From ita's link (since I know that most people don't click on them. Thought it would be funny for teachers and parents out there:
The Groupon Guide to: School Skills
Before children can advance to the next grade in school, they must possess certain skills necessary for increasing academic success. Here are the skills your child needs before beginning the next level of their K–12 education:
Kindergarten: Familiarity with the alphabet's first (or "beginner's") half
First Grade: Ability to fake an understanding nod when difficult concepts arise
Second Grade: Readiness for spelling bees and their more dangerous cousins, spelling wasps
Third Grade: Can design and carve their own multiplication table
Fourth Grade: No longer satisfied by anecdotal evidence of cooties, demands to see empirical proof
Fifth Grade: Can judge a book by its cover
Sixth Grade: Feels an adult-like superiority over younger elementary students, derived mainly from shoebox-diorama proficiency
Seventh Grade: Recognizes that rest-of-life coolness is determined on the first day of middle school
Eighth Grade: Expertise in Hollywood-caliber makeup effects to simulate outward signs of puberty
Ninth Grade: Total rejection of parents, society, sellouts, poseurs, un-raged-against machines, traditional values, book learning, mall curfews, capitalism, know-it-alls, know-a-bits, know-nothings, playing a full game of Mousetrap instead of just building the mousetrap and watching that, anyone who hasn't seen The Matrix, anyone who has seen The Matrix, and most of their friends from middle school
10th Grade: Should be able to read by now
11th Grade: Prepares for prom by holding hundreds of practice proms in the backyard, starring dozens of neighborhood dogs in tuxedos
12th Grade: Must be a complete and functioning adult
Very funny op-ed by Eric Weiner.
On the one hand, as a fellow Weiner, I feel his pain. On the other hand, he has given us Weiners a bad name, and let’s face it: we didn’t have a great one to begin with.
Last week, someone I didn't know from IT stopped by and checked to see whether I had some program installed. They had tried to push it through as an update, but it hadn't worked on mine, so they needed to install it manually. They didn't want to disrupt business activity, so they wanted to do it after hours, and they needed to do it under my login, so he asked for my password. It was expiring soon anyway, so I wrote it on a Post-It for him.
He was supposed to install it on Monday night, and when I checked Tuesday, I didn't see any new programs installed.
This morning, someone I did know from IT stopped by and asked me to change my password immediately. I told him I was waiting for someone to install some program.
He informed me that that had been a social engineering project. That man hadn't actually been from IT. I had given him my password. I had failed.
I GOT PUNKED BY IT.
I GOT PUNKED BY IT.
Dude. That sucks. Valuable lesson, and all that.
On a few occasions we've needed passwords for users at our big client's office. They make a big deal of it, and always change their password as soon as we're done. So they seem well-trained on this....
IT put my passwords on a postit yesterday too. But I knew it was official. I didn't like it.
IT calls me up an sometimes needs my password...but it's always the same guy who tries to hit on me, so I know it's him at least...
Another mindbogglingly inane argument for the existence of God (from PZ's blog): [link]
The gist of the argument is the Earth could not have existed for 3 billion years like science says. Because if it had, there'd be no water left on Earth. See, because people
drink
water. But if the earth is only 6,000 years old, there'd be plenty of water left.
Apparently the person who came up with this argument does not realize that water we drink does not stay in or bodies forever....
Has he not heard of the water cycle?
The gist of the argument is the Earth could not have existed for 3 billion years like science says. Because if it had, there'd be no water left on Earth. See, because people drink water. But if the earth is only 6,000 years old, there'd be plenty of water left.
This guy needs to see a urologist immediately.
