I loved this XKCD comic. It’s a very elegant distillation of what’s become a blogger and pundit favorite: if you study X instead of Y, you are a fool. Never mind that our system is slouching comprehensive failure; whoever you are, you should feel bad for studying whatever you studied. If you’re unemployed, underemployed, or unsatisfied in your job, well, it’s your own fault.
To put it in personal terms: I’ve known for most of my life that I would end up in graduate school, even back in the boom days of the go-go early 2000s that I grew up into, when unemployment was low and incomes were bubblicious. That means that I have had people calling me a moron in print for well over a decade now. That’s cool. The system regards everyone who isn’t a profit maximizer as a chump; that’s what it’s for. What has been interesting, recently, is that the ranks of the chumps have suddenly grown. For years, going to law school was represented as the practical, responsible, even mercenary alternative to going to grad school. Going to law school was what you did if you wanted to really go for the American plutocrat lifestyle. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t– the law job market collapsed. Did the narrative change? Did people say, hey, we were sure law school was the practical thing to do, turns out it wasn’t, maybe we shouldn’t be so judgy about shit? No. Instead, law school was just subsumed into that narrative. Never mind that people could have gone into law school at a time when it was considered the most pragmatic thing to do and finished when it was considered a rip-off. No sympathy! The judgment cometh.
We could always insert some facts. Like this one: those with advanced degrees are the single healthiest educational demographic, both in terms of unemployment and income.
Is this the only fact that matters? Of course not. Are there provisos, qualifications, and complications? Of course. Can people find a thousand ways to deny the meaning of this information? I know they can; I’ve heard it before. Demographics are not destiny. What interests me is how desperate many people seem to be to find those provisos, qualifications, and complications. The idea that academics are necessarily chumps is argued back to front: people arrive at the conclusion and proceed to find justifications for it. Why?
Here’s what I think: I think that our culture, to its great shame, has responded to widespread crisis and anxiety not with solidarity but with its opposite. That opposite is the defensive posture of attacking everyone else’s choices. You will never go broke, as a blogger or a journalist, writing stories that call other people suckers. People seem to have an insatiable hunger for narratives that indict the choices others make. Because it’s not just graduate students, anymore, or law students, and you can bet that as more and more occupations fail to deliver the good life, more and more people will be cast down as suckers. What people don’t say, but is abundantly clear, is that their search for suckers is pure defense, a way for them to feel better about their own anxiety, precarity, and unhappiness. In a time of crisis like the one we’re living through now, people could draw together and try to support each other. But our culture, so riven with competitiveness and zero-sum thinking, permits only defense through aggression. When people start talking about other people’s bad choices, I know that they feel angry and sad about their own life.
When the law school turn happened, it was tempting for me to laugh; my own fortunes had been negatively compared to theirs for a long time. Couldn’t do it. I can’t change our culture, but I can do my best to let other people make their own choices and to not be shitty to them. I might end up a sucker, I don’t know. My own department, in a very small field, has an almost unheard of hiring rate. But God knows I could be the one to wreck the track record. If I do, then I’ll do what everybody else is trying to do: get by. And maybe eventually we’ll all say, “Well, the financial crisis sucked, and we didn’t exactly respond to it the best possible way, but it’s a new day, and let’s see how we can make things better for everybody.”
Everybody except for the people who fucked it up in the first place, that is. They go to jail.
arguingwithsignposts
I think this XKCD is better.
David in NY
I think your analysis — “attacking everyone else’s choices. You will never go broke, as a blogger or a journalist, writing stories that call other people suckers” — is wrong. There is a special, particular pleasure people take in attacking people who are educated, who can use complex ideas (which most people, face it, can’t).
This will not change in this country until the A-student gets the prom queen and the football quarterback does not. That is … never.
Ed. to fix — removing feeble attempt at gender equality in penultimate sentence that ruined syntax. DYI.
