Hatchbacks, Keyboards, and College

Vikram Bath

Vikram Bath is the pseudonym of a former business school professor living in the United States with his wife, daughter, and dog. (Dog pictured.) His current interests include amateur philosophy of science, business, and economics. Tweet at him at @vikrambath1.

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70 Responses

  1. Will Truman says:

    Niles: I know exactly how you feel. This morning I discovered a ding in the door of my car.
    Frasier: Let me guess – no note on the windshield?
    Niles: No. And even worse, after I’d left the car off at the body shop, the rental agency didn’t have a single luxury car left. They stuck me with some vehicle I believe they call a Hunchback.
    Frasier: No. I think that would be a Hatchback, Niles.
    Niles: It’s painted panic-button red, with a large rear window that pops open.
    Frasier: Oh, that would be the Hatchback.
    Niles: Well, there’s a novel idea: name the car after its most hideous feature. I presume it was a toss-up between “Hatchback” and “What’s that odor coming from the floor?”

    Frasier 3×17, “High Crane Drifter” {Video}Report

  2. Kazzy says:

    Re: QWERTY

    I was taught (in keyboarding class!) that the QWERTY design was intended for inefficiency, because old type writers would get jammed up if you taught too fast. All the little hammers and mechanical moving pieces could handle only so much speed. That is why less common letters — like DFGHJK — are centered and more common ones — like ASERT (all left handed, mind you) and ON — all involve a reach and/or weaker fingers. Is that true?

    As I read this piece, the word “inertia” kept coming into my brain. We do what we do because we’ve always done it and we generally require some sort of jolt to the system in order to shift. Some people and areas of life require more of a jolt than others but most people won’t just say, “The hell with how we’ve always done it. I am ignoring all of history in making this decision.” Unless they are the sort of person to ALWAYS zag when the world zigs in which case they are still sort of doing what they’ve always done.

    Also, that guy’s explanation for the sedan is moronic. I’m pretty sure all hatchbacks and SUVs made today have available covers to hide the things in your trunk. It might cut down on storage space (or, depending on if you have the hard or the soft cover, how much can be hidden) but it’s there if you want it. Or you can do what our parents did in the station wagons of yore and throw a blanket over it.Report

    • Gabriel Conroy in reply to Kazzy says:

      I had heard the same story about QWERTY, but don’t know if it’s true, either.Report

      • The David article mentions that one of the key features of the QWERTY layout is that you can spell the word “TYPEWRITER” using only the top row of letters. This made it easy for salesmen to offer a demonstration. The only letters that are on the top row that aren’t used in the word are Q, Y, U, and O.Report

        • Also from the PDF, the layout was the result of a bunch of trial and error over a 6-year period in an attempt to reduce the number of “typebar clashes”. There’s no mention of it being meant to slow down typists.Report

          • Slade the Leveller in reply to Vikram Bath says:

            I think the former follows the latter. Typebar clashes were the product of speedy typists.Report

            • Autolukos in reply to Slade the Leveller says:

              Not necessarily; as I understand designs of the time, the physical positioning of components made conflict more likely for keys in certain relationships than others (let’s say nearby, which I think was actually the case, but it could be anything). If this is the case, rearranging letters to provide better separation between common combinations can reduce conflict even if speed remains the same.Report

              • Alan Scott in reply to Autolukos says:

                This.

                The layout of the QWERTY keyboard was designed so that letters commonly used in sequence wouldn’t be typed by adjacent fingers, though I think inefficiency played into it as well.Report

              • Chris in reply to Alan Scott says:

                It’s been a while since I’ve read anything on the subject, but last I read, the Densmore letter-pairing frequency part of the myth was almost as mythological as the slowing the typing down part.

