If you haven’t already watched this, it’s a great clip to forward to your fear-addled Facebook acquaintances and elderly relatives. It’s Shep Smith! He’s a FOXS NEWS favorite! As NYMag described the clip:
Fox News conscience Shepard Smith brought a rare moment of sanity to the network this afternoon when he shut down a colleague’s report that there was a “widespread panic across the country” over Ebola. “Oh my God, Doug, I appreciate it, but I think we both know there’s no widespread panic across the country,” Smith said. “And I think we also know that if there’s a widespread panic, it’s not based in fact and it’s not based in reason.”…
Rather than insinuate that the government is lying and President Obola is to blame, Smith went with real talk: “There is politics in the mix,” he said. “With midterm elections coming, the party in charge needs to appear to be effectively leading. The party out of power needs to show that there is a lack of leadership.” In other words, stop watching Fox News immediately…
But surely we’re still allowed to mock…
Oh man @MattBors is the best. pic.twitter.com/UPBjfy7eeB
— Adam Serwer (@AdamSerwer) October 16, 2014
“Erick Erickson: He’s what you get if you take an influential political evangelical, boil him in a pot, skim off the tallow, mix it with a little dog pee, and apply it to your front door in the form of a giant “X” in hopes that human kindness will see it and pass your house over. And the amazing thing is: It will.” – Adam Weinstein, Kinja
The sum of all fear-mongering: http://t.co/cPjwVKLwRI
— Daniel Larison (@DanielLarison) October 16, 2014
***********
Apart from giggling at the self-serving morans, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
schrodinger's cat
Whatever happened to all the South American children that were coming over the southern border? That issue seems to have completely faded from the news. Now it is Ebola, all the time.
khead
My wife and I both work from home.
Even before the outbreak – I only left the house for food, gas, and betting on the NFL.
So, my lifestyle is still intact. At least until the cable is shut off. As for the rest of you…
You have my sympathies. /Ash, Alien.
raven
Anne, I’m reading yet another book about the Battle of Atlanta in the Civil War. I just read the part about the famous Night March by Hardee’s troops and it seems as if they sang Annie Laurie as they departed the city.
JPL
I don’t think we have to worry about dog pee.
TheMightyTrowel
Question: why do students grade grub? Does it ever actually work?
I just got a 2 page long email explaining why I had marked an essay badly (I gave it a D+) because even though it didn’t do what I’d asked her to do and made some deeply flawed logical jumps she had read some books and the logical jumps were demonstrating originality.
All this made funnier because this is a co-taught class and my co-lecturer and I second marked all the essays so her grade has already been reviewed.
Southern Beale
Rush Limbaugh does not like being told not to panic:
beltane
@TheMightyTrowel: It seems the student put more effort into contesting her grade than she did on the original assignment.
Violet
The 60-something white guy sitting behind me at jury duty, who was spouting off wingnut talking point to the two other white guys sitting near him and who tried to get me to engage in the conversation as well, was concerned that someone in the jury assembly room might have Ebola. Yes, seriously.
aimai
@schrodinger’s cat: Right, I think these Republican congressmen are lying down on the job. The truth is right in front of our faces:
South American children with calves the size of cantaloupes are carrying Ebola infected Gay Isis Members over the border with Mexico in order to Protest the Keystone Pipeline and Bring America To Her Knees.
Baud
I’m still terrified of the Grand Zero mosque.
aimai
@Violet: Woah.
EthylEster
Wow. Is that a real pic of Larison? For some reason I imagined him about 50.
The Dangerman
How long until an approved vaccine for derp?
jl
I don;t want to PANIC people… but models for contagious disease epidemics work pretty well for rumors and spread of BS through population too… Dunt Dunt Dunnnnnnnn!!
Will the ebola panic rumor epidemic SPREAD!? Will you, random citizen, be run down in an Ebola rumor panic outbreak stampede?
This will be so cool and win the morning. Good excuse to call in the hordes of national security experts from their trailers down by the river.
lamh36
@Violet: Let me guess they probably saw someone of a darker hue with a possible accent…right.
Ugh…people are idiots…smh
Baud
@Violet:
If you have to ask who has ebola, it’s probably you.
