The shipping costs would be murder

This magnificent sculpture of a giant octopus tearing down a temple is for sale in Japan. It would be perfect for my front lawn.

octotemple

There are still the small matters of the sad, hungry moths that flutter out of my wallet when I open it, and I should probably talk to Mary before investing in a lawn ornament that would dominate the neighborhood, and oh, yeah, the neighbors might have something to say…

John Oliver disappoints me

This is a deeply anti-intellectual message.

He’s telling people that school is irrelevant. He starts off with history, and actually makes a good point: that history is often taught poorly, with a narrow focus. That’s a complaint about the quality of the teaching, and I think it’s good to encourage students to demand better of their instructors.

But then it gets weird. He starts complaining about the subjects themselves: no one needs to know any math beyond addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and how does he know? Because he’s a satirist on television who doesn’t understand logarithms, and he’s just fine.

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