On Education: A Good Place to Start

As I said in my previous post, I'm not yet prepared to dive fully into fever swamps of education policy in America. But here's a place we can all start: parental involvement. Daniel Akst shares some good common sense in today's Wall Street Journal, namely, that high-performing students tend to have encouraging, involved parents who focus on education as a collective goal of the whole family. He also scratches the surface of a deep cultural problem that I believe will continue to undermine American education for the foreseeable future, namely the indifference and opposition of many parents toward education. We all complain that many parents don't value education, but nobody seems to acknowledge that many parents actively undermine education. They disparage the curriculum, subvert students' respect for their teachers, and lobby for easier workloads and lower standards. Teachers who try to combat these tendencies are seen as engaging in a power struggle against the families. And there most certainly are some educators who are trying to subvert the influence of families on young students, which just feeds the perception of education as a struggle between opposing camps, instead of the partnership it ought to be.

On Education

I've been formally requested, now, to write a piece (or what will probably amount to several pieces) on education. Problem is, I've got to figure out exactly where I stand myself. I've got some reading to do, see. But one thing I am convinced of, however, is that the whole culture of mass education in America is misguided at best. I definitely agree that college is not for everyone. Thing is, I'm pretty sure high school isn't for everyone, either. Or oughtn't be. But I've got some reading and pondering to do before I can get my thoughts into a coherent order on this remarkably convoluted subject.

I Want One: Everything-Proof Convergent Phone

For the inauguration of my "I Want One" category, I bring you the everything-proof convergent phone from Sonim. It's waterproof, shockproof, and dustproof (a huge plus in this line of work), plus it includes such non-standard "apps" as a compass, thermometer, barometer, and altimeter. Which is to say, not only can it survive water, shocks, and dust, but it could also make itself very useful in places where such hazards are to be found. Needless to say: I want one. Apparently the manufacturer is still looking for a distributor, so I might have to wait a bit to get one of my own, but you know I will, if only to show up all those hipster iPhone users. "Ooooh, you're phone goes 'boing' like Mario while you jump up and down? Sweet, but can it tell you the ambient air pressure? I didn't think so."

The Hurricane Has Won

In discussions on the proper prosecution of anti-terrorism strategy the argument often comes up that if we, as Americans, change our behavior or compromise our shared political ideals, then "the terrorists have won", by successfully changing our behavior in what is fundamentally a culture war. So why, after making such a show of maintaining our American spirit in the face of terrorism, have we completely capitulated to a hurricane? Nobody at the Republican Convention can do anything one way or another to prevent damage from Hurricane Gustav to the city of New Orleans. It's not like they're putting their activities on hold so they can all head down and sandbag the levees. But it's a sign of the Oprahization of America, apparently, that it's now apparently insensitive to go about your business when someone (or in this case, someone's property) may be suffering, somewhere. Sensitivity requires us all to put our lives on hold so we can sit around wringing our hands in the face of any incipient potential "tragedy".

Sidenote: New Orleans is deserted. The evacuations were mandatory and thorough. There will be no tragedy. If the city were to sink below the waves, the only people to go with it would be the unconscionably foolhardy. And the reporters. No tragedy. I know it would be pretty hard on all the people whose homes would be devastated yet again, but in light of this world of ours, I can't quite bring myself to get too hung up about a bunch of people losing their stuff.

Un-Wired Weekend

Just got back from a relaxing weekend up in the northwoods, but now I'm realizing how much news I missed while I was fishin' and drinkin' beer among the birches. New Orleans is again threatened by a serious hurricane, which some Democrats find comic, and proof that God is on their side. Also: Sarah Palin. Need to do a lot more reading before I can make any real judgement on that decision, but I do have two observations: Governor Palin is probably the most attractive national-level politician we've yet seen (in this country, anyway, other countries are far more advanced in this particular regard), and secondly, it's so great to hear a nice Northern accent in national politics!

Embed This Ad

While the Obama campaign's busy trying to prosecute political non-profits for saying things they don't like, the McCain campaign has put out a pretty powerful one of their own. Again, this ad focuses on Obama's friends and colleagues, but this time its his friends and colleagues in the Democratic party who take center stage, with all their reservations and concerns about whether Obama could be an effective president in our dangerous and unstable world. Of course, all these clips are from before he became the presumptive nominee, and they've all had radical changes of heart as to his competence and readiness (particularly Joe Biden!). Too bad the videotapes couldn't disappear as easily as their concerns did:

On Vista

I'll either be buying or building myself a new desktop computer sometime in the next month or three, and I'm already debating whether (assuming I don't take the Mac plunge) to install Windows Vista on my new machine, or just stick with good ole' XP. I think Jeffrey Rowland may have convinced me:

I wasn't sure exactly why everyone was so angry at Windows Vista until I actually tried to use it for an actual, real-world reason. This god dang thing sucks, y'all. It's like somebody just took a good-lookin' car that ran good and there was nothing wrong with it, and they came in and screwed a bunch of fancy-looking crap to it and redid the wiring so none of the gauges or lights work. They put some fancy, spinny rims on it but crap gets stuck in them and the tires go flat all the time. And then it assumes you're an idiot so it constant ask you things like "are you sure you want to change the radio station?" Oh look, the cupholder just broke off because the radio is too shiny. Wait, the cupholder came original with the car. Hopefully in a couple of years they'll make a cupholder that I can replace it with; until then I'll hold the beer between my legs.