                If I remember correctly, the historical research suggested it evolved largely out of feedback from telegraph operators. But that was the scholarship of 3 or 4 years ago, so it could have been supplanted as well.Report

              • Michael Cain in reply to Autolukos says:

                This, and other considerations. I’m old enough that I composed a lot of stuff on a portable manual typewriter — it’s still down in the basement somewhere if I wanted to drag it out. Typebars that are close to one another are more likely to get tangled simply because they’re close enough to snag each other over more of their trajectory. Failing to release a key completely holds the typebar up in harm’s way, particular for nearby typebars. IIRC, and it’s been a long time, jamming was more likely to occur with keys associated with the ring finger in particular because people have trouble lifting that finger while simultaneously striking hard with the middle finger. More likely to jam with combinations on the non-dominant hand also, because the fine motor skills aren’t as good.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Kazzy says:

      It’s a myth that the Qwerty keyboard was designed to slow down typists and minimize jams. It was actually invented by a Welshman by the name of Lloyd Qwerty. Being rather vain, he insisted on having his surname appear at the beginning of the first row of keys. It jammed quite frequently when used to type his native language, so it never caught on in Wales, but by a happy coincidence the arrangement worked quite well in English due to its radically different letter frequencies.Report

    • Vikram Bath in reply to Kazzy says:

      Kazzy: inertia

      I actually don’t think this is the right word. It isn’t that people are slow to change. It’s that they are in a happy, stable equilibrium and no one has any incentive to change.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to Vikram Bath says:

        I’d agree with that. I am a big believer in the value and importance of routine, consistency, and predictability for all people (borne out of my knowledge of the value and importance of routine, consistency, and predictability for young children and theory that adults are just giant young children). Most of us derive immense comfort from these things. As such, there has to be a pretty compelling reason to change. Or change has to be forced upon us.Report

    • Kim in reply to Kazzy says:

      Close.
      The “touch typing” idea was a later invention. When they first started with the keyboard, people mainly used hunt-n-peck.Report

  3. zic says:

    Actually, I don’t think ‘cool’ = most popular now; it’s what the folk are buy now that will be most popular soon. By the time something is #1, it’s no longer cool, and cool has shifted to what’s about to go viral.Report

    • Vikram Bath in reply to zic says:

      That would be the cute ute, I guess. Though that’s perhaps already #1. So, what’s next?Report

      • zic in reply to Vikram Bath says:

        Well, here’s what’s cool and affordable; and hatchbacks are well represented. My sweetie just bought #2 on the list — a hatchback. We were in a Dunkin Donuts one day, and a kid ran it, “It’s my car!” at which the place emptied out of both staff and customers, except us and the older manager, and they went out and gawked at and admired my sweetie’s car.

        The privacy thing is, I think, tinted windows, not hatchback vs. sedan.

        QWERTY is just what most of us learn. My daughter taught herself devorak, and uses it on QWERTY-labled keys; it’s just a simple option change on the computer, retraining one’s muscle memory, and a willingness to let go of looking at the keys as you type. I sometimes use that to develop passwords; a word or phrase in devorak shifted back to it’s qwerty keys.

        Here in ME, there has been a continued effort to align what’s taught in the state colleges with the needs of employers; both for technical programs and in more liberal-arts programs. And that alignment is a big draw for students entering college and opting for instate (with instate tuition) instead of going elsewhere.Report

        • Vikram Bath in reply to zic says:

          There does seem to be some room for suitably European-ish hatchbacks to get some buyers. In their case, I do wonder whether any success they achieve will be self-negating, which you sort of allude to. For most of the cars on the linked list, I think if too many of them were sold, they’d be less appealing. The exceptions to that are the Mustang, Wrangler, and GMC Canyon.Report

  4. Michael Cain says:

    I have a sub-compact hatchback (Honda Fit) and adore it. Most practical urban/suburban car I’ve ever owned.

