Another Survey

Well, here I go again. I just got emailed another survey, and thought maybe someone who reads here might be able to fill it out too.

The Adaptech Research Network is developing a scale that postsecondary students can use to grade their on-campus experience with adaptive technology and they need pilots. So if you’re going to school, or graduated in the last two years and feel like helping them out, go here and fill it out. If you have any questions about the survey, their emails are on the page. You can even get a few bucks for it! Yea a few bucks! And you’ll be helping a dude who I met 12 years ago. Ug! That was a long, long time ago.

Somewhere, There’s a Code Monkey in Trouble

This is just a quick post to warn anyone who might have clicked on John Pinette’s website in our links bar and thought about buying his stuff via PayPal that you shouldn’t do it. I guess that address isn’t being used anymore and you have to buy all his stuff through Amazon. Luckily for me, who already bought a CD via PayPal, they’re shipping it out anyway. But they say the button should be coming off the site. But until it does, clicking on it is a definite nay nay.

What? A Legitimate Email Warning?

Yesterday, I got an email that made me shake my head and question reality. Had I fallen into a parallel universe? Was I still sleeping? If I was awake, had the world changed as I slept?

I got an email that told me I should read it immediately and let everyone know of its contents. It talked about kids inhaling compressed air or aerosols and dying from the effects. So I thought, “ug another hoax, time to load up snopes and debunk it. To my surprise and shock, when I got there, I found it was true! The guy was a little extreme about it, telling us to get the cans of Dust-Off, the substance that his son used to get high which eventually killed him, out of our homes, but I can understand him being a little over the top when he wrote this. I mean, he just lost his son!

Um wow. Someone sent me an email warning, and it actually was true, right down to the last detail. This guy’s name, his son’s name, his wife’s profession, the name of their dog, everything was true! How often does that happen? That’s just weird.

Oh…My…Lord!

this story sounded so stupid when I first read it that I thought it couldn’t possibly be true. So certain was I that Ananova had been taken for a ride that I went and did some looking around. In doing so I learned 2 things. Yes, these people really did change the name of the play to The Hoohaa Monologues because one person was offended by the word vagina, and yes, the world is in fact doomed.

They’ll Get a Brain Freeze before a Tuition Freeze

Ug protesters. That’s all I can say when I read this story. When will students realize that yelling protest slogans, tacking signs on awnings and handing MPP’s report cards with F’s for accessibility and A’s for student debt doesn’t do anything in the long term? It gets momentary attention, but nothing happens. I may have to interject mid-story just to make fun of them. Off we go.

With lips turned blue from the cold and flushed pink faces, students chanted “What do we want? Tuition fee freeze! When do we want it? Now!” while marching down Gordon Street yesterday.

They waved burgundy signs reading “Reduce tuition fees.”

Minutes earlier, about 150 University of Guelph students gathered at the University Centre to demonstrate as part of a National Day of Student Action, a nationwide protest involving thousands of students.

Several of the Guelph students grabbed coffee before they headed out to brave the cold, which hovered around -21 C with the wind chill.

The bitter winds had many returning to the warmth of the university building.

You really want those tuition freezes, eh? If you were serious, you would have worn your woolies.

Those who did make it downtown demonstrated outside MP Brenda Chamberlain’s office. They were told by one of Chamberlain’s staff that tuition isn’t a federal issue.

Nice research job, fellas. Really shows you know the issue.

Students continued to chant outside her office for at least 30 minutes before they tacked a large sign that read “Reduce tuition fees” to the building’s awning and moved on to Liberal MPP Liz Sandal’s office.

Way to waste your time and theirs.

Sandals greeted the students outside her office and responded to their concerns by pointing out that the provincial Liberal government has put in place a five-year plan to invest $6.2 billion in post-secondary education to open up more spots for students and to provide grants to 120,000 students.

As a result, more students are opting to enter college and university, she said.

“We don’t even have the resources,” screamed student leader Becky Wallace. “Students are dropping out. It’s not fair.”

Sandals replied that there have always been students who have struggled to pay tuition.

“That’s such a cop-out,” a student yelled from the crowd.

Sandals added the Liberals have made more student grants available and increased financial assistance.

But the students wouldn’t hear it, and handed the MPP a report card with an “F” for accessibility and funding, and an “A” for student debt.

Way to make an impact. If you want to be heard, at least return the favour! Otherwise, you’ll get nowhere and you might as well piss into the wind.

Erika Wieler, 18, a first-year U of G student, said her tuition jumped this fall when a freeze was lifted.

She said she only has three-quarters of her savings left, which she’s been putting away for university since she was 11.

“Now, I’m going to have to make as much money that I made in seven years in one year.”

Yep, tuition sucks.

The average tuition for a Canadian university student in 2006-07 was $4,347, up 3.2 per cent from the previous year and almost triple the average of $1,464 in 1990-1991. Quebec students were at the bottom end of the scale, paying an average of $1,916, while Nova Scotia students paid the most — $6,571.

The Canadian Federation of Students estimates the country’s more than one million post-secondary students have debts totaling $20 billion, and the amount grows $1.5 million each day.

Chris Bentley, Ontario’s Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, pointed out the Liberals froze tuition early in their term. The freeze was lifted last fall. Tuition then rose as much as five per cent for undergraduates and as much as eight per cent for those in specialized programs.

The freeze couldn’t be maintained, Bentley said.

