Learning |

The Tax on Good Grades

Aug 192011

August 19, 2011 Posted by Entropy Echo at 12:01 am August Tagged with: carlson, college, dumb, earn, education, exposingleftists.com, fallacy, false, federal, fox and friends, gpa, grade, interview, learning, lesson., logic, lower class, middle class, oliver darcy, school, sting, sucks, tax, tax structure, upper class, video No Responses »

Back in my day, we didn't tax the high GPA makers! That creates more students!

August 19, 2011

Well, it’s back to school again, and, as most of you know, those with the highest grades will be asked to give away some of those GPA points to students who didn’t try as hard so everyone can have a chance at a better education and job later on.

Oh, that’s not how that happens?

Fox sent out a camera crew and recent college graduate to a few campuses to ask students how they would feel if they were asked to give some of their GPA to lower students so the people with lower grades could have higher GPAs. Obviously, this did not sit well with ANY student. How then, Fox asks, do we justify taking MORE money away from the wealthy in the form of increased taxes and giving it to the lower and middle class? Isn’t that the same thing? Taking away from the people who worked for their money and giving it to people who don’t work hard so they don’t get as much?

I think you can already see the problem here.

Students by ~dpoephoto on deviant ART

A student earns a GPA over a long period of time. It takes years. To get that grade, you have to study hard, do your work, and if you want to bulk up with transcript, you have to take AP classes that sometimes don’t even give you extra points or anything like that. They didn’t for me, and while part of the Honor Scholars Program at DePauw University, I had to take classes that were an order of magnitude harder than any other class I’ve ever taken, and said classes didn’t even count for extra points. And I still made the Dean’s List several times.

That’s not how taxes and economics work.

For several decades, the upper class has received what can only be called “corporate welfare.” They actually get taxed less than people who make WAY less and can write off any number of expenses. For Fox’s analogy to make sense, students with higher GPA should have had to do less work to get better grades over time AND people with lower GPAs should have had to give up a portion of their grades to people who were already getting good grades.

Let me put it another way. Billy works hard but can only ever get a 2.5 GPA. Tommy lucked out nearly on his freshman year and got a 3.8 average. The school then took some of Billy’s points and gave them to Tommy to keep him in the highest percentile. Now, Billy has to work harder for his points, but Tommy can cruise along knowing the points he gets from the bottom of the ladder will offset his lack of work and keep him higher up.

Fox News by ~Darren-Kelly on deviant ART

Students with high GPAs generally work VERY hard to get those grades. I know I did. The upper class in this country gets a free pass and politicians in their corner to make sure they stay up there. There is an entire infrastructure just to keep the rich rich. There is no such system in place for students. Lower grades don’t always mean you’re not working hard. Most students give it their best. Job-wise, I work my butt off and make less per hour than the dean’s secretary. Stop pretending like people who are poor don’t work hard. Try teaching. Try being a sanitation worker. Try being a gardener, migrant worker, police officer, firefighter, or even a babysitter. That’s damn hard work.

People who rely on hedge funds to GIVE them money? Must be nice.

In short, Fox sucks, students rock, have fun on the first week of school, students and teachers, and I’ll see you Monday with the new Weekly Muse story. Keep voting!

first day blues by ~misternow on deviant ART

Felonious Use of Carnal Knowledge 2: The Word Salad

Aug 172011

August 17, 2011 Posted by Entropy Echo at 12:01 am August Tagged with: .com, ass, butt, child, children, cursing, dirty, english, final destination 5, fuck, funny, johanna gohmann, junk, learning, moist, new romance, offended, offensive, parody, penis, piss, racism, rectum, salon, sex, shit, speech, splooge, swearing, syntax, testicles, toilet, vagina, video, vocabulary, weiner No Responses »

...and a lot of people apparently DO let the words hurt them.

