As a teacher, the under/overachievers article was my favorite this week. Favorite bits: "That music is not allowed on campus! Extinguish your incense, please" and the "Three Pillars of Education" cartoon—it felt like something I might have done in high school (well, probably not, because I was an anxious mess and deathly afraid of getting in trouble).
Side note: those Latin nerds need to brush up on their linguistics. While it is in the PIE family, German is not descended from Latin.
I took a “humor in the media” class in college in 2009 and one of our assigned textbooks was one of the Onion’s print book compilations. I just realized that’s only 4 years after the oldest stories in this journey. The Onion and the Daily Show had huge influence on my sense of humor and on what to take seriously in politics. I just bought an Onion print subscription bc I just saw that ITS BACK and I have the certificate to prove it. Keep up the amazing work!!
The "new delicious species" story was cited in Scientific American later that year! Specifically, in their own humor column by Steve Mirsky, in relation to an actual news story that was remarkably similar:
I love the graffiti'd up Latin club poster! Reminds me of the earlier article about teens having fun with restaurant comment cards; you can tell someone had lots of fun working on those images.
*Were* teenagers getting really into Gil Scott Heron in 2005? Or were they blasting (e.g.) "American Idiot" or "Ridin" or even "Killing in the Name" or some other angry song which *doesn't* name-drop Engelbert Humperdinck? I know, I know, it's a joke, but the fusion of "crazy college kids getting very intensely into leftism for two seconds" and "dumb teens getting into some newly cool retro ephemera" is so weird to me.
I think it helps to remember that most of the staff, for many years and into 2005, were University of Wisconsin-Madison students who grew up in the Reagan era, and this is probably ... not a blindspot, per se, but an area where they are deliberately *not* going to update their references
As a teacher, the under/overachievers article was my favorite this week. Favorite bits: "That music is not allowed on campus! Extinguish your incense, please" and the "Three Pillars of Education" cartoon—it felt like something I might have done in high school (well, probably not, because I was an anxious mess and deathly afraid of getting in trouble).
Side note: those Latin nerds need to brush up on their linguistics. While it is in the PIE family, German is not descended from Latin.
Great catch on the Latin. My high school only offered French and Spanish, wish I could have taken Latin
I took a “humor in the media” class in college in 2009 and one of our assigned textbooks was one of the Onion’s print book compilations. I just realized that’s only 4 years after the oldest stories in this journey. The Onion and the Daily Show had huge influence on my sense of humor and on what to take seriously in politics. I just bought an Onion print subscription bc I just saw that ITS BACK and I have the certificate to prove it. Keep up the amazing work!!
The "new delicious species" story was cited in Scientific American later that year! Specifically, in their own humor column by Steve Mirsky, in relation to an actual news story that was remarkably similar:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/kha-nyou-smell-a-rat/
I love the graffiti'd up Latin club poster! Reminds me of the earlier article about teens having fun with restaurant comment cards; you can tell someone had lots of fun working on those images.
*Were* teenagers getting really into Gil Scott Heron in 2005? Or were they blasting (e.g.) "American Idiot" or "Ridin" or even "Killing in the Name" or some other angry song which *doesn't* name-drop Engelbert Humperdinck? I know, I know, it's a joke, but the fusion of "crazy college kids getting very intensely into leftism for two seconds" and "dumb teens getting into some newly cool retro ephemera" is so weird to me.
I think it helps to remember that most of the staff, for many years and into 2005, were University of Wisconsin-Madison students who grew up in the Reagan era, and this is probably ... not a blindspot, per se, but an area where they are deliberately *not* going to update their references