School Choice Has No Impact. And Your Point Is..?
Steven D. Levitt writes about some of his cohorts whose studies indicate that sending kids to “better” schools doesn’t guarantee better results. Part of the answer is likely that the definition of “better” is based on outputs, like how high the test scores are at the school or what fraction of its students attend good [...]
A Possible Book Ban?
SomeONE apparently didn’t like a couple of paragraphs of Lee Smith’s “Fair and Tender Ladies”, and wants the book banned from Washington County Schools. Makes sense. High school kids these days really aren’t prepared for that kind of language, mostly because they’ve been failed by our school systems. Back in my day, we could to [...]
Violence Isn’t Cost Effective Anymore
This TED talk by Steven Pinker is pretty interesting. I’ll let all of his side comments, such as crediting Bill Clinton with the decline of violent crime in the 1990s, go. The most interesting aspect of this talk is not that violence is decreasing over time, but why violence is decreasing. It seems pretty simple [...]
Monday Morning Potpourri
Hurricane Dean…this is getting pretty scary for the folks in Mexico as it looks like it is picking up. I have a friend who really geeks out over hurricanes, and I’ve been encouraging him to start blogging on them. I know he reads this (sometimes), so I’m calling him out publicly now. START! Overheard on [...]
Patriot Act Keeps Us Safe From Fighting Cocks
Whew! Good thing we have the Patriot Act to keep us safe from those radical Islamic…chickens? Just after midnight on May 13, 2004, a small team of FBI agents crept into the legendary Del Rio Cockfighting Pit in Cocke County. … Acting under the authority of the Patriot Act, the agents had obtained a search [...]
Knox County Property Tax Increase?!
WHAT?!?!!? Wasn’t it the threat of a property tax increase the used to strongarm the public into voting to approve the doubling of the wheel tax a couple of years ago?!?!!? By the way, that money was supposed to go for the new downtown library. If you haven’t been, take a trip downtown and check [...]
Gingrich and Kerry to Debate
Not presidential though, it’s climate. What once was touted as a concern for humanity has now officially been polarized by the Republicrats as a way to sell books and get some “look at me” time.  Jeremy Jacobs has the full story. I couldn’t help but be amused by this: “As a father, when someone tells me that [...]
Dollars – The American Language
One of the big issues surrounding the illegal immigration debate is language. Here in Tennessee, legislation has been sponsored to limit the languages of state documents to English only, and there have been other issues involving foreign language books in public school libraries. It seems to be old reliable for anti-immigration people–attack the fact that [...]
Ten Reasons to Ditch MySpace and Start YourSpace
1. ARE YOU SMART AND/OR INTERESTING? If you are smart and/or interesting, you can easily create your own site. On your own website the possibilities are endless. You can blog all you want, add huge galleries of photos and videos, private message boards for you and your friends to contribute, etc. People who want to [...]
How Did We Ever Get Along Without This?
NASCAR Romance I saw these in Kroger the other night and could not believe it. I gave NASCAR one chance at the Bristol night race a few years ago. I can honestly say I don’t get it. One thing I can say for sure is that I can do without books that bring to mind [...]
