by Connor O’Steen

Editor’s note: Our guest is currently in Afghanistan working for PARSA, a non-governmental organization (NGO) specializing in microeconomic development with an emphasis on women and children. He’s often in rural areas far from Kabul where most other journalists cannot, or will not, go. You’re unlikely to find his insights in the mainstream media. Often, he has no access to the Internet, so excerpts will be sporadic, at best. His correspondence to us is edited for context and to remove information that might put him or his coworkers in danger.

The hard-working orphans of Chaghcharan

Chaghcharan is the largest–essentially only–city in Ghowr province. I use the term “city” lightly, because the “city” part of Chaghcharan is the intersection of two roads around which a number of buildings are clustered. Full Story »

— President Bush at a press conference; July 16.

— Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., predicting the federal budget deficit would double this year; according to Manu Raju of The Hill newspaper, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that, for the first nine months of fiscal 2008, the government ran up a $268 billion deficit, $148 billion more the same period last year; July 17.
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In case you’ve been off-planet, the dumpster fire that is Election Season 2008 is in full swing. While this can be entertaining if you’re cynical enough, it’s a process that can exert a warping effect on the perspectives of even the best among us.

In times like these, it’s often helpful to turn to the wisdom of the ages. Today, then, we offer a collection of insights on politics from some of history’s more astute observers of public life.

Enjoy. Full Story »

I’ve been following the New Yorker/Obama cartoon dustup that my colleague, JS O’Brien, wrote about earlier today. In addition to the official and media reactions that have littered our news channels, I’ve also been tracking the heated debates raging across Left Blogistan with a mix of bewilderment and anger. I certainly empathize with JS and his “Archie Bunker” analysis - I grew up in the same kind of household he did and knew people who thought Archie was a true American hero. And there’s no doubt that the Manhattanite view of the world JS describes often lacks any meaningful grasp of what life is like on this side of the Hudson.

That said, there are some points where I think I disagree with JS - or perhaps it’s simply massive frustration masquerading as disagreement. Let’s work through it and see. Full Story »

A few weeks ago we showed you a painting by Miro and posed the question: is this art? The consensus opinion seemed to be that sure, I guess it’s art, although I wouldn’t pay a penny for it.

Today we look at digitally generated images and ask the same question. Specifically, have a look at Electric Sheep, my cool new screen saver program. According to the Web site:

Barack Obama is currently ducking the incoming from the something-for-nothing right on his assertion that Americans should learn Spanish.  To be sure, he also says that immigrants to the US should learn English, as if all those immigrants are sitting at home thinking, “Gee, why should I learn English just so I can stop cleaning hotel rooms for $2 an hour and start earning a six-figure sales income?”

Obama’s assertion that learning a foreign language is a “powerful tool” in the job market is only partly right.  It’s a useful skill, certainly, for some jobs, but not necessary for most.  Anyone who travels much outside this country is already aware that English is spoken almost everywhere there is a decent educational system.  Heck, my clumsy attempts to learn a bit of the local languages when traveling have often been met by hurt feelings.  It would seem that many Europeans, at least, feel that Americans trying to speak their language is an indication that we think they’re poorly educated.

The Brits are the worst about this. Full Story »

When it comes to religion and faith, everything is inherently subjective, not objective. Simply put, there is no way for the adherents of one faith to know objectively that they’re faith is right and that another faith is wrong. Additionally, there’s no method of determining an objective truth, and because most religions lack any ability to reconcile with the incompatible beliefs of other faiths, conflict becomes inevitable. Religion tells its adherents what the supposed truth about reality is, but can offer no objective proof thereof.

There exists a process that can determine, objectively and without the need for blind faith and revealed “truth”, how reality really works. The name of that process is “science.” It’s because science claims to be able to discover how reality really functions, without the need for - and yet without demanding the lack of - religious dogma, that many believers have felt so threatened by science that they have sought to inject their creation stories into scientific classrooms. Unfortunately, the state of Louisiana has now become the next battlefield in the ongoing science vs. dogma and evolution vs. creationism conflict. Full Story »

— George Carlin, who died early this week at age 71; June 23
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In an effort to win back lost Hispanic votes, Republican presidential hopeful Senator John McCain held a closed door meeting with more than 100 Hispanic leaders in Chicago. However, things did not turn out as he hoped.

Blogger Matt Ortega reports that the event was attended by Rosanna Pulido, State Director for the Illinois Minutemen Project, who was not too thrilled with McCain’s double talk on immigration.

McCain knows he cannot win the election without the Latino vote. However, by pandering to his audience when it comes to immigration, John McCain is playing a dangerous game - one that will cost him the Latina/o vote come election day.

In the beginning, God created heaven and earth and all the creatures and Man in his creation, and He saw His creation was going to be trouble in the 1800s. Then Man developed the scientific method, and eventually was born a man named Charles Darwin, and God said “uh oh….” for, in His omniscience, He knew what was coming. And Charles Darwin developed his hypothesis of natural selection, which was then tested and retested and corrected and verified uncountable times and elevated to the level of scientific theory, with proof nearly as strong as for the Laws of Motion and gravitation and quantum mechanics and Murphy’s Law.