Raven
“Is this the only fact that matters? Of course not”
I spent a number of years in Adult Literacy Education and GED work. We told folks that a high school credential was “necessary but not sufficient. That applies to every level of education. I had a boss that I had been in a doctoral program with. She hired me and it turned out she was the worst boos I have ever had INCLUDING in the Army. After a couple of years they isolated her in such a way that she finally quit. She had the education but it wasn’t enough.
TR
Because recognizing that academics do what they love, work flexible hours while doing so, make decent money and can earn lifetime guarantees of employment would undercut all their assumptions.
Much smarter to go $400,000 into debt in law school and roll the dice on a corporate career.
srv
It doesn’t matter how much school you took if you just got grades based on PC or affirmative action. So unless you’re a white, non-union male, you don’t deserve that job.
Greg
@David in NY:
I think there is an interesting change happening there, actually. The social “cachet” of being a nerd is huge right now, at least among the young. But I don’t know if that is a temporary phenomenon, or a real social change akin to the overwhelming acceptance of LGBT rights among young people.
Anoniminous
This.
Despite the US obsession with money grubbing, education should be more than mere training to get a job.
Comrade Dread
Haha, just kidding. They get bailouts. And op-ed space in newspapers to tell us all how badly they feel that we cast dispersion on them and we just don’t understand the free market otherwise we’d blow them.
And another chance to do it all again once they buy themselves some congressmen to keep the nasty government from outlawing their insanity.
Southern Beale
You elitist, you! Don’t you know you’re supposed to go to trade school or better yet, drop out and move to Alabama to pick tomatoes now that all the Messkins have been kicked out of the country?
WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA ELITIST SCUM?!
I mean FFS how else are we going to beat the Chinese?
evap
I went to grad school because I loved being a student and didn’t want to think about getting a “real” job. Here I am more than 30 years later a professor — I still have never had a “real” job. I can’t imagine a better life: I love my job (apart from the times when I have to deal with whining students or faculty) and the pay is quite decent. Good job security and my job has been very compatible with raising children.
Of course, it’s much much harder to get an academic job these days than it was when I got my PhD in 1985.
cokane
Great article
David in NY
@Greg:
I’d be interested in the basis of your conclusion, and wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it’s true in certain locales in the country. Things were better for my kids — at, I should say, a school picked not to damage them — than in my midwestern high school four decades earlier, but the word I get from places like where I came from is that things are still pretty much the same. (I particularly admired a woman I knew who taught high school math recently in NC and urged her girls — “Marry a nerd, you’ll never regret it.” I think she felt she was fighting a losing battle.)
WereBear
It can be even simpler than that.
Whatever choice you made must have been the wrong one… or you wouldn’t have ended up this way!
And any fool would have either chosen another career/not been driving that night/manage to avoid that pesky virus.
It has to have been a wrong decision because you wound up here, needing help, when REAL PEOPLE don’t do that.
Of course, it’s stupid. But that’s what they do.
Greg
@David in NY:
I have no hard evidence, and I live in Seattle, which has got to be one of the more intelligence-accepting areas in the nation, so it’s certainly possible that my perception is warped. My kids certainly seem to have it better so far than I did. Our popular culture has embraced things like science fiction, comic books, and computer games wholeheartedly. Anti-bullying initiatives like “It Gets Better” are mainstream. In short, it’s cool to be different and smart right now.
I’m not saying that teenagers will ever stop being teenagers – prom kings and queens and the dates thereof are always going to be chosen for the shallowest of reasons. But there seems to me to be a genuine and massive change in acceptance happening.
gaz
So apparently, considering that my employment prospects have never really been affected by a bad economy:
1. I have a GED
2. I’m astoundingly weird to most people.
3. I’m transgendered (see #2)
4. I refuse to dress in a way that conforms to people’s expectations.
5. I don’t like people, generally speaking.
6. I’m more than a little unstable at times.
By all rights, I should be unemployable. I’m so fucking employable in fact, that I’ve never taken another job before quitting the one I had.
So I don’t believe the hype. Fuck college. Fuck no college. Fuck your major, and fuck whining about your failings, or the failings of others.
From my POV, whether or not you are employable hinges heavily on some intangibles that don’t seem to reflect educational accreditation, personal appearance, or likability. I’m not sure what it is, but all of this post screams utter bullshit to me. All of it.
