some editions of Middlemarch provide a translation in a footnote:
We talked for a long time; she was simple and kind.
Knowing no evil, she did only good:
She gave me alms from the riches of her heart,
And listening intently as she poured out her heart,
Scarcely daring to think, I gave her mine;
Thus she carried off my life, and never even knew it.
The Events Leading to My Death
The title of this post would make a good title for a blog, I think. Feel free to use it as I already have a blog title.
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of: Chevron
I like the sodas at Chevron . . . they’re not restaurant quality, but they’re better than the flat, tasteless sodas you get at most other gas stations.
On the downside, Chevron as often as not has some donate-a-buck-to-charity shakedown going on at the register.
“Would you like to donate a dollar to CHOC?” the clerk asks as he rings up my soda.
“No, but if Chevron wants to take a dollar out of the price of that soda and donate it, I’m okay with that.”
If I want to donate to CHOC, I’ll donate to CHOC. If Chevron wants to donate to CHOC, let Chevron donate their own money to CHOC.
Don’t strong-arm the customers into donating, then pat yourself on the back for your charitable activities.
Driving Mr. Nietzsche
