Category: Bad News

Horrible, unpleasant stuff

That “Human” Touch

Bad News, Seen On Campus

Apparently some colleges can’t even get it right when it comes to acceptance letters:

Applicants to Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health were the latest anxiety-ridden group of young people to fall victim to an admissions glitch, when, in February 2017, the school accidentally sent offers of admission to 277 students then said the notices were sent in error about an hour later. But those students are just the latest in a string of others who have suffered the same fate. Schools ranging from Carnegie Mellon to Tulane have sent admissions notices in error. In 2009, the University of California-San Diego accidentally told 28,000 students they were admitted to the school, when in fact they were rejected.

Of course, the response from these blundering fools is of the “My bad!” shrugs, along with the inexcusable excuses:

The errors are likely the result of the most mundane of office problems: IT challenges.
“For some places you’re taking relatively young professionals, you’re putting them in roles where they don’t have an enormous amount of experience with business process,” Farrell said. “The other piece is that sometimes the systems on campus, the enterprise management systems, can be very complex and not terribly user-friendly.”

I’m sorry, but we as a society are way past the “Oh, the computer got it wrong” bullshit. I’m not a litigious kind of person, but this looks like a classic case of a huge class-action “pain and suffering” payout. Without some kind of financial penalty, the universities (all of whom include courses on “Computer Science” in their curricula) have absolutely no incentive to fix this situation. So the “complex, unfriendly enterprise management systems” won’t get fixed, nor will the “inexperienced young professionals” get fired; and prospective (fee-paying) students will continue to get shafted. (My suggestion:  every time a person gets a false acceptance letter, that student should be entitled to a full-boat, all-expenses-paid four-year scholarship at the offending college. That, I think, would get someone’s attention.)

All in all, however, this sorry experience will also provide school-leavers with an excellent foretaste of corporate indifference and inefficiency, an experience that should stand them in good stead in their future careers. When their lives can be fucked up by a “mail-merge” mistake, young people will see at firsthand just how unimportant they are to Global MegaCorp Inc. If that doesn’t melt the “snowflake” mentality, nothing will.

OMG Rocks?

Bad News, Seen On Campus

Wait… so schools are now advocating bringing rocks to a gunfight?

A Pennsylvania school district is arming classrooms with buckets of rocks as a last-ditch defense against mass shooters.
David Helsel, superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill County, told ABC News on Friday that every elementary, middle and high school classroom in the district is stocked with a 5-gallon bucket full of river stones for students and teachers to pelt an armed intruder.
“We’ve been trying to be proactive just in case,” Mr. Helsel said. “How can you aim a gun if you’re being pelted with rocks?”

I’m not even going to touch the obvious stupidity in this strategy.

However, when just a week ago the Army put out a statement that new recruits are unable to throw hand grenades further than a few yards because so few fathers can be bothered to play catch with their sons these days… good grief, what a bunch of pussies.

Weekend News Roundup

Bad News, Business, Culture, Men & Women, Politics

…wherein I comment on various snippets of what passes for “news” these days, and which happened to catch my eye en passant:

1.) Ireland threatens to poach U.S. business from the U.K., post-Brexit.
— It’s called the “free market”, and nobody should care about this other than the ignorant. Remember that you’ll be negotiating with the United States and against Great Britain, boyos. Good luck with that. And just hope that your masters in Brussels don’t punish you for straying outside the fold.

2.) Women achieve orgasm more often when having sex with other women than they do with men.
— Don’t care. Next:

3.) Prince Harry won’t sign pre-nuptial contract with divorced Hollywood starlet.
— Yeah, this is going to end well, considering there’s about $40 million involved. Dreamy royal ingenue vs. Hollywood lawyers… nope, not gonna take that bet. And the pussification of Harry continues apace…

4.) Saintly charity Oxfam involved with sex orgies and sexual harassment in Haiti.
— Considering that Haiti is one of the pox capitals of Shitholia, could this be conclusive proof of liberal idiocy, or is it just the Darwinian process? I report, you decide.

5.) Disloyal and dishonest asshole fired from the FBI before he can retire with multimillion-dollar pension.
— My only question: what took them so long? Should have been done over a year ago.

6.) Has-been CalGov Arnold Schwarzenwhatsit said some stupid shit in Austin, TX.
— Dude should have stuck to bonking hideous Hispanic housemaids. Of course, in Moscow-On-Colorado he’s going to get serious cheers for saying that “oil companies are killing people by abetting the burning of fossil fuels, and that all products using fossil fuels should be marked as associated with hazards like tobacco.” Yet another has-been liberal Republican who needs to just STFU.

And finally:

7.) SecState Tillerson was on the toilet when told he was fired.
— And we needed to know this… why? Somewhere out there, someone’s former journalism professor is reaching for the razor blades. (Not that this would be a Bad Thing, mind you.)

Hall Of Shame

Bad News, Lies and Untruths

So PJMedia is an “objectionable” website, huh?

Wait till you go to Britishland. Here are a couple of websites I discovered were blocked, while I was Over There (in bold type):

I’m amused by the fact that weapons are lumped in with hate (or, for that matter, gore — as though Collectors Firearms have blood dripping from their antique bayonets or swords, FFS). It just shows how frightened these Brits are of… well, of everything. (Imagine being afraid of hatred.)

Amazingly, my website was not blocked under those auspices, because I surely feature all four of them on a regular basis* — a Good Thing they didn’t block me, or else I’d have gone over to Sky Broadband offices and shown them what “hate”, “gore” and “violence” really are. As for “weapons”:

Fuck off and die, Sky Broadband, you bunch of pussywhipped, nanny-hugging hoplophobe sissies. (Now that’s hate.)

I mean, if we can’t shoot ’em, can we at least flog them a little?

*I don’t do porn on these pages, but after seeing this timorous nonsense, I’m sorely tempted…

Good Timing

Bad News, Travels

Looks like I picked the right time to stay at The Englishman’s cottage in Boscastle (i.e. in December last year):

Fifteen flood warnings have been issued by the Environment Agency, most of which are concentrated in Cornwall and the south west of England.

And lest anyone think I’m being facetious:

The Boscastle flood of 2004 occurred on Monday, 16 August 2004 in the two villages of Boscastle and Crackington Haven in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The villages suffered extensive damage after flash floods caused by an exceptional amount of rain that fell over eight hours that afternoon. The floods were the worst in local memory. A study commissioned by the Environment Agency… concluded that it was among the most extreme ever experienced in Britain. The peak flow was about 140 m³/s, between 5:00pm and 6:00pm BST.

Granted, the British government has built all sorts of anti-flooding drains and such in Boscastle since then, but I’m still nervous. Government works are not always infallible, as a certain city in the Mississippi delta found out a few years back.