Wrymouth3
Emperor
I avoid Starbucks at all costs. Not only is it overpriced non-coffee, it's also filled with some pretty obnoxious people too. I feel bad for employees that work there.
Random Rants : Pissed tae th' gills
- Thread starter Takhisis
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I avoid Starbucks at all costs. Not only is it overpriced non-coffee, it's also filled with some pretty obnoxious people too. I feel bad for employees that work there.
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
Yeah, while I really enjoy the atmosphere of the interiors itself the coffee is overpriced. My dad, he just buys the really cheap normal coffee that no one buys and then adds ice and milk and all that stuff and voila he just saved himself $5.
ReindeerThistle
Zimmerwald Left
Wut? OMG, what continent are you from?
Farm Boy
I hope you dance
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But but... the Irish make fantastic coffee! Not talking about the type with alcohol, haven't tried that.
Don't strangle me preez. Hollywood isn't my doing, and I live really far away from it.
madviking
north american scum
it looks likes someone's a bit butthurt
Tea is superior to coffee, you know.
Tea, black, with sugar, is an excellent drink. But technically, Europe is the land to the south-east of Great Britain.
Irish without alcohol? I know you people tend to romanticise Ireland but this is going too far.
Grendeldef
Trancerelic & coffeeholic
This will change while you advance in your studies of Finnish language.
Irish Coffee is the supreme form of a superb product - just bloody expensive here with no apparent reason. Funnily enough the best IC I've ever drank was in Chamonix, France of all places. Extremely cool mugs, too but unfortunately they were unwilling to sell'em.
Yes, you people have a lot of words for disliking stuff. I can do more than merely disliking.
I believe that adding 'kahvi' to 'viina' shouldn't be that expensive.Grendeldef said:
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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Rant: My textbook on Chinese history is so wrong about the Mongols. Apparently, they couldn't shoot bows from horseback until they acquired stirrups from the Jin, they coalesced at an unknown date and "migrated from their homelands" for unknown reasons, possibly climatic, and invented "slingshots" with counterweights as well as fire lances. And tomorrow this misinformation will be taught to another class of impressionable students who don't know that it is wrong. Aaaaarrrrgh
Spoiler explanation of rant :
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
Personally I've always been more worried about professors or TAs who spread misinformation about history (or something else) because at least from what I've seen students are less likely to retain about a textbook says compared to a TA or professor, especially if the TA or professor is particularly charismatic. Several cases in point:
- I had a history TA who said the ancient Egyptian state was founded in 4000 or 5000 BCE and that we should be calling it Kemet. The last part is amusing because, while the ancient Egyptians did call it Kmt, there's kind of no point because we don't call China Zhongguo or the Sassanid Empire Eranshahr or whatever so there's no need. He also mentioned some other really bad non-modern history in general. As a side note, this TA also taught Asian-American history at a community college. He was pretty knowledgeable about modern American history, yes, but his knowledge of anything earlier than the Renaissance was pretty off.
- I also had an extremely charismatic International Studies professor - probably the most charismatic I've ever had, the kind who's supposed to inspire you and make you want to do better things - who's spouted some rather outdated historical ideas and facts, though I don't exactly remember what they were at this time.
- One professor (who otherwise was alright) said there were three countries in the world that were never colonized by the Europeans: Iran, Turkey, and Ethiopia (I think). Japan wasn't one of them, apparently.
Of course even the best professors will occasionally make a slip, but I worry most are those who make slips in areas they don't specialize in (a political science professor making a mistake in history, or a historian of WWII touting some outdated ideas about antiquity, etc.), especially if they're charismatic.
Phrossack
Armored Fish and Armored Men
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Spoiler :
Trouble is, the prof is new at teaching, and he tends to read directly from the books. I really won't like hearing him teach history wrong, but I also really don't want to be that one guy in class. I suppose I'll just have to put up with it. Maybe send him an email, but that just seems wrong.
sophie
Break My Heart
Office hours. Don't approach him in a dickish manner. Just ask him why he's using that book. Maybe provide some sources that you prefer and explain why. Assuming he's not a dismissive douche, you may both come away from the conversation the wiser for it.
Seriously. Office hours are there for students to interact with professors, and it isn't nor should it be a one-way street.
That's not even mentioning Afghanistan, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, both Koreas (well, Japan colonized them and the USSR occupied North Korea for a few years after WWII, but I'm not sure if that counts), Nepal, and arguably Mongolia, Bhutan, and China (none of those three was ever under direct European control, but certainly all were under indirect European control). And there's of course plenty of smaller areas and tiny islands that the Europeans never made contact with.
Ethiopia isn't even entirely correct, since the Europeans certainly got parts of it and the Italians occupied the whole thing during WWII, and hell, Turkey and Iran had their internal affairs messed with about as much as some of the other nations I listed.
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
Yeah, office hours are good. Most professors end up sitting around doing nothing because no one ever comes, but unless they're a douche like Owen Glyndwr, many professors really like it when students come to talk and discuss topics they are really interested in (or even topics they don't care much about).
Korea was directly colonized by Japan, so I guess that counts.
But anyhow this professor was subbing for my professor, and she's a political scientist and not a historian (they just both specialize in Iran, and the class was on modern Iranian history, so I guess that worked out). I guess I can forgive her because she otherwise seemed pretty knowledgeable and it's one of those instances where otherwise decent professors make a slip.
Korea was directly colonized by Japan, so I guess that counts.
But anyhow this professor was subbing for my professor, and she's a political scientist and not a historian (they just both specialize in Iran, and the class was on modern Iranian history, so I guess that worked out). I guess I can forgive her because she otherwise seemed pretty knowledgeable and it's one of those instances where otherwise decent professors make a slip.
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
Ah, that's true, although her statement was that "there only were 3 countries never colonized by Europeans" so Japan wouldn't count obviously if they were doing the imperialism game the Europeans were doing.
cybrxkhan
Asian Xwedodah
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