What made you go WTF today?

[Illusions]

Received an email from Game advertising Black Friday deals. That is NOT a thing. Black Friday is not a thing here.

They're going to try to make it a thing. Black Friday deals on Thanksgiving weren't a thing here a few years ago, now they are.

On another note, Bitcoin. I am perplexed by its rapid rise in price over the last couple of weeks, however I'm uncertain why anyone would spend or accept a currency that fluctautes sometimes 50 - 100 USD per day. Just thinking about it in terms of actual USD if you bought a coffee for $5 last week, that money you spent is now worth $10. I don't think the people investing realize this can't continue if you also want it to be viewed as a widely accepted currency. In fact while typing this, the price fluctuated from $850 up to $860.

[Ominous Gamer]

Received an email from Game advertising Black Friday deals. That is NOT a thing. Black Friday is not a thing here.

Considering GAME deals in an industry that is increasingly digital, and those digital prodivers all have black friday sales.... get used to it.

[GGT]

On another note, Bitcoin. I am perplexed by its rapid rise in price over the last couple of weeks, however I'm uncertain why anyone would spend or accept a currency that fluctautes sometimes 50 - 100 USD per day. Just thinking about it in terms of actual USD if you bought a coffee for $5 last week, that money you spent is now worth $10. I don't think the people investing realize this can't continue if you also want it to be viewed as a widely accepted currency. In fact while typing this, the price fluctuated from $850 up to $860.

I still don't understand Bitcoin or virtual currency. But then, I still don't understand Goldbugs.

[Hazir]

What's wrong with Germans ? Another cannibal murder/suicide pact ? An actual website for cannibals ?

[Timbuk2]

Yeh it's highly bizarre.

[Khendraja'aro]

What's wrong with Germans ? Another cannibal murder/suicide pact ? An actual website for cannibals ?

What's wrong with the Turkish? Another failure to understand that two guys don't represent a nation?

[RandBlade]

Touchy. Typical German, no sense of humour.

[Khendraja'aro]

Touchy. Typical German, no sense of humour.

Typical British. Thinking that they get to define humour.

[Aimless]

Typical British. Thinking that they get to define humour.

1 - 1

[Hazir]

What's wrong with the Turkish? Another failure to understand that two guys don't represent a nation?

I think we're actually up to four now. Plus a website.

[Khendraja'aro]

Cannibalism isn't exactly limited to Germany.

Let's count the cases since 1990:
USA: 5
Ukraine: 1
North Korea: Several
Australia: 1
Venezuela: 1
Germany: 2
UK: 1
Tanzania: At least 25
Turkey: 1
Liberia: 1
Canada: 2
Colombia: 1
Russia: 2
Brazil: 2
Pakistan: 1
Slovakia: 1
Netherlands: 1
China: 2
New Guinea: 1
India: 1
Syria: 1

[Loki]

I should note that Tanzania is a former German colony.

[Khendraja'aro]

Yeah, but after WW1, the Brits got it. And we all know that British cuisine is horrenduous. Might have something to do with it...

Ball's in your court.

[Aimless]

Er I think it's the whole murder-suicide-cannibalism pact thing we're talking about here.

[Hazir]

I should note that Tanzania is a former German colony.

I also have this inkling North Koreans didn't do it for sexual gratification. And then we've got this

The Dutch incident was by two punks on TV trying to achieve maximum shock by eating a minute part of eachother's butt ? Was that even genuine ?

[Khendraja'aro]

And then we've got this

And? There are several cultures who eat at least parts of their recently deceased to supposedly retain some of their strength. It's called endocannibalism.

[Veldan Rath]

Yeah, not touchy at all.

At least you are snappy dressers.

[Khendraja'aro]

So, since I don't want to invent the wheel time and again, I'm sometimes looking for new worksheets, material and books which explain stuff on my pupil's level.

Found some worksheets on a German school book site. Skimmed through the preview available, looked nice. Since the registration process for teachers is a bit involved (need to get a form stamped and mail it), I signed up as a "private person".

Only to discover that said worksheets are only downloadable by registrated teachers. I'm guessing that they think this is the proper way to prevent cheating by pupils.

Yeah, that might work. If they disabled the previews - because those include all the pages including the solutions, just with a big "PREVIEW" watermark... morons.

[Loki]

Maybe they're hoping the students would include the word "preview" on their answer sheets?

[Khendraja'aro]

I'm not sure which thought process lead them to this particular "solution". In my class, this would've earned them an "F" for "Abject Stupidity" (which you usually get for pulling stunts like "testing the temperature of a Bunsen burner with your hand")

[Loki]

Hm, maybe there should be a whole new grade for that.

[Khendraja'aro]

You mean, like the medical codes they sometimes use? ("Patient suffered from AGA, explainable due to being NFN"?

[Loki]

There's a grade for "withdrawal" (W). Maybe there can be one for intellectual withdrawal. I've found that what leads to the worst (and most hilarious) papers/test answers is not a lack of knowledge of lack of intelligence, but the inability to read the damn questions.

