(I am volunteering my time at a Career Night on a college campus. I work for a VERY large military-industrial-complex corporation. I have this conversation with one student.)
Student: “What company do you work for?”
Me: “[Very Large Military-Industrial-Complex Corporation].”
Student: “What do they do?”
Me: *surprised she’s never heard of the company* “We are a defense contractor.”
Student: “Oh, you mean like a law firm?”
Me: “…”
(I go to a very small, Catholic high school. It is so small that we would typically have class with the same people almost all day. In my sophomore year theology class, I am seated next to a girl who comes across as an airhead. She asks the dumbest questions and irritates the teachers, constantly raising her hand and not even waiting for the teacher to acknowledge her before yelling out another doozy of a question. One day, she’s agitating the — honestly, kind of a b**** — theology teacher so much that the teacher looks like she’s going to scream.)
Teacher: *blinking furiously* “[Girl], I need to get on with teaching! I can’t keep explaining this to you!” *turns around and starts writing angrily on the board*
Me: *rolling my eyes in frustration*
Classmate: *turns to me and whispers* “Do you think I can get her to cry?”
(I was so shocked I almost burst out laughing. Apparently, this girl was being annoying for entertainment purposes. As an adult, I wouldn’t find it funny anymore, even if the teacher was a fanatic and a jerk, but I definitely looked at her differently from then on, and it turned out, she was actually quite intelligent, and I definitely understand how hard it was to take a class seriously when the teacher’s opinion mattered more than anything else.)
(My math teacher isn’t great. My two friends and I often sit off to the side of the class and do other homework while keeping an eye on her, because we are well ahead of this class and she is painfully slow in teaching the topics. On the bright side, she allows this because we do well in class. On the not-so-bright side, we’ve also had several disagreements with her about the accuracy of what she is teaching, most notably, her insistence that the constant pi is equal to 22/7 — not close to it, but equal to that exact value. In actuality, pi is not the same as any number, and famously requires lots of work to calculate ever more digits to be ever more precise. Most geeks know this, and all math teachers should. During two earlier incidents we’d given up trying to convince her she was wrong. On this particular day, she starts teaching the class about rational and irrational numbers. Rational numbers can be expressed by a ratio of integers — i.e. 22/7 — while irrational numbers cannot — i.e. pi. She starts putting down examples in two columns. As shown in the book, she puts pi in the irrational numbers category.)
Friend: “So… if pi is 22/7, that is a ratio of two integers. Why isn’t it listed as a rational number?”
(She looks flustered and thinks for a good thirty seconds, then erases pi and moves it to the rational numbers column.)
My Friends & Me: “Noooooo!”
(This suddenly became our Alamo, our line in the sand. We weren’t giving up this time. It took us another fifteen minutes of arguing to finally convince her that while pi was approximated as 22/7, this wasn’t its actual value. We had to dig through some extra textbooks she had in her cabinets to find an earlier textbook that stated this explicitly and simply in a single sentence in order to convince her, but she finally admitted she was wrong. The reason she had so many spare textbooks sitting in her cabinets? She was the head of the math department and they were samples from publishers. Also, this was the honors class.)
It’s time for the December roundup! Our editors have decided among themselves which stories in December deserve the extra attention, regardless of the number of thumbs-ups they received. Out of the 821 stories we posted in the month, we’ve singled out nineteen.
If there are any stories from the last month you feel we should have included, please let us know in the comments!
Don’t forget to vote for your favorite stories in the poll below! Note: You can choose up to three*.
He’s From Iowa, But He Works In Outer Space – A presentation of the history of the future.
Innocent Until They Prove Themselves Guilty – Stupidity isn’t a crime, but it can help!
A Child’s Priorities Are The Ultimate Christmas Gift – Don’t try to use your children to guilt employees for your poor Christmas planning!
Good Customer Service Doesn’t Grow On Trees – This year’s Christmas is a bit buggy.
You Can’t Dismiss The Karma On This One – Taking the boss to court makes for VERY satisfying reading.
Saved By Their Spidey-Sense – Spiders + Cars = Outcome you might not expect.
Laughter Really Is The Best Medicine – We grow old… we don’t always grow up!
That’s One Prescription Of Holiday Cheer – Next time you say you’re sick of the holidays, think about the people who are sick ON the holidays.
A Needling Suspicion Of What Happened – Dentistry so bad it makes you numb.
Hamming It Up Over Other People’s Religions – Guess what? Other religions exist, regardless of how delicious ham is.
They’re Not The Only One With A Child – Even MORE poor parental planning!
He’s About To Get A Chile Reception – Fighting scammers level 1000!
Unable To Mathematically Compensate For Discrimination – You’re not disabled until someone else disables you.
No Need To Pardon This French – The city of light racism.
In Great Loss There Can Be Great Kindness – The onion-chopping department is open.
“Nice Guys” Usually Aren’t – Be nice to the girl, then get sex. That’s how it works.
Way Better Than What Neelix Can Cook Up – To boldly cook what never has been cooked before!
This Joke Is On The Spectrum – Jokes about autism don’t have to be offensive.
Appearances Can’t Be Deceiving – Pure blind justice!
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*Not Always Hopeless stories are not included in the poll. This is because often they are so lovely they win by default.
Dear Readers!
Welcome to 2019! We’ll be making a whole bunch of posts highlighting the NotAlwaysRight year in review.
We’d like the help of you, our dedicated readers, to pick out the Reader Favorites of 2018.
Please leave suggestions and recommendations in the comments to this post. If you can’t remember the title or can’t find the link, a brief description of the story will do. Don’t worry, we will find it and consider it for the review of our readers’ favorites of 2018.
We look forward to seeing what you choose!
Happy New Year!
The Editors
