Here’s an eye-opening paragraph from a larger article that peels apart the layers of Jim Cramer’s position as a market expert, now under public attack from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show:

In fact, however, Cramer is not just “below average.” One really need look no further than Jim’s language: touting any stocks with the words, “they go up…they go up consistently, almost every day” is, to any sane investor, simple charlatanism. In the 19th century a man may have been able to stand on a sidewalk touting an elixir that cured hangovers, gout, typhus, and the Clap, and people did not know enough not to believe him. Today, anyone attempting such snake-oil entreaties would be met with general head-wagging and laughter, because consumers are scientifically literate enough to know of the several biological mechanisms underlying such maladies and understand the impossibility of any one elixir curing all of them. Similarly, someone recommending stocks because “they go up consistently, almost every day” to investors possessing a basic understanding of markets and finance will induce precisely the same head-wagging and laughter. Unfortunately, biological literacy is more widespread than is economic literacy, and Jim Cramer manages to stay on the air, pitching financial snake-oil to the general public nightly.

We have a national public education system, meant to provide every American the basic tool kit with which to operate in society. It has always baffled me that financial education has not been a part of the core curriculum. After all, aside from death, the only infamous certainty of adult life is taxes. Why aren’t high school students taught how to do taxes? Why is there never a day of school devoted to the basic rudiments of filling out a 1040, especially given that it’s illegal to not do so once you’re out in the world and earning money?

Read more: Why money needs to become part of the core curriculum

The fight against mosquitos and West Nile Virus has taken to the skies. But what exactly can officials see?

Read more: Fly Spy

Henry Selick's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline is one of the most beautiful girl-goth movies I've ever seen, trumping even the superb (and sadly overlooked) A Series of Unfortunate Events. Selick also brings discipline to Gaiman's usually meandering plots, and keeps things moving at a brisk pace; even though he can't quite overcome the clunky "quest of three" structure of the climax, he at least shuffles it through quickly and with some jaw-dropping visuals. While his work has always been overshadowed by Tim Burton because of their collaboration on Nightmare Before Christmas, Selick shows that he has as much vision as the modern macabre master, and even (at this phase in his career) more discipline, only deploying his most fantastic visual flourishes when the story calls for them, content to fine tune the details of the mundane when mundane is all the story needs.

Read more: Coraline

Sentimental, picaresque, predictable pap, and I loved every minute of it. An orphaned pauper sells his foster father's fiddle in order to finance a career in the traveling theater, and promptly falls in love with the troupe ingenue. Through a variety of misadventures, she disappears on him, and it's up to our hero, and his rough upbringing, to save the day ... not to mention discover the mystery of his birth. It would be a perfect example of 1600s English literature, except it was written by an American in the 1940s, making it a perfect example of the kind of book that would never get published anymore, even though Oprah would love it! Probably not worth the effort to track down, since it's out of print, but I would venture that anything by Edison Marshall is likely to be entertaining enough, for those who gravitate toward dead authors who don't get taught in high school. In his day, Marshall was John Grisham Big (his novel "The Vikings" became a Kirk Douglas vehicle), but it's safe to say he, like most popular and populist entertainers, has faded into obscurity for anyone born after the Truman Administration. It's not hard to see why, but that doesn't make his writing any less fun.