spEak You're bRanes

Thanks to Luke for dredging this shit up from an HYS debate about the merits of university.

Is a university degree necessary?

Er… try asking a coherent question if you want a sensible answer.

A university degree is not necessary in the same way as air, food and water are. You can live a happy and fulfilled life without a university degree, you won’t survive five minutes without air to breathe.

If you want to be a medical doctor, a university degree is necessary for you to attain your ambition. (Note for aspiring medics: you also need air to breathe!)

If you want to learn how to learn and how to think, to explore a subject of interest to its fullest extent… well, you can acquire these skills elsewhere, but a university degree is a good way to set your feet on the right track. Oh, and you still need air to breathe.

Define ‘necessary’ and you might be able to answer your question for yourself. Trouble is, I learned how to craft such debate by, er, going to university. Oh, and I still need air to breathe too!
Megan

BA (Hons) in Smug Pedantry, right? I did the same course, which is why I feel qualified to craft this equally smug response: the actual, entirely reasonable question was, ‘is a university degree necessary for success in later life?’

I’ll give you a 48-hour extension to resubmit your answer. Any later and you’ll be forced to wear one of those striped beanies with the little propeller on top for the rest of your life. People will laugh openly as you walk by and small children will follow you around for hours at a time, poking you with sticks, but at least it’ll draw attention from the long, silvery thread of drool perpetually dangling from your chin.

The Reith Lectures – “What We’ll Never Know”.

Ever wondered what it’d be like if Nigel Tufnel ate Timothy Leary’s handbag and then gave a lecture on astronomy, the speed of light, information and A Very Big Number? Nor me, and yet here it is.

It is impossible for humans to know everything, we are restricted in our knowledge by time and distance.

There are infinate things that we know of but just cannot do/achieve/experience ourselves now or even by a million years into the future.

I have a little print out above my computer monitor which I scribbled a few years ago. It says-

Infinity of knowledge

Knowledge is so great that even if human knowledge was enough to fill the density of a billion worlds, it would still be significantly less than one trillionth of knowledge still to learn.

We have computers that can count numbers that most of us would just find impossible to even get a grasp of. We know of numbers that even if humans counted one by one for a trillion years it would still take a bigger/greater number of years than most people could understand.

Humans will never know so much because we are just so limited.

Most people do not know what number a “googol” is. Its a number with 1000 zeros, its impossible for a human to count up to it without the aid of technology, (the numbber 1 million just has 6 zeros in comparison). A number that is so astranomically bigger than a “googol” is a “googol plex”. A “googolplex” is so vast that we do not even know what it is so a googolplex plus one is an impossibility to know and is basically irrelevent.

To travel to outside our planetry neighbourhood would take much longer than the lifetime of one individual, hence even travelling for a million lifetimes we would not be able to reach that which we can see via telescopes etc. Which means that ALL the available knowledge of ALL that which is just in one direct linear line 1mm wide is beyond our capacity to have knowledge about, let alone 360 degrees around us.

In all things, if we were to measure our knowledge on a solar ruler in milimetres (one ruler is the distance between the sun and earth), the knowledge we have presently attained is MUCH MUCH less than 1 millionth of millimetre in comparison to knowledge that is waiting out there for humans to try and learn about.

I think the greatest knowledge we can have is that which we know about the wonderous events which led us to our existance and that knowledge which we are capable of using to maximise our continued existance for as long as humanly possible.
MrWonderfulReality

What a speech! Someone fetch this man some robes! From this day forth I shall gaze up into the cosmos with a renewed sense of wonder. Future generations of scientists will describe the day when, as young children, they ravenously devoured the words of MrWonderfulReality and first knew that they would dedicate their lives to studying… um.. massive great.. um.. stuff.. and .. well.. you know.. googolplonkers and numbers and sky-millimetres and.. like.. complicated, whirly, infinite shit.

Why are you still sat there reading this??? GO AND BUY A FUCKING TELESCOPE.

O mankind, thy nature be thy downfall!

See, the problem with us humans is our duality and shit, the eternal raging battle between our loftier ideals and our raw, bestial urges. For every word of Baudelaire there’s at least two thousand glued-shut copies of Razzle littering the hedgerows of Lancashire alone.

And nowhere is our species’ tragic condition more evident than in these two generous slices of pungent cheese, thoughtfully cut by Randy from some HYS nonsense about some telly programme or something.

There is nothing to which television shows will not sink to attract bigger audiences: Ok, the lowest common denominator is where the action is, tells us a lot about our so-called civilisation!
ian cheese

An admirable stance, Mr cheese! But then, having spent all of three minutes drooling through his vibrating Bundy eyeballs at Corin’s norks, he gets the horn and we see his high horse bolt from under him to dry-hump a Bravissimo catalogue.