Then again, I recognize that throughout my life, I’ve found myself on one edge or another of any given bell-curve. It’s a wonder I don’t play the lotto.
Linnaeus
I posted this link about folks with Ph.D.s on food stamps in another thread, but I think it’s worth reposting here. My first thought after I read it was, “How many people will respond by saying those Ph.D.s are just losers who deserve what they get?”
Jay B.
People who go strictly into the Mercenary Arts in college lack context for the world in which they operate. I don’t begrudge that in a plumber — you want them to know exactly how to fix the problem and everyone can learn about anything in self-guided study and experience about the world — but I do in a more complex system like a corporation where middle managers only know a limited amount about everything from interpersonal relationships to basic ethics.
I hate people who go to Business School. They are useless warts on actual achievements.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Southern Beale: Oh so you didn’t even THINK to mention joining the military? :( Communist!!
Amanda in the South Bay
Bleh, I pretty much think I’m fucked most of the time.
James Gary
@Greg:
The social “cachet” of being a nerd is huge right now, at least among the young.
I’d put “nerd” in quotes there. I’ll readily agree that the what used to be “nerd” signifiers– comics, D & D, video games, un-flattering clothing styles, big clunky glasses, etc.–are fashionable at the moment. However, the actual quality of nerdiness–which I will broadly define as a preference for intellectual pursuits over social ones–doesn’t seem, to me, any more or less popular among young people than it ever was.
Amanda in the South Bay
@gaz:
Meh, I’m trans, about to graduate sans job, and yeah, face down depression and anxiety on a regular basis.
James Gary
@gaz:
Um, congratulations on your abilities in your chosen field (whatever it is) and how they seem to massively outweigh your apparently abrasive personality.
The thing is: not everyone is as fortunate as you are in this regard.
Amanda in the South Bay
@James Gary:
Well, trans people do sorta tend to gravitate to tech for those reasons. But yeah, most trans people (male and female) don’t get paid 6 figure salaries and work in IT.
burnspbesq
@TR:
Nobody in the history of the universe has ever gone $400K in debt paying for law school. $200K is just barely conceivable, if you have a non-working spouse and kids and go to school in a high-cost-of-living area. $120-150 is more likely.
If you think you can prove otherwise, let’s see your data.
Xecky Gilchrist
That means that I have had people calling me a moron in print for well over a decade now.
If you’re younger than Boomers, it’s been a lot longer than that.
David in NY
@James Gary: @Greg:
And I guess what I meant to say by my original A-student/quarterback dichotomy was that our culture, even in school, which should be primarily about education, is fundamentally anti-intellectual. You can avoid it, and we sent our kids to a particularly good private school for their first nine years just to do that. But it’s the pool in which we all end up swimming (unless we get one of those professor-type jobs).
(BTW, we measured our choice of school a success when we saw our son, in sixth grade, sitting at the school door as a cute girl flounced by and said to him, “Hi, smart boy!”, and it wasn’t an insult.)
DFH no.6
Ah, it would be pretty to think so, wouldn’t it?
I remember on the Everyone Hates Keith Olbermann Show that he would often, in regards to the financial system collapse, say something along the lines of “and that’s why daddy went to jail”.
I thought then, and I think now, that it’s just not going to happen.
Matt McIrvin
@greg: When I was a teenager in the 1980s, there was a strange rash of jokey teenage comedy movies about science nerds (most of which were really more broad parody than homage), and I remember actually seeing handwringing op-eds about how dangerous it was that people were celebrating social dysfunction and you couldn’t pick on nerds any more. Which just made me even more resentful, because as a nerd I knew full well that you could still pick on nerds.
I suspect part of what goes on is a stage-of-life rather than a cohort effect: other things being equal, it’s always pretty good to be a nerd when you grow up, but it’s never good when you’re a teenager, so people assume as they get older that something changed in a pro-nerd direction.
gaz
@James Gary: I’m well aware of that. As I said, there seems to be some sort of intangible dynamic at work.