TheMightyTrowel
@beltane: Actually, the sad thing is that she definitely did put effort into the original assignment. She just put the effort into the wrong places and the whole thing fell apart. She mis-read the essay prompt then made figures which made no sense to support her misreading. Essentially, she tried to argue that a short story about neanderthals (this is for an archaeology on film and in fiction class) was a legitimate critique of archaeology and archaeologist’s perceptions of the past when actually it’s a story that makes use of ancient people to discuss violence in human society and whether or not it’s innate.
lamh36
I’m trying my best to ignore as much “newsy” stuff as possible. I’m in countdown mode right now. 15 days and I’ll be on my way to Hawaii.
Tonight though, I’m just sitting here surfing the net until 9pm when I have to watch my latest obsession, “How To Get Away With Murder”. As I told John C on Facebook, Viola Davis is my “spirit animal”. I just lover her. It has become destination television for me on Thursday nights.
the Conster
@Baud:
It’s always always always projection with those assholes.
Omnes Omnibus
@EthylEster: He looks like he could easily be 50.
the Conster
@lamh36:
Me too, except the Patriots game tonight. Also Mysteries of Laura.
Anoniminous
@Violet:
lordy
Baud
@Baud:
I’m so terrified I can’t even spell “Ground” correctly.
Hal
I’m trying to figure out if I want to complain to the union regarding my office. I work in a hospital, small office, phone job in new york state. We’ve been short staffed and informed by our boss that because of a consultant, we are technically overstaffed, even though my co-worker who was hired a little under a year ago as a part timer works full time hours because there are not enough people.
Office has mandates. Someone calls in, takes vacation etc, someone gets mandated if needed to cover the shift. So, next month my coworker who works 7am to 3 on Sat so I am being mandated to cover. Problem is I work my normal night shift from 11p Friday to 7am Sat. So I’m expected to stay until 3pm, then come back at my normal 11pm shift that same day.
On top of all of that, all of us who work from Friday at 5pm until Monday at 7am get no breaks of any kind because we all work alone on each of 3 shifts. I just don’t know if the union is going to anything, if the corporate compliance office is the way to go, or if complaining to the bosses will work. They know obviously about the schedule, so I doubt they care.
Sigh. I just need a new job.
Roger Moore
Unless you’re Natalie Portman or covered in hot grits.
Mnemosyne
@Hal:
I have no idea who you should complain to, but you should complain to someone. Is there a state OSHA office that you can make an anonymous call to? It still seems weird to me that they can schedule you for only an 8-hour break between shifts, and a daytime break at that.
ETA: Also, isn’t that going to put you over the top for the week as far as overtime hours? Or did they work some other scheduling magic so you stay under 40 hours for the week?
aimai
@lamh36: I’m into the Blacklist. Big time.
Roger Moore
@The Dangerman:
Never. SATSQ.
aimai
@efgoldman: But the real question is what is the contagion rate for derp?
Violet
@lamh36: They certainly did. I live in a very diverse community and the jury duty pool was a good cross section of our community. There was a much darker hued woman seated across the aisle from them and this particular man looked quiet askance at her when she walked in.
It never fails to amaze me how older white people, and I guess white people in general but it seems to be a definite thing with the older ones, will start spouting off wingnut talking points and political opinions in public. You don’t see that happening with other people. It’s totally white privilege. They can do it because the consequences are minimal. Particularly for men.
jl
I am not sure whether Smith is really the conscience of Fox News, or he is just earning his keep as the token sane person.
If he is the token sane person, really should not give him much credit, since he probably senses when time to pop up and provide a fig leaf of fair and balanced.
I will admit he is far more competent than most of Fox’s token liberals. That is a very low bar, but he can easily pass.
JPL
After listening to the Iowa debate, I feel like I need a shower.
Hal
@Mnemosyne: OT isn’t an issue in my work place. They pay out left and right. One advantage of hospital work. One pay period I voluntarily worked 33 hours of OT, so I’ll get paid. I just don’t see how I can stay awake from 11pm to 3pm, and I am a half hour drive from home.
Honestly, it’s an easy job (for me at least) that I took to go to school. A part of me feels a little guilty because when there is down time, and that’s usually in the evenings after 6 or 7, calls can come in steady but not overwhelming. Midnight shift is mind numbingly dead. I can do homework. Hell, my co-worker watches stuff on her computer.
But lately just having to be hear all the time, days off, 16 hour shifts, it starting to get annoying.
