Great roque’s gallery of bad financial gurus. Those ‘gurus’ who give bad advice, get indicted, go bankrupt, or bankrupt others. The post also links to an extensive debunking of Robert Kiyosaki book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It’s worth a read whether or not you already think Robert Kiyosaki if full of baloney.
July 9, 2009
May 7, 2009
iTunes Sucks
Every version sucks more. Now it takes a billion years for the autofill feature to work. To make matters worse, while the thing calculates for autofill, it abruptly foregrounds itself every few second. So shitty and so inexcusable.
April 26, 2009
Joel Bauer
Meet Joel Bauer, he’s a man so far up his own ass that he can lecture you for 20 minutes on his philosophy of packing.
April 9, 2009
Sometimes stealing is just easier
The award for bad customer service this week goes to Steinberg, a software publishing company with a sales phone line that is always a busy signal. I considered buying an upgrade, but since I have to call and have no way to reach them, I guess I will buy something else instead. I wouldn’t do this, but I could also just download a cracked version in less time than it would take for me to get through to them or their email customer service. Sometimes it’s just easier to steal.
October 23, 2008
Test Optional, Not Really
Fairtest is an organization that claims to be against standardized testing. The organization publishes a list of 775 College & Universities that do not require the SAT or ACT. Sounds impressive right? However, all it takes is a quick analysis to establish that the list is pretty flimsy. The list sounds considerably less impressive when you look more closely.
Many of those on the list are affiliates of for-profit educational institutions and repetitions abound:
They clearly pumped up the list a little here. To make matters worse, 56 of those listed are not actually test optional at all, requiring applicants to “submit COMPASS, CPAT, TABE, WAIS, Stanford Achievement Test, ASSET and/or college entrance exam if not submitting SAT/ACT scores.”
For many of the Art Schools and Cooking Schools listed, it’s not clear why they would ever have required an academic admissions test. It’s disingenuous to claim associate schools like these with a ‘growing test optional movement’ when they most likely never used the SAT or ACT in the first place!
There’s also no notion of the scale within within this list, many of the schools have small enrollments. For example, there are 23 Yeshiva (Orthodox Jewish religious schools.) These are highly specialized institutions with small enrollments – 25-200 students. It’s a misrepresentation to pump up the list with such schools.
There’s also no information provided on the selectivity of the schools. A less selective school does not need to use an admissions test if they are already admitting 90%-100% of candidates. I did a quick scan and found many schools that would let anybody in. It’s just not that profound a statement to say that schools that are admitting on essentially non-academic criteria or have open door policies are ‘going test optional’ when in fact they’ve never needed to use an admissions test and their admissions policies are antithetical to the use of an admissions test. This may be realistic for many of these schools, but it is not realistic for colleges and universities that need to select the best candidates for a limited number of slots.
You can make up your own mind by taking a look at the list.
July 16, 2008
Knotty Noose
The Village Voice continued it’s story on ousted Teachers College professor Madonna Constantine. It doesn’t shed much new light on the story, but demonstrates that Columbia was not quick to judge; rather it took its time investigating the issue and its conclustions were not reached hastily.
August 6, 2007
A troll for all seasons
Matt Sanchez is up to his dirty tricks again, but unwittingly sullies the name of his right-wing associates. First, The Weekly Standard reports that The New Republic’s Milblogger Scott Thomas Beauchamp (identity now revealed) dispatches were fabricated. After raising a such a big stink, it turns out that TNR’s source was none other than our favorite gay porn star, former male escort, Wikipedia editor, alleged thief, and obsessive egosurfer Matt Sanchez. So much for reliable sources.
The New Republic has since found corroboration for almost everything they printed. Media Matters has since called Sanchez on his bullshit. Time Magazine’s Swampland blog has also picked up the story. Blogger Nate Nelson wants to ensure quite reasonable that this chicanery isn’t being done on the public’s dime.
You can always count on Mateo for laugh.