Sheer Randomness, followed by SCI Results

Recently, the science teachers decided to give us the results for our final test of this period of the school year. An exam considered to be quite important since it summarized nearly all we’ve done since the beginning of the year. After having told us our results they did something that perplexes me even now, two days after: they posted the results for most of the students for everyone to see on a board in a frequently used hallway. Supposedly it was because they were tired of people asking to check their grade. Because, as everyone knows, opening a binder requires herculean strength. Since they didn’t want everyone snooping to check out other people’s grades, they decided to place the result by the code associated with the student. Now this is the part where you can practically hear Adam Savage (co-host of the show Mythbusters) say: ‘‘Well there’s your problem!’’. The codes just happened to be in alphabetical order too...If you’re taking for the teachers (or just have some kind of grudge against me), you could come up with something along the lines of: ‘‘It’s not like they can tell in what order you are unless they know your family name’’. This would be true if we weren’t seated in alphabetical order in class. The class right across the hallway from the results.

I’m not saying everyone in our level can’t wait to find someone to tease because of a bad grade they got, but just by seeing that the first person on the list got something like 40%, it doesn’t take half a brain cell to tell it’s the guy who’s name is Aaron A. Aaronson. And yet I’m willing to bet if you ask for someone else’s grade, they’ll refuse you and accuse you of something like not respecting the privacy that the other students are entitled to. This would be coming from the people who openly display the results of the majority of the students out of pure sloth.

The good thing is, I’m sure none of the students of the grade above us will be able to decipher the results. I say decipher because as the lab rats of the educational reform, the way the bureaucrats decided to grade our work has turned into nonsensical jibber jabber. In one case they grade by percents going by bounds of 4 which translates to a letter with a sign. You can pass with a D+ nowadays. Call me nostalgic, but with the previous system we did not have these communication problems. The reform was a good concept that got applied and received in an appalling manner. The confusion with the grades is probably the reason people don’t retain them as well which causes the kind of situation we have now.

I hope you enjoyed those rather crude pictures of fruits and vegetables posted above. God knows that there’s nothing more hilarious than aubergine penguins...

SOHCAHTOA!!!!

We're finally diving into trigonometry. It reminds of me something mentioned in a previous post, what was it again? Oh yeah, this was it:

"...nothing like taking a shit while the teacher is talking about trigonometry."

For the full context, read the whole post here.

As usual, however, rarely does anything ever meet one's expectations, and this is no exception. It doesn't seem that this year's trig will be difficult to the point that spontaneous defecation will occur. I may be jumping the gun, saying that it will be easy even before we've gone through the darn subject, but it's a risk I'm willing to take. Besides, the worst that can happen is somebody suddenly shitting his pants, right?

Contrary to the opinions of certain people, this blog isn't only about pessimistic ramblings and ranting. Believe it or not, you're actually learning...something. (The beauty of it is you choose what you learn.)

But for today, I've given myself the task to make sure you won't forget SOHCAHTOA. (I don't see how you can forget something as simple as SOHCAHTOA, though.)

Here's a few mnemonics for it:

Some Old Hippie Caught Another Hippie Tripping On Acid
Two Old Angels Skipped Over Heaven Carrying A Harp
Sex On Hard Concrete Always Hurts The Orgasmic Areas.
Sex on horseback Could add heaps To one's assessment.
Sex on holiday comes after tons of alcohol
S = oh hell , C = another hour , T = of algebra
"I just think of an italian person kicking a soccer ball with their toe. Soccer-Toa sort of thing :D" -Jules

Also, in a Chinese dialect, Toa cah soh means big-footed woman.

Oh and, can you believe it, there is even a (fictional) story about SOHCAHTOA. I'm interested in writing, but never will I go to this guy's level. Points for creativity though.

The Legend of Sohcahtoa
by Matthew Martinelli

Many moons ago in the Archimedes Forest lived a young Indian girl named Sohcahtoa. As with all Indians of the Zenzizenzic* clan, Sohcahtoa derived her name from a memorable event in her early childhood. One day her father noticed her sitting on a natural log, dangling her feet in the water and solving problems involving right triangles. He cleverly declared her name shall be "Soak a toe". However, his daughter heard him say Sohcahtoa, and the name stuck.

Sohcahtoa studied for many years and became very proficient in mathematics. She probably would have become a famous mathematician if she hadn't discovered boys---especially Falling Rock.