If you didn't notice the fine-print on the comic, it says "Microsoft Vista was invented because of a bet between Bill Gates and the Pope to see if it could just completely put people off of computers for good."

Obama and Friends

We're seeing some pretty disturbing behavior from the Obama campaign on the one hand, and the Denver police (in presumable cahoots with Democratic party event organizers) on the other.

In the first case, there's a shocking disregard for First Amendment rights inherent in the Obama campaign's demands for criminal prosecution of the leader of a political non-profit which has been running (a fairly effective) attack ad against him, raising questions about his relationship with "guilty as hell, free as a bird", "just a guy who lives in my neighborhood" Bill Ayers. Now, I'm no campaign strategist, but it seems to me that when someone runs an attack ad, your best bet is either to counter its claims point-by-point, or to offhandedly dismiss it as slanderous lies, as if it were below your concern. Reacting with outrage while refusing to address the points -- which would be pretty easy to refute, if by chance they weren't true -- then demanding the incarceration of the people responsible for the ad, well, that just strikes me as protesting too much. Besides the, you know, appalling disregard for the First Amendment. (The Obama campaign has released a "factcheck" on the Obama-Ayers relationship. I'm not going to get into whether the editorial pages of liberal newspapers qualify as sources, or whether Ayers' continuing and proud admissions of guilt might not make "he never served time" the best argument in his favor.)

As far as the Denver police go, I just wonder who it was they were so intent to protect from an ABC News camera? Or was it just that someone's getting tired of the public seeing how much good old-fashioned money is behind the Obama campaign?

Seven More Years

Seven years until this girl's dad is fighting off the hordes of soldiers and various gun nuts wanting to marry her. Then again, she could probably hold her own.

http://view.break.com/562090 - Watch more free videos

Remaking the Highway Trinity

Gas, Food, Lodging... and Wi-Fi? Louisville, Nebraska thinks so, but the state disagrees. Mike Elgan of Mike's List says Wi-Fi has become a "universally valuable service" deserving of a position along with the familiar highway trinity of Gas, Food, and Lodging. An increasing number of states are providing free Wi-Fi at public rest stops, with roadside placards advertising the service, so why not mark exits where the service is available? While I've only been in this position once or twice, I can certainly imagine situations where it would be very useful to know which exit had businesses offering Wi-Fi, particularly as the use of Blackberrys, iPods-Touch (I pluralize how I please, thank you very much), and Wi-Fi/VoIP phones continues to grow.

In related news, I noticed on my recent visit to Minnesota that different states have varying protocols as to whether they note coffeeshops on their freeway exit signs. Minnesota lists Starbucks and Caribou on the "Food" signs; I hadn't ever noticed it, but I don't think other states do this. It's nice, since most coffeeshop chains sell enough food for a substantial snack. And it precludes the need to add a "Coffee" sign. To which I, of course, would in no way be opposed.

The Temple Of Obama

This one just speaks for itself.

UPDATE: Behind-the-scenes video of the INVESCO Obamodeon! Skip to around 4:00 for the close-up of the stage.

Amatuer Surgeons and Professional Educators

The indomitable, unmatchable, and utterly irreplaceable Thomas Sowell weighs in today with a typically pithy piece on the failure of central planning of economies. This sort of thing is Conservatism 101, but he illustrates it with an example I thought much of my readership might appreciate:

When amateurs outperform professionals, there is something wrong with that profession. If ordinary people, with no medical training, could perform surgery in their kitchens with steak knives, and get results that were better than those of surgeons in hospital operating rooms, the whole medical profession would be discredited.

Yet it is common for ordinary parents, with no training in education, to homeschool their children and consistently produce better academic results than those of children educated by teachers with Master’s degrees and in schools spending upwards of $10,000 a year per student — which is to say, more than a million dollars to educate ten kids from K through 12. Nevertheless, we continue to take seriously the pretensions of educators who fail to educate, but who put on airs of having “professional” expertise beyond the understanding of mere parents.

Thank You Kathleen Parker

Thank you for finally acknowledging that the real issue behind last week's Purpose-Driven inquisition of Obama and McCain at Saddleback is not who "won" but rather, why on Earth are our presidential candidates prostrating themselves before Rick Warren as if he were some sort of evangelical Pope? This sort of thing might be appropriate in a nations with historical establishment of religion. It is wildly inappropriate in America.