I hope the female wrestler is a lesbian & make love to the beauty queens & the dwarf will be the voyeur.
ian cheese

Christ alone knows how he managed it, but if you look at the above post in its original context, you’ll find it’s actually stained with gobs of tear-diluted jism.

The Japanese Prime Minister has resigned over a broken electoral promise and the BBC has asked a load of people who’d never heard of him before whether they think he did the right thing. I’ve just spent an unhappy few minutes reading through the answers in an attempt to find one that didn’t contain the word “honour”. There weren’t any. It got slightly more bearable and entertaining when I started imagining them all saying the word “honourable” in a piss-take Japanese accent. Here, try it.

Mr. Hatoyama is obviously a very decent and honourable man. By tradition Japanese culture encourages this type of behaviour. In the UK however [... goes on for some time ...]
warriorsottovoce

See?

If his resignation is over breaking an election pledge & simply that then he is a man of honour.
ian cheese

Nice one Ian! Apparently he was extremely worried about bringing shame to his famiry and had even contemprated suicide before he saw your comment. He asked me to tell you that he’s feeling “a rot better now”.

Language is undoubtedly the single most important development in the history of our species. Without it, there would be no society, no civilisation, end of. We use it to share thoughts, feelings, ideas; form concepts so abstract they could never have existed otherwise. Some of us, on the other hand, simply use it for its own fucking sake, flap their mouths about, spurt stinking piss-streams of phonemes that may be recognised as words, but are bereft of any real value.

You’ll remember EBAYTKMAX. Well, now he’s applied his formidable insight to this bollocks about blogs and Rod Liddle. Thanks to David.

What is a BLOG? What is a FEED? And what is a THREAD? Can someone tell me in SIMPLE language? Pretend I am aged 5, explain it to me like I am that age….. Thank you
EBAYTKMAX

Thank you Megan for your quick reply, (my daughter’s middle name is Megan but I wanted it to be spelt Meghan, but thought most people wouldnt know how to say it, so its spelt the same as yours) thank you again, I understand a bit more now.
EBAYTKMAX

Do you, though? Do you really?

Mr. Thompson, Ms. Tranter, nice to see you both again. Now I know Susman: Epidemiologist hasn’t had exactly the figures you were hoping for, but frankly I think it’s done better than any other programme in the 4:55am slot on BBC Cymru. Apart from the ones in Welsh.

But yes, I completely agree we need to kick things up a notch for the second series. So I’ve been working up some ideas for the new series with my writing partner Ed. Now, think about it: where would Morse be without his Lewis? Bodie without his Doyle? Tosh Lynes without his bottle of whisky in a brown paper bag? Taggart without his coffin? So I propose to give susman a crime-fighting partner all of his own. Let me show you a sample scene:

DAY. EXT. The courtyard of a large church.

Andy Kadir-Buxton: Yes! Using the Buxton Handclap Method! Now, I've filled my super soaker with lemonade. Bags I deal with the nuns!

Now, I know you haven’t greenlit the second series yet, but I think with such a powerful format reboot we could easily be looking at viewing figures on a par with Horne & Corden. I know four insomniacs in Swansea who are very excited at the prospect.

Thanks to Glenn. No, really, thanks to Glenn. This Have Your Say reform has hit us all hard here, and it’s good to be reminded of the power of change to generate pompous, wounded stupidity.

When the leader is in charge of ‘Have your Say’ and makes a total mess of ‘updating’ it so that it loses it’s point and it’s appeal – without consulting any of the contributors.

OK, so not the worst bullying I’ve ever suffered but my feelings are definitely hurt. No recommendations? How am I supposed to feel heard? Is anybody out there?

Chris Jones, Rickmansworth, United Kingdom

It’s always hard losing something you love. Chris Jones may have a little void in his heart where the ‘recommend’ button used to be, but it will heal with time. Until then, we’ll find him standing, dejected-looking, in the bread aisle at Sainsbury’s, poking wistfully at a pack of white English muffins.

I’m digging into my percy stash here peeps. The last few bits from from the defunct RSS feeds.

Remember when the beeb asked the gnomes “Should sportsmen be role models off the pitch?”. BigHitter decided it was time to wheel out the word “moot”. He had obviously been deeply impressed by someone who used it once and had been practising at home, in front of the mirror, ever since. “The point is moot!” he’d say, waggling his eyebrows. Sometimes he’d hold a finger in the air and pause for effect before letting rip with the full force of his weighty moot. “The point, Sir” (significant waggle) “is moot!”. And then he’d fling his coat over his arm and stalk out of the room, feeling like a Massive Professor of Opinions ‘N’ Shit.

