Visual source: Newseum
It's not that we expect all that much of teachers. Just take care of our kids for most of their waking hours, give our society the knowledge to stay competitive with the rest of the world, and submit to whatever name calling we want to indulge in today. Oh, and do it at bargain prices. On the other hand, Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari suggest that we pay teachers more and focus the blame for the problems of our education system on the people who can actually do something about it.<>When we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.
And yet in education we do just that. A must read piece.
The New York Times has more to say on the Ryan plan for turning Medicare into a coupon program. Not surprisingly, the closer you look, the worse Ryan's plan really is.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that federal payments would be 35 percent lower in 2022 than currently projected and 49 percent lower in 2030.
To make up the difference, states would probably have to cut payments to doctors, hospitals or nursing homes; curtail eligibility; reduce benefits; or increase their own payments for Medicaid. The problems do not end there. If a bad economy led to a sharp jump in unemployment, a state’s grant would remain the same.... This would put an ever-tightening squeeze on states, forcing them to drop enrollees, cut services or pump up their own contributions.
Kathleen Parker looks at the birther issue from several angles, and has a hard time finding a view that's not depressing.
To whichever group one claims membership, one can’t help wondering when exactly we lost our minds.
What are we to make of these crazed factions that become obsessed with conspiracies, unconvinced by facts? Perhaps most important, what is the rest of the world to think of us? Will even third world countries someday (soon) look at the United States and say, “Oh, well, those Americans, they’re crazy, you know”?
Dana Milbank thinks the White House correspondents dinner has jumped the shark.
The correspondents’ association dinner was a minor annoyance for years, when it was a “nerd prom” for journalists and a few minor celebrities. But, as with so much else in this town, the event has spun out of control. Now, awash in lobbyist and corporate money, it is another display of Washington’s excesses.
This keen observation earns Milbank the "duh" award for the week..
Susan Straight revisits the 70's energy crisis with a little slice of nostalgia and a large slab of foreboding.
The San Francisco Chronicle revisits this week's Supreme Court ruling, in which the Gang of Five, Inc. once again handed a big victory to corporations over consumers.
The case blesses shady business tactics. Firms can get away with credit card overcharges, unauthorized fees or a phony bill because a showdown class action lawsuit isn't allowed. The ruling casts a shadow on another case before the high court in which 1.5 million women are seeking to bring a class action case against Wal-Mart for sex discrimination.
Time interviews Al Gore on the subject of his new book. You know, the one I'm going to review in about two hours.
When you stay up too late, doing something like, say desperately scanning a set of bland editorials looking for something worth putting in APR, what happens to your brain? A new study suggests that sleep may not be an all-or-nothing proposition. Many animals are known to turn off their brain one half at a time (reptiles do it, so do birds and even some mammals such as dolphins). It now appears that something similar may be happening in other mammals when they are deprived of normal sleep.
Research published today in Nature demonstrates that in visibly awake rats, neurons in some areas of the brain's cortex briefly go 'offline'. In these pockets, neuronal patterns resemble those associated with non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep1.
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The napping neurons can affect behaviour. The number of OFF periods grew as the length of time the animal had been kept awake rose, impairing its cognitive performance when challenged with a difficult task — reaching for a sugar pellet through a slot in their plexiglass cage.
Clearly in my case both the Google and grammar sections of my brain are on break at the moment. And would someone please put my sugar pellets back on this side of the glass? Sheesh.
