The Off Topic Topic

[CountDeMoney]

Ed's kids shit in bidets.

[Ed Anger]

Ed's kids shit in bidets.

Bidet dookie is a serious issue.

[Tonitrus]

Ed cleaning the bidet....

[Ed Anger]

Close enough.

[mongers]

Why's Minnie Driver single. 

She deserves a decent bloke. 

[CountDeMoney]

Why's Minnie Driver single. 

She deserves a decent bloke. 

I'd have done her.  In 1997.

[CountDeMoney]

Ed's kids shit in bidets.

Bidet dookie is a serious issue.

In Europe, they've coined a term for it now:  bidumps.

[Lettow77]

Lettow--Why do they sometimes give characters from Osaka southern US accents when dubbing shows and movies?

Is that the way people from Tokyo view Osakans?

As was mentioned, they are also casted as yankees due to the greed thing. But Osaka also has pretensions to having good food (they are wrong, of course), and are reputed to obsess about food similar to their avariciousness. Osakans are frequently portrayed as lacking social graces/being blunt or stupid, which can be another way they overlap with portrayals of Southerners.

The absolute evolution of Osakan dubbing is when they are given Texas accents, as Texas is a fair take on a more boisterous and greedy South.

[Liep]

One of the largest contractor companies in Denmark has just filed for bankruptcy. I guess that explains why the bridge they were building near here has been lying unconnected for the last month.

[Ed Anger]

I just watched that Miley Cyrus clip from the VMA'S. Yuk.

Taylor Swift: yum. Even though she is a man eater.

[Grey Fox]

She's also craazay.

I don't understand the appearl of twe(u)rking.

[CountDeMoney]

Taylor Swift: yum. Even though she is a man eater.

She is indeed a total cutie pie with bedroom eyes, but from what I've read on teh intrawebs, being a man eater is not her problem: it's not letting men eat her, iffin' you fittin' tah git mah drift.

[lustindarkness]

Miley just wants to show she is a talentless skinny ugly tramp. Taylor Swift seems to be anorexic, poor thing.


It also proved my point to The Wife why I did not care to watch the VMA.

[Eddie Teach]

I just watched that Miley Cyrus clip from the VMA'S. Yuk.

That was bizarre.

@Lusti- she is not skinny, just because she's not fat. She appears to eat sufficiently and have an active lifestyle.

[Jacob]

Read a review of a book in the NYT comparing educational systems in 3 countries that perform at the top in international rankings.  The explanation it offers for Finland's performance: teaching programs at universities are very competitive and only take top students.

For that restriction to be effective, doesn't that require loads of applicants?  Something else has to be compelling people to try to get in.

I understand the need to have more than 1 bathroom but it doesn't have to be this perfect master suite with the giantest of giant soak bath when you have 2 other bathroom & a powder room in your home.

But, eh, when you suffer from IBS, anything will do.

I don't know.  Maybe low opportunity cost plays a part.  Pretty flat income distribution in Finland I believe.

If it's anything like the Danish system (at least back when I was looking at post-sec education in Denmark which is a few decades ago) it works like this:

- there are a limited number of higher educational institutions.

- there is a limited number of places in each program, and that limit is somewhat related to what the society needs (which I imagine is related to number of jobs). F. ex. my cousin was trying to get into some sort of grad school level program for script writing for film or something like that a few years ago; if I recall correctly it was the only program available in the country, and it only accepts something like 8 students a year. So you're not going to have a million wannabe script writers out there competing for the few available jobs; same with teachers - if/when you graduate, you'll have a decent chance getting a job.

- admission into a program is basically based on grades, on a highest grades get to pick basis. So back in the day when I was graduating from high school (in Canada, but I was still paying attention to Denmark), the hardest program to get into was midwife (which was fully medically accredited thing, not some wacky hippie BS) where you needed something like a 99% average to be considered, while going to Engineering school didn't require more than something like 65% or 70% and was not considered nearly as prestigious as, say, graphic design (another limited and hard to get into field at the time) and many of the other fields that get shat on in the North American discourse.

- as for teaching specifically, it is a fairly desirable career. I expect there's not a super glut of unemployed teachers; there's the absence of the litigious culture that drives terrible school policies; teachers are generally socially respected; teachers generally and uncontroversially have the kind of influence and say on education and policy that have become political footballs in North America; teachers are backed up by social workers and others when it comes to addressing social problems and problem kids; school boards are not arenas of political electioneering and posturing; teachers get decent salaries compared to other people with a similar level of education.

In other words, it's probably impossible to import those dynamics to the US.