    The problem with learning a non-QWERTY keyboard is that then you look like an idiot when you have to use a keyboard other than your own. Maybe it’s just a deficiency in me, but my fingers can only “know” one keyboard at a time, with a miserable couple of weeks involved in switching. I had the same problem with vi vs. emacs — I used whichever one was available on all the computers I had to deal with, because my fingers could know one or the other, but not alternate over the short term.Report

    • The Fit is the world’s most perfect car as of right now, I think.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to Vikram Bath says:

        @michael-cain

        What makes the Fit so special? I may be in the market…Report

        • Michael Cain in reply to Kazzy says:

          @kazzy
          Short version: My 2008 Fit is a brilliant compromise of all the most common things I need/want in a car. Highlights: affordable, ridiculously reliable, fun to drive, reasonable gas mileage, small enough on the outside to deal with narrow lanes and tiny parking spaces in downtown Denver or Boulder, big enough on the inside for five moderate-sized people on short local drives, and the Magic Seat® system for manipulating the cargo volume behind the front seats deserves its name [1]. Lowlights: it can’t do everything at once; five people and their luggage for a week-long trip is out of the question. I understand that the more recent models have been refinements on the theme. I believe I read the other day that the 2016 model is two inches shorter on the outside, but has five cubic feet more space inside.

          [1] On a recent trip to my daughter’s house in Fort Collins I put the following into the car: me, a new dishwasher still boxed, a folding ladder six feet long, two four-foot shelves, two gallon cans of paint, and a full 5-gallon tool bucket. At lunch time, we rearranged to carry me, my daughter, the granddaughter in her child seat, and had room for a new ceiling fan (boxed). At dinner time, me, my daughter, her husband, the granddaughter in her child seat and the 60-pound dog snoozing in the space behind the rear seats.Report

    • The thing about QWERTY is that the transition costs are likely to outstrip any benefit. Some alternate configuration doesn’t just have to be better than QWERTY, but it has to be so much better than QWERTY that it’s worth the difficulties of not having a standard and/or everybody having to learn to type from scratch.Report

      • Autolukos in reply to Will Truman says:

        It’s even worse for the alternative, because the time devoted to learning the alternative could also be spent improving QWERTY performance.Report

        • Brandon Berg in reply to Autolukos says:

          Not really. The benefits of practicing with a particular layout have rapidly diminishing returns. If you’ve been using QWERTY for a year or more, you’re not going to see significant additional improvements in the amount of time it would take to get up to speed in Dvorak.Report

          • I actually learned Dvorak and used it for some years before eventually switching back. I wrote about it on the Blog We Shall Not Speak Of. I was going to do a typing test before and after to see whether there was an improvement. I should try to look up what my scores were…Report

  5. Saul Degraw says:

    A few years ago, I was at a party and talking with a woman in her 30s from the UK. She was doing her undergrad at Cal at the time. She had a respectable white-collar job in the UK without a college degree. Something that would always go to a college graduate in the United States. She told me that the UK forbids pay discrimination based on educational level of success. The US did not and she was quite livid about this.

    I have no idea whether this is true or not but it seems to me a law like that would be necessary to stop lots of people from pursuing 4 year degrees.

    There seem to be too many moving parts to this problem. Here are the parts as I see them.

    1. How many people should attend university? I have seen lots of people argue that too many people attend college and/or that college is not for everyone. I have never seen anyone come up with a percentage and say “I think that only 18-20 percent of Americans should have college degrees because….” Now this a quota that market types tend to loathe but coming up with a good number of how many people should attend college is going to be a good way to reduce the number of college students if that is your goal.

    2. A lot of people on the anti-college market tend to come off as ideologues, cranks, and/or culture warriors (usually right-wing) with ressentiment on their shoulders. Peter Thiel (crank) and Rick Santorum (right-wing culture warrior) come to mind.

    3. America’s system of public and private universities provides market options. The American university system is a marvel of free-market economics in many ways. There are public and private universities that cater to all levels of student who passed high school. My view of the rest of the world is that there is still ranking but there is not quite the range of “We accept everyone” to “We accept only the best”. The rest of the world goes from competitive to most competitive in terms of admissions. Also Japan is the only other country I can think of with private universities that are held in esteem. Other countries have private universities but they are often seen as less prestigious than the state universities.