August 17, 2011

It’s no secret that the words and language we use color our perceptions of the world. Having grown up in Mexico, my thoughts often start out in Spanish even though I speak more English than anything. That syntax and sound are the things I use to measure beauty in speech. I think, though, that there is no better recent example of this ability for early language to shape our perceptions than this little article.

In short, Johanna Gohmann talks about how her parents used euphemisms for certain words, especially things pertaining to sex or bodily secretions. From her article:

Perhaps not surprisingly, my parents’ modesty spilled over into s-e-x terminology as well. To be fair, we didn’t exactly live in Berkeley, Calif., with 9-year-olds openly shouting, “Mommy, my vagina itches!” This was the ’70s and ’80s in the suburbs of Indiana. Many families employed a certain slang with these words, and not just because “rectum” is a difficult word for a toddler. For many, it’s a given that girls have their “coochie” and boys have their “weiner.” But not us, thank you very much. A brief dictionary sampling displays words that were all our own.

Boo (verb) – to defecate: “Mom! The baby just booed in his pants.”

Tink (verb) – to urinate: “He just tinked into a root beer can while driving!”

Tote (noun) – both the male and female genitalia: “Jo kicked Marty in the tote!”

Bo (noun) – buttocks: “Where’s the Benadryl? A bee stung Graham on the bo.”

Giving him elbows (verb) – breast-feeding: “Mom is busy. She’s giving the baby elbows.”

Did you catch all that? It reminds me of a child a coworker once taught. He didn’t know any words for animals or numbers. He knew the baby words. Instead of dog, he’d call said animal a “bowwow.” A seven? That was a “stick w’nother stick.”

My niece, being all of six years old, is actually a very eloquent young lady who can speak a few English phrases and has near-perfect Spanish diction. Why? Her parents never baby-talked to her. I’m assuming my boss and her husband did the same thing with their daughter, a precocious little thing that has syntax down.

Imagine all the people. by ~audreymarlett on deviant ART

I hope you’re seeing the problem with raising a child knowing euphemisms for common, everyday things the rest of us freely discuss. I understand a person might be uncomfortable with certain images and topics, but to alter the word itself will not get rid of that image or that topic.

Check this out. I’m going to substitute the word “Funyun” for “spic,” and all death-related verbs will be switched with “splooge.”

Okay, you see those Funyuns over there? They come here, they steal our jobs, and leave us with nothing. I’m not saying we need to splooge them. No one is saying anyone needs to get splooged. I’m just saying that something needs to get done about the Funyun problem or some of the more radical elements in this country might splooge them if they feel they’ve been pushed too far. And it’s not that I’m racist. My best friend is a Funyun. I just don’t want to see splooge on the streets of this great country.

Back in the third article ever posted here, I said that words have power when we give them power. Unless you have synesthesia, changing one word to another will not take away the meaning of a word. It might make it silly, but it doesn’t mean your subject’s changed.

Don’t be afraid of using the correct words and terms for something. Granted, there is such a thing as being polite in casual conversation, and certain words are funnier than others, but don’t sugar-coat the conversation because the topic upsets you. If the topic is what bothers you, don’t even talk about it. Be honest with yourself. Words have meaning for a reason.

Stop blaming the phonetics and start confronting the vocabulary.

And now, I present to you the only good thing to come out of Final Destination 5. You have to admire the self-awareness these actors and actresses had towards the entire project. They’re comfortable making fun of their movie even before it comes out. Enjoy the campiness!

Anarchy for the Common Man

Jan 172011

January 17, 2011 Posted by Entropy Echo at 12:01 am January Tagged with: anarchism, anarchist, anarchy, arizona, art, birds, change, chaos, conservative, control, dawkins, education, emma, gay, guns, homosexual agenda, learning, maddow, manifesto, narchic, progress, revolution, shooting, SMBC, snooki, teaching, watson, what if you're wrong No Responses »

If you join an anarchist group... you kind of defeat the purpose.

January 17, 2011

It’s been a heavy week, what with talks of violent rhetoric and other goings on around the world, so let’s talk about something light.