@Amanda in the South Bay: Been there. Done that. It wasn’t worth it. 6 figures can blow me. I’d rather enjoy my life.
middlewest
I think this XKCD presents a somewhat alternative, but still convincing, viewpoint.
NancyDarling
@Amanda in the South Bay: Amanda, How you doing? I haven’t seen you around here in a bit.
About the jobs things. I remember reading an interview with David Simon of “The Wire” in which he stated that 15% of the urban poor are extraneous to the functioning of capitalism as we do it now. The same can be said of the rural poor.
Some of our unemployment is structural, not just related to lack of demand. We need a big shift in how we think about work, what constitutes full time work, fair pay, etc.
Also, my son, a mechanical engineer has had no trouble finding a job and just started a new one in the Silicon Valley area that he is very happy with. He is single and doesn’t own a home which gives him mobility that the married-with-children/homes/pets don’t have.
Villago Delenda Est
More and more, the key to success in this fucked up country of ours is to pick the right parents before you’re born, contrary to the desires of most of the Founding Fathers, who had first hand experience with the pure asshatiness that such a system is bound to provide.
It’s why Jefferson fought for an estate tax. He wanted to prevent the accumulation of wealth over generations that leads to massive disparities in wealth that create social instability.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
I think there’s also an element of denial. People desperately want to believe that the universe is just because the alternative is just too horrible to contemplate. They’re perfectly happy to blame other people for their own misfortunes, and sometimes even to admit that they’re at fault even when they aren’t, just to preserve that belief.
Cato
The median wage and unemployment figures for Bachelor degrees are no doubt made better by all the people who are in STEM fields or in graduate school and don’t show up in the unemployment line.
Bottom line is, major in Women’s Studies or Art History and your “career” is going to involve the phrase “one or two sugars in your latte, ma’am?”
Loneoak
Ugh. Is there are worse idea than “we need more business majors”? We’d be a lot better off if we tripled our artists and philosophers. I think we have enough English and lit majors, though.
Cato
He also majored in something real, not Queer Theory.
rlrr
@Loneoak:
At one time there were no business majors (except accounts). One majored in one of the liberal arts, if becoming an executive was one’s goal…
Roger Moore
@gaz:
Maybe you’ve had a good career experience, but that’s not typical for people in your position. And Bill Gates is a very successful college dropout; it doesn’t mean that dropping out of college is a good idea in general.
The only caveat is that you need to be very careful about cum hoc ergo propter hoc when looking at that information. It’s an open question whether educational attainment is directly valuable, a proxy for harder to measure things like determination or social capital, or some mix of the two.
rlrr
@Shit for Brains:
So, how many people have degrees in “Queer Theory”? I’m betting the number is very close to zero.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cato:
Actually, it might well involve the phrase “We’ve got it bracketed. Fire for effect.”
Forum Transmitted Disease
This is not an accident. When all the crabs are busy yanking each other back down into the bucket, they don’t have time to notice that bucket’s headed straight for a boiling pot.
Cato
@rlrr:
I believe Queer Studies is a major.
David in NY
@Cato: The funny thing is you don’t (and I believe, can’t) produce any statistics to prove say, that people who major in business are employed at any greater rate than people who graduated in art history. I mean, go ahead, find me the statistical analysis. Then I’ll believe your crap.
rlrr
@Shit for Brains:
Where? And how many people actually major in it?
Jebediah
@Comrade Dread:
I sort of like it this way, which is how my eye saw it first.
DFH no.6
I have a mech engineering degree (no post grad) and I’ve been working steadily in the building construction industry for over 30 years.
Although my heart’s always been more with the humanities like art and history and literature, I went the “safe route” and pursued a formal education that seemed more sure from an employment standpoint.
Others I know (like my daughter with her medieval history and French degrees – she’s a GS-12 with the DoD and travels the world, now) made other choices, and good for them.
All in all I’ve been very fortunate and it’s worked out for me, and even though I sometimes wonder “what if I’d gone into anthropology or history or English instead?” it’s really no different from wondering “what if I’d married that other girl?” or “what if I hadn’t moved here but stayed there?” and other such ruminations.