Olympics

I'm staying with some old friends here in Tennessee, and we've been watching quite a bit of the Olympics. I hadn't really seen anything until now, so I didn't really have much commentary. I still don't have much you haven't already heard, whether it's musing on the age of the female Chinese gymnasts or griping about the problem of incompetent judges. One thing I haven't heard much about is the jarringly bizarre program commentary provided by NBC's Olympic commenters. I'm accustomed to the stereotypically-accented rants of Olympic veterans like Bela Karolyi, but the networks own commenters are hardly more coherent at times.

Now That's Journalism

A Georgian reporter was shot and slightly wounded by a sniper during the recent Russian kerfuffle.  Her reaction is spectacular: she just keeps reporting.

Growing Up

Overheard from a buddy's phone conversation about financial matters with his fiancée on our drive to St. Louis:

Yeah, I'll just talk to my parents. They know a lot more about this than we do... Boy, what my Dad would have paid to hear that 10 years ago.

It's funny how, in the right contexts, relying on one's parents is a sign of maturity.

Trip Update

2,000 miles covered already. I need an oil change, but when I detoured through Asheville to look for a JiffyLube, I realized it's not exactly an oil-changin' sort of town. It's the sort of place where even the McDonald's bears a facade in the style of the Biltmore estate, Asheville's primary tourist trap. All in all, though, it looks like a very classily touristified slice of Americana, the sort of place that might make a really nice family vacation destination. And you really can't beat the mountains around here. By the time I got settled for the evening, everything was closed, and unfortunately I'm guessing most places will be closed tomorrow, so my poor car will just have to deal. Right now I'm staying in a hotel in Knoxville, TN, and I'm really wishing I had researched the city a bit more before I made my reservation here on the edge of town; if I had known Knoxville was such a nice city, I'd have gotten a downtown hotel so I could get out a bit instead of spending a Saturday night drinking Sailor Jerry's rum and blogging in my hotel room. Oh well, lessons learned.

So True

Xkcd nails it again. Now, I'm a solid devotee of Google Maps. I probably have a rather unhealthy attachment to it, honestly, to the point that I feel a shudder of horror at the thought of using something so positively primeval as MapQuest. But it does occasionally have some snafus. Or more accurately, this world of ours doesn't quite live up to the perfect order implied by Google. And of course, Google's employees like to leave little jokes here or there. For a while, requesting directions from anywhere in North America to anywhere in Europe would direct you to New York harbor, followed by the line "swim the Atlantic", continuing with road directions from Calais. Google's got jokes.

Driving

So friends, I'm noticing that I've got quite a bit of driving coming up in the next month. Like, just shy of 5,000 miles worth (destinations are approximate and unrepresentative, crazy stalker people!):


View Larger Map

So, who's got some tips for enjoying long lonely drives? I'm no stranger to the open road myself, but I've covered most of this terrain before and I'm a bit worried boredom might get the best of me.

Putin Went Down to Georgia

Yeah yeah yeah, I'm sure I'm not the first to make that joke.

I realize I'm uncharacteristically slow to comment on the "situation" developing in Georgia. Namely, you know, the Russian invasion and air campaign against a sovereign neighbor. I seem to think there's a term for a high-speed armored invasion with overwhelming close air support: oh yeah, blitzkrieg. In any case I'm not hugely read up on Russian and post-Soviet geopolitics, much less on Caucasian studies, so it's taken me a few days to pull together enough to make some informed comments.

In light of Russia's bombing of civil infrastructure, and particularly the attempted bombing of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that connects the Caspian oil fields to world markets, circumventing Russia's regional petrohegemony, I think it is difficult to see this invasion as anything but blatantly imperial. Russia's transparent excuse to be protecting Russian citizens in South Ossetia from Georgian aggression, well, that one's sort of been used before. True, there's a strong separatist streak in South Ossetia, but the Ossetians in Russia have little more interest in being part of that country, either. So Russia's claim to the moral high ground is pretty difficult to accept.

I'm pleased (and unsurprised) to see Senator McCain's unequivocal condemnation of Russian aggression and his support for our Georgian allies. I'm also saddened (and similarly unsurprised) by Senator Obama's refusal to take sides. Initially, his campaign completely refused to place blame: "It’s both sides’ fault — both have been somewhat provocative with each other." This from his foreign policy advisor Mark Brzezinski. Later, Obama toughened his line. He now "condemn[s] the outbreak of violence in Georgia". Well good for you, Senator Obama, give that outbreak a stern talking-to! Maybe invite the outbreak in for talks, or threaten the outbreak with sanctions. Maybe, if push comes to shove, our military strength might be used to influence the outbreak of violence to behave itself. Senator Obama also says that "Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected." Does he fail to realize that this statement is completely meaningless to a party that has disputed what constitutes Georgia's territory since that country's independence? Yesterday, Obama finally got around to sounding a little bit less like a Kremlin stooge and more like an American President, or in this case more like McCain's initial (and impromptu) statement. Taking 48 hours to reach the same position your elderly opponent came to when questioned on the airport tarmac doesn't really engender confidence for the proverbial 3:00 A.M. phone call.