Youth is wasted on the young (but I forgot who said that)

It might have been George Bernard Shaw, but I find myself frequently having a little trouble rapidly retrieving labels like names, words, titles, etc. I am told and have read that this is a natural consequence of growing older, and I guess I first started to notice the cognitive slowing at around 40. Now I mention this because the young really don't know what worries the old. Yes, each generation of the newly old frets that should they become infirmed they will be a burden on loved ones. What's new about the self-absorbed forever-young baby boomers is the pervasive fear of senility. As we see our parent's generation living longer than any before them, we observe for some the terrors of senilty. As we notice difficulties in retrieving certain types of information, we leap to the worry that the ravages of Alzheimer's cannot be far behind. For our grandparents, it was the "Big C" (cancer), but for us, it is the "Big A," and the "senior moment" joke is just so much whistling by the graveyard. The young worry about what they will be; the old worry about remembering what they were..

What fork do you use for scorpion?

Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
- Ambrose Bierce

Dogs seem to regard all that they encounter as one of only two things: edible or inedible. People, however, have greater discrimation and a broader spectrum of choice (except perhaps for the British- great country, great people, but awful food- like we slurpie-sucking cheeze-whizzing Americans have anything to crow about). Yet look at the things we actually choose to eat! There are TV shows chronicling the disgusting things we're willing to eat, and businesses selling such wares are thriving. (Check out edible in London) There's an old saying that one man's meat is another man's poison, but now one man's poison is another man's meat. When did mealtime become truth or dare?

Real Men Don't Wear Scarves

Did you learn nothing from the metrosexual man-purse fiasco? Do men really need to emulate women's fashion? OK, they're wearing knit scarves indoors. Whatever floats your boat, and at least it's not the legwarmers of yesteryear. But scarves as fashion just don't work for men. You want to wear a winter scarf under your overcoat on a frigid day, fine. But the eccentric ascot, pompous draped-from-the-shoulders "look," and now the tied knit scarf just aren't working. Where's that big beer can with the "Be a man" caption when you need it?

Campus fashion watch (high on the very long list of things I know little about): Uggs nearly dead, tied knit scarves past peak, head scarves and big sunglasses on the way? (Let's hope not.)

Queues Cues

Why is there not a standard placement for the gas tank fill pipe on a car? It doesn't have to be in the exact same spot on every car, but at least have it on the same side. I don't know how many times I've seen a car with the cap on the passenger side, and it's not their fault, create havoc, or at least inconvenience, with waiting lines at gas stations. It was easy in yesteryear when the gas tank and cap were typically at the back of the car, though it was sometimes hard to find the cap and I imagine that the detonation at rear impact was an annoyance. If everyone had the fill on the driver's side, for example, everyone just stays to the right from either entry point and it's smooth sailing. By the way, would you please pull up to the frontmost available pump? And while we're at it, you might consider parking your car somewhere other than in front of the door to the gas station convenience store (perhaps those lined areas 10 yards away called "parking spaces") should someone actually want to drive around the car pumping gas in front of them rather than have to wait for the cars ahead to pull away or for you to complete your I'll-just-be-a-second transaction that won't be.

Addendum- The Prince

This mandatory advisement (previous post) is generally met with the reaction that the school has its heart in the right place (if you'll forgive the cliched reification) in attempting to provide better guidance for its students, whether one regards this as a service or disservice, feasible or unfeasible. But a likely "hidden agenda" here is an attempt to address the "retention problem."

Our school has about a 50% retention rate, meaning that about half the entering freshman will graduate. This is fairly typical, give or take, of public colleges, with private schools a little higher. You may well quibble with the figures, as they are almost certainly understated (not accounting for transfers, those that take a while to graduate such as part-timers and other sources of bias) but it is clear that a lot of students who start college don't finish. I imagine there are a lot of reasons why people don't finish, some easily understood, some not. The mandatory advising seems to address one potential reason for dropping out, which is lack of information and the obstacles that creates.

I often think that getting a college degree is more about learning to overcome obstacles than learning what's in textbooks. While learning such skills is important, certainly alleviating student frustration and confusion would help increase student retention as well as good will (leading to increased satisfaction, reputation, enrollments, alumni contributions, etc.).

So the issue is whether the increase in information, satisfaction, retention, etc., are worth the student coercion, some degree of faculty resentment (extra time, additional learning, philosophical differences, etc.), potential problems (system errors, student errors, faculty errors). In other words, do the ends justify the means? They seldom do.