Strong With the Dark Side

Submitted for your edification, a summary of this past weekend's slot machine activity for yours truly. Amount invested: $7. Amount won: $177.45.

I played "Star Wars: Dark Side" penny slots at the Golden Nugget downtown and at the Silverton. And I turned $7 into $177.45. I am strong indeed with the Dark Side of the Force.

That is all.

Like Leslie Neilsen

Apparently I am in the process of following in the footsteps of both comedy legend Leslie Nielsen and my uncle Bob (Google didn't turn up any image results for him). Today, after having isolated experiences with singles for the last six months or so, a close inspection of my beard revealed three WHITE whiskers. I'm getting old. For those of you playing the home game, I'm expecting to look either like this guy or this guy by Christmas.

Nope

Wrong. This approach makes no sense in education. Yes, it works in business, but only because you have complete control over the most important aspects of achievement in business. Does your average ad exec want his pay tied to whether or not GM had breakfast the morning of the publicity launch? Does the weapon systems design department at Lockheed-Martin deal with whether or not the nuke broke up with her boyfriend the night before the Autocrat turns out to check out the new missile? Nope. But we do. End of story.

Gunslayer

I just want to say that while this seems like kind of a good idea, it really isn't a good idea at all. Do we really want to introduce more weapons into the school system? Isn't it actually fairly likely that allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons in schools will result in angry students trying to take those guns from the teachers? Or, even worse, that something like that would lead to a slippery slope ending eventually in all people in a school all armed all the time? As an angry armed student, you're less likely to try and shoot somebody who might also be an angry armed student, right?

When I was in high school, I wrote a short story that shared its title with that of this post that was all about Angry Armed Students. I thought it was an interesting idea to think about -- and it was, since students were still allowed to think about things like that in pre-Columbine suburbia -- but never did I imagine that some dimension of the idea might actually happen. These times are Strange indeed.