You know, it’s about time! The algebra lobby has been controlling this nation’s future for too long. Why? Because people, especially celebrities, have been cowed by them, and because the algebra interests have the nation’s representatives in their pockets! G-d bless you, Ms. O’Donnell, for your courageous stance.
This is chapter one of “Posting For Dummies”. I’ll thank you to keep you brazen ads for you new book away. Here we utilize a little used, often atrophied portion of the human body. It’s called the “Brain”.
(Picturing edwino like the girl in that old Star Trek episode- “Brain, brain!, What is brain?!”)
Oh, and WWRD? She’d make a strong public statement, refuse to debate, only attack, and then violate her stated “moral beliefs” in her own life, claiming celebrity priveledge. Way to go! Good role model, there! Im a hypocrite, he’s a hypocrite, wouldn’t you like to be a hypocrite too!
I hope you’re not taking any algebra classes. Because that’s not what Rosie would do. Of course, you’re entitled to worship Rosie all you want.
Geez…Yet another example of a complete moron using “celebrity” status to “Reach out to the people!”
It doesn’t take a lot of brains to produce or watch Rosie’s show. What pisses me off is that she has probably 20 million people tuning in, and a few million think her Word is Gosphel.
Brings to mind how cultural historians like to “label” decades. (the 60’s me, the 80’s greed, etc…)
Unfortunately, I think they might call this decade the “I am a dumbfuck, I get my news and opinion from Rosie, Oprah, AOL, and sound bites on CNN” era. (Except for Dopers of course) It’s sad that a lot of people think because somebody is a “celebrity”, they are automatically deemed to be intelligent. <puke>
As far as math goes, I have a big slide rule that Rosie can sit on and rotate…
Although Rosie has taken stupidity to a rather unique low, heck, most celebrities are twits in their own little subtle ways. You can’t help but smile when one of them opens their mouth and spouts off some bizzare little philosophy for solving world hunger. Bless their little hearts but when you make a career out of entertaining people, you obviously weren’t meant for the intellectual bigtime.
I strongly suspect my colleague Edwino of sarcasm. At least I hope so.
However, I have heard people go on about Rosie as a “positive female role model”. I feel the same way about this as I felt when they said it about Heather Renee French, the Miss Kentucky who became Miss America a couple of years ago. To me, the message she sent was, “Yes, girls, you can succeed as a strong woman, as long as you’re good looking and willing to parade yourself around like a show cow.” With Rosie, it’s the same thing, except that it’s “so long as you’re willing to be mushy, cutesy, and annoying.”
Oh, and re: math–I got a degree in math before I moved on to medicine. I’m on pediatrics right now, which involves a lot of calculating doses. Often the resident will say something like, “So that’s 12 mg/kg, and he weighs 44 lbs,” and reach for the calculator. “240 mg”, I’ll say. She’ll tap away for a few minutes, write down “240 mg”, and then look at me like I’m Rain Man or something. If Rosie ever brings one of her kids to the clinic, I’ll make sure the resident with the worst math skills goes to see them.
Dr. J
Dear Rosie,
Math essentially is pure logic. It strengthens the mind. Just like the end result of lifting weights is a strengthened muscle - the mind is much like a muscle and math is a sound vechicle to build it.
Algebra is a stepping stone to higher level math. All youngsters should be taught it (as well as trig, calculus, etc…). The world is constantly becoming more technical & complex and “your kid” will one day be part of the next generation that will fill our shoes. It will sure be a different world then but one thing is for certain… we are going to need people with “strong minds.” Math is a tried and true way to attain a strong well-structured mind.
Ahem
Don’t you realize this!?
No, of course you wouldn’t realize this Rosie, because you’re a_<censored>[DELETED]&^%&#%$^@!!!
-pop-
Now be off and spread ignorance! muhaha! Us techies will profit and prevail! <grin>
What is this thing Rosie did for her kids that she preached against?
Just for y’all who missed the sarcasm, **Edwino is, if I recall correctly, a PhD candidate in biology, and I’m willing to bet he knows his way around algebra.
She shrieked and screamed that guns should only be in the hands of policemen and no-one else, then proceeded to cram her foot in her mouth when other parents at the school that she sends her kids to objected to her armed non-police bodyguard carrying an ASSAULT WEAPON!!![sup]*[/sup] into her kids school on a daily basis. She defended by saying, in essence ‘The rules are different for famous people like me.’ <this message has been brought to you by SLANTCO! Slantco is always fair, impartial and objective in it’s word useage!
Fenris
[sup]*[/sup] The term “Automatic weapon” is being used here in the Rosie sense: Any gun.
A more accurate term would be “a semi-automatic pistol” (I believe it was a Glock).
