Really? Really, Apple? If I spend $150 on someone, it means I love them! But if someone else spends $200 on them, it means they love them even more! Fuck you.

“Revolutionary?” Sure, that’s probably true. “Magical?” No. Fuck you.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

I’ve tried to restore my iPhone about 20 times and keep getting a “can’t restore, 1013″ error, so I took it into the Apple store. What they said:

Which is great, except for the fact that the Developer Connection isn’t my account, a very nice friend of mine added my phone to his account so I need to get the new version from him, which it’s probable I can do. All of that would be fine, except why the fuck can’t you restore from a Beta?

That’s right, italics AND bold. That just plain doesn’t make any sense to me. I can understand not being able to downgrade from a fully released version, even if it’s rather annoying, but a Beta? What? It’s an unfinished OS, it’s an unstable version, and you can’t take it back to a stable release. I am not happy.

If you will allow me a personal rant for a second, I would like to expound on what is possibly one of the stupidest ideas ever.

Starting next year, MIT will institute a required meal plan for students living in undergraduate dormitories, to the tune of $1900 for freshmen and $1500 for upperclassmen, despite the fact that MIT hosts a meager 4 dining halls, all of which, I might add, are pretty dang small. I don’t really see how they’re planning to fit 5,000 undergrads into 4 dining halls, each of which seat about 100 people or less, every day for dinner. Oh, that’s right, didn’t I mention? They don’t serve breakfast or lunch. They still expect  students to provide for themselves the other 2 meals a day, which for those who don’t like to cook (the majority, I would guess) probably adds up to a higher cost than the dining plan. The MIT campus is rife with food stores for a reason, many of which have become integrated into institute tradition, such as Anna’s Taqueria or the legion of food trucks now located behind the medical building.

I have eaten at an MIT dining hall exactly once in my entire time there, and there is a very good reason for that: their food sucks. I mean,  for reals. It’s exactly what you would expect from a cafeteria, which is just fine with me if you choose to pay for it, but forcing old vegetables and floppy, undercooked tofu (I was a vegetarian at the time of this meal) down student’s gullets while telling them it’s in their best interest is not in any way acceptable.

MIT Dining’s defense of this ludicrous plan is that it will “allow students more opportunities for better and nutritious food in the future,” or some nonsense like that. In other words, they’re making students shell out almost $2,000 on top of the $40,000+ for tuition, to create a program for future students to enjoy. There’s also something in there about getting students eating healthier, more nutritious meals, but again, it’s not a choice. It’s a classic “you might not like it, but it’s for your own good” scenario. It might just be me, but this sounds an awful lot like Social Security. Or Communism.

All I can say is, thank God I moved off campus.

Dear Sketchy Guys -

I see you every day, pan-handling for spare change in your dirty clothing and thin jackets outside my temperature-controlled office with a business casual dress code. I hear the hungry growling of your big-gulp cups as your plaintive, smokey voices waft along your breath to ask for some change, for some food, for a kind smile and a “I don’t have any, sorry.” Truly, my heart bleeds for you and I can’t escape the pang in my chest when I walk away with a wallet full of small bills.

HOWEVER.

I understand that asking for money is a fast-paced and competitive business, since each client rarely gives to more than one person a day, but some of your tactics are ineffective, insulting, and just plain stupid. Allow me to elaborate.

• I know my hair is red, but please stop calling me “Little Red Riding Hood.” She wore a red cape, idiots. Also, calling me anything with “little” in it will get you tortured and killed when I take over the country. It does not help that I am taller than you.
• Telling me to “Smile, honey!” will result not in me smiling, but in me fantasizing about punching you in the face.
• Telling me I’m beautiful while asking for money and sneering in a lecherous manner is not effective.
• Asking me to come in with you to a small, dark, and crowded shop to buy you food will not work. Even if your intentions are harmless, please remember that you are an old sketchy man and I am a young woman not inclined towards being molested.
• When you ask for money and I ignore you, it is not ok to stand up and follow me while you keep asking. Please don’t be offended when I start walking faster – it’s nothing personal, really. If you were wearing a $3,000 suit and reading a copy of the Wall Street Journal I would do the same thing.

By following these simple rules you can elevate both yourself and your fellow sketchy men, redeeming yourselves in the eyes of the public. Remember, it is not your situation in life that makes you sketchy, but what you do with it. So stop being sketchy. Please.

Sincerely,

- Clare “Little Red Riding Hood” Bayley

Initial Disclaimer:

This post does not apply to liberal arts classes where discussions are encouraged, or any class where there is more than one answer to a question. The majority of my schooling has been in math & science, and there is only one derivative to any trigonometric function.

The room falls silent, the last syllables to drop from his lips echo across the lecture hall, finally absorbed into desks and paneling. He looks around expectantly – no one raises their hand, no one meets his eyes, no mouth opens to utter more than an awkward cough. Shuffling sounds fill the silence, sounds of bodies rubbing against chairs, paper rustling along desks, pencils tapping onto any available hard surface before quickly falling silent, embarrassed at their loud intrusion into the stillness. He looks around, heart in his throat, waiting, waiting, hoping there will be just one, just one student who will lift their arm and vibrate their throat to say an answer, a wrong answer, a question, a snarky question, an insult, anything. He would even welcome a request to go to the bathroom, the silence has gone on so long, gone on beyond the point of reason, gone on beyond the point where he can assume no one knows, yet his pride will not allow him to speak just yet. He must give them a little more time, a little more chance to redeem themselves, to distinguish themselves from the classes that have gone before them, from the bodies which hours before, days before, years before, sat in these same chairs and did not answer. Silence fills the hall.

