(Post transferred from Google+ on the occasion of its shutdown)

When I was in high school, there was a certain amount of complaining to the effect of, "Why must I do $assignment for $classIamnotgoodat? I want to follow $careerpath and the skills I learn by doing $assignment will be totally irrelevant!"

There was a certain quiet smugness among those of us good at math and science listening to the humanities people, because unlike our perfectly legitimate complaints about history papers, obviously they were going to grow up and discover that they desperately needed algebra to get anywhere in their chosen careers.

I am now writing a historical review for some math conference proceedings.

I think I am glad that it was quiet smugness, because there is now no one can tell me that they told me so.

Humanities oriented cousin not on Dreamwidth: http://i.imgur.com/7sY7b.gif

origamist: I am tempted to reply with http://xkcd.com/451/, but the whole point of this post is that being smug and superior towards the humanities is not always a good thing.

Humanities oriented cousin not on Dreamwidth: I think the humanities have value. I just think that the cancer of postmodernism has eaten away at them for the past 35 years.