The dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who had counseled students applying to colleges not to try to “measure up to everybody else’s standards,” resigned from her post today after acknowledging that she had padded her own résumé.
:: NYTimes Article via Email {Thanks Pink!} ::
Given how arbitrary and ridiculous college ranking is it’s a bold and perhaps inadvisable move to tell everyone about the fuckup. Probably a better move in the long run though.
also, this is a amazing article on how the CIA used a fake sci fi movie to sneak hostages out of iran.
:: whoa via wired ::
I’m pretty sure that the deep nagging fear for everyone in their 20′s is that we will withdraw into a withering personal stagnance that starts in the 30′s and stretches on for the rest of our lives. We see it clearly in the faces of people whove stopped getting epiphanies, simply don’t dance anymore and outright refuse to change their ideas even in the face of ample evidence to the contrary. They are the people who have stopped examining because whatever shimmering ball of vibrance enchanted them as youth has faded under the responsibilities of advanced adulthood and (in some cases childrearing). They are the people doing the exact same goddamn thing that they were doing 10 years ago. We’ve all looked at that and said “sweet fucking christ, i hope that doesn’t happen to me.”
Here’s a couple things (of many) that I’m hoping will prevent such sanity
1. However great, you can’t rest on your past achievements. If you’re getting older, smarter, more wise…you have to do something better, bigger, more complicated. {Sorry, kids don’t count, true they are hard and complex but you have to do something else too}.
{ps tibor kalman said “Your children will smash your understanding, knowledge and reality. You will be better off. Then they will move away and You’ll miss them forever. ”
2. Challenges are good, if it doesn’t hurt or is at least a little bit uncomfortable, you’re not growing.
3. The future doesn’t count until it happens. Despite being kindof a racist douchebag Henry Ford said it best:
You cannot build a reputation on what you are going to do
4. You have to surround yourself with awesome friends that challenge the fuck out of you. by definition we don’t hold ideas that we consciously recognize as inaccurate or wrong but they are in there, lurking. Don’t be a dick when they get rooted out and smashed like the little bastards that they are. remember, you are better off without them anyway and you prolly owe a big thanks to the person who revealed them.
:::: Photo via Jeremy.Plemon ::::
Okay, today officially marks the end of me blogging in secret to a few friends. This shit is officially public. I’ve added some prettyness, recent comments, trackbacks, and a reputedly sick spam filter so that I can spend more time laying out trenchant commentary and less time deleting delightful comments about hot sweaty pregnant italian porn. Give a shoutout if shit isn’t working properly.
In other news, I continue to be bowled over by culture shock from living and attending school in santa cruz. Today is april 20 which corresponds to the police code for marijuana usage. It’s more or less the Saint Patricks day of weed and a defacto holiday around this city. I’ve decided to lay low since I’m not particularly fond of smoking.
Humorous events so far:
*There’s a meadow at school which is the considered the main gathering point for getting high on 420. Police opted to grasp meaninglessly by blocking off the meadow entirely somehow “thinking” that would do something. Word of mouth spread and people simply relocated until authorities realized the absurdity of the whole program.
*Someone distributed pot cookies in my section earlier today. About half the people left with cookie in hand. Not that I care of course. Friends who went to school at oxford said that they routinely drank with their professors. I AM ABSOLUTELY ASTOUNDED THAT WEED CULTURE IS SUFFUSED INTO MY UNIVERSITY!!!
++++ UPDATE ++++
420 is not actually police code >> from wikipedia
It is widely accepted that in 1971, a group of teenagers at San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California, calling themselves “The Waldos”, used to meet every day after school at 4:20 p.m. to smoke marijuana at the Louis Pasteur statue.[2][3] The term became part of their group’s salute, “420 Louis,”[4] and it eventually caught on more widely. Many cannabis users continue to observe 4:20 as a time to smoke communally. By extension April 20 (“4/20″ in U.S. dating shorthand) has evolved into a counterculture holiday, where people gather to celebrate and consume cannabis.[5][6]
There are also many apocryphal urban legends attempting to explain the origin of the term. Two of the most common of these are that 420 refers to the number of active ingredients in cannabis (in actuality, there are around 315 active chemicals in cannabis, varying depending on the exact plant used), or that it is a police dispatch code related to cannabis.[7] .[8] The San Francisco Police Department use “420″ as a dispatch code for juvenile disturbances,[[1] and while this explains the origin of the urban legend, does not account for the origin of the term.
Under the system, known as the “anti-online game addiction system”, the first 3 hours of play for each day is considered “healthy”, during which players will be awarded full points in the virtual world. The next 2 hours will yield only half the normal points and there will be no points after 5 hours.
After the 5-hour limit, players will be subjected every 15 minutes to the warning: “You have entered unhealthy game time, please go offline immediately to rest. If you do not, your health will be damaged and your points will be cut to zero.”
All the online games run in China, including the Massive Multi-player Online Role Player Games (MMORPG) operated by NASDAQ-listed companies such as Shanda, NetEase and The9 and other games like those run by Tencent, will have to abide by the rule.
:: Creepy Via Email {thanks Jay!} ::
Amid significant customer demand, the computer maker [Dell] said on Thursday that it has returned to offering the older Windows version as an option on some of its consumer PCs.
::: Ouch, Dell is bringing XP back :::
Here’s a critical factor that separates good people skills from bad people skills: relevance! When communicating make sure to include only information that is directly important to the person, the backstory can wait.
example: say you’re a diabetic who may die if you don’t get an insulin shot. when you arrive at the emergency room it’s a bad idea to spill an incoherent rant about how your tweaker wife is trying to kill you. Yes, you will get shitty, slow emergency service if you are a jerk…fancy that! In fact, you could come about this close -| |- to being arrested. When the nurse comes to take your blood pressure do not wave a soda can in her face during a nonsensical diatribe about your tweaker wife’s boyfriend breaking into your house. Try to consider adding this information as a quiet afterthought. It may also be worth noting that your insane paranoid delusions are disturbing the hippy and his friend who are trying to watch nature documentaries while waiting for a doctor to put a cast on her broken hand.
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
In the 12th and 13th centuries the church declared a holy war on cats, because….they were ambassadors of the devil. After two years of persecution the cat population in europe was decimated and there followed an explosion in the rat population…bringing the plague! Then the catholic church reversed its decision and anyone caught abusing a cat would be excommunicated.
–TitaniumDreads
ps I read this in a book called The Little Book of Bad Taste, I googled around a bit but wasn’t able to find a source. I did find info that a lot cats were killed because it was suspected that they actually carried the plague…
VAGINA POWER!!!
Really weird
All via the magic world of email, Thanks P. and thanks M.
—TitaniumDreads
This is sweet, but not worth like 9000$
:::via boingboing:::
There are nearly 26 billion male masturbation sessions in the U.S., yet there are fewer than five million kitten deaths annually. Far from a one-to-one correlation, there are 5401.5 masturbation sessions for every single kitten death. This means that the average American man can masturbate regularly for 22.5 years before he is responsible for the death of a single kitten. Indeed, with a life expectancy of less than 75 years, the average man will be responsible for only two or three kitten deaths in a lifetime of vigorous masturbation.
glad that the good reverend could clear that up, I have to..umm…go now.
–TitaniumDreads
