On A Fan's Notes On "Gilmore Girls"
Thanks to this show, I spent a sizable chunk of late middle school/early high school trying to pepper my speech with as many references as possible, because I thought it would make me sound cool and smart like Lorelai. However, due to my limited teenage knowledge and tastes, I probably sounded less like a Gilmore and more like one of the Big Bang Theory dudes (though that didn't exist yet. I was ahead of my time). I still vividly remember my best friend telling me, more than once, "That was clearly a reference to something. I just don't know what." The one reference my peers actually got with any regularity? "Oy, with the poodles already."
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On 'Crash': The Most Loathsome Best Picture Of Them All
@LyingOutOnDecaturRoad It beat out High Noon, too. I would also rather watch the Quiet Man, Ivanhoe, or Moulin Rouge than Greatest Show on Earth.
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On Venture Capital's Massive, Terrible Idea For The Future Of College
I don't understand how MOOCs are the future when so many fields/subject simply can't be taught that way. How do you teach/learn science with no hands-on lab experience? How does any field that involves working with people--medicine, psychology, social work, education,* etc--get taught online? I get that the performing arts are "useless," but how do you teach music except in person? (I guess you could do voice lessons over Skype, maybe.) How would acting even work? I get that it's not exactly a lucrative field but the world would be a lot more boring without any actors.
And I'm really skeptical of how many doors we're opening when the new method of education seems geared to serve only the highly self-motivated. (Seriously, the rates of completion for MOOCs are ridiculous.)
*you know, if we still have some physical classrooms around for the really young, really special-needs, or really rich
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On Venture Capital's Massive, Terrible Idea For The Future Of College
@lorabora I learned how to light a lightbulb with a battery and wire in fourth grade, and understood how it worked. It's not that difficult, and the electrical knowledge involved is "how to complete a circuit." I really, really hope electrical engineering majors go beyond that. I wasn't exactly a super-precocious kid.
(Full disclosure: I definitely would've been thrown for a bit by having just one wire--I learned with two--but I figured it out before the video showed anyone getting it right.)
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On The Eternal Life Of 'Twilight' In Forks, Washington
@fb574920322 When I visited Forks back in '08 (town picked by a family member who wanted to see the rainforest without camping and had no idea about sparkly vampires' popularity), a woman I talked to at the tourist center admitted that Twilight had a limited shelf life, but the town was going to make use of the popularity while it lasted.
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On Taylor Swift's Analogies, In Order Of Incomprehensibility
I need you like a heartbeat.
I dunno, I need my heartbeat pretty bad to, like, pump blood and keep me alive and stuff.
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On How Do You Like Barack Obama Now? A Conversation
@Astigmatism I'm young and I don't even get my peers. What were they planning on doing when they finished school? Is their health so much better than mine that they never considered what it meant to go without coverage? Are they still in the teenage "I'm invincible" phase where car accidents and freak health scares only happen to other people? Do they think jobs with good health benefits exist for everyone? (the economy turned when Bush was still in office, so I really want to know about that last bit.)
What do I know, I'm just the artsy weirdo who's actually pursuing her creative dreams because the law means I don't have to worry about finding my own health coverage until I'm 26 (at which point the exchanges will have kicked in--nice timing, Mr. President).
(I'm also a lady who'd like to maybe marry another lady some day, so that's keeping me from voting for the party that seems full of people who hate me on both counts.)
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On The 40-Year-Old Reversion
@Jeanne S@twitter That made no sense to me, too. (Of course, you'd think an affluent Park Slope parent might've met the type of teen who isn't remotely blasé about birth control because they've been told they HAVE to go to college, and Ivies and babies don't mix. And because unplanned pregnancies when you're young and unmarried and not yet settled in life really throw a wrench in things. But I guess their kids are too young and generalizations are everything.)
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On The 40-Year-Old Reversion
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On Chicago Has Hurt Feelings
That review was a hoot. Doesn't the Times employ fact-checkers?
I did like reading about how our weather's been improved by global warming. Yeah, all that flooding sure was an improvement.