Violet
@the Conster: Do you really like The Mysteries of Laura? I watched it because they were re-airing it on Friday or Saturday last weekend and I figured out who was responsible for the crime in the first three minutes or so. It was telegraphed from the beginning. I don’t find Deborah Messing plausible as a detective and I don’t believe she and Josh Lucas’s character were ever married. They don’t have chemistry. The other characters seem like cardboard cut outs. I don’t get the appeal.
Corner Stone
@JPL: Don’t use all the hot water.
Nellie in NZ
My daughter is transiting through Dallas just now. She says that a drunk guy got on her flight, joking that he was exposed to ebola. Is that going to be treated like joking about bombs?
She didn’t seem too worried – just saying, wow. When the trip was planned months ago, Dallas wasn’t a concern.
The Dangerman
@Roger Moore:
This isn’t good as I think I just heard O’Reilly say that Mitt Romney will likely be the candidate in 2016; I mean, there’s derp and then there’s deep derp.
Violet
@Nellie in NZ:
Dallas is always a concern.
Mike J
@Roger Moore: Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those.
Hal
Also, saw a black kitty that I always see in my neighborhood, one that was more kitten size about two months ago, hauling a big squirrel behind the neighbors shed across the street today. There are a ton of squirrels on the surrounding streets, seems more than usual to me, and by my estimate 3 or 4 strays I see up and down the block and the alley my house is next to.
Feel sorry for the poor squirrel, even though in the last house I had the damn things kept getting in the attic, and the only help the landlord have was giving me a squirrel trap. I relocated 8 squirrels over two years, and eventually they seemed to get smarter and smarter.
My last attempt at bait involved a left over piece of pizza, and when I looked outside later, there was a squirrel in a tree eating the pizza he snatched from the trap without setting off. So I guess I’m team kitty.
Roger Moore
@Mike J:
I’m sure Cowboy Neal can.
chopper
@efgoldman:
In soviet russia, oh forget it.
MomSense
@aimai:
I love that show, too.
raven
@Hal: A big red tail hawk got a squirrel in the backyard Sunday and I hope it was just the beginning.
debit
My office’s client base is about 80 percent Somali. Coworkers have been talking about how to “deal” with the situation if one of them comes in after traveling overseas. No one was amused when I suggested that we would probably be okay if we simply refrained from licking the clients.
the Conster
@Violet:
I really like Debra Messing. I think of her like Lucille Ball – I watch her, and don’t care about the plot. She’s in every scene and pulls off some great physical comedy effortlessly and carries everything she’s in. I loved The Starter Wife. I never got into The Good Wife.
Roger Moore
@chopper:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
In Soviet Russia
Poem write you!
Mike J
@Roger Moore: One of the boys from Holland, MI used to show up at the London perl mongers meetings back in the day, but I don’t recall which one.
gene108
I am biting the bullet and signing on for a personal trainer. Small exercise studio in a strip mall. I’ve been fat for the last 11 years and I have not been able to get the weight off by myself.
Hopefully, with some guidance, I can stay focused enough to do it this time.
Baud
@the Conster:
I like Messing, but not in that role.
trollhattan
@jl:
When he gets spun up on air I really don’t think Shep is faking it. FWIW I do wonder whether he has any moments of self-reflection when he cashes the checks.
raven
Unfortunately I set my camera on autofocus and it focused on the little flowers instead of the big hawk but here it is.
skerry
Y’all hear about #clipboardman?
Also, my favorite FB RWNJ (childhood friend) says that State Dept has bought up all the hazmat suits and that’s why the Dallas hospital didn’t have any. And all the body bags.
Exurban Mom
@TheMightyTrowel: My personal favorite: student used Google Books to find pieces of texts that had some relationship to the topic, cut and pasted them into a paper that read like utter shit, the very worst paper I had ever received in 20+ years of teaching. Because it was a Frankensteinian linkage of pieces-parts from mostly very old books (many full text works on Google Books are out of print or very old), it had no consistent style and was a truly awful piece of plagiarism. When I failed her the assignment, which ended in her failing the class, she complained, saying she worked really hard on it. I couldn’t figure out if she paid a service who ended up doing a terrible job for her, or if she really thought that paper made any sense.
chopper
@raven:
i’m color blind, you insensitive clod!
Omnes Omnibus
@skerry:
Why the? What the? Huh?
schrodinger's cat
@Hal: It is good to be on the side of team kitty, if you know what’s good for you.
