Reason magazine gives us an eclectic, irreverent list of modern heroes to the cause of freedom. Most surprising member of the list? Ashcroft – for mobilizing the defenders of freedom against him, or maybe Evan Williams, founder of Blogger. I think Tim Bernes Lee, who invented the World Wide Web should have been on this [...]
This long, exhaustively detailed, chronological account of Franklin’s life is a wonderful read. I learned that: – He had even a greater influence on the course of this country than I realized – He was a lousy husband and father – He was a dirty old man with a strong attraction to women far younger [...]
Izzy has found a study by the Manhattan Institute that concludes: The parents who send their teenagers off to those freshly-painted, wholesome-looking suburban public schools every morning would probably be shocked if they realized those schools are virtually indistinguishable from urban schools on most measurements of sex, drugs, violence, and delinquency. There may have been [...]
John Taylor Gatto published an article in the August 2003 issue of Harpers giving an overview of the real purpose of public education and the damage it does to our kids and our society as a whole. None of this is news to a homeschooler, of course. A couple of quotes just to wet the [...]
I don’t think so. Sci-Fi author Cory Doctorow (who I happen to like BTW) thinks a flash piece by the liberal group truemajority.org is one of the most effective pieces of political advocacy he has ever seen. I guess facts and truth aren’t important in Cory’s world. The entire piece is one big fabrication predicated [...]
I wached The Ring last night. Alone. In my basement. In the dark. It is the scariest movie I’ve seen in a while. It’s not scary in the “something startling happens and your wife / girlfriend screams” way. It’s worse. It’s fear that starts with the hair on the back of your neck, and slowly [...]
Public Service Announcement. Barf bags are highly recommended before reading this essay reminding us of how under appreciated the poor public school teachers are. (And a thank you to Michele for sending me the link.) I am your public school, a 200 year-old experiment giving America the strongest economy in world history. Given the source, [...]
10 mistakes writers make I plead guilty on all 10 counts.
Take 1 song – Hey Ya by Outkast Add The Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon, liberally edited And you get this, which is a lot more entertaining than you might think. via Boing Boing
Social software is the buzzword for early 2004. Friendster is all the rage, picking up boku investment dollars even though they have no discernable business plan for actually making money. Now Google is getting into the game. And, its an exclusive club. I’ve already seen several blog posts of people begging for invites. This is [...]
Michele’s son is having continuing problems with a bully. It’s not the bully that is a reason to homeschool. Bullies exist in homeschool groups too. It’s the reaction of the school system.
According to ESPN, based on 10,000 simulations of the Super Bowl, Carolina will win 17-14. Fark used the “interesting” tag on this. I think “unlikely” is more appropriate.
For my non geeky readers… he created WinAmp at the age of 18, got bought out by AOL, and was a multimillionaire before he was old enough to buy beer. He has been a real thorn in AOL’s side, constantly releasing pro freedom software like Gnutella against AOL’s wishes. Heh. Sounds like he has some [...]
U. of Washington researchers got $378K of taxpayer money to study how people remember where they’ve been on the Web. They discovered that people don’t really use bookmarks / favorites. So, they set out to make bookmarks more relevant by giving IE users the ability to annotate their bookmarks. I can save the government a [...]
Interesting article at Fast Company about how much “better” cheap wine tastes these days. Beer, which was traditionally more of a blue collar beverage, went upscale in the 90′s with the explosion of micro brews in the US. Now, wine is going in the other direction, with apparently good wines becoming affordable. I wonder if [...]