Self-righteous motherfuckers who criticize the education choices others make (like a certain asshole troll from hereabouts and his “Queer Theory” bullshit) can go fuck themselves.
ReflectedSky
I liked this piece, and I think it’s basically dead-on. I think the one element missing is that the wealthy oligarchs who are privileged in the current system want to keep it that way, so they make sure their lackeys in media and government keeping pushing the message that whatever is wrong, it isn’t systematic. Mainstream media is basically a giant push poll these days.
@David in NY, your metaphor really bugged me, as it displays the mindset that “nerds” are unattractive males who should be able to land pretty girls as rewards for their intelligence. I realize this isn’t Jezebel, but come on.
Plenty of smart teens are girls, and some of them would love to date smart boys, except often those guys are busy trying to validate themselves by landing cheerleaders — with whom, presumably, they have nothing in common. But yeah, date her anyway, of course. Because she’s pretty. And you want her as a reward. Because that’s what girls are for. (Note that some cheerleaders are smart, as are some football players. Note that some “nerds” aren’t actually all that smart. Likewise, there are handsome nerds, although at that point, they usually shrug off that term and go for another.)
The fact that the football team is more honored, more promoted and more subsidized at most American high schools than the various academic bowls and the like is more relevant.
Rob in CT
This is one of those things wherein there is some truth, but the proponents just can’t help but overplay their hand.
A case can be made that more “STEM” majors would be a good thing (note: not business grads!). This does not translate into defunding the liberal arts, nor does it mean that an uptick in math grads will result in magic ponies for all (indeed, it’s possible that all it would do is increase the unemployment rate of people with math degrees).
Cato: GOP delenda est.
tcinaz
The tenor of these comments reflects exactly what the right has been attempting to accomplish for the last 40 years, erode any confidence in a universal system of education. Unfortunately, the evidence cited is always of the anecdotal variety, which in fact proves nothing more than the truth of variability within a large statistical sample. Sure some people without much formal education prosper, sure some people with unusual social orientations succeed. But these variations don’t support the conclusions that the right has hammered on for two generations now: American educational systems are failing. In fact, the “Education Pays” chart above demonstrates the statistical value of having an education quite clearly. The nuance to how that education is attained and what it contains can be debated, but not the efficacy of education in general. And to those who point to today’s economic woes even for college graduates, understand how the right has worked to undermine the economy at every level so that they could prove their premise that the whole system is failing. Note also though that even in a down economy the statistics still favor the educated, just as the down economy tries to resolve itself despite the right’s fervent efforts to prevent that.
David in NY
@Cato: Do you know how to use Google — you seem to be short on the ability to provide evidence beyond your “belie[fs].” And your beliefs, oddly, are not themselves of much weight.
Cato
China is funding STEM majors, and forcing students to take real, hard science/technical courses. I doubt they waste much time on Women’s Studies and Queer Art History.
Cato
STEM majors should get full freight. Liberal arts majors can pay for their four-year parties themselves.
Brachiator
@Cato:
You are such a tool, and an uninformed one at that.
One of the stereotypes when I was in college, with some foundation in fact, was that some upper class women there became art history majors so that they could join the boards of art museums and add a little cultural cachet to the businessman and lawyers that they were ultimately going to marry.
If you are going to troll, at least try to bring a little wit to your game.
@Villago Delenda Est:
And yet Jefferson was a slaveholding aristocrat whose very comfortable life was founded on the exploitation of others. Many other Founders were either from the elite or sought to join it as quickly as they could. However, I agree with you to the extent that the Founders believed that there could be a lot more room at the table for others.
Jebediah
@Cato:
So which of your credentials are you trying to burnish here? Your anti-intellectualism or your homophobia?
And you and Tom Friedman can take your “let’s be just like Communist China!” stuff and cram it up each other’s ass.
Cato
@Jebediah:
OOOOOOOH! Homophobia! I’m sooooooooooooooo hurt by this accusation! Whatever shall I DO?
Jebediah
@Brachiator:
You know damn well that Verisad will never be able to do that.