Sohcahtoa liked Falling Rock and convinced him to study mathematics with her.
After a while he got bored and said, "I like angles to a degree and I feel positive about
whole numbers. I'll even do sum addition. However, I feel the inverse of multiplication causes division, and I'm totally confused when you say, 'pies are squared'. Nevertheless, graphing is where I absolutely draw the line!"

Sohcahtoa tried to teach Falling Rock about the legs of right triangles, but he was more interested in studying her legs. Right before Falling Rock turned 18, he asked Sohcahtoa to marry him. She agreed to be his bride and put her studying aside. But before they could be wed, Falling Rock had to pass "The Trials of Manhood". Every boy in the tribe had to complete this ritual to be deemed ready for the responsibilities of marriage. Tasks were uniquely created for each individual. Falling Rock's task required him to travel to Triangle Mountain and put ink on the tail of the parrot that sits at the peak.

When Falling Rock and his tribe arrived at the base of the mountain, the elders supplied him with a few cooking utensils and a jar of ink for the parrot's tail. He bid them farewell and spent many days in the sun, becoming quite the tan gent on his way to the peak.

That was the last time anyone ever saw him.

After a few weeks, Sohcahtoa decided to go up the mountain to find him. A few thousand feet up, she found her lover's cooking utensils sitting over a fire. The high pot in use (hypotenuse) was a sign (sine) that she was on the right side of Triangle Mountain. She climbed to the top, but she didn't find the parrot. However, she did find a message written on a stone. Her mathematical sense found it ironic that on the stone at the peak of Triangle Mountain were the words "Polly gone."

Sohcahtoa descended the mountain and never gave up hope that she might find her lost lover. Even to this day, it is said she is still looking for him. In fact, you can still see the signs Sohcahtoa left on the sides of the roads in the mountains: "Watch for Falling Rock."

We've been IB-ed!

Yesterday and today were the days when, if the we were a corporation (we kind of are, but I mean if we were one with money), the executives would arrive in their bizjets from the land of the rich and prosperous and appropriately hygienic and visit the pawns to examine how production is coming.
Minus the bizjet, this is an accurate description: they're strolling through the factory in their expensive suit & tie outfit, talking to nervous engineers with calculators in belt holsters, sub execs wearing cheap suits, and mechanics in dirty blue coveralls. They would have their clipboard and pen, making mysterious notes, questioning, poking, prodding, probing, investigating.

We, the students, are the product they are performing their quality checks on.
They're pretty innovative if you think about it: they've managed to create a product that actually talks back and tells 'em what is wrong.

The IB is the clearest image of corporate level bureaucracy for us at this point in our [pointless] lives, and were in contact with it on a daily basis. Every project, every activity, every teacher, will invariably somehow incorporate IB BS (stands for bullshit but also for bureaucratic sheeshkabab—the food that keeps bureaucracy going) relating to making links with the areas of interaction and [insert more BS here]. Nobody likes it, but we've been stupid enough to hold still, so now, we're used to it. Since mindless bureaucracy does exist, and will be part of the lives of a majority of us for the rest of our lives since the majority of us have gotten our minds dulled and our imagination vaporized, we tolerate it and have become pretty good at it.

What brings a faint smile to your face and an evil snicker from your soul is when you listen to the exchange as the executives question the products. We praise the teachers, express indifference as to the IB program and projects, but we demolish, vilify, and figuratively (although I'm sure some people also literally) poop on the attempted imitation of the IB program by the CSMB which is called the 'reform' !

It is an horrible attempt at copying the IB process. We end up with questions like: How do you think your personality has helped you get through this project?
not to mention the absence of proper class material and their only excuse is: We're still trying to iron out the wrinkles, you're the lab rats, hang in there.

I don't know about you, but I don't find that comforting. To my knowledge, lab rats end up dead well before reaching their average lifespan.

Again, they've given themselves the privilege of playing God. They're risking our future to perfect a new way of teaching, which is supposed to reduce dropout rates, heighten interest, and 'produce' smarter generations of kids ready for the adult world!
So far, it's raised dropout rates, lowered interest, increased teacher workload, decrease amount of knowledge students receive.

