Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Average student hit by origami plane from space

More stuff from New Scientist: A Japanese engineering professor wants to launch a 20cm Origami airplane from ISS.
The things you learn from unconventional ideas - I'd never have guessed that light objects don't heat up much when entering the atmosphere. I'd have thought a paper plane entering the atmosphere would make *poof*.

***

The government made a social survey on students. I'm guilty of being interested in knowing the averages about my field of study (It's a general problem of humanity, I think - we need to know all kinds of averages, so we can compare ourselves and see if we're average enough. Only then can we rest easy) - that interest, however, has never been satisfied, because nobody seems to take us literature students seriously enough to justify talking to us about our averages.
Anyway, now I know - again - that I'm atypical (or maybe les beaux arts are simply atypical by themselves, and therefore nobody investigates them - why look at something that you know will disappoint your expectations, eh?).

Apparently, a majority of students gets public funding. The average student also has a monthly budget of over 1000€ (imagine how many books you can buy for so much money), and spends 970€ (a majority of that is spent on accommodation and food - knowing how much accommodation roughly costs, I can estimate what is left for food, which isn't bad; although I do wonder if "food" includes all the money spent on party drinks; hmmm). The average student has a 45-hour-week (33h for studies, 11.5h for work). Only one third of all students has no stress-induced health problems (!).

So we have a body of over-worked, under-paid future labourers who are already damaged before they take up their intended position in society. That's good. Because, you know, broken people do so much better work.

***

I think I haven't shown these before ... they're quite old. I tried to make some simple icons depicting German idioms. Some more simple than others ;)

3 comments:

Magpie said...

*giggles*

those icons are great! Spent a long while guessing!

Manuela said...

Hehe, didn't think they are that difficult. But maybe because we don't use idioms that much anymore.
I even have some sketches for more here, but never felt like finishing them ;(

Magpie said...

there were only one or two that were more difficult - although I DO know people who most likely wouldn't have figured out more than one. At work, I'm known for managing to use idioms/quotes from books in almost every conversation.