Suffern ACE
@Brachiator: Yes, but Jefferson in the end, did his best to die broke. If he was aiming to have T. Jefferson II, III and IV serve as president, he picked a very strange way to go about it.
Jebediah
@Cato:
I certainly don’t expect a proud homophobe to be hurt by the label. But are you seriously asking for suggestions about what you should do?
We could start with Brachiator’s suggestion that you find and employ some wit in your comments. I think that is probably the most (and possibly only) civil suggestion you will get, because you are a sad and shitty troll who only gets attention when people are bored or for whatever other reason feel like punching an easy target.
trollhattan
Hey, somebody had to.
Cato
Speaking of HOMOPHOOOOOBIA!! !OHHOOOH! looks like Amendment 1 is going to pass very easily in NC, despite the fact there’s an active Democrat primary for Governor in that election.
Face it, queers are going to be viewed as repellent freaks by the vast majority of humanity for quite some time to come.
gaz
@Cato: You can always count on Taco to double down on the dumbstupid.
Face it, bigots are going to be viewed as repellent freaks by the vast majority of humanity for some time to come.
Fixed that for you, you drooling idiot.
trollhattan
@Cato:
Assumes facts not in evidence. Thanks for playing, here’s the home edition of our game for you to play, well, at home. To which you should now go.
Jewish Steel
So your Beliefs back up your assertions? What a serendipitous turn of events!
Even this arts degree holder can see the error here.
Cato
@gaz:
Most people are going to be repelled by the idea of shoving a dick up another guys butthole and then ejaculating inside. Sorry to break it to you.
Outside of NYC, New England, San Francisco, an Western Europe (and the latter won’t last long given the growth in the Muslim population), you’re going to be repellent, disgusting freaks of nature. Sorry.
Jebediah
@Jewish Steel:
What error? We had Li’l W “going with his gut” for eight years, and everything turned out wicked great!
rlrr
@Shit for Brains:
Seems like you spend an awful lot of time thinking about these activities…
gaz
@Cato: Actually, the vast majority of people don’t give two squirts of wet shit who people decide to sleep with.
You’re a fucking moron. And you’re the only one bringing teh buttsecks to this thread. Telling. You’re pathetic.
chopper
i, luckily, majored in UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH.
Raven
@Cato: You’re a brave motherfucker behind that keyboard aren’t you punk?
Cato
@gaz:
Truth hurts for you, doesn’t it?
The US is actually a comparatively tolerant place for you compared to, say, China, Russia, India, Mexico,…you get the idea.
gaz
@Cato: I own property in Mexico, bitch. I’ve spent more time there than you spend trolling BJ. I’ve forgotten more about Mexico than you’ll ever know. Of course, it’s a given that you’ll spout nonsense without knowing fuck all about it.
And no it doesn’t hurt. I pwn little bitches like you all the time in r/l. Some words on a screen don’t do shit. You’re a troll. You’re really not that important to anybody. At all. Which is probably why you spend your time here trolling in a desperate and pathetic attempt to garner attention for yourself. Here, you think you’re somebody. In r/l you’re a nobody. News flash. You’re a nobody here too!
Cato
I actually don’t care much about the gay thing one way or the other, you know. I’m just glad Amendment 1 is going to piss off a whole lot of liberals tonight.
Cato
@gaz:
LOL u mad bro?
gaz
@Cato: I stabbed the last bitch that called me faggot to my face.
Ordovician Bighorn Dolomite (formerly rarely seen poster Fe E)
@Cato: @Cato:
You are such a complete fraud.
The baristas don’t put sugar in your latte–that’s up to you.
gaz
@Cato: I stabbed the last bitch that called me a f4gg0t to my face.
Cato
@Ordovician Bighorn Dolomite (formerly rarely seen poster Fe E):
I wouldn’t know, since I never had to have the misfortune of working as one. But I’m sure you know all about it.
Cato
@gaz:
Cool story, bro.
gaz
@Cato: Cooler for me than the bigot.
Too bad cops don’t give a fuck when a tranny bleeds a skinhead, huh?
