I just discovered Window 8 and now I need to know the name of the enemy of humanity who came up with this torture device. This is the most obnoxious operational system I have ever encountered. Can anybody explain what the point of making PC function like a tablet device is? People who want tablets can just get tablets.

At the same time, I have to recognize that Windows 8’s idiocy did serve a purpose. I was having a bad day until I had to work on a Windows 8 computer. Trying to get it to function was so engrossing (and mostly futile) that I got really distracted from everything else.

Maybe Windows 8 should be used for grief therapy. It’s quite useless for everything else.

I really REALLY hope that no perky administrator decides to install it on all our campus computers.

One useful tradition that has been lost is wearing mourning. I would gladly wear mourning if there were a chance people would know what it meant. This is a small town and everybody has seen me with a huge belly. Now I dread the prospect of answering questions and preventing people from offering congratulations.

A fascinating post on why so many people insist they are bad at math.

“Of the 254 counties where the number of food stamp recipients doubled between 2007 and 2011, Republican candidate Mitt Romney won 213 in last year’s presidential election. . . Kentucky’s Owsley County — which backed Romney with 81 percent of its vote — had the largest proportion of food stamp recipients of all the communities where Romney won.”

“Opposition to the burqa has been massive over several European countries. Defenders of this full-body shroud specifically designed for little girls and women are in the embarrassing position of having to declare huge swathes of the population of Europe bigots.”

It is very sad to see people who were so zombified by their manipulative and abusive parents that even in adulthood they keep trying to explain why their parents were completely justified in not loving them. Pay attention to the linked post’s title. The naked masochism is terrifying.

“I saw a job ad on Craigslist recently that asked for five years of Exchange 2013 experience. Five years. For a product that’s been out for a few months. Yeah, good luck filling that one.” I don’t doubt for a moment that this is true because I happen to know quite well who is often in charge of creating job ads and just how clueless they can be.

Colleges keep building enormous stadiums that can’t be filled. There must be a psychoanalytical explanation for this weird obsession.

If these shoes don’t make you smile, I don’t know what will.

A Montrealer asks, “If such a thing as psycho-geography exists, then surely there should be a market for psycho-geographical counselling?” The answer is, yes, of course. One can definitely remove the traumatic associations with certain places through therapy. I have used it to turn “No Heaven” back to “New Haven.”