Useless Conversation

[Chimpy]

At Illinois, 'Campus Honors' gets to register first (along with Marching Band and Athletes since they have to get into classes around their practice schedule) but then it goes by seniority in terms of credit hours earned.

I went into my Freshman year with 18 credits from taking Calculus from the University as a senior in high school, and I placed out of Rhet 101 and think I took like one AP test, so for the second semester of my first year of college I was scheduled with the sophomores which meant that I got into most of my freshman classes before they filled up.

It was about a billion times easier when I changed majors and had to catch up on required freshman/sophomore level classes as I was a junior in class standing.

Technically my program was considered an "honors" program, but that just meant that you had to keep a B average in your core classes or get put on probation/kicked out of the program.

[Miasma]

There was a rumour when I went to University that government funding (which is significant in Canada*) was purely based on first year enrollment numbers and so the schools tried to attract as many students as possible and then culled them come year two when they were just a liability.  Organic chemistry was the class everyone on the science side of the campus believed was used to force people to drop out by making it an absolute hell of worst professors, terrible textbooks and onerous lab components.

* Significant in every other non U.S. first world country probably too.

[Selby]

My experience has shown that Honors students are barely above the ability (usually one stdev or less) of the general student population yet command more resources.  In the STEM disciplines, anyway.

I applied just for grins as I was one of those "top tier" students and my counselor in high school highly encouraged me to since I had multiple honors there already.  I didn't get in because the department head specifically told me that my entrance essay was not appropriate material and I had nothing distinguishing myself from the dozens of other applicants he rejected.  But that I was more than welcome to try and distinguish myself and reapply next year.  I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself and his superior PhD in Middle English History, but figured that would be a bad idea.  My sister got in with her lazy application and after seeing the more than a dozen honors kids in my first year engineering classes either flunk out or not come back, I realized it was a joke.  Especially when I asked an engineering professor about it and he rolled his eyes and said if I wanted more work in addition to the already grueling schedule of 2.5 years of project-based engineering school, I was more than welcome to waste my time.  I never bothered, still graduated ahead of schedule (out of the 95 or so of my class that started, only 15 or so of us finished) and got into graduate school at the same time and aced that too.  "Honors program" my ass.

[Lantyssa]

If I had a dollar for every honors student that boasted a high school gpa of 4.0 and subsequently flunked my organic class, I'd retire tomorrow. 

I loved my honors organic class.  Though we were down to eight from thirty by the second semester.

I know of the two of us that stuck around through grad school we were smart, but also way too lazy, laid-back, and undisciplined to be good grad students.

[Merusk]

That you love us and throw parties for us at your house?

Honors programs are little more than a marketing tool created to attract students with higher-than-average entrance criteria.  My experience has shown that Honors students are barely above the ability (usually one stdev or less) of the general student population yet command more resources.  In the STEM disciplines, anyway.

If I had a dollar for every honors student that boasted a high school gpa of 4.0 and subsequently flunked my organic class, I'd retire tomorrow. 

Brave man, throwing that around in a forum filled with former honors students. May as well have thrown out that you fucked their daughter and she's a whore, too.   

Not that I think you were wrong. Basic rational thought should disabuse anyone of the notion 'honors students' are in any way special. The top 10% of every class of every high school in the country still gets a lot of mediocre people in and leaves a lot of superior minds behind, based on dissimilar class size alone.

That's before you get grade inflation and false promotion for chest-thumping over who has 'more honors students' out of the way.  Then start to consider non-traditional brilliance or folks who thrive in a "doing" rather than "sitting" environment.

[Paelos]

In my mind, only a really stupid person goes around talking about how smart they are. Unless it came up in direct conversation, I think I've mentioned my honors program experience...never. I'm more likely to talk about my leadership program, or my fraternity experiences, or my Masters classes and the group projects.

[Signe]

Yeah, me too.  What?

[Phildo]

We had a guy in my fraternity who would have "leadership seminars" for the brotherhood.  It mostly involved him regurgitating acronyms like DWYSYWD and sounded pretty silly.  Still, we attended and paid attention so I guess he was leading.

He's been pretty successful since College, too.  Maybe I should have memorized more than one acronym.

[Johny Cee]

That you love us and throw parties for us at your house?

Honors programs are little more than a marketing tool created to attract students with higher-than-average entrance criteria.  My experience has shown that Honors students are barely above the ability (usually one stdev or less) of the general student population yet command more resources.  In the STEM disciplines, anyway.

