(no subject)

Why Nerds are Unpopular: "Being smart seems to make you unpopular. Why? To someone in school now, that may seem an odd question to ask. The mere fact is so overwhelming that it may seem strange to imagine that it could be any other way." Excellent reading courtesy dasphios. (Also recommended is John Taylor Gatto's Six-Lesson Schoolteacher, which I've linked once before but don't want to forget about when I reread this. Graham feels that Gatto is wrong in ascribing to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, but both make some excellent points. Gatto's interview (linked from the essay) is also worth a read.)

Bad Ass Coffee Shop Under Fire, courtesy skreidle (also responsible for Wednesday's cats).

ha-ha-only-serious

Public Service Announcement: "Attorney General Ashcroft would also like you to lay off the book-reading for a while."

I seem to have shot myself in the foot with Kierkegaard. Three-page summary of the arguments (philosophical and religious) in Sickness Unto Death. Not a hard assignment; it's basically A) so the prof will have a grade back to us before the drop date and B) to make sure we understand the material. So I sort of stagger through it, with no real coherent theme, really just a chapter-by-chapter summary. I expect to get royally blasted for this ("Yeah, great, you can read and summarize, but your organizational skills are lacking. C-"), but instead I wind up with apparently one of the better essays in the class. This does not speak well of my classmates. It also means I've got that whole high expectations thing going foragainst me with the other two papers. And they'll actually require thought and analysis. Bleh.

And it's raining. I hate rain. Snow at least looks pretty; rain is just cloudy and dreary and, well, wet.