Ordovician Bighorn Dolomite (formerly rarely seen poster Fe E)
@Cato:
I do like a good cup of coffee–that much is true. But I AM one of those STEM grads you think are so cool, so remember, you admire me and my way of sciencing the shit out of everything in sight.
Cato
@gaz:
So if a wahabbi Muslim called you a f4gg0t, would you stab hi m too? Or would that be an Islamophobic hate crime? I bet a liberal brain would be very, very confused about that one.
Steve in Sacto
A weekly wage differential between high school and college grads of $415 equals #21,580/yr. Over a 40 year work span that’s $863,200 in constant dollars. Taxed at just 15% that’s $129,480 (constant) in additional federal tax revenue. Seems to me there’s a pretty good fiscal case for the federal government to pay outright the cost of college education.
…adding, this doesn’t even factor in the potential social benefits of innovation, invention, scientific discovery etc. from the additionally educated people.
gaz
@Cato: Of course you are confused. That’s not news.
David in NY
@ReflectedSky: Sorry, it was shorthand for “social status,” which is what’s at issue in the whole dissing of intellectuals — the attempt to prove the anti-intellectual has a higher status than the intellectual. I had had a bunch of parentheticals attempting to iron out the one-sided gender aspect of the shorthand, but it was just too clumsy. (see edit to original). Anyway, you are correct that the proper point is that “the football team is more honored, more promoted and more subsidized at most American high schools than the various academic bowls and the like ….” That’s a better statement of the problem.
Cato
@gaz:
So would you stab a wahabbi Muslim that calls you that? Or would to demur out of respect for their non-western culture that was victimized by white colonial oppression?
Cato
*Would you demur, etc.
gaz
Cato, I’ve never met a wahabbi Muslim that has called me a faggot. The only problems I seem to have, is with white trailer trash assholes like yourself. So I guess we’ll never know. Presumably, the muslims are raised better than you inbred fucks
gaz
@Cato: Cato, I’ve never met a wahabbi Muslim that has called me a f4gg0t. The only problems I seem to have, are with white trailer trash assholes like yourself. So I guess we’ll never know. Presumably, the muslims are raised better than you inbr3d fucks.
Jebediah
@Cato:
As has been pointed out by a couple of us, nobody gives two shits about you. You don’t make anybody “mad.” You only get attention when people are very bored, or feel like punching an easy target.
You help illustrate that the right is full of proudly brainless bigots, but we know that already. You are useless. Your trolling is completely, transparently ineffective. Your support of Mittens probably hurts his campaign more than it helps (microscopically, of course.)
I am only engaging with you because I am procrastinating on starting some errands. Do you really think you are hurting Gaz’ feelings, or whatever you are trying to accomplish? As soon as I have some more coffee, I will be ignoring you, just like everybody else here will do as soon as they get bored with you.
Cato
@gaz:
Go to Saudi Arabia (or the French suburbs, come to think of it) and let me know how that goes. I guess you’d be too much of a p*ssy to punch a Muslim, for fear you’d be called an “Islamophobe” by your lefty friends.
In Britain, a LGBTLMNOP group actually canceled a gay pride parade in a neighborhood of London for fear of offending Muslims. I guess you approve.
gaz
@Jebediah: Yep. Also, I’ve got exactly one USB port left that works – I let the magic smoke out, so it’s time for me the schlep it down the road and swap out my case and Mboard. cuz of a short. So I’ve got better things to do now. Just killing time w/ Taco waiting for 2pst so I can strip it over at a buddy’s house. I’m out.
gaz
@Cato: You guess a lot of things. Anyway. Fuck off for now. Time for me to scrape you off of my boot, and move on to more important things I’ve got going on right now.
Cato
@gaz:
Well, I guess you ARE used to scraping things off.
Jebediah
@gaz:
But but but aren’t you crippled by Verisad’s devastating attacks?
Yeah, I am about to head out for my errands, too, and I don’t think either one of us will give Verisad another thought until whenever we feel like troll-punching again.
