A couple of years ago, Polimom and a distant cousin coordinated a genealogy trip to New York State. We spent two solid weeks together, poring over deed books, reading through personal memoirs or business account ledgers, searching for the elusive threads that tie us to our ancestors, and to one another.
Thanks to this family research, […]
I confess; I jazzed the title up a bit — but only a little, because while the end of the world isn’t imminent, it appears that the effects of global warming are going to bring some massive changes:
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Rising temperatures will leave millions more people hungry by 2080 and cause critical water shortages […]
Every time I approach the question of education or reform, I find that people respond from many different directions, with radically diverse assumptions. Thus, it appears to me that we don’t have a consensus on what, exactly, we’re trying to accomplish with our public education system.
Perhaps I missed the mission statement.
Is the goal a literate […]
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about the problems in Los Angeles high schools, where they’re facing drop-out rates of around 50%. The LA Times ran an enormous education special about the crisis, and while they noted that there are problems for urban school districts all across the country, no-one seemed over-worried about Texas’ […]
It’s probably too early in the morning to comment on this article from the NY Times (slightly truncated version available from the Houston Chronicle, here), but the cognitive dissonance is too great to ignore:
Could it be possible that you are saving too much for your retirement?
[snip]
[… A] small band of economists from universities, research institutions […]
The nation’s moved past the nightmares of Katrina and Rita, and nothing could have underscored this reality more than Tuesday night’s thundering silence on the subject during Bush’s SOTU address.
Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was […]
Here we go again with the English language / assimilation yammer:
WASHINGTON — American civilization eventually will collapse if government doesn’t do a better job assimilating immigrants into society, possible GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Wednesday as he urged Congress to enshrine English as the nation’s official language.
The former House speaker said political correctness and […]