Cotton-Pickin’ Days

Hey, you slackers. Have you attended a college fair lately? No excuses. You can attend online college fairs just like this mother who’s getting a head start:

Julie Richardson, a Virginia mother of two elementary-school-age boys, attended as a preliminary way to research colleges, she said, since she “didn’t know the difference between a Harvard and a Michigan.” [emphasis added]

I’ll tell you some differences between Harvard and Michigan:

• Tuition
• Location
• Prestige
• Admission standards
• Attitude

As Cobweb put it at WSJ’s The Juggle:

Typical Harvard guy. Thinks he’s smarter (more clever) than the rest.

Just kidding! Substitute Stanford for Harvard if you want to take a potshot at me.

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The Freakonomics blog asked some New York students about their college experience. Their responses to the ones about sex, really shocked me. Of course, I’m pretty atypical since I got married straight out of college, two months shy of my 22nd birthday.

Ali, 21, Senior, Journalism, New York University

How many more people do you think you’ll sleep with before you get married?

I intend to sleep with a lot of people before I get married (if I get married). I think I’ll sleep with at least 20 people, maybe five of which will be as a part of committed relationships.

How many would you like to?

I’d like to sleep with way more than 20! But let’s be modest. 30? Yeah, 30.

The other responses ranged from a few to two dozen.

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Who knew there were so many different ways to solve 26×31 or 133/6?! Life just keeps getting more complicated. Our poor kids are really in for it and therefore so are we, their poor parents. ARGH.

Meterologist MJ McDermott lists the following problems graduates of the American school system are having with math:

1. Inability to work alone without checking in with others (too much group work)
2. Lack of math fluency in the symbolic language of math
3. Lack of math basic skills, e.g., trig, algebra, arithmetic.
4. Dependence on calculator (can’t do 4×6 without a calculator)

In the end, McDermott recommends Singapore math for children having trouble with math. There was also a great discussion of these various math education methods–TERC and Everyday Math–at kitchen table math, the sequel.

What do you think of your own or your child’s math education?

HT: Lilian, math teacher extraordinaire

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Based on my last ramblings about the books I’m reading, Gender Guesser tells me that I’m a “Weak MALE” if the 425 words I submitted for gender analysis is in the informal style. I’m a “Weak FEMALE” if what I wrote was meant to be formal. What the @#!

via Jezebel

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Don’t blame the boys!

Going a bit dippy is a common pregnancy trait. But if you really go doolally, you could be carrying a girl. In tests, mums carrying boys out-perform mums carrying girls. But after the birth your brain (usually!) gets back on track.

via Mothercare

Based on on my behavior, I wonder if people think I’m carrying a boy or a girl.

Don’t answer that!

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Work has never been so much fun.

I saw this sign on one of the doors over at Marv’s office building. How many people do you think have showered together so far?

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Believe it or not. I’ve actually had kids say this to me when I prevented them from bashing their skulls in at the pool doing one of their crazy stunts. Where were their parents? Many floors up in their apartment.

via I Can Has Cheezburger?

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Take a good look look at this bag of mini jelly babies from Marks & Spencer.

The jelly babies on the packaging look like fresh, plump, shiny, happy babies. This is what they really look like.

Do these bear any resemblance to the jelly babies on the package?

Nobody likes this strange powdered confection that is hard on the outside and mushy on the inside. The weirdest texture ever and not at all what you’d expect of a gummy candy. Blech.

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Or you could find yourself asking a certain blog publisher to remove an obnoxious comment which she may or may not be inclined to do.

She knows why you want the obnoxious comment removed.

Said obnoxious comment happens to rank on the first page of a Google search for your name.

The rest of the search results are all respectable scientific papers that reflect positively on your image.

You didn’t think her little ol’ science blog would have just as great of an impact on Google, didja?

Be honest about why you want the obnoxious comment removed and maybe even tell her you were drunk off your a** when you wrote it.

She may remove it. She may not.

Just remember that what you say online stays online and could come back to bite you in the a**.

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“I had hoped that they had evolved beyond this.”

~Columbia University economics professor Ray Fisman, on the results of his speed-dating study, which found that men avoided women who they believed were smarter or more ambitious than themselves.

Who needs ‘em?

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