Why do public schools stink? According to Thomas Sowell and a study that he sites, we might want to take a long look at the teachers.

Most discussions of the problems of American education have an air of utter unreality because they avoid addressing the most fundamental and intractable problem of our public schools -- the low quality of our teachers. There is no point expecting teachers to teach things that they themselves do not know or understand.

That becomes painfully obvious from a recently released report from the U.S. Department of Education. This report has an innocuous title on the cover -- "Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge" -- and devastating facts inside.

According to this report, in 28 of the 29 states that use the same standardized test for teachers, it is not even necessary to come up to the national average in mathematics to become a teacher. In none of these states is it necessary to come up to the national average in reading. In some states, you can score in the bottom quarter in either math or reading (or both) and still meet the requirements to become a teacher.

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, offers this editorial on CEOs and CFOs of American corporations.

I think it's useful to put these corporate scandals in perspective. Every employee I ever worked with in my old cubicle-dwelling days was pillaging the company on a regular basis, too. But the quantity of loot was rarely newsworthy. My weasel co-workers were pocketing office supplies, fudging expense reports, using sick days as vacation and engaging in a wide array of work-avoidance techniques.

Most people rationalize this kind of behavior by saying that corporations are evil and so the weasel employees deserve a little extra. The C.E.O.'s and C.F.O.'s aren't less ethical than employees and stockholders; they're just more effective. They're getting a higher quality of loot than the rank and file, and for that they must be punished

Nice post on the idea of freezing yourself ala Walt Disney and possibly Ted Williams.


What does it stand for Alcor believes nanotechnology will advance to a point at which repair at a cellular level will become possible. Life expectancy will then jump to hundreds if not thousands of years. The primary cause of death in the future will be accidents that destroy the brain structure. The difficulty Alcor sees is most of us will be dead long before this becomes possible. Their premise is to just "bite the bullet" now and use the best techniques we have at hand in an attempt to bridge the gap.

Some experiments have shown excellent long term tissue preservation in LN2; in one experiment a dog was taken down to freezing and brought back. It lived out a normal doggy life afterwards. Many in the cryogenics field have a political dislike for the whole concept so few have actually been doing the experiments. None expect it to be easy; none give the current techniques any more than an outside chance of working. Alcor people will tell you that up front. It's in their paperwork and disclaimers.

Why would someone have themselves frozen???? "All things considered, I'd rather be in Philadelphia". If you are cremated, you ain't comin' back. If you're buried to rot, you ain't comin' back. If you're cut up for medicine, you ain't comin' back. If you are frozen in liquid nitrogen for a century or two... well you might not be coming back. But... If you love life why not take a shot? You can't take the money with you anyway; Alcor isn't a big profit corporation, it's a member run organization and all funds go to the purpose.

MC Southern from Wake Forest University gets in tomorrow as the parade of visitors to the city of Chicag continues. Should be a good time for all.


Quick update on my training partner, Pee Wee, who has now benched 225 and for the first time in his life benched his weight. Pee Wee in just 6 weeks of eatting properly and workout with me, has surpassed all of his previous personal bests. Just goes to show the importance of diet and knowing what you are doing. Pee Wee will be repping 225 by this winter.

- Christian

The record industry asks nicely for all the downloading to stop (see the spoofing piece earlier in the week). I say give the customers what they want and they will pay for it, until then dl away.

"In 2000 in America, seven albums sold more than five million copies. Since then, none has sold more than five million copies," he said, putting the fall down to consumers who spurn the record stores and search elsewhere to get their music for free.

Kennedy said Irish supergroup U2 sold 10 million copies of their first Greatest Hits compilation album. The second volume is due out this year and he wondered: "Are these figures still attainable?"

The oldest memeber of the human family has been found according to this Nature article.

After a decade of digging through the sand dunes of northern Chad, Michel Brunet found a skull 6-7 million years old. He named it Toumaï.

Toumaï is thought to be the oldest fossil from a member of the human family. It's a dispatch from the time when humans and chimpanzee were going their separate evolutionary ways. A thrilling, but confusing dispatch.

From the desk of J. Llyod, a nice piece on college hoop recruiting...Plus the article gives Wake some love..

Drew Naymick returned to his North Muskegon, Mich., home one day last winter and skimmed the recruiting mail that comes daily when you're 6 feet 10. A postcard from Wake Forest stood out.