    4. American geography and economic isolation. American school districts often seem to come in two groups. Ones where an overwhelming majority of students attend 4-year universities and those where the overwhelming majority stop education after high school, maybe some community college. There might be some exceptions. I grew up in a town where most of the parents had graduate degrees, not just college degrees. I think the guidance counselors would have had no idea about how to help someone who was not college bound. They could tell you “These are your reach schools. These are your safety schools. These are you 50/50 schools.” Tracking exists in the United States but it is done by geography and socio-economics more than testing and academic achievement. I was a kind of a late bloomer and academic misfit. I suspect in Europe, I would have been put on the non-college track early on. In the U.S., I stayed in the college track because I grew up in a prosperous suburb and my dad was a lawyer and my mom was in education admin.

    5. What is the purpose of the “college is not for everyone” argument? Is it to save people from going into debt or something else like preventing brain drain into economically depressed regions like Humboldt, CA which don’t have much white-collar work? I suspect that the saving rural and isolated or just economically depressed areas from brain drain is a big issue. The problem is that these types of areas really don’t have jobs that would interest the academically curious and minded. I have seen people rue stuff like “Why can’t really smart people be satisfied with working at Wal-Mart in rural Montana instead of fleeing to Seattle and the University of Washington and they can just read books in their off hours?” Or any other big town or city? I suspect that trying to prevent brain drain in some areas is akin to moving deck chairs on the Titanic. America’s economy seems to be of areas that are really prosperous and areas that are really depressed and poor. I am not sure how to prevent this.

    Eureka, CA is a good example. Humboldt County is beautiful and filled with nature like redwoods that are centuries old and trails that feel like you are stepping 100 million years into the past. The original Jurassic Park was filmed in Humboldt. Humboldt is also really isolated because it is 230 miles north of San Francisco and 300 plus miles south of Portland, Oregon. A lot of marijuana is grown up there. There are also a few microbreweries and wineries and some good farms but not enough to support the entire region with interesting jobs. The people who live in Humboldt tend to be real hippies. Meaning that they purposefully want a low cost of living and a rather chill lifestyle. When I was in Humboldt, the big story in the alt weekly was “The War on Hippie Christmas”. The story was about how Humboldt State was not allowing hippies to go dumpster diving on move-out day and the remains were being given to charities. It takes a special kind of person to see this as an outrage and a scandal.

    There was some parts of Eureka that were trying to be tourist friendly. There was a charming chocolate and coffee shop in a lovely Victorian that was well-painted and maintained but the jobs for young people in Eureka were nothing more than working in some of the shops and restaurants that tried to be tourist friendly and that was not enough. Humboldt does not want to be tourist friendly because of all the weed grown there.

    Sometimes I feel like a lot of culture and social debates in the U.S. can be boiled down to whines of “Why can’t more people be like me? Why do people need make different choices?”Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      The biggest problem with Peter Thiel and most of the college isn’t for everybody crowd is that they seem to want the people who aren’t going to college to try their hand at entrepreneurship. That might be fine for some really creative auto-dictates but it is bad for most of the less risky people without an idea for a business. Most people just want a job that will lead to at least modest prosperity. They don’t want to own their own business or have to compete fiercely with others. Even most of the best educated people do not have the skills or personality necessary to be an entrepreneur or small business owner.

      The other big problem is that countries with lower rates of college admission tend to have laws and social programs in place to make the economic outcomes of the non-college bound and college bound less different like the British law on banning pay discrimination based on different levels of education or mandatory vacations to ensure everybody gets a decent amount of time off from their job. This is not going to happen in the United States.Report

      • Brandon Berg in reply to LeeEsq says:

        @leeesq I’m not sure what all Thiel has to say about alternatives to college*, but many of the rest of us just want to get out of this awful Nash equilibrium where college is used as a hugely expensive—no matter who pays the bill—certification program for jobs that require only skills that are (or should be) acquired in high school or earlier.