If I had a dollar for every honors student that boasted a high school gpa of 4.0 and subsequently flunked my organic class, I'd retire tomorrow. 

It's been a long time, but when I was applying to colleges Honors programs were generally the only thing offering you merit based awards outside of the National Merit Scholarship which was really fucking tough to get at a school you really wanted to go to rather than a school trying to pick up a few National Merit Scholars to pad stats.  I'm sure plenty of Honors programs are shit marketing tools, but there were plenty that still offered me around half tuition off entrance into their Honors program.

When I was in college, the thing to do as a freshman was to say how glad you were that you didn't have to go to your safety school of [insert Brown/Cornell/Middlebury].  People really liked to bag on Brown and Cornell.

[Lantyssa]

I think Nebu was talking from the school side of things.  Honors programs are great for the students.  The privileges are only a notch or two below those of the athletes.

[bhodi]

http://www.johnskylar.com/post/107416685924/a-career-in-science-will-cost-you-your-firstborn

One of the most depressing things I read last week. And according to friends who are in various places along that path, completely accurate. A few comments from him:

The "free education" or even "you are paid you get a degree!" really does resonate surprisingly well in the echo chamber of grad school. The conference in November was... rather eye-opening for me seeing people who graduated ahead of me... still not finding positions at the reunion.

The worst part is, there are people queuing to clean diarrhea off a diabetic rat... people with PhDs.. desperate suckers. "Bring your own rag"

[Paelos]

My aunt and uncle were both geneticists. Finally gave it up when they realized they were going to die a slow death for no reason. They retrained themselves in IT and got jobs in the private sector making twice what they made before. It's sad.

[Lantyssa]

http://www.johnskylar.com/post/107416685924/a-career-in-science-will-cost-you-your-firstborn

One of the most depressing things I read last week. And according to friends who are in various places along that path, completely accurate. A few comments from him:

Yep.  A large part of it was the hours that made me get out.  I couldn't handle the stress that many required to get anywhere brought.

[IainC]

For me it was reading the jobs pages in New Scientist and realising that 5 years of university was going to qualify me for a glorified data entry job at not a lot more than minimum wage.

[pxib]

Middle Earth Quiz:

Do these words and phrases refer to parts of the human body, or reference people and places from J. R. R. Tolkien’s work?

1. Antrum of Highmore
2. Crypt of Morgagni
3. Caves of Androth
4. Lobelia
5. Loop of Henle
6. Scapha
7. Great Vein of Galen
8. Halls of Mandos
9. Groin
10. Gap of Calenardhon
11. Macewen’s Triangle
12. Canal of Schlemm
13. Gerontius
14. Islets of Langerhans
15. Meckel’s Cave
16. Chamber of Mazarbul

You shall not pass.

[Miasma]

I didn't know where to put this but thought it was funny.

tl;dr  Our version of the NSA, the "Communications Security Establishment Canada" ironically sent a newspaper a detailed report of a security failure at its new building.  Instead of redacting all the classified info they highlighted it and included a note saying "be sure not to let the newspaper know that our new expensive high security building was only protected by a padlocked chain".  Also, taking a security approach proved solid by the video game Doom, we are missing a red key so if you find one lying around you can gain access to the secret tunnel which has the BFG spawn point and a medkit.

[Yoru]

I didn't know where to put this but thought it was funny.

tl;dr  Our version of the NSA, the "Communications Security Establishment Canada" ironically sent a newspaper a detailed report of a security failure at its new building.  Instead of redacting all the classified info they highlighted it and included a note saying "be sure not to let the newspaper know that our new expensive high security building was only protected by a padlocked chain".  Also, taking a security approach proved solid by the video game Doom, we are missing a red key so if you find one lying around you can gain access to the secret tunnel which has the BFG spawn point and a medkit.

And now for a new game: News, or excerpt from early drafts of Spies Like Us?

[Chimpy]

Ok, all you hippy bastards in Colorado who voted to legalize pot sales. Can you fuckers get the liquor laws changed so that I can buy non-3.2 beer at the grocery store?

I will survive as I am told there is a liquor store next to where I am going to get dinner in downtown Steamboat, but it would have been nice to get it when I picked up all the other necessities earlier 

[Signe]

My sister just came back from a funeral and the guy who is Penguin in Gotham was there.  She says he's completely adorable.

