The Perfect Solution

OR:
How to Save The Coal Industry From Itself
and Deal With Flat-Earthers in Education. 

Apparently, some people still look to athletes as role models in this day and age over rescue workers, engineers, doctors, and scientists. Teachers find themselves arguing with students over the shape of the earth because Kyrie Irving wasted his Duke University education. If he played football, we could simply blame the CTE and carry on with our lives. 
Also apparent according to a few authority figures is that our coal industry is in serious need of revitalization despite the fact that doing so at this point in time would only stimulate the economy by a factor of one-one-hundredth of a percent and make even less of a dent in the unemployment situation.

Here's how to solve both problems.  

Gather all students who believe the earth is flat, tell them that the robots have taken all the jobs they ever would have been qualified for, and cart them off to the coal mines. If they ask questions, just mention reptoids and flouride in whatever impromptu narrative structure comes to mind and make sure the last word is Skynet. Failing that, tell them that robots also want the coal mining jobs and they'll be in too much of a frenzy to see the plotholes. 
Put them through a basic outdoor survival seminar on site, making doubly sure they know how to make tents and boil water at the bare minimum. Finally, promise each of them a dollar for every metric tonne of coal that gets brought out. If they ask about minimum wage, health plans, or any sort of benefits, simply make chicken noises at them while challenging their maturity and dropping the term "snowflake" at least once. Arm-flapping is optional, but encouraged for the benefit of visual learning. 

Now walk away. 

If you're at all concerned about matters of conscience, rest assured that the part about robots taking all the jobs they would ever be qualified for is completely and totally true. If further doubts arise, ask yourself this question: Exactly what tasks would you trust people who fall for this plan to do, much less people who believe the earth is flat? 

Funding is simple. Take the total number of participants, work out what they would earn in their lifetimes from social security, and deduct one-third of that from social security. Like this new workforce, it will not be missed. 

Flat-Earthers Say The Dubayest Things

Made the mistake of watching an +Eric Dubay video. I'd heard the convex lens argument before on a +Stefan Molyneux video and was ready to write it off as the guy in that video simply being new to the whole movement. 

You know the saying, "You never see a gray one."? It usually refers to the life expectancy or tenure of a certain occupation, especially a very dangerous one. With conspiranoids, especially flat-earthers, a similarly apt statement would be, "You never see a smart one." I bring this up because I'd been giving Dubay the benefit of the doubt that he might be the most intelligent flat-earther, to such an extent that I don't think he genuinely buys into his own bullcrap (i.e. John Norman isn't a misogynist, it's just what sells books) and at worst is simply caught up in his own tabula rasa metaphor. 

I was wrong. 

Half a Mind to Have and Have Not

Let's talk about grammar, spelling, and an overall command of punctuation for a moment. There's a possibility I've gone over most of this before, so if you think you already know where this is going, you won't be missing anything.

The Gadget Guy asked why I don't ridicule the grammar of people who agree with my views meanwhile it's somewhat the focus of my caricatures of him.

Short version: I don't honestly believe there is any such thing as perfect grammar, not in English, anyway. The language is too big a mashup for anything to mesh properly. Still, while I let out the odd "teh" or "lead" when I mean "led", some people have a batting average so much lower than mine, so much than the rest of the team in fact, the other team throws the game out of sympathy.

ShortER version: You're just that bad.

Now, as for why I seem to play favorites:

The reason has to do with the definition of pretentious.

"attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed."

To that end, if you're going to claim to be intelligent, observant, and articulate, or otherwise having an inside track on some unknown truth, it's not unreasonable to expect you to demonstrate the skills necessary to understand this information in the first place.

If you've ever seen Apocalypse Now, you might remember that journalist who basically thought Marlon Brando was the second coming. One of his lines about "reality" goes something like this: You can't go into space with fractions.

This line sums up exactly how The Gadget Guy "thinks". While it's true mathematics in and of itself can't help anyone achieve anything, it's application does. When Galileo said, "Math is the language in which God has written the universe." he wasn't being literal. He was saying that merely using philosophy and direct observation was not enough to understand the world around us. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with it, simply that it was misapplied. Mathematics and the scientific method provided a mechanism to prove hypotheses and spot any falsifiable aspects. Consider the moon, how eclipses were seen as ill omens by primitive folk, while those who knew better not only knew there was nothing to fear, but could even predict their occurrences. In fact, it can be used to one's advantage, such as Christopher Columbus using it to convince the Native Americans he was god-like. Arthur C. Clarke illustrates this in his Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. This all finally brings us to Friedrich Nietzsche's master-slave morality, wherein the values of "haves" are judged by "have-nots" as having evil intentions by default, a resentment of other's sentiments. In a roundabout way, it's envy. Worse, rather than the type of envy that may motivate people to transcend their betters (inspiration), it's the type that takes its bat and ball and goes home... after setting fire to the field and bludgeoning the other players unconscious.

30 GOTO 10: Doublethink Dumb