        *I know the Thiel Fellowship specifically focuses on helping a handful of exceptional individuals with entrepreneurship, but that doesn’t say much about what he thinks the average college-bound high school graduate should do.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      The purpose of the “college is not for everyone” argument is to avoid sending people through 4+ years of college when the social benefit of doing so is less then the social cost.

      “Social,” in this context, means the aggregate cost/benefit to society regardless of who pays the costs or receives the benefits.Report

    • Alan Scott in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Man, Humbolt is awesome.

      I grew up in Redding (east of humbolt over the Klamath Mountains), and my mom was a Humbolt State Alumna. We’d visit the area every year or two and go camping. I can absolutely see why people would want to live there.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Alan Scott says:

        @alan-scott

        Physically it was very beautiful and amazing. There were some decent restaurants in Eureka and our inn was surprisingly big. I wouldn’t say it has much of an economy though,Report

        • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          According to Wikipedia, Humbolt County has a population of about 135,000 and produces twenty percent of California’s forest products. It also has a lot of dairy farms. When you combine the state university, tourist trade, forest products, farms, and marijuana you have a big enough economy for it’s population.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Saul Degraw: but it seems to me a law like that would be necessary to stop lots of people from pursuing 4 year degrees.

      Don’t mistake “effective” with “necessary”. A law like that might be effective, but it is hardly necessary, since other strategies certainly exist that could achieve the same, or a similar, result.

      To your points:

      1) There might be some ideal percentage of people in the US with degrees, but it is unlikely to ever be a known quantity, or a static one. One indication that it is currently too high is the number of degree holders who are un/under-employed (although degree type matters in that number).

      2) You do this a lot, claim that a person or group has some idea or attitude, but rarely provide links to the a representative expression of that idea/attitude. Can you post some links of Thiel being all crackpotty in this fashion?

      3-5) Umm, the US is littered with open-enrollment schools. My cousin works for one and advises prospective students on what classes they’ll need to take, including remedial ones.

      You are getting to the heart of the College Is Not For Everyone argument here, and this is something I’ve talked about before, as have others, so I’m not sure why you seem to be ignoring this message, but I shall repeat it once again.

      The argument is not a black & white College is For You, but Not For You; rather it’s a suggestion that college is not for every high school graduate, and that young adults should not have their economic success/sustainability severely limited because of the lack of a 4 year degree. Very few 18 year olds are ready for the rigor of a university because they lacked the institutional, social, and/or familial support necessary to succeed at university. They will need time as an adult to develop the head space that will let them take on a university education, and until they can do that, they should have other educational opportunities that will allow them a measure of economic sustainability or success. Those alternative opportunities should not be socially disregarded, nor minimally supported by social programs.

      Of course, you can continue to ignore this and dream up your own off the wall ideas for the reasoning behind CINFE (brain drain? really?), but don’t expect people to keep engaging you seriously on this.Report

    • What is the purpose of the “college is not for everyone” argument? Is it to save people from going into debt or something else like preventing brain drain into economically depressed regions like Humboldt, CA which don’t have much white-collar work?

      For me, the purpose is 1) saving people who aren’t academically inclined from having to spend four years and a lot of money doing something they dislike in order to get a C average and gain some knowledge that isn’t necessary for the kind of job they’ll probably end up doing (e.g., something more hands-on rather than academic/knowledge-based); and 2) preventing college degrees from being devalued by having a bunch of people who got through on Cs and haven’t actually acquired the skills their degree is meant to teach. Also, there’s a shortage of people in the trades, partly because we’ve spent the last decade telling everyone they have to go to university if they don’t want to fail in life.