''It was a picture of a football player, bent over puking,'' Naymick said. ''It said, 'We'll be sick if you don't come to Wake Forest.' ''

8th graded does it up at the Nike Camp.

Still, forget about his age for a moment and try to visualize this: Caracter is tall enough to be here at 6-9, which is now considered a giant in an era of few big men. He's one of only 19 players out of the 203 at the Nike Camp who were 6-9 or taller. His 286-pound frame was also bigger than all but three other players in the camp.

Now, back to his age. At 14, Caracter was one of two eighth-graders invited by Nike (along with 5-8 point Demond Carter of Laplace, La.) -- a first for the prestigious camp. College coaches can't comment specifically on Caracter or any other player, but the idea of having eighth-graders on the court doesn't bother coaches if it's within reason.

Supposed crazy sleep walker at UMass gets acquitted of all charges.


He was a drunk college student prowling for sex, prosecutors said, an unwelcome visitor who slipped into 10 dorm rooms in the quiet hours after the parties ended, rousing women and grabbing odd souvenirs: a bottle of vitamins, a bikini bottom, a pair of scissors.

One woman said he began cutting off her shirt; another awoke, she said, as he was trying to yank off her underwear.

Adam Kieczykowski, now 19, doesn't deny that his body may have moved along the circuitous route through 13 floors, hopping in and out of a dormitory elevator at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. But Kieczykowski said in court he cannot remember anything other than falling asleep early Sunday morning during Spring Fling weekend in May 2001.

His body may have done what his mind cannot fathom, he said, because he was sleepwalking

A Calvin and Hobbes movie...Perhaps...

The Redneck games are kicking off and going strong.

The charm of the Redneck Games may lie with its complete lack of sophistication. Not only are shirts and shoes not required, but going without them seems a virtual mandate. Many dealt with Saturday's heat by taking a dip in the Oconee River adjacent to Buckeye Park, where the games are held

More reasons why the music industry sucks...ala an email I received.

Just Spoofing

The music industry has added another weapon to its usual sue-everyone response to music file swapping. It is now paying firms to swamp peer-to-peer services with bogus music files.

The idea behind such "spoofing" is that by raising the cost, in time and effort, of shared files, consumers will be driven to purchase the record labels' own offerings. The labels are in effect turning the Net's anything goes ethos against file swappers.

This shows just how determined the big labels are to keep their historical price-points and business models in the face of an overwhelming change in technology. They would rather spend money to push up the cost of a competing good instead of adjusting their own prices downward.

Another track being contemplated by the Recording Industry Association of America also shows that the labels are willing to go nuclear in their fight to maintain the status quo. The RIAA is kicking around the idea of suing individual users of swapping services.

That the RIAA would even consider taking some teenager with a hard drive full of Blink 182 songs to court shows that they are deadly serious--spoofing or not.

Pittsburgh cries as the Camero and Firebird die.

Not that I agree 100% with this article, but it looks as if the health establishment is finally on the run. All the obesity might be catching up with the ridiculous food pyramid that obviously has failed. I personally attempt to not mix carbs and fat (ie carb and protein meals in the morning and protein-fat meals at night with amazing success) not cut out carbs, but none the less find this article interesting.


If the members of the American medical establishment were to have a collective find-yourself-standing-naked-in-Times-Square-type nightmare, this might be it. They spend 30 years ridiculing Robert Atkins, author of the phenomenally-best-selling ''Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution'' and ''Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution,'' accusing the Manhattan doctor of quackery and fraud, only to discover that the unrepentant Atkins was right all along. Or maybe it's this: they find that their very own dietary recommendations -- eat less fat and more carbohydrates -- are the cause of the rampaging epidemic of obesity in America. Or, just possibly this: they find out both of the above are true.

The title of this satirewire.com piece says it all...Michael Jackson Still Thinks He's Black

Black artists, however, declined Jackson's offer to serve as a figurehead to lead the charge for equality, saying they would prefer that a black man spearhead the effort.

Australia banned Grand Theft Auto III because of its influence on their youth. A joke right??? Nope...

Australia -- the rugged land of the Outback, famously shark-infested waters, and an inscrutable version of football whose basic point seems to be inflicting physical punishment -- is now threatening to become the free world’s leader in restricting anything that smacks of fun.