I used to like Rosie too. I watched the very first episode of her show, and I remember this because it came on during the first week of moving to a new city. I thought she was funny and I thought the Koosh balls were pretty neat. But then I was 14 and still naive.
Soon in the second season, I began to realize Rosie’s hypocrisy. She’s a total rip-off of Johnny Carson, for one. Sure, it’s okay to idolize the guy for what he did for talk shows, but don’t completley copy the man!
Second, during her first week on TV she started whining about Kathie Lee Gifford talking about her kids all the time, especially that Cody. Rosie, on the other hand, talks about her kids non-stop ALL THE TIME. “Guess what? My little boy…he stuck a penny in his nose! (wait until audience finishes heart-warming laughter) I just about died! Isn’t he just cutey-patootie?”
Third, look at the ego on this woman! You can see that right off when she walks through those curtains. The curtains are the glitziest thing I’ve seen since a Broadway show. As the show progressed, she started having actual Broadway singers sing about her when the show began! Ahhhhhhhhhh!
Fourth, I hate Elmo. It was cute the first time, Rosie, but having Elmo on for 217 times in a row is not funny, nor is it “cutey-patootie”.
Fifth, poor Tom Selleck.
Caution - parental bragging follows
My daughter is the only freshman in Honors Algebra II, having aced Algebra I in 7th grade and Geometry in 8th. She’ll be in pre-Calc next year, and I fully expect her to have college math credits before leaving high school. She recently taught her bf some algebra concepts that he was unable to grasp from his instructor. She has a set of CDs at home that go from algrbra thru trig, calc, and statistics.
I told her about Rosie’s pronouncement - her reaction matched many of those expressed here. So, our future isn’t all that bleak - at least one young woman is carrying the Algebra/Higher math torch.
End of bragging
Ben quoted Rosie as saying…
“I think there’s no way they should have to teach [math] now. We have computers. We no longer need to know why 3x=2y/4.”
Acutally, I could see this as a great lead-in by a math teacher to a beginning class of algebra…
“Now, class, Ms O’Donnel says we don’t need to learn algebra any more, we have computeres. Can anyone agrue with this?” Then said teacher could go on and explain exactly why we need math and for what.
In my education experience, they often teach you the skills you need, but often don’t show you how or where to apply them. sigh
Could it be that you have found the Jack Chick of Anti-Algebra?
Hm. Not exactly on topic, but I just found this article. I didn’t realize that Rosie had been officially “outed” in the media.
I’d just like to say one thing:
First, Outer, Inner, Last.
And for the record, yes, I am a med student and a PhD candidate in molecular biology. And, yes, I use algebra every day. Anybody remember C1V1 = C2V2? I invented that.
A post wouldn’t be truly sarcastic or ironic if I had to tell people it is ironic or sarcastic, now, would it? Sorry, I was in a weird mood last night.
FOIL???
s’ok, edwino. I got it and I thought you were funny. 
Well, I didn’t, and I don’t usually miss sarcasm, but this time…I did. Remarks retracted.
As someone with an advanced doctorate in sarcasm, even I almost missed it in Edwino’s post. The only thing that tipped me off was the sig line. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to like Rosie O’Donnel AND Thomas Pynchon. Violates a fundamental rule of physics, or something.
As for Mz. O’Donnel’s statements, that’s the sort of comment I would really have gotten behind…when I was ten. As an adult with a full range of cognitive functions, I’m able to realize that, although I may not like or be good at something, it does not follow that that thing is unnecessary or unimportant. Hell, I am neither good at nor enjoy open heart surgery, but as I sit here wiping Big Mac grease off my fingers, I can’t help but reflect how glad I am that SOMEBODY out there knows how to do it. Still, I can’t get too agry about this. Rosie is, after all, a celebrity, which is usually mutually exclusive with that whole “cognitive function” thing I mentioned earlier.
[uneducated hick]
mabe Rosie wuz sayin she didn lik that cummershul were dey showt “algebra!” lots of timez. i dont lik that commershal eider. who needs dat crap n e wayz. i herd that Einstin wasznt too gud at addishun eider. and why do we need two no gud spellin eider? da wordz is spelt all weird n e wayz, itz to hard to rememember it all.
[/uneducated hick]
[computer geek]
Now if Rosie wanted to complain about multivariate calulus with complex numbers, or non-Euclidean vector n-spaces, I might agree. I have had to learn that stuff and more for my CS degree in progress, but I don’t think I’m going to use too much really advanced math for writing computer games. It works better than gingko for keeping the mind sharp though. I suppose Rosie would like us all to have rusty, broken butter knives, as long as we have machines to do all our cutting for us. I wonder if she knows what metaphor is?
[/computer geek]