He needs them to keep mice out of the equipment. My second house is full of electronic equipment, surplus parts, tools, books, and other "junk", so his place looks familiar. And I no longer have a cat, and I have found mouse nests in some of my stuff.
Yes, I tend to agree. I saw an early example of this even at Johns Hopkins University, where I attended from 1966 to 1970. For one thing, I had problems with advanced calculus, and I really did not understand much. I would get scores of 15 or 25 out of 100. Yet they were graded on the curve, and I actually passed! I took the course over again, with an instructor who spoke real English and did not write in Sanscrit, and I learned a little more, but this time I passed with a "C" for test scores well under 50%.
In a class on Games and Artificial Intelligence, I worked hard on a programming project and turned in a pretty good assignment, and I was appalled when it was returned with a note saying that the professor had learned that there was a lot of cheating going on, although he did not specifically blame me. I'm sure things have deteriorated since then.
It seems that the PC thing to do, these days, is to reward laziness and poor learning habits, at the expense of those who take the time and effort to learn and do independent research and make efforts above and beyond what is demanded. The "no child left behind" program pushes students through the system with little or no absolute requirements for graduation, and are often rewarded just for not engaging in criminal activity (which is also tolerated). Maybe this should be replaced with a program of "No child's behind left unspanked"!
This attitude, poor character, and lack of responsibility also appears as poor decision making in real life, as evidenced by many of those who are now losing their homes in the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Many of these people were duped into getting themselves into unrealistic situations because they did not get a good education, which was freely offered to them, and had the expectation that things would be just given to them because they were somehow entitled to it. They kept their poor spending habits and accumulated more debt, until their house of plastic cards fell down on them. But now they expect the government to step in and save them from their own irresponsibility.
I was challenged on this when I brought it up and discussed it on rec.pets.dogs.behavior, where most people thought I was being heartless and uncaring about these poor people. I realize there are some cases where good people had bad things happen to them through no fault of their own, and they deserve some sympathy and assistance, but most probably were lazy students with poor character.
Paul