“We would all like the cost of what we do to remain the same,” he said. “What was good enough when I went to university is not good enough today. We need to keep up with the times.”

When will people realize that if they want to effect change, they need to actually do some, well, long-term work. Yelling at MPP’s just makes you look like a crackpot. Ug. Yeah tuitions are high. What needs to get cut is the administrative waste. If presidents and chancelors weren’t making six-figure salaries, maybe we could put the money where it belonged. But all this screaming and yelling is such a waste of energy, and it makes them look stupid. It’s so very sad.

What A Bunch Of Boobs

This is just ridiculous.

The Breast Cancer Society of Canada has rejected a large donation from a group called Exotic Dancers for Cancer because some of their other donors don’t support the charity having a connection to such a group.

I can’t put into words how sad and pathetic it is that anyone would have the audacity to try to dictate to a charity who they can and can’t take money from. Cancer is not a business, and you can’t sponsor it like you can a hockey game or an episode of Lost. It isn’t a case of whoever cuts the biggest cheqqe gets to make the decisions. There is no competition involved other than perhaps a friendly wager over who can raise the most money to support the fight against a horrible disease that affects people all over the world in numbers I can’t even begin to fathom. And if you win that competition, you don’t win the right to run things at the office. If you want that, start your own damn charity and leave the rest of us alone. So long as it was raised in a legal way, money is money no matter who it comes from.

I hope that the folks at the Breast Cancer Society grow a spine, sprout some good sense and tell these donors to suck on it even if it costs them some money in the short term. Yes, I said short term. Because once word gets out about what’s going on, you can count on 2 things. That there will be more than enough private citizens to fill at least some of the gap, and that these so-called major donors will have a lot less of a problem with a bunch of strippers giving a few bucks to charity once the public relations nightmares start. Major donors tend to think in terms of dollars and cents, and once those dollars and cents stop flowing their way, it’s amazing how quickly opinions change.

A B C D PHD

Well, here comes some more juice on our ten-year-old university students. It looks like their mom is at least behind the human rights complaint. After reading this one, I think I can hit everybody in this thing with the wierd stick. Here I go.

First let’s hit the mother with the weird stick. She said she enrolled the kids in the course, but never explained why. Now she’s holding a press conference. Do these kids need any more attention? I get the sense she’s quite the media hound.

Now, time to hit a student from the campus newspaper with the weird stick for saying this case is a humiliation to other students because it’s saying their courses are so easy that even a child could pass them. Are the egos of the U of O students so fragile that they can’t handle the fact that their *might* be a brilliant kid out there who, by some fluke, made the entrance requirements? I’m not saying these two kids did, but I just find that argument weak.

The school gets a slap with the weird stick. Why not just refund their money? If they made a mistake, and these kids don’t make the requirements, say you screwed up, give them their money back. If there’s no missing money, there’s really no room for a complaint.

And a final slight tap of the weird stick goes to our two little stars of the show. When asked if this experience had made them into activists, Sebastien said, “I can’t answer that, I don’t know what activism means.”
Well then maybe you should go back and catch up on some of the grades you skipped.

I feel sorry for the poor little guys. I get the sense they’re pawns in this whole game. But maybe there will be more stories on this. I still think it’s weird.

Slippery Slope or Safe Path?

Have you ever read a story that makes sense and doesn’t make sense all at the same time? I just read one. Brain injury experts are trying to say that people who go tobogganing should wear helmets!

What?

Yep, they say that they should wear helmets.

My first response was, jesus lord this is another step towards making the world so safe there’s no fun. I’ve never heard of someone getting a brain injury or killing themselves on a toboggan. I’ve heard of the odd broken leg or something, but nothing catastrophic.

Then I read more, and they said that toboggans can get going at speeds of 35 km/h and if you hit something, the results can be pretty bad. And, if kids are supposed to wear helmets on bikes, why not toboggans since they have similar speed and no steering? Makes sense too!

Then they mentioned how many kids end up with toboggan-related brain injuries. 2000 per year! How come we never hear about them? That’s so weird!

But here’s where the other part of me starts screaming again. They say that injuries can be pretty serious if you toboggan down an ice-covered hill or one with a tree at the bottom. Well gee, if you’re watching kids slide and you *choose* that as their toboggan hill, then you’re pretty stupid and they’re already doomed because they have you as a parent. I know whenever I wanted to go sliding, mom always looked at the hill and decided whether that hill was a good idea.

So I can’t decide whether this story is stupid, sad, a good idea, or what. Any thoughts?

Child Prodigies?

Wow. While I was reading the paper, I came across this story.

Twins, 10, fight expulsion from University of Ottawa

OTTAWA (Jan 30, 2007)

Accusations of age discrimination are being lobbed at the University of Ottawa by 10-year-old twins who were registered in a course before being expelled in the fall.

Sebastien and Douglas Foster filed complaints with the Ontario Human Rights Commission on the basis of age discrimination after the school deregistered them from the Science in Society course they had been attending.

They say the university knew about their age, recognized their status, accepted their fees, issued student cards and allowed them to complete more than half the term before expelling them.

The university said the expulsions had nothing to do with age, but the fact the twins didn’t have high school diplomas and were not in the process of obtaining them.

If what these kids say is true, I hope they win their case. Just goes to show the university is a business first. But I’m so confused. What made them go to university? Who urged them to take university classes, or was it their idea? If so, why? Who paid their fees? What was the last grade they completed before skipping straight to university? What took the university so long to notice them? This is just weird.