So, practice over, here he is, giving it a go in public. Be kind, this is his first time.

They dont glean any respect from me, so the point is moot.

But, they should be insiprational to youngsters, after all , they are all adults who never grew up but alas they have been developed inside a pandering , narcissist bubble all of their adult life , subsequently know very little of the real world

Ridiculous wages for what amounts to very little achievement
[BigHitter]

Shit at sport, eh?

Anyway, my advice is that you take “moot” along to a few open mic nights before you try another proper gig with it. Hone your skills in front of a friendly crowd. Also, and sorry if I’m doing you a disservice here, but you strike me as the sort of cunt who might start riffing on shit like “ergo”, “methinks” and “QED”. This is the equivalent of launching into a twenty minute acappella of “Hallelujah” and then, just as everyone is about to glass themselves in the tits, asking them to “join in if you know the words”. Trust me, you can’t pull this off. You’re WORSE at this than you were at sport.

The HYS forum has changed recently. They’ve got rid of the recommendations and paging and I think maybe raised the character limit, resulting in extremely long pages of unreadable bollocks. It’s a massive improvement and hopefully means nobody will ever try to read any of it ever again.

They also got rid of the RSS feeds of user posts. Now I have to scan through, looking for good shit, instead of simply subscribing to the feeds of the most amusingly self-important bellends. It’s not massively rewarding.

I’m going through old ones I saved but never got round to posting. Sometimes, it’s never too late.

If a victim is being physically attacked, the victim can use self defence to protect himself. That is the law of the land, and it should be no different in the classroom.

To those who are shocked with this statement, believing that children should not be taught that violence is the answer to violence. Well remember this: bullying is easy when the victim can’t retaliate; and sometimes, it’s never too early to learn about the real world.
Lloyd Belle, Nottingham, United Kingdom

Good call, Lloyd. Sometimes, the only way to stop bullying is to batter the fuck out of someone much smaller than you.

I have to thank whoever made the decision to ask the gnomes “What should Britain’s defense strategy be?”. It just keeps on giving.

It really brought out the very best in them. Many of them appear to have been patiently formulating military strategies and collecting important-sounding acronyms for years. They’ve beavered away in secret, reading about war, thinking about war, fantasising about war and masturbating about Lynda Bellingham. Finally, the little white box has asked them what the army should do. This is their chance to make a difference.

Expand support for special forces, specifically the SFSG, and look to expand SF aswell . Satelitte technology

Correctly equip regular forces with everything ground commanders recommend and unhindered by budget and cost saving

Ditch Trident, make a more mobile rapid response force, split into self sufficent units of 1500 strong supported by helo’s, Littoral combat ships and other defensive counter-measures .

There arent enough words available to be able to describe everything needed .
[BigHitter]

Aw, come on. Cheer up lad. Sure, it’s easy to become despondent when you realise that nobody gives an elasticated wank-nappy about your plan for Afghanistan. Don’t give up and don’t let it get you down! Try and forget that you’ve pissed a substantial portion of your life away patiently shoveling lorry-loads of arseblubber into the internet. Forget that you believed, for no reason that the rest of us can fathom, that this was worth doing. Abandon your conviction that important men with moustaches were leafing through your penetrating observations with grudging approval. Bravely ignore the fact that everyone has actually been shitting themselves laughing at you.

The clues you need are already on HYS. Look, here’s our old friend Ron C, putting you all straight.

…….I`m certainly not amongst them……….
Darkseid Jones,

Like all our hys`s they will always like your`s get lost in the “dark”. The mandarins in the MOD, won`t even bother to read them either, try writing direct. You still don`t get it. Why do you bother posting, its`s only all a bit of fun. lighten up.
Ron C, Northwest, United Kingdom

I think you’ve got the right attitude, Ron. The trick is to lighten up and remember that the only person who actually pays any attention to what you write is me. And I think you’re a lonely bollock.

Domestic defence security is vital with less committment overseas.The new aircraft carriers are a must, as this in turn will bolster our air defences, we also should rethink our nuclear strategy and slim back on this, and consider strengthening the army ground fores with emphasis placed on fast efficient reaction well trained and equipped units. Do something worthwhile about the terrible state of army accommodation and increase pay that its`s well above the highest parking ticket zealet`s pay.
Ron C, Northwest, United Kingdom

Ron? Can you hear me? You need to lighten up, Ron. RON? IT’S ONLY A BIT OF FUN. RON???