TheMightyTrowel
@Exurban Mom: I get one of those every third semester. Automatically goes up for academic dishonesty review and it’s out of my hands.
skerry
@Omnes Omnibus: Exactly.
I report, you decide.
PsiFighter37
@gene108: Good luck! Half the battle is working out, but the other half is cutting out the snacking and eating healthy. If I gave into my natural urge to eat cookies to my heart’s content, I don’t think any amount of exercise would help me out.
Violet
@the Conster: I guess I’m not a fan of hers. I don’t dislike her. I just kind of think she’s limited to a couple of expressions. When she’s supposed to play angry or upset she’s really over the top. Then there’s her serious face. Doesn’t seem to be a lot of nuance. But that’s just me.
Betty Cracker
@lamh36: I’ll have to check it out. You steered me right with “Luther.”
rikyrah
There are four places in the country truly outfitted to fight Ebola.
Will someone explain to me why Montana and Nebraska were chosen as two of the sites?
chopper
@chopper:
Wait, why did that post end up responding to raven, instead of roger moore?
raven
@lamh36: We watched the first installment The Affair with Dominic West and Ruth Wilson. Ruth was the psycho broad in Luther (as you know). It was just ok, lot’s of screwin.
raven
@chopper: I thought you didn’t like red tail hawks.
Exurban Mom
@efgoldman: I had a banner semester when I had three students turn in papers I found on term paper websites for purchase. The associate dean called to ask if I had any idea what the hell was going on. Students underestimate the ability of profs to use the Google as well as they do.
the Conster
@Violet:
Yeah, she’s made for TV. I can’t think of any good movie she’s been in, but I enjoyed The Wedding Date with Amy Adams. She’s no Amy Adams.
TheMightyTrowel
@efgoldman: I have a huge reputation for being a raging bitch who fails students easily. They rarely try and get anything past me.
raven
@Exurban Mom: Lota people I know use Turnitin.
BillinGlendaleCA
@lamh36: I don’t know how set your Hawaii literary is; but I suggest that, if you have time the hike to the top of Diamond Head is well worth the time. It’s not a long walk from the base of the crater and not too steep a climb. However, DO BRING A FLASHLIGHT(the last bit involves climbing stars inside the mountain without any lighting).
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: And five open beds, according to Rachel.
Hal
@Violet: I don’t know if I’ve seen Debra Messing in anything but Will and Grace, which I thought she was great in, but that was a comedy. She also had great chemistry with Eric McCormack. There was one dramatic scene in Will and Grace where she and will get in a fight over a having a baby together and was surprised by the range she had in that scene, but it was all of one minute long.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah: Proximity to big and fairly remote air bases? They were built as part of the 9/11 response. Wasn’t Nebraska where Bush hid for the first 24 hours after the attacks?
She was great. Reminds me I think I missed the last season of Luther.
cckids
@rikyrah: University Hospital in Nebraska is an outstanding place in its own right. As to the biocontainment unit, I assume it is partially geographical (center of country), and partially due to the presence of Offut AFB. Rachel said they got the cash for it as part of the post-9/11 money bomb. Finally, some of that going to good use.
raven
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It got to be too much for my bride so we quit.
Violet
@Hal: I think she’s got pretty good comic timing. She was good in Will and Grace but a lot of that is hitting punchlines or physical humor, which she she is good at. I watched some of “Smash” and she was really flat in that. There were scenes that were supposed to be dramatic and even heart-rending for her and I just kind of yawned. I think “The Mysteries of Laura” (and WTF with that title?) is a little less serious and allows for more of her comic abilities to come through, but it’s still too much of a drama for her to excel.
I think she’d be better in a dramedy that leans towards camp, like “Desperate Housewives” was, or an actual comedy. I just don’t think she’s got dramatic chops.
Joel Hanes
@Exurban Mom:
she complained, saying she worked really hard on it.
And probably she did, by her standards.
Some of the kids I’ve coached don’t really understand that the whole point is to learn to actually learn the material, to think about it, and communicate their own thoughts. They tend to regard the actual learning, thinking, and understanding as lip-service goals, like a bad corporate mission statement that no one takes seriously, that no one could _possibly_ take seriously.