      I don’t think we should deliberately prevent people from going to university. I do think we should stop telling them “You need to go to university or your life will be a failure!” We need repairmen, we need plumbers, we need a ton of jobs that don’t require you to know calculus or analyze Milton, and those jobs should be decently paid (and at least at present, are – you can make a lot in the trades). And some people enjoy those jobs. If someone doesn’t want to know calculus or analyze Milton for its own sake, then they shouldn’t be pushed and pressured into doing so (at great cost of time and money) for fear of being unable to get a decent job.

      My preference would be to make university free but also raise admission standards and expectations of performance to higher than their present level. People whose skills and interests are suited to university are able to go there, regardless of their family income, and don’t end up with a mountain of debt. People who just want to go to university to party flunk out, no matter how rich their parents are. People whose skills and interests aren’t suited to it do something else of value with their lives, and don’t lose four years of their lives and end up saddled with loans in order to do something they don’t like and don’t need.Report

  6. Saul Degraw says:

    And everyone is talking cars and keyboards and I went to college. That says something or other.Report

  7. Damon says:

    It’s actually worthwhile reading the comments on Doug DeMuro’s posting.

    Samples:
    “America loves hatchbacks. They’re called CUVs and SUVs.”

    “Because an aging, fat, and physically decrepit population has an easier time getting into taller wider vehicles. They don’t have to lower and hoist their jabba bods very far with their weak muscles or fold tight their intra-abdomenal adiposity in a tall CUV. ”

    “Noise is a good point. The cargo area is basically a reverb chamber. Has anyone ever ridden in a CR-V circa 2008-2010? The din is almost unbearable.”

    “Hatchbacks shorter than their sedan counterparts are lousy. Cargo depth is more important than height. With many hatchbacks, it’s impossible to carry people AND their cargo. With a sedan, the trunk may not be huge, but it can take 5 people + luggage. Sure you could fold the rear seats down, but then it’s people OR cargo.”

    ….

    Also, a counter point on this link: http://www.autoblog.com/2010/09/28/hatchbacks-who-says-americans-dont-buy-em/Report

  8. DensityDuck says:

    So we like sedans better than hatchbacks because we’re privacy fetishists.

    That is the stupidest goddamn thing I have ever heard.

    But, that said, I did notice that when I bought my Prius they sold it to me as a “hatchback”, but shortly thereafter all the advertising (and Toyota’s website) started referring to it as a “liftback”.Report

    • I charitably assumed that he was tossing out an explanation as a way to jump-start the conversation, not because he actually believed it. (Not that I would know about any such strategies for writing blog posts. *I* surely would never use such a tactic.)Report

  9. Vikram Bath says:

    Not that anyone asked, but I’m going to volunteer my thinking about Toyota’s thinking about the Matrix. Toyota specifically went out of its way to make the Matrix not look like the Corolla despite being a Corolla. They certainly would have sold more Matrices if they had instead called them Corolla station wagons or Corolla hatchbacks. Instead, Toyota got a model that never really sold all that well.

    I think Toyota did the research and figured out that merely by offering a hatchback option for the Corolla, the Corolla sedan itself would look all the more less cool than it already is. By not offering a hatchback (at least in name), the Corolla seems like a proper sedan.

    And what has since happened with the Matrix? Toyota discontinued it and is now re-introducing it as the Scion iM. It’s under a different name plate with an even more distinct look and a mandatory ground effects body kit. Somehow they really, really don’t want anyone to know it’s a Corolla.Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to Vikram Bath says:

      Keep in mind that the Matrix was a co-production with Pontiac, who sold the same vehicle (with slightly different trim) as the Vibe. So they were always trying to keep it separated from the family-friendly economy-car Corolla. (And, as you point out, they’ve moved the whole thing over to the Scion line so the cars don’t even have the same badge anymore.)