Brachiator
@Suffern ACE:
I never got a sense that Jefferson intentionally died broke. He appeared to be a crappy financial manager who died deeply in debt.
And he didn’t have any sons, rendering moot any serious question about any Jeffersons succeeding him.
As an aside, it may have been a lucky thing that neither Washington nor Jefferson had sons, which let the country avoid messy problems of what to do with ambitious sons, and helping squash the few embers of the idea that the presidency might be an hereditary office.
ETA: I should add that Jefferson never had any sons with his wife. He had sons with Sally Hemmings.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Veritroll was spewing this same anti-intellectual horseshit over at Lawyers Guns & Money a few days ago in a thread about the Chronicle of Higher Education, except that he was going by “Anonymous” there.
Marci Kiser
I think there’s also an element of the embittered ‘responsible’ adult unloading on what he perceives as unrealistic choices.
“What, you think I wouldn’t have liked to lounge around for five years reading French philosophy and working on my novel while nursing the same shot of espresso for six hours in a coffee shop? I had to live in the real world, you shiftless layabout of a hipster.”
A lot of people have to give up on the things that make them happy because they feel the pressure to “make a living.” When they see others who didn’t have to do that and are being insufficiently punished for not being miserable, it provokes an uncharitable reaction.
BGinCHI
Anyone post this guy singing it yet??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu1VhsNOwPU
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: Drop/Add five zero. Fire for effect.
/gunner pedant
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Cato:
Might I suggest suicide?
Jebediah
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
For some it really is the best choice.
BGinCHI
@Loneoak: That really hurts.
Can we have enough lit majors?
Hell no.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: You just want job security.
I really don’t think that undergraduate majors matter all that much. A well-rounded education that encourages the development of critical reasoning and communications skill is more important. I know English majors who became MDs. Learn how to learn, and you are golden.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Agree. Was just messing with Loneoak.
That’s why it’s so misguided when people assume a major is a specific training regimen. It isn’t.
It’s like when people dismiss kids learning languages. “When would they ever use….?” That’s not the best reason to be bilingual (arguably). The best reason to learn any other language is to learn how to learn at the highest level, as well as teaching you how your own language works.
The world would be a better place if all kids took Latin. Period. World peace in 2 generations.
PIGL
@Cato: You know what? Fuck off and die in a slow fire.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI:
Perhaps you should read some Roman history. Or Medieval history. Peaceful bunch that lot was.
Lord Omlette
FWIW, the one you linked to was actually the 2nd xkcd posted today. The 1st was only available to the first 10,000 people. A mirror is available here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/tao39/xkcd_ten_thousand/c4l0p81
ReflectedSky
@David in NY: What a gracious response. I really appreciate it. Communicating across comments can be difficult.
I agree with you about the how the social status of intellectually talented students vs. athletically talented students reflects America’s fundamentally anti-intellectual attitude.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I always assume George Washington was infertile since he married a woman who had had 4 children before she was widowed at 25 but apparently never got pregnant during her marriage to George.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Yep. There is some speculation that a form of tuberculosis rendered him infertile, and so he had to settle for being father of his country.
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
““Marry a nerd, you’ll never regret it.” I think she felt she was fighting a losing battle.)”
I had a boss who said the terrible thing about engineers was you could trust them as lovers.
Wilson Heath
For a long time I had figured the law bubble was endogenous. Lots of internal factors had been pointing to unsustainable growth for years. Then again, how was this different from the traits of the broader economy? And the prior legal market contraction was around the recession of 2000 or so. Hmm.
I think watchers of problematic sectors may be overly sold on the structural unemployment argument because they saw specific rot that was mirrored in all the other sectors that they weren’t watching. Demand got yanked out from under the house of cards that included all sectors. All majors suffered.
justa poster
The problems in the legal field are simple – there’s been a rise in the number of folks going to law school that’s greater than the demand. There’s also a general lack of understanding as to what a typical lawyer earsn. So, if you are considering the law as a profession, go to a good law school and avoid excessive debt. Pretty simple. Median starting salary is 60K. So, don’t take on more than 60K in debt. There’s no scam, no dark plot that I can see.