Sure, she’s enrolled in a second year Spanish class, but the idea that she should be making a serious attempt to actually learn to speak the Spanish language seems to her naive, an absurd expectation, like expecting her to fly. These kids treat school as a cargo cult — if they deliver a physical mock-up of the work demanded, they feel they deserve recognition for the work they put in building the fake runway and control tower, completely missing the point that they’re completely missing the point.
jl
@Joel Hanes:
That syndrome seems familiar to me. My experience, it was most noticeable when dealing with MBA students, and undergrads who aimed at B school. Less prevalent among general undergrads, and least in professional and academic grad school.
Do you have an ‘approach’ for that attitude in a student?
Anne Laurie
@rikyrah:
IIRC, same reason supermax prisons end up located at the butt end of nowhere: Not many NIMBYs, because the few local voters are desperate for anything that’ll bring in jobs.
As a counter-example, the NIH wants to put a level-four (including Ebola) lab in Boston, because it’s a place with access to lots of medical expertise and world-class universities. Community reaction has not been favorable!
Anoniminous
@rikyrah:
Bio-warfare labs
schrodinger's cat
@aimai: You are snarking but I did hear something along those lines, from a rather paranoid friend of mine.
Villago Delenda Est
Ron Johnson needs to take a long walk off a short pier that extends over shark infested waters.
Apologies to the sharks, but you have to eat what’s offered.
Tenar Darell
@Violet: You are very kind. I would have turned around and said I just got back from Africa and coughed on him.(yep, General Ebola Hysteria is getting to me)
Mnemosyne
I should be packing up my books, but I’m procrastinating.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: I go back and forth over who is worse for Wisconsin, Walker or Johnson. Then I realize I don’t hate myself enough to contemplate the question further.
Tenar Darell
@lamh36: I really want to like this show, but I’m just cold. Maybe it’ll grow on me like Scandal. Viola Davis is an amazing performer, I’d like to see where she goes with this.
raven
@efgoldman: And the Hokies are getting clubbed by Pitt.
JR in WV
On the other hand, a few young people I know, kids of my contemporaries, are PharmD, biologist geneticist, biologist running clinical trials worldwide, surgeon, news reporter (yes still a few of those even today) etc.
One young man, home schooled by back to the land hippies, got his GED and enrolled at the nearest University, where Mrs J worked. She would give him a a ride home after his last class of the week, and back to school on Monday. One day he was really quiet, and Mrs asked him what was bringing him so low.
I flunked a chemistry test, he said. Mrs J asked him what went wrong, and he said he didn’t know the answer on many of the multiple choice questions. Seems he thought it would be cheating to guess! Home schooled, he never took a fill in the little circle test, never heard do all the easy questions first, then go back to work on the hard ones.
Mrs explained that on a multiple choice question, first you eliminate the out-of-bounds answers, the one that couldn’t possibly be correct. Then you evaluate the remaining answers to select the one most likely to be correct. “Isn’t that cheating?” he said.
So after that he aced all the chem tests, and teh prof dropped the lowest score, so he aced the class. All of the classes, actually!
And my cousin’s kid (also a cousin, first once removed) graduated last May, double major, math and physics, summa, recruited to grad school at USC and UNLV where there is plasma work that interests him, full ride plus pay for teaching undergrad classes. So his dad, my cousin, doesn’t have to support him anymore. He plays guitar too. Girls like him! He’s living the dream! He used to run cross-country, but that took too much time….
So there are lots of kids doing well. They don’t usually stand out as extremely as the ones doing strangely, though.
I have to imagine that older folks have always felt that the younger generation is going to hell. Maybe so, if the R’s keep lying to them, but they seem pretty sharp to me. Mostly anyhoo.
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne: Take your ritalin, and pack your books.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Last time I moved, I found drinking helped with packing. On the other hand, at the time, drinking seemed to help with everything.
Arclite
@Southern Beale: Shep is 10 times the man Rush will ever be, even with mascara on.
RaflW
Great work by Shep Smith. He has been a rare moment of sanity in the shit-storm a few times at Fox.
But I do take issue with one thing he said (and it ties in with Betty’s Loneoak thread earlier today): He says no officials have lied. I feel pretty certain that Presby Hospital senior officials have lied. Now I think Shep was meant to be referring to government officials, and really about CDC/NIH.
But lets be clear, Shep. Hospital corporations have a very big incentive to lie right now. A few might use the delay to actually procure some gear and plans to back up their palaver. The bulk are just praying the scourge will pass them over.
