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Diane Ravitch favorably reviews a new book that raises a very good question: educators, and those who would advise them, constantly talk about the responsibilities of teachers; shouldn't there be more emphasis on the responsibilities of students?
If you're trying to keep up with the Zeitgeist--I am, but I'm falling ever further behind--you really need to know about the Thefacebook.com.
Robert X. Cringely, interesting as always, conjectures that Apple's plan for the mini-Mac is HD movies.
Time explores the "twixters". ("The years from 18 until 25 and even beyond have become a distinct and separate life stage, a strange, transitional never-never land between adolescence and adulthood in which people stall for a few extra years . . .") The article is long but interesting. Here are my three reactions:
1. It's amazing how journalists can recycle ideas. This piece is basically the "Boomerang Kids" piece of a few years back.
2. We are, as a whole, an ungodly rich and fortunate society.
3. American colleges and universities are doing many students no favors. The average time to degree is edging toward five years at a time when it should be shrinking toward three. (Not that colleges are solely to blame, of course. The students, and their parents, share it.)
Remember that terrible, horrible, awful flu-vaccine shortage we had a few months back? The one that demonstrated beyond doubt that the Bush Administration was full of incompetent ninnies?
Now there's a surplus of vaccine.
For now, my all-time favorite Joel Spolsky piece: "Advice for Computer Science College Students." Half of the advice is not specific to computer-science majors. If you know a college student, or someone about to become a college student, do him a big favor and suggest he read it.
It's a small masterpiece.
It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Mark Steyn brilliantly dissects the Democrats' concern with "exit strategy". (And in passing slices and dices a Washington Post journalist.)
Nearly 1000 klicks from Addis Ababa, in the wilds of northern Ethiopia, a British journalist discovers something amazing:
Did they want to learn English? Yes, replied everyone. Why? “It is the language of the world, and I want to know the world,” replied one boy.
A great line from Ralph Peters: "Leftists are always happy to weep over corpses, but they find it an inconvenience to save the living."
"His delivery has improved, slightly, since that press conference, but he still makes Eisenhower sound eloquent. He states the obvious in spectacularly uninteresting ways. He speaks in dead tones and sports cliches. There is still no meat in what he feeds the press. He manifests no discernible sense of humor. He gives us nothing. In a word, perfect."
Not only that but Bill Belichick was an economics major and he still stays in touch with one of his college economics professors.
Count me as rooting for the Patriots today.