http://www.thisblogisoverrated.com Thu, 28 Aug 2008 02:09:07 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I haven't posted for a while, but that's because I've moved somewhere completely new in the last week or so and I'm still settling in. So good to be out of Ann Arbor. So, the new town? Well, it's a college town that got its name from a woman ... http://www.thisblogisoverrated.com/2008/08/27/ann-apolis-is-overrated/ Consumerist has some great advice on how to stick it to Big Pharma and save on medications: stop taking them! You may like taking "medicines that have never worked" and "medicines that were never needed" just for fun, but if you just stopped, you'd save so much money! And ... http://www.thisblogisoverrated.com/2008/08/05/those-lazy-americans-and-their-unneeded-medications/ Those pampered, entitled, adultolescent college students are at it again! According to a new study reported in the Times, "When male students enrolled in four-year universities, levels of drinking, property theft and unstructured socializing with friends increased and surpassed rates for their less-educated male peers." Oh no, not ... http://www.thisblogisoverrated.com/2008/07/31/boys-gone-wild/ When I dropped out of J-school, the extent of their "new media" training was a course that showed students how to use boolean operators like "and " and "or" to enhance searches. But at least we didn't have to take a class on Twitter. (Sorry for the light posting; most ... http://www.thisblogisoverrated.com/2008/07/31/school-of-blog/ An otherwise interesting Times story about tuition-free Berea College in Kentucky contains this pampered-college-student howler: "[U]nlike most well-endowed colleges, Berea has no football team, coed dorms, hot tubs or climbing walls." At least reporter Tamar Lewin is willing to consider football teams as a pricey amenity. But coed dorms? ... http://www.thisblogisoverrated.com/2008/07/21/those-pampered-college-students-again/ The Times' media reporter David Carr gives us an unsparing account of his life as a drug abuser. His life as a domestic abuser? I'd say that two offhand references to his violence against his ex-girlfriend in a sprawling, self-flagellating 9-page essay constitute a fairly sparing account. ... http://www.thisblogisoverrated.com/2008/07/18/i-dont-have-a-snarky-title-for-this-one/ Funniest grammar-related witticism I've seen in a while, from a comment thread on Megan McArdle's blog about cyclists: One day I was riding the bus to work and ahead of us was a bicyclist with a placard on the back of her bike with the vehicle code section saying bicyclists have ... http://www.thisblogisoverrated.com/2008/07/17/eats-posts-and-leaves/ This is what happens when academic non-scientists attempt to write about "geeks." Here Scott McLemee describes the thesis of the new book Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software, written by an anthropologist: [T]he whole process of creating and distributing free software is itself, to borrow a programming term, ... http://www.thisblogisoverrated.com/2008/07/16/ihes-hilarious-entertainment/ (Back from out of town; sorry about the light posting.) Another rant from a disgruntled waiter, this time with a book deal in the works. What is it about food service jobs that provokes such vociferous tirades on hipster blogs, all the sanctimonious posturing about how the way one ... http://www.thisblogisoverrated.com/2008/07/15/overrated-waiters-who-complain-about-customers/ Thoughts on the economics professor who sat in an office full of rotting food watching porn and e-mailing a friend about his strategies to seduce a "totally dumb" student whose "little girl set of mannerisms" appealed to him ("find out her weaknesses, flatter her, and then dig out more ... http://www.thisblogisoverrated.com/2008/07/07/putting-the-ick-in-economics/