Nobrainer’s Think Tank

I just had a second (maybe even third) year engineering student ask me, during a quiz I was proctoring, what the conversion between degrees and radians is.

For you non-engineers, I don’t know which dumb question that relates to in your life, but for engineering students that’s a ridiculously stupid question for someone at that level.

Not only should the student know that conversion from experience and practice, the student should have have been able to think through the conversion. “How many degrees in a circle? 360. How many radians in a circle? 2 pi. Ergo, 360 degrees equals 2 pi radians. Ta da!”

Some time ago, I pointed out a Salon.com article, written by RFK Jr. In it he ranted about big-pharma conspiracies and the alleged link between thimerosal containing vaccines and autism. A rant which left out things like scientific reasoning and sound logic.

So now he’s being paid 20-large by state universities for his bullshit. (Life, albeit short, must be sweet as a Kennedy.)

He was recently visiting Virginia Tech where he gave a “rambling speech… that lasted more than an hour.” “While he pointed out good work and sound perspectives from past Republican and Democratic presidents Monday,” (presumably ignoring his family’s ongoing efforts to block windmills near their Cape Cod home?) “he labeled the Bush administration the worst in history when it comes to the environment.”

He didn’t stop there though.

He criticized what he called a “negligent and indolent press” for perpetuating the idea that there’s still a debate about global warming despite overwhelming scientific evidence that it is real.

And Junior knows his science! [my comments in brackets]

Well, the science is clear. This month, a study [a study?] published in the journal Nature by a renowned MIT climatologist [so renowned as to be unnameable] linked [linked how?] the increasing prevalence of destructive [destructive how?] hurricanes to human-induced global warming.

That’s from a HuffPo piece he wrote during Katrina 18 months ago. In it you can see that he was wishing destruction upon Mississippi for something their governor did years earlier.

So combine Katrina, and that one study, and 2006 hurricane season and you’ve got a powerful message.

Back to his recent speech at Tech:

“Eighty percent of Republicans are just Democrats who don’t know what’s going on,” he said [that speaks loudly for the ineptitude of communicational abilities of Democrats].

But aside from a few cracks, Monday’s speech had a somber tone and warned of what today’s actions could mean for future generations, not to mention the current one.

“We’re living in a science-fiction nightmare in this country [yeah, life is shitty here in America, where our press is free to the point that they permit scientific debate] … because somebody gave money to a politician [the Kennedy’s have never accepted donations],” he said.

As best I can tell, Bobby Kennedy, Jr. is an opportunist, just like so many others with political clout. I would end with a reminder to not trust the guy, but you already knew that.

Instead I’ll end by reminding you that the world would be a better place if I was in charge.

This is interesting:

“We need to stop endlessly repeating ‘You’re special’ and having children repeat that back,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. “Kids are self-centered enough already.”

I prefer, “Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.”

Fortunately for me, I am special. I, however, didn’t learn it by being told. I learned it by consistently out-performing my peers in almost every measurable way, including conceitedness.

The standardized inventory, known as the NPI, asks for responses to such statements as “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place,”"I think I am a special person” and “I can live my life any way I want to.”

You can also bet your ass that the world would be a better place if I ruled it.

Twenge, the author of “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - and More Miserable Than Ever Before,” said narcissists tend to lack empathy, react aggressively to criticism and favor self-promotion over helping others.

It seems that if you continue to lie to your child about how special he/she/it is, he/she/it will turn into a Republican.

“Current technology fuels the increase in narcissism,” Twenge said. “By its very name, MySpace encourages attention-seeking, as does YouTube.”

Is buying a domain with your name in it included?

“Permissiveness seems to be a component,” he said. “A potential antidote would be more authoritative parenting. Less indulgence might be called for.”

I have to agree with that. And remember, the world would be a better place if I was raising its children.

The above animation appears when the new Yahoo! Mail is loading.

Let’s just say that the first time I saw it I didn’t think it depicted one of those old exerciser belt thingamajigs.

It must be a triple leap year. (from CollegeHumor)

I had to share this with Rachel because February 30th has become a running joke between us. Due to some cunning planning on my part, our first date was on August 30th. It follows that our 6-monther would be on February 30th. Realization of this fact went down the “we’ll have to do something on the 30th… wait… what? Oh it’s February!” path.

Not to be outdone, she tracked down the website of the calendar provider, which also provides some grumpy response emails, with the following being my favorite:

“…yet another in a long line of crimes against humanity perpetuated by you pinko tree huggers.”

But it occurred to me that this could be a business opportunity. Sell intentionally, subtly inaccurate calendars as gag gifts. Add a day, remove a day, start a month on the wrong day, shift some holidays. And with that add dual-layer packaging. The first layer, to be removed by the gift-buyer, clearly identifies the content. The second layer makes it seems like a run-of-the-mill calendar.

I think it would be funny to see how long your friends take to notice the problem, if they notice the problem, or if they don’t notice at all and spend half the year being very confused… maybe bonus points should be added for selling with it a CD that will alter the calendar in Outlook to match the wall calendar.