Anarchy.

Yes, you too can be a founding member of the new generation that destroys Western civilization as we know it!

Well, not quite.

See, to say that something or someone is “anarchist” is a bit like saying you can make pizza. Are we talking Chicago-style pizza or New York-style pizza? Do you make it from scratch or do you use biscuits to make mini-pizzas like I do? Most anarchists say they want a world without government, without an overlord-like power telling everyone what to do and what’s acceptable. That’s the one constant.

The problem, though, is that the ways to go about reaching this world differ.

we want anarchy not chaos by ~Swoboda on deviant ART

Much like La Raza, anarchy is a goal that lies far in the future. That’s not to say there are not anarchists now. There are. I’m one of them. I believe an ideal world is one in which every person is free to do as he or she chooses. This is a world in which we no longer need governments. It’s a world where personal freedom and accountability are held up there with life, liberty, and the rest of Superman’s motto.

The problem, though, is people.

Let me put it this way. Anarchy is the belief that the people have the final say and can govern themselves. Okay, fine… have you met the “average” person? Churchill once said that a few minutes with the average citizen are the greatest argument against democracy.

And he’s right.

We’re dumb. We really are. Think of the average person. Now think about the fact that half the population is dumber than that. And if you don’t understand that last sentence, you fall under the “lower than average” category. Sorry.

Ode to American Gothic by *Quasimanga on deviant ART

I don’t talk about education and art just because it’s something I do or like to do. Art and education, the appreciation of things not essential to survival and the ability to absorb knowledge are the keys to a fully anarchic society, one in which we move beyond progressivism and conservatism and simply evolve into a world of personal choice and freedom. The ability to learn and adapt is falling away from us. Whether we like to admit it or not, we’re in a world that embraces anti-intellectualism. Science is shunned as something evil or some conspiracy to control. Art is seen as some sort of freaky endeavor that only the crazy or slightly mad pursue.

Art and education are the key to our future.

I have friends who, despite being life-long conservatives, pursed a higher education and, through their studies and their acceptance of new ideas, realized that choice and freedom were the way to go. Art has, for many of my friends, spoken to them of themes and messages language just can’t handle or is too verbose to communicate.

The ability to think not just of the world but the world of art and reading “between the lines” is what stands between us a true anarchism.

And anarchy is not a negative term. It’s just used as such by people who don’t know better.

anarchy by ~myfriendjoshua on deviant ART

Anarchy is freedom. It doesn’t mean total chaos. It means choice, but also the ability to take responsibility for those choices. And that’s why an informed population is essential. That’s why education and art are, I truly believe in my heart and mind, the key to a free society.

I want anarchy. I want a world where movies are not rated. I want a world where information flows. I want a world where we hold people accountable for their actions. I want a world where fear of the unknown is replaced by healthy curiosity for new possibilities.

I want controlled demolition of everything around me.

Anarchy by ~xMusicXcisuMx on deviant ART

And now that we’ve dealt with the imminent FBI investigation, time for the links.

I know this is old, but Richard Dawkins explains, in the most straight-forward way possible, why adherence to old ways is so prevalent and a hindrance to progress.

In case you still need a little Arizona shooting talk, Rachel Maddow blows away the myth that guns at the shooting would have made it safer. There WERE guns there. Other people were almost shot.

I have a certain amount of derision for Snooki’s book. just the fact that it was published gives me pause, but it’s good to know the reviews may be better than the book itself.

You know all those bird deaths were the little guys just sort of fell from the sky. Apparently the gays did it. Not making this up. It seems that God is sending us signs.

Do you want to know how to piss off Emma Watson?

And finally, showing why an understanding of the scientific process, or taking in as much data as possible, is important, here’s a Saturday morning Breakfast Cereal comic showing why the proper interpretation of data is important. Don’t forget to check the poll on the upper right, and I’ll see you on Wednesday!