It's not so much Old Fashioned WASP-y as it is Aspirational Southern Housewife-y. It celebrates new money and gratuitous displays of wealth. My boyfriend is the archetypal nice WASP from Cape Cod and his entire family (pretty much your standard Kennedy Democrats with a sailboat/tennis court/purebred hunting dogs they…

American obsession with testing is minor compared to a big portion of the world that outscores the U.S., which is a big reason why testing here is ramping up. American kids and parents would freak out if testing was as important here as it is in South Korea or China.

As someone who actually studies the science of how to teach people, all this common-core hate is bullshit. When we were in school, all we were taught was how to add and multiply, like a cook book. We never learned why we were doing it, and that made more advanced math a lot more difficult than it should have been.…

I kind of don't see an issue either. I attended some classes in France (and took courses from French professors in under grad and grad school), and they were the easiest courses I ever took because all they required was rote memorization. On tests, if I literally repeated back to them word-for-word what they had…

Yeah, I didn't see these math problems as out of line. In fact I did similar problems at that age and that was 25 years ago. It seemed fairly obvious to me what they were trying to get the kids to understand. Maybe the problem is that a lot of parents have terrible basic math skills?

I am not a fan of Common Core, but I actually dont see an issue with these questions. At this point in 3rd grade, kids have been doing multiplication for several weeks, if not months. The first question is asking them to recognize that each of the numbers they'll need to represent are multiples of three, so rather…

I am so going to hell...

Not to defend Pinsky too much here, but... lots of diseases get called "garbage can" diagnoses by doctors. My wife has said that internists will regularly include fibromyalgia in this category as well. That isn't to say that they aren't "real," but they are often diagnosed when there is no specific pathology present…

Two thoughts:

I'm curious to see this, mainly because the show is quite different from the movie, and I feel like people will be like "OMG! THIS VERSION RUINS THE ORIGINAL!!!!!" Actually, my dears, the movie ruined the show... and I use "ruin" loosely, since neither the show nor the movie is particularly amazing. (Entertaining as…

Totally off subject but my son asked after she brought back summer why didn't her dress melt? Because afterall she remade it for herself with her ice magic...shouldn't it melt?

Dog trainer here: they don't have a sense of right and wrong as we perceive it. It's more of a sense of "gets me things I want" and "gets me things I don't want" ;) There is a lot of argument in the animal behavior community over what emotions animals feel, and while most of us do think that dogs have emotions, guilt…

Okay, I'm gonna be that guy. The dog is adorable but that's not guilt you're seeing. She's reacting to her owner's agitated state and is trying to show submission. Dogs don't feel shame and to say they do is anthropomorphizing. (I hope I spelled that right.) Adorable puppy tho.

Pretty meaningless and privileged gesture. He is a rich white guy, he won't experience any retribution for this and he has the option of leaving the country immediately should he be in any danger. I just wonder about the position he has put his tour guide, people who carry his gear, etc in. They are the ones likely to…

Color correction really isn't that big of a deal.

I feel a bit weird about his assertion that the president couldn't get the flag down himself too. Like unless you can climb a fucking mountain, your opinion isn't valid?

As a runner, this article bothers me. Who cares if these people ran rouge? Seeing as you don't have pictures of them with medals, are you SURE they took medals at all? I want you to find me a person that ran legitimately and didn't get a medal because they were out of them. I probably still won't care about this,…

Bio-duck? You tell me bio-duck. Bi not a chicken?

You sound like you gave it a lot of effort and probably looked pretty classy. Skinny jeans and a baseball cap? Ehh.....

If I have to "build up a tolerance" to a candy, I feel like the makers of that candy have failed miserably.