Violet
@Mnemosyne: Set a timer and pack for 15 minutes. See how far you get. Just do that much. If you get on a roll, do another 15 minutes or longer. And AL is right–take your medication if you need to.
Violet
@Tenar Darell: You know, you pick your battles. I didn’t want to create a scene in the jury assembly room. Not worth it.
trollhattan
@Exurban Mom:
Boom! I know so many grown-ups baffled by the whole interweb thing it’s good to hear those darn kids aren’t getting away with this stuff.
trollhattan
@the Conster:
Yes. One is an actor, one is a teevee joke-deliverer. And since we’re discussing redheads, Jessica Chastain (local girl does well).
TheMightyTrowel
@trollhattan: Down here in Oz, I and my non-Australian contemporaries (30 somethings) are more comfortable with technology than my 20 year old students. it’s frightening to me how bad they are at using computers. One of the ones I caught plagiarising last year left all the links in her paper from the wiki cut and paste. Turns out she had no clue how to remove hyperlinks from the text. SIGH
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@schrodinger’s cat: They are bringing Ebola, how can you not know that.
gwangung
@skerry:
For four years before now? ‘Cause they’ve had plenty of time to prepare for this….
jl
@RaflW: In fairness to Smith (I grit teeth and spit ) he made his report before the full FUBAR of the Presby Hospital in Dallas was revealed, or maybe as the story was breaking. So I am not sure he knew the full extent of what they did.
I am a layman, but what they did sounds real strange to me: basically substandard protective protocols and equipment until a lab test confirmed the diagnosis. Layman me previously had read the story of a Nigerian doctor who survived the illness, and her narrative mentions several very specific signs and symptoms of Ebola infection that you can see easily with the naked eye just looking at the patient from a few feet away. So, seems to me that waiting for an official confirmatory lab test is a pretty piss poor excuse for shoddy precautions for days while the patient was very sick, and I would expect had plenty of symptoms in plain sight to make a good guess about the diagnosis
I posted a link to the TPM story that appeared last night.about it in a thread yesterday.
And from what I read about Presby Hospital in Dallas is that it was, and still is (?) a non-profit organization affiliated with the frozen chosen (Presbyterian) Church. So, general attitude or for-profit providers (to maximize profit) or non-profit providers (maximize revenues, achieve targeted retained earnings for expansions and contracting deviltry and rat-effing in health care and insurance market) lead to similar incentives to chisel, cut corners and BS and lie about it.
Tenar Darell
@Violet: True. If I’d had the opportunity, I probably wouldn’t have even thought all that up in that moment. But if I had, maybe I would have figured out that being a troublemaker would get me tossed as a juror. I mean, I would probably have had to speak to the Judge, right? I would have been able to point out Africa is a continent and I’m not responsible for correcting someone else’s ignorance of geography when the guy has no idea whether to ask if I’d been in West Africa. And the final option was to point out “well that guy’s an ignorant bigot, and I am a liar so both of us should be sent home.” Would never have happened to me in real life, but the story possibilities!
Violet
@TheMightyTrowel: That’s funny. Is that because they’re all on their phones now. And tablets, I guess?
TheMightyTrowel
@Violet: I mean they are on phones and tablets, but mostly it’s because australians suck at tech.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
Yeah, I was thinking “Grand Zero” was a casino. Thanks for clarifying.
Violet
@Tenar Darell: This was in the jury assembly room before we ever got put on a panel and before we ever saw a judge. The bailiffs were around and some court clerk who collected our paperwork. No judges around.
Tenar Darell
@TheMightyTrowel: I’ve thought about this in relation to librarianship and archives. Perhaps it’s as simple as the fact that they grew up using computers as straightforward tools, rather than exciting puzzles or at least new learning opportunities. Like the transition between the Model T, which was meant to be repaired by blacksmiths and tinkerers to the professionalization of auto-mechanics? We’re the tinkerers and blacksmiths (and pros), but the twenty-somethings assume they should be auto mechanics? (Still working on the idea).