      Toyota Corporation seems to have taken from this the lesson that there ought to be very strong brand identities that do not in any way spread out. “Toyota” is for dependable and economical vehicles with plenty of room inside. “Scion” is for the younger drivers who want sporty(-looking) cars. “Lexus” is the luxury and high-performance badge. And if you want a particular thing then you go to the proper brand. The Corolla actually handles very well, and Toyota could make an excellent Miata-type sport coupe on that platform, but they’ll never do that because cheap sporty coupes is Not What Toyota Does. The closest they’ve come recently is the FR-S, and A) that’s in the Scion brand and B) it’s pretty expensive and C) it’s really built by Subaru.Report

  10. Morgan says:

    You actually have no idea why you went to college? How utterly pathetic. Are you actually saying you were such a one brain celled drone that you were never excited about learning something?

    That explains so, so much about you. I’ve wasted a good half hour of my time looking over your blog posts and I’ve concluded that you suffer from the delusion that you are right without bothering to look at issues from other angles. In short: You, sir, are a short step down from the average amoeba. At least they have a purpose, if only to cause dysentery.

    For the record, some of us went to college because we enjoyed learning. While of course, one can argue that one can educate oneself, especially given the variety learning tools and resources available now, the fact is, college employ people. Said people are experts in their field. Said people also have the benefit of experiences which will never be in any textbook.

    I’m certain you’re the type who went for no other reason than to get a piece of paper, and frankly, you make me sick. I know so many young people far more intelligent than you who would actually enjoy the opportunity you were given, not because they wanted to check a box and get bragging rights, but because they sincerely wished to better themselves and broaden your mind.

    Clearly, you missed out on that opportunity as well as the opportunity to improve what modicum of native intelligence you might ever hope to have had.Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to Morgan says:

      You actually have no idea why you went to college? How utterly pathetic. Are you actually saying you were such a one brain celled drone that you were never excited about learning something?

      That explains so, so much about you. I’ve wasted a good half hour of my time looking over your blog posts and I’ve concluded that you suffer from the delusion that you are right without bothering to look at issues from other angles. In short: You, sir, are a short step down from the average amoeba. At least they have a purpose, if only to cause dysentery.

      For the record, some of us went to college because we enjoyed learning. While of course, one can argue that one can educate oneself, especially given the variety learning tools and resources available now, the fact is, college employ people. Said people are experts in their field. Said people also have the benefit of experiences which will never be in any textbook.

      I’m certain you’re the type who went for no other reason than to get a piece of paper, and frankly, you make me sick. I know so many young people far more intelligent than you who would actually enjoy the opportunity you were given, not because they wanted to check a box and get bragging rights, but because they sincerely wished to better themselves and broaden your mind.

      Clearly, you missed out on that opportunity as well as the opportunity to improve what modicum of native intelligence you might ever hope to have had.

      whatReport

    • Chris in reply to Morgan says:

      I thought about turning this into a limerick, but I’ll leave that for the big boys, or Vikram. I recommend something like:

      Here spews a commenter named Morgan,
      Who screams like an out of tune organ.
      He seems remarkably bitter,
      And a tad bit familiar.
      Ah, he’s probably just an old troll come back again.Report

    • Francis in reply to Morgan says:

      I have to say that this is a better than average insult, but a bit too wordy. I am moderately impressed. Full marks would be conditioned on better editing.Report

    • Vikram Bath in reply to Morgan says:

      Vikram Bath: You actually have no idea why you went to college? How utterly pathetic. Are you actually saying you were such a one brain celled drone that you were never excited about learning something?

      I did perhaps get a little carried away with saying I have *no* idea. I had Reasons, and I think I even had to produce them for application essays. The general point, however, is that I didn’t choose among college, getting a job, joining the Peace Core, traveling abroad, or joining a farming co-op with equal equanimity to each option. College was such an assumed goal that I’m not even sure what could have convinced me to do something else other than extreme financial difficulties.

      I’ve concluded that you suffer from the delusion that you are right without bothering to look at issues from other angles.

      I don’t doubt that, but would you say that’s unique to me? Or am I unusually unlikely to consider other angles? Can you point to an example?Report