Anyone who has made it up to the 3rd grade has experienced this, the awkward tension which follows when a teacher asks a question to the class. Very rarely does this actually elicit an answer, even a wrong one, because all students can be classified into these categories during those times:

Let us look at the possible scenarios involved here were a student actually to speak:

1. Someone answers with a right answer.
   1. The class learns the correct answer, and the teacher moves on with the lecture.
   2. The answerer is identified as a brown-noser by the rest of the class.
2. Someone answers with a wrong answer.
   1. The teacher corrects them with the right answer and moves on with the lecture.
   2. The teacher tells them they’re wrong and continue waiting. (loop and evaluate again)
   3. The student who answered has just been embarrassed in front of the entire class.
3. Someone answers with a clarifying question.
   1. The teacher answers it, then answers the question and continues with the lecture.
   2. The teacher answers it, then continues waiting. (loop and evaluate again)
4. Someone says something else, usually irrelevant.
   1. The teacher, annoyed, will give the answer and continue teaching.
   2. The teacher is pissed for the rest of the class, spoiling his mood for the day.

You will note that one of the results of all of these situations is that the teacher gives the correct answer and continues teaching. Also note that this is the same result that would have occurred if the teacher had never asked the question in the first place. Not only that, but the negative consequences that follow from every above scenario are avoided. Asking questions and getting answers only causes problems, asking questions and getting no answer wastes time and causes embarrassment for all parties, so why do they continue to do it? Why, from elementary school to graduate school, do teachers ask questions to their students? I can think of only a few reasons, all of which I will now demonstrate as futile.

To Keep the Class Engaged:
Easy. If you’re sleeping through class already, you’re not going to wake up to the sound of a question being asked, much less the silence of it not being answered. If you *really* want to keep your students engaged, either say something genuinely interesting or vary the tonality of your voice so no matter what you’re talking about it sounds interesting.

Prompt Them to Learn Through Guilt and Embarrassment:
(Note: This tactic not guilt-inducing in all students)
These are college students. Friday night they will get wildly drunk, pass out, and wake up with a penis drawn on their face. The mild embarrassment induced from asking questions is not enough to overcome the mighty power of laziness.

They Don’t Know the Answer and Hope the Students Do:
This one is actually 100% valid, but reserved only for cases such as high school gym teachers being forced to teach advanced mathematics. (for reasons I’ve never understood, all K-12 gym teachers must also teach one academic class)

Identifying Brown-Nosers for Future Ridicule and/or Sources of Worship:
Also valid, but in a selfish, malicious way.

I am obviously approaching this from a biased perspective, and even though I stand firmly with my opinion expressed here I cannot help but wonder if there is something else they hope to obtain by this. I have been taught by some of the most brilliant people in their fields, yet even they cannot logic through what I have expressed above. Perhaps I am missing something, or perhaps it’s just something taught in teacher-school, a relic of olden days when children were beaten with a wooden stick if they didn’t answer promptly. “Spare the rod, spoil the child” still applies if you don’t remove the actions which prompted a need for said rod. How ’bout we just ditch the system all together, and use neither rod nor spoilage – neither answers, nor questions.

Final Disclaimer:
I suppose I should have titled this “Teachers Who Ask Questions and Expect Answers,” since some of my all-time favorite professors use questions often and effectively in their lectures – because they don’t expect any answer. In fact they often give it themselves, right after they ask the question, thereby instilling curiosity into the student’s minds and satisfying it immediately, creating a pleased sense of fulfillment in the students allowing them to enjoy and (dare I say) look forward to lectures. Imagine, teaching in such a way that your students actually want to learn – genius!

Just one of our many ways to utilize the 1st amendment, adding quotes to the default signature of emails is a habit adapted by many, from boppy tweenagers to corporate secretaries. These range from Einstein to Churchill to the seemingly, and unfortunately, immortal Larry the Cable Guy, and they bother the hell  out of me. I’m not entirely able to explain why, but here I will walk through it as much as my mind is able.

Perhaps it is that they intrude into my otherwise peaceful email-reading, distracting me from my productivity just like Jehovah’s Witnesses who knock during dinner. But it is of course my choice to read it, so perhaps here it is not the quote itself but the common methods of decorating them – borders of stars, italics, fru-fru font – that really pull my eye.

Another related possibility is not the intrusion, but the waste of my time or the disappointment of my mind. By the time I  get to an end of an email I am in full reading mode, scanning every word in line until there are no more. Sure it’s technically my choice to not read it, but it’s my automatic response anyways. It is not at first obvious that the text beyond the name is a quote – it could be a PS, it could contain something vitally important or impressively witty. Maybe I get my hopes up as I start reading beyond the end of the writer’s name, and all those hopes are dashed to the ground when I see a line pulled from a Bond movie.

The obvious argument can be made that these quotes are a form of self-expression, much like bumper stickers or tattoos. Oddly enough I am very much in favor of the later 2, which relates up to my first point – intrusion. Stickers and body ink are passive forms of expression, entities separate from any others which it might be my business to deal with. That sounds confusing even to me, so let me say it like this – if it was my business to inspect car bumpers, the stickers would be intruding into my business. As I am not inspecting auto parts but rather reading emails, the quotes are what is intruding.

My last and most persuasive argument – for the most part, these quotes are completely meaningless. First of all, they are *always* completely out of context, unless you happen to be writing an email about quotes in an email. Sure, some of them are cute and make me think/chuckle/tear up when I read them – when I read them for the *first* time. It is awfully rare that I will receive a single email from a person, and after that preliminary contact I have no desire to repeat my quote-reading experience.

I respect your decision to express yourself, people – I really do. I just wish you did it some other way.