[Khendraja'aro]

Yeah. Just yesterday I read some tests my pupils had written and one of them included the most beautiful tautology.

Not to mention the swath of people who overlooked the "not" in "Which additional identification methods for plastics can not be used in an automated recycling apparatus?"

I should add that the previous question was "Describe the general process of a trash recycling apparatus".

[Loki]

I always start exams by saying "read the questions carefully". I also write "NOT" in all caps and spell out all the numbers. Not sure if that would help in a high school though.

[Khendraja'aro]

I'm so mad!

I may have told you guys previously that I've begun working at a school where the Physics department was understaffed which resulted in a massive neglect of the equipment.

Which in turn resulted in me having to get offers for a complete new set of Physics equipment (almost everything has to be bought anew). Sounds like a dream for any Physics teacher, right?

Well, that's where bureaucracy rears its ugly head. Since the budget I'm allowed to spend is set at 80,000€, I have to get three comparable offers. The problem: "Comparable" only works if the equipment you're buying is exactly that: Comparable. In this case, not so much, at least if you actually get offers from 3B Scientific, Leybold and Phywe (the 3 big companies in Germany for scientific equipment for schools and universities).

While there's a certain amount of stuff that is equal to each other (there are only so many ways to build a 5 kV DC Generator!), there's also a good amount of stuff that's not equal. For example, ALL the experiment kits for the pupils. Or the wave machines. Or the Michelson Interferometer. Or the equipment to measure stuff digitally.

The offers I got from the three companies reflected that - they all contain the equipment to do roughly the same experiments. They differ, however, in extensibility or flexibility in some areas. Which means that the offers are not directly comparable.

To counter this madness I chose one company (Leybold) and their resellers to get a price point for the same equipment. This way I had three offers and comparable equipment. Not to mention, we still have some incomplete Leybold stuff around here which made it possible to get spare parts which in turn reduced the price (otherwise we'd have to throw that stuff away as it's useless in its current form).

Only that the school department decided that anything above 50,000€ needs six(6) offers. Which they didn't tell us previously. And which also isn't mentioned in their guidelines (which does mention such a requirement, albeit for price tags above 100,000€!)

Arrrgh!

[Loki]

Welcome to government procurement. You'll give up eventually and go for the lowest offer.

[Timbuk2]

And what happens if there simply aren't 6 offers available?

[Hazir]

Where I work we get a lot of documents that contain people's medical history. These documents are supposed to be marked as such with a big red stamp stating 'Medical Confidential'. I have one of the machines that can produce these stamps, but they came out rather vague so I asked for a replacement of the inker. As it turns out we're economizing to the extent that the inker was injected with red ink from a bottle. It works, but really, what the fuck? This is supposed to be economic? In stead of flipping out the old one and pushing in the new one, two people are kept off their work for 10 minutes in order to have a working stamp? I am sure we burnt through more money figuring out how to do this without getting covered in red ink ourselves than it would had cost to have an inker ready available.

[Khendraja'aro]

So, I went with some colleagues and visited a coworker of mine who had a baby on Monday. Afterwards we went to one of my colleague's house and had some coffee while we chatted.

Naturally (for teachers, that is), school subjects cropped up. That's when the biology teacher told us about how some pupils of hers came up to her and told us about the disturbing fantasies another pupil of hers had voiced about wanting to kill her. She confronted the guy (thinking that it was a bad joke - hell, sometimes I myself do those when telling pupils that we're distilling alcohol next and there will be three grades: Good (drinkable produce), moderate (blindness after drinking) and fail.)

However, he neither denied it nor did he apologize. He even further elaborated. Coupled with another teacher's report that he didn't want to give a report on "Virtual food trading" because he didn't write about the subject and his writing would be "weird", so he didn't want her to read it, this makes for a worrying outlook.

This guy is in one of my Physics classes as well (it's just a voluntary course, though). I had given the class (since they're only 7 pupils) the choice between a traditional exam and them presenting an experiment (coupled with a research paper, of course). I gave them three weeks time for that, they also were allowed to use the equipment we had plus the simulation software (which is fully capable of simulating all aspects of the experiments in question). I also told them that they could approach me at any time if they ran into any kind of problem.

Today was presentation day and I was a bit anxious to see what he had done. Everyone else had their presentations and papers ready (even the two pupils who were ill and thusly absent!). He didn't have anything.

Damn. Well, I gave him another chance and set a strict time limit on when he was to turn in the work but also told him that I would have to dock 50% of his grade on this paper and presentation. He then proceeded to calculate: "But that means if I get 5 points, it'll only be 2.5 points in the end!" Me: "Yes, and I'll be the one to decide whether to round up or down!" (This is Highschool grading in Germany: Goes from 15 points to 0 points, 15 being best, with every three points going down a grade. 5 points are needed for a passing grade.)

One should note here that he immediately calculated the minimum amount of work he'd have to do in order to achieve a passing grade.

I'm a bit worried about him. My colleague will talk to a so-called "Confidence Teacher" tomorrow who will decide which steps to take next, as they are teachers who took a special 3 years course exactly for these kind of situations.