TheMightyTrowel
@efgoldman: I was a 12 year old in the mid 90s. Has it really changed so much since then? I mean, I am in no way a tech head programmer, but I can do basic things and i know how to explore new programmes and find tutorials to teach myself more difficult processes. It shocks me at what my students don’t know, can’t figure out and won’t even try to understand.
mai naem
I was talking to my sister(news watcher but doesn’t get into the weeds on stuff) today and she asked me what these Obola stickers she was seeing were about. I had to tell her that this time around I really didn’t understand this conspiracy/joke whatever. Usually I can follow a RWNJ conspiracy theory or even see the humor in their stuff. I may not agree with it but I can see how they are getting there. This Obola thing has me mystified. Obama wanted ebola? and for what reason? He wants to lose the Senate? For what reason? And Obola/Obama doesn’t rhyme or anything.
Omnes Omnibus
@mai naem: You should bear in mind that some people are idiots, some people are hateful, and some people are both.
Joel Hanes
@jl:
Do you have an ‘approach’ for that attitude in a student?
In high school students, I think it reflects attitudes toward learning and accomplishment that come from the home situation, and I’ve had zero success producing an actual desire to learn via exhortation. IMHO, only example or ambition can do the trick, and I’m not in a position to supply either.
In college students, I’ve told a couple that since they clearly weren’t in college to actually learn, they should stop wasting everybody’s time and their own money: they should immediately drop out and get a job. If they decide, later in life, that they’re genuinely interested in acquiring the knowledge on offer, they can always re-enroll, and will then find it enjoyable and rewarding to study things about which they actually care.
Nellie in NZ
My daughter (who was mentioning the guy talking loudly about being exposed to ebola before getting on the flight departing from Dallas) said that, on arrival, the flight was met by four officers who took him off to the side when they deplaned. Just a loud drunk but no more yapping about that sort of thing.
catclub
@Roger Moore:
Was that just Slashdot? Or Everywhere? I only read it at Slashdot.
Anne Laurie
@mai naem:
Following Dinesh D’Souza (insert elephant-parade joke here), Fox news “pundits” are telling people that President Obama’s “Kenyan Marxist/Muslim background” means he wants America to suffer just like those filthy off-color African countries do — ergo, if he didn’t actually import Ebola victims on purpose, he at least encouraged Thomas Duncan to fly to the heart of clean white All-American Texas and spread his contamination. Newest iteration of standing puke-funnel trope, ugh.
Derp Derpson
Always fear the Derp. You never know when or where it will strike next.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Anne Laurie: That’s like Protocols of Zion level crazy on their part
Ripley
@TheMightyTrowel: That’s what I experience: I’m consistently shocked by how most 20-somethings I instruct are truly awful at Google and other internet skills. They sure can Facebook and Instagram the shit outta things though.
Omnes Omnibus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Well, yeah.
cckids
@Mnemosyne: Books were my easiest pack; they are staying, so less sorting & getting rid of stuff. Plus, they’re rectangular & non-breakable; easy to fit into boxes.
Procrastination, I understand completely. :)
mai naem
@Anne Laurie: Okay,I know this is a hypothetical GOP conspiracy we’re talking about but why would Obama do it now?. Wouldn’t he want to do it after the election? If he loses the Senate, he for sure can’t get any of his Kenyan soshulist blah appointees.
Anne Laurie
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Yep. But the Protocols got a lot of people killed, even though they were 100% BS filtered through a scrim of phantasizing. The puke funnelers know what they’re doing, which moves the needle from ‘stupid’ to ‘evil’.
MattR
I like the addition to the chart in Adam Serwer’s tweet. Ebola panic is definitely a bigger problem and more contagious than the actual disease. I had previously seen the real chart it is based on. My only issue with that original chart is that it doesn’t account for the duration of time that people are contagious which gives an incomplete picture of how contagious the diseases are or the chances of an outbreak. For example, an HIV positive person may infect 4 others while an Ebola patient infects only 2, but the HIV person is doing that over a period of a 15-20 years while the person with Ebola is doing it over 15-20 days.
sm*t cl*de
Needs moar Sandy Skoglund:
sandyskoglund.com/pages/imagelist_fl/1979_84fl/resources/images/medium/bridgefsfileVolumesRAID_Works…
Gretchen
@Anne Laurie: When we’re trying to attract top research talent to solve our most important problems, would that top talent be more attracted to the idea of living in Omaha or Boston? Hmm, I wonder. I’m sure all the MIT PhD’s would love to relocate to Montana, along with their Harvard PhD spouses, and live there forever.
Mnemosyne
@Anne Laurie:
Yes, this turned out to be the winning solution. Good thing I have a bottle of 10mg at home.