Probably their utopian vision will happen one day, but how many more generations will be sacrificed before they hit the magical combination? Why did they opt for a one shot total revamp instead of a gradual implementation? We aren't short of time, at last check, we still had a few hundred years before our sun explodes/implodes.


PS: Something that worries me is their general philosophy which can be summed up as so:

They don't need to know anything by heart (specifically definitions, formulas) because it's all written down, and documented by previous generations, so they can just look it up on the internet or in books if and when they need it.

Oh, is that right? What have you been snorting? What if the power goes out? What if we're stranded on an deserted island? What if an EMP takes out every electronic device and the internet? What if there's a nuclear holocaust? What if a giant piece of shit shat by god, aka, an asteroid, impacted with the earth and caused a worldwide extinction? What if there is an zombie invasion?
I don't know about you, but I don't walk around with a few dozen volumes of encyclopedias strapped to my ass waiting for the Apocalypse.

Rolling sardine cans

Pvt Murphy gave us the finger again, and on his favorite day too. That SOB just loves screwing up everybody's day.

The 211 buses were one short. We were on a streak people! A few weeks without the dreaded rolling sardine box syndrome. Damn you! They had to only send one today. The people just back from Italy must be pissed. Still, gotta be optimistic, at least it wasn't raining. The smell would be terrible.

Every time this happens, it's a study in human behavior. Standing back, you wonder, why do all these people, while knowing that:

1. You cannot occupy the same fucking point in space as another person!
2. The doors, unlike some things, don't get bigger no matter how much you ram them!

still do a privacy invading zerg rush. We're like self-packing sardines.

The reasons are of course, that we've had a long hard day, and want to get the hell away from the school ASAP, and that if we don't take that bus, we are going to take double the time to get home. Nevertheless, to take your mind off the indecency of hot bodies pressing against each other, and certain other unmentionable things, you're mind wanders to things like the day you'll have your own car and moon the suckers still trying to squeeze on as you drive by, or have a limo to pick you up, or dropping a stink bomb amid the people and watch that huge mob explode outwards and away from the door.

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In an unexpected, but unsurprising reaction, some people have decided to express their satisfaction as to the performance of the Ethics substitute teacher. This one is written by DAN.

First off, I would just like to note that for the past few weeks, Ethic has been one of the best classes ever. Julien (and I mean the ethic intern) was one of the greatest teachers I've ever had. Ok like, if only every teacher was like him. Then I wouldn't beg someone to shove their pencil in my wrist. I'd actually want to come to school every fucking day. The guy knows how to talk to teens. He knows that we are in a faze that we think that everything is crap and that we control the world. We are in this moment of puberty that turns our brain into goo and that we can't really see things in an adult's point of view. Which is normal. I mean, every fucking human being has gone through this time and some manage to survive.

This teacher understands what we're going through. He's funny and says funny jokes that we understand at the right moment. Not like some who tell their "jaw-dropping" anecdotes of life. Dude, we're not interested. This guy's smart. He knows everything, and let me tell ya: religion and philosophy are fucking hard to study, and yet we see this immense passion coming out of his mouth every time he gives us an awesome lesson.

Who knew that talking philosophy could be so cool? The man tells us these awesome stories of robots and how they might control the world or stories about the Matrix and shit.

Also, he doesn't think we're dumb-ass noobs of the Reform. I mean, this recent project we had to do on technology and religion. He says that we are a unique generation that has the greatest source of knowledge and we can use it properly. Not like some old farts. We are special!

Everybody is for my opinion. They all love this guy and they want him to be our permanent teacher. Everybody thinks he's fun, cool, and smart as hell (and cute XP). We all want him to stay!

But, because God hates my guts, everything I like must leave me. He's just an intern. JUST A FUCKING INTERN! Can't we trade? For fuck's sake, this is our future we're talking about. Please let it be someone we trust to guide us to a bright future. Isn't it we who must choose?

No. I guess fucking not. Because we are little "measly, meddling, blind juvenile-delinquents who don't know what we want". I guess the adults must choose for us. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Everything I like evaporates before my eyes. So not fair.

So yeah, this is how I feel. And by the way, if you don't like the way I express myself, then fuck off. But I would love to hear your opinion on this matter as well.

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Weekly Double:


Q. What do you call a sheep with no legs?

A. A cloud

Q. What's pink and fluffy

A. Pink fluff

Q. What's blue and fluffy

A. Pink fluff holding it's breath