But the colleges don’t even pretend that— they are pretty open that being a legacy makes you more likely to get in, regardless of your actual qualifications.

You would have got into your school anyway. This article is complaining about the people that wouldn’t have. You say the donations allow for diversity. The article points out that legacies directly reduce diversity and that that’s always been the reason they were admitted. It’s almost like you are glossing over the…

IQ tests aren’t all that meaningful.

I would wager to guess that if you and people just like you were switched at birth with poor people of the same ethnic background that those who were born to “genetically more intelligent” wealthy people, raised in a stereotypical poor home, would end up exactly in line with their…

When legacies are getting into schools at 5x the rate of regular applicants there is a lot more going on than just legacies having been given more resources and thus becoming better students. Also, your assertion that IQ is heritable (a “fact” used to support scientific racism) has been thoroughly debunked.

There can be a correlation between a 12 year excellent education and acceptance into the most prestigious schools, but I went to a private high school with a bunch of legacy kids and they were D students who should have been Fs. And not the brilliant kind of student who is too bored to make an effort in school.

Ha! Try the experience of realizing that the scholarship that allows you to attend a certain school is endowed by the family of one of your classmates. So you are a XXX Scholar, but Cornelius XXX is sitting next to you in class. Awk-ward.

In a similar survey, one hundred percent of Parisian men admit they are assholes.

Jamie Allmeyer’s story reminds me of my checkered history of ordering drinks in Utah. There’s the time I was told the wine special was “peanut gringo.” There’s the time my wife and I ordered two margaritas and had four individual glasses delivered to our table (Cuz, y’know, we each wanted two margaritas a piece. At…

There definitely is. A study earlier this year suggested that loneliness poses a major health concern and should be evaluated by health care workers (sorry, I don’t have the link on me). What was surprising about this study is that it contradicted that a bit — if it was simply about loneliness, the trend would have…

I grew up around a lot of really old people. Some of them had been married forever. Almost every woman I had known was a stay at home mom, a nurse, or teacher. But all of them were married. Not all of them were happy. Divorce was still a little scandalous. And once these ladies’ husbands died either through heart…

They also had strict rules on their salads.

I’ve posted this story before, but fuck it, I’m telling it again.

What is a hand dipped shake though

My favorite though, was when I overheard a new employee who was prepping cucumbers and talking to the dish washer. She thought it was really dishonest that we said some of our sandwiches were vegetarian or vegan when they contained cucumber. The dishwasher was confused and said that cucumbers were vegetables. The…

Oh, pastrami. Last year I found a bombass recipe for brussel sprouts with roasted pastrami and assumed that since you were supposed to sautee the meat with butter before roasting everything, that pastrami could be found in a raw form. This here black shiksa went to not one, but TWO deli counters asking for raw…

This sort of petty in-fighting is why a man will never be president.

Jamie Layton’s story reminds me of a famous story I heard when I was working at a regional theater festival.

The waitress’s exasperated manager, the bartender and two bus boys join in the search and they eventually find it - at the bottom of a full pitcher of water.

When I was a kid, we lived near a reservation in California. I had a few Native American classmates, but the majority were white. One weekend, one of the boys who lived on the reservation had a birthday party. He invited our entire class, including the 25-ish white students. Of those white classmates, only me and one…

It’s stories like this that make me roll my eyes when people lament the rise of social media. Because of facebook, and the ability to connect with strangers from all over, this little girl was able to have an amazing party. I just feel like there really is good in a lot of people, and things like facebook and twitter…