[Viin]

Ok, all you hippy bastards in Colorado who voted to legalize pot sales. Can you fuckers get the liquor laws changed so that I can buy non-3.2 beer at the grocery store?

I will survive as I am told there is a liquor store next to where I am going to get dinner in downtown Steamboat, but it would have been nice to get it when I picked up all the other necessities earlier  

I think you'll live. There's tons of liquor stores around and they often carry a large variety of stuff - especially in places like Steamboat.

Make sure you get to the Rec Center for some time in the hot spring pools. Or up to Strawberry Park (assuming its not snowed in).

[schild]

Euro fucking tanked. Which is amazing for my industry. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

[Reg]

Why is it good for your industry? That's the vaping industry, right?

[schild]

Because most of the best hardware in the industry is made in Europe.

[Teleku]

It's also great if you live in Europe and are still paid in dollars.   

USD has gained like, 25% strength against the polish zloty (which is heavily tied to the euro) over the last year.  Just in time for me to be leaving.   

[RhyssaFireheart]

Why did it take me so long to set up ecommerce on my own site instead of using Etsy (which did nothing for me)?

And adding pieces to the shop would probably go a lot quicker if I'd actually kept things more organized instead of just being a lazy git.  Now I get to organize things in order to select which pieces go into the shop.

[Ironwood]

Take your seven facts to fuck.

[Sky]

Time to buy some new minis! If the pound can gain equity I'd be even happier.

[Rendakor]

So we were supposed to get some huge blizzard. Car had a light dusting, and work was not cancelled.

[Signe]

So we were supposed to get some huge blizzard. Car had a light dusting, and work was not cancelled.

Same here.  You're in NJ, right?  New England got battered though.  Everything here is closed.  Schools, public offices, etc.  Nearly everything, anyway.  WaWa is open. :)  My brother in law has been playing tag with the Southwest Air over his ticket home from San Fransisco today.   Weather people had everyone fooled.  They should apologise.  "Dear People, we're sorry you closed your businesses, schools, universities, social services, etc. for no reason.  We hope you didn't go broke or hungry.  Cheers." 

I think the weather people are in cahoots with the aliens.  Maybe they ARE aliens.  OMG.

[Rendakor]

Yea, southern NJ. Schools are all closed because they called it yesterday, but we got less than an inch.

[Chimpy]

The thing is, if they hadn't closed stuff ahead of time and the big storm did wallop places everyone would be bitching that they didn't plan ahead.

I do blame this whole "OMG we need to have names for winter storms now too because the weather channel needs more eyeballs!" shit for a lot of the innacuracies of late.

[Sky]

From Louis CK's email list (he cancelled a show at MSG):

In any case, there seems to be a massive storm approaching New York City.  They are calling this storm "historic" which.... Well I didn't know you could call a thing historic if it hasn't happened yet.  But I'm not one to defy future historic events.  And I have to be respectful of the responsibility I have to the 15,000 people who are holding tickets to the show and could be stranded somewhere historically trying to get to or from my show.  I think it's clearly better that I alter history in the name of safety and cancel.  Besides, if you've ever tried to get your deposit back when you rent a banquet hall for a wedding that gets snowed out, you don't want to even know what the deposit is on Madison Square Jesus Christing Garden is.

I love Louis CK.

[Paelos]

OK question about how to handle a situation of etiquette.

I'm in a social group that has a lot of people I get along with, and many good-looking women who I am interested in talking to when we do things together. However, there is one guy who is gangly, overweight, nerdy who knows that I like gamer culture/nerdy things. As such, he seems to attach himself to me when I'm at parties to talk about inane stuff. I try to walk away and I'll get brief respites, but he's like glue. He finds me after I get done talking to people.

The problem is that this guy is a woman repellent. He's also a game-killer. He's the opposite of a wingman. Not to mention that I am starting to dread going to things when he's there because he won't leave me alone. And he also shows up to everything, unfortunately.

Now, I'm sure many of us have been this awkward guy before, or known people like this, so I don't want to be a dick about this to him. Because there's obviously a way to broach this without breaking down what little self-esteem the dude has. But I need some suggestions on a way to either broach the subject politely, or make it known I'm trying to mingle, or in general get him to leave me alone without acting aloof and walking away. Because that's been done. He's not getting the hint.

[Pennilenko]

Tell him that shit. Tell him exactly what you just told us. He will leave you alone after. Forget about sparing his feelings.

[pxib]

Yes, nothing you said comes across as hostile or cruel. Protecting him from that info isn't helping either of you.