Efficiency

So, I'm taking my Bachelor's of Education and at the lecture our prof is talking about efficiency and how it was the biggest thing in the Industrial Revolution. It was so big, in fact, that the concept of efficiency flooded all aspects of life, including how teachers teach their students. Given this comparison, our class was outraged. How can people treat children as if they are machines to be made?

The simple fact is that we don't. The word "efficiency" has been demonized in our heads. We immediately understand "efficient" as being inhumane and wrong. I find it funny/sad how so many degree holding people can be so reactionary. They're probably all Slap Chop owners, too, not to mention the storage rooms full of Oxy Clean (even I felt Billy Mays had more authority than most professors).

O, what a glorious world we now live in now that we are enlightened! No longer are we subjects of the evil system of efficiency, nor must we suffer the anguish of mustard stains!

The problem is that efficiency is not a bad thing. It's a concept. Concepts are never entirely bad.
What about fascism? Hey, I'm all for democracy of sorts, but wouldn't you agree that being a fascist when it comes to something like flushing after you shit that fascism is a good thing? Shouldn't we all be shit-flush fascists? Say that five times fast.

Efficiency is no different. Yes, we should not treat children like brain jars that we need to pour knowledge into as quickly as possible. But that is assuming the formula for educational efficiency is curriculum covered/curriculum available, or even just proportional to the students' final grades (answers correct/total questions asked). No one seems to be capable of imagining the formula {[sum of the change of lifelong knowledge (learning)/number of children]/time}, or, to put another way, how much learning you can evoke in how little time.

Let me give you an example. Most people in my program take the concept of efficiency and disregard it as evil, suggesting instead "quality of quantity." Now, imagine yourself in a class of 30 students. A teacher could certainly take the time to teach each child in the classroom the lesson of the day in a unique style that would cater exactly to that student's learning style. Who can argue that this would not yield a greater quality of education? But, as anyone can plainly see, this strategy of teaching each individual child on their own is ___________.

If you said "stupid" I have to agree with you, but you're not quite there yet. If you said, "tha gr8est idea evar!!!1!!" I have to ask you to politely go fuck yourself (and yes, there are seriously people like that). If you said "inefficient" well then I guess I've made my point.

If you're still unclear about something I've covered in today's blog, please, come see me after class.

LBP

I'm still not on the bandwagon.

It's fun. It's entertaining. It's creative. It's multiplayer. Yeah, it's a great game.

But it's not "OMG-my-life-is-nothing-without-this-game;I-must-create-levels-and-have-them-be-judged-and-everyone-will-love-me-for-once!"

It's more of an "ah ha ha!" in a childish voice while you bouncily clap your hands together.

It's amusing, it's entertaining, it's bright and wonderful and uplifting.

But take a look at the Halo series.

• Aliens. Check.
• Guns. Check.
• Vehicles. Check.
• Multiplayer. Check.
• Machinema. Check.
• ....

Actually, I- um...

Blog over!
I gotta go!

Mankind: A Million Years of Luck and Survival by Fisher Price

So, my younger brother is having a baby. We've been doing renovations and decking out the house with stuff and places for the baby. While I was at the grocery store my mom pointed out how gigantic the baby stuff section is. It covers 80% of the wall, two aisles thick.

My first thought here was, "how the fuck did mankind ever survive without all this crap?" What did we do before $30 baby pillows and $40 baby outfits and $60 baby toys and $300 baby boxes?

$300?! For a baby box?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, break it down a minute.

It's a box. A box that you put your baby in. You slept in one, I slept in one. I think they call them cribs, but I'm pretty sure that's what gangstas call houses. And they seem to cost just as much. It's like a scale version of a house with equally scaled cost, only you don't get a yard or bathrooms or outlets because your baby isn't an equally scaled version of a person.

My point is that for $300 I'm going to make my own fucking baby crate! I don't remember the one I grew up in and neither do you. And if you do, you certainly didn't care that it was $300.

I think a lot of people scoff at the cheapness of that plan, as if it were unthinkable that someone would put a baby in a non-professionally handcrafted wooden cage. Perhaps the precision engineering yields to the child superior growth and mental ability. Perhaps its finely tuned aesthetic design that has been passed down for generations soothes the child into a more restful state. Perhaps they imbue the very materials with ancient magicks in the factory which can never be replicated. Or perhaps it's just an overpriced box that you keep your kid in until you have to throw it out because your kid needs a bed in a few years.

The Faster and The Führer(ious)

Am I the only one who thinks this would be the best film in the franchise?