Fall is a time when school gets back in session. For college kiddos, it's especially exciting. After all, you get to meet your new roommate! While you can picture all the good times you'll share together, you never really know how things will turn out until you actually cross paths. Sometimes it's a perfect match, sometimes it's a disaster, and still other times, your roommate actually turns out to be pop group DNCE. It's just the luck of the draw.
Remember this past NFL offseason, when all anyone could talk about was whether or not the New England Patriots used under-inflated footballs in a 45-7 victory over the Indianapolis Colts en route to their fourth Super Bowl of the Bill Belichick/Tom Brady era? Because I sure do. And it was horrible.
Enter Ben Goodell, a seventh grader who already seems more in tuned with reality than the commissioner who he shares a last name with, who wants to put an end to "Deflategate" once and for all. And boy, do I hope this actually works.
"I wanted to prove that Tom Brady is innocent," the 12-year-old St. Pius V Elementary School student said. He and about 120 other students participated in the school's annual science fair, and he won the Outstanding Project Award, which is awarded to only eight students.
Goodell's project took a standard inflated NFL football and exposed it to different elements, including humidity, snow and ice. The ball deflated two PSI (pounds per square inch) every time, which is the lowest recorded PSI from Deflategate.
And hey, if this means we never have to talk about Deflategate again, it's a victory for all of us.
Occasionally, BuzzFeed produces something that's not a list about cats or nostalgia. This is one such thing--a visualization of what the world would be like if teachers were treated like athletes. And I must say, it's quite spot on. Enjoy.
Friend of the blog Andrew Swinney joins the podcast to talk about life as a band geek. We also wax nostalgic on all sorts of school memories. Ah, those memories. Enjoy!
I feel like this all the time. I can rattle off all kinds of nonsense, but rarely is it actually what someone is looking for. Oh well. Calvin will make a great architect someday.
In addition to his transporting/transmogrifying adventures, Calvin has also created a number of aliases for himself. One of these is Spaceman Spiff. Usually, the intergalactic narrative has Calvin navigating the perilous skies, with lots of vivid backgrounds on the strip. The color of the Sunday strips really help in these instances.
Often, Spaceman Spiff is about to crash land when Calvin snaps back to reality. Usually he's about to get into trouble, but occasionally he ends up answering his teacher's or parent's question correctly. I like those more than when he's goofing off, mainly because I enjoy when Calvin celebrates, as in the final panel.
Before other kids started providing smart answers on tests, Calvin was finding his own loopholes. I always enjoyed using the "Guess and Check" strategy on math exams, and would do what I could to game the system if I didn't know the answer outright. Sadly, though, as I'm sure Calvin will soon realize, this will not result in a correct answer. Unless your teacher is awesome.
Plenty that Calvin does is quite realistic, especially for a six-year-old. But one thing nearly every kid can relate to is not wanting to go to school. A lot of strips find Calvin bemoaning the need for an education, whether actually in class or simply waiting for the bus to come.
This is a favorite of mine. When I went to school, I sometimes felt this way--maybe not quite as early as kindergarten, but certainly throughout stages of my education. Fortunately, though, I never walked presumably several hundred yards with both feet through one pant leg. Getting dressed is tough.