And God’s followers said “uh oh,” for while they lacked God’s omniscience, they could see the writing on the wall. And so many of God’s followers attacked the theory of evolution as godless untruths and against the literal truth of the Creation, although which version of Creation was something God’s followers couldn’t agree on and killed each other over. And scientists fought back with logic, the scientific method, and peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals, and eventually beat back the “creationism” assault.

So God’s more virulent followers tried a flanking maneuver called “intelligent design” that very nearly worked until scientists and pointed out that ID was religion, not science, and didn’t belong in the science classroom. But using their God-given creativity, His same followers who had been beaten a second time changed their approach yet again…. Full Story »

— Stephen Viederman, a New York shareholder, after “Exxon Mobil’s chairman and chief executive, Rex W. Tillerson, defeated a shareholder effort … to take away one of his jobs at an annual meeting punctuated by a debate of the company’s policy toward renewable energy and global warming”; May 28.

— from a statement by Troy A. Clarke, the president of G.M.’s North American operations, announcing that “19,000 hourly workers — a quarter of a unionized work force that already has been drastically pared down — have accepted buyouts“; up to 16,000 of these $28-an-hour workers may be replaced by “entry-level” non-assembly workers making $14 an hour; May 30; emphasis added.
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— from a report by the American Association of University Women, “whose 1992 report on how girls are shortchanged in the classroom caused a national debate over gender equity,” that debunks the notion of a “boys’ crisis,” saying, “Girls’ gains have not come at boys’ expense”; May 20.

— Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., who has led the Senate’s efforts to expand education benefits for veterans, on President Bush’s threat “to veto a bill that would pay tuition and other expenses at a four-year public university for anyone who has served in the military for at least three years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001″; May 22.
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The Old Man and The Hawk
for Carrie A.

If he hadn’t been thirsty, the boy might have missed it. He saw it when he raised his canteen. It didn’t seem like much at first, he thought, just a black speck curling through the blue Utah sky. But he kept looking, curious. He squinted at the distant mystery, his thirst temporarily forgotten.

“Mr. Seth, is that a bird?”

The old man leaned against a stout but gnarled juniper, thumbs hooked in the shoulder straps of his worn canvas pack. He knew how and when to steal a few seconds’ rest as the minutes and the hours and the days and the life flowed by. He curled his arm around the juniper, letting his palm see and know the tree’s rough bark. He didn’t look up. He didn’t need to.

“It’s a hawk, son.”
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— John Hofmeister, president of Shell U.S., to CNNMoney.com; May 6.

— Amy Myers Jaffe, a fellow in energy studies at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, discussing results of her just-finished a two-year study looking at oil companies and how they spend their money; May 6.
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As our friend Pat so eloquently noted yesterday, graduation season is upon us. Commencements hit full stride today up the road at CU, and I suppose at hundreds of other institutions across the country, as well. So S&R would like to take a moment and congratulate the Class of 2008. If you’ve read us much at all you know that this year’s seniors are part of a generation that’s been much examined and oft-critiqued, but rest assured - if we’ve been harsh on you, our fondest hope is to be proven very, very wrong. Full Story »

— Buzz Bissinger, author of “Friday Night Lights†and other bestsellers, castigating blogs on HBO’s “Costas Now”; May 1.

— Rep. Charles Rangell, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, describing the 17-foot-long, 300-horsepower, 2004 Cadillac DeVille he leases for for $777.54 a month; House rules permit members to lease any vehicle at taxpayer expense; May 1.
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It’s often difficult to get the attention of my students. But when I told them that it’s possible that a few of them would see the year 2100, and that most of their children surely would, they stopped furtively texting under their desks and began paying attention.

When I was born just after World War II, I told them, the population of the United States was about 141 million; of the world, about 2.7 billion. Now, 62 years later, Americans tip the scale at about 303 million; the world’s population has grown to about 6.6 billion.

A little extrapolation of U.S. Census data, I told them, shows the American population hitting 518 million at mid-century and 758 million in 2100. The world’s population is likely to grow to 14 billion at century’s end. Imagine what that world — their world — would be like, I challenged them.

But I was too optimistic. In a report to be released today, a Virginia Tech professor estimates that between 2100 and 2120 the population of the United States will reach one billion people.
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Since we appear to be celebrating educational idiocy lately, here’s a contribution from Don McLeroy, chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, which is currently embroiled in the hair-tearing, gut-wrenching, eyeball-poking process of adopting a new English Language Arts curriculum. Actual teachers and former teachers (not consultants, so who cares) raised concerns that the proposed reading list contained very few (4 out of 150, to be exact) books concerning Hispanic culture. The student population in Texas is approximately 49% Hispanic, which (because there are other races here, too, believe it or not) makes them… the majority. Yep.

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Administrators at West Virginia University have demonstrated, both by their actions and their words, exactly what’s wrong with higher education in the US.  In case you missed it, here’s the story. 

Heather Bresch is the chief operating officer (COO) of Pittsburgh-based Mylan, Inc.  She is also West Virginia governor Joe Manchin’s daughter.  The CEO of Mylan is a longtime contributor to Machin’s political war chest.  So far, it’s a pretty familiar story.  A child of a close friend and associate is promoted to a top executive job.

But wait!  There’s more!

Ms. Bresch published a biography claiming an MBA from West Virginia University.  As a routine check, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called WVU and, ding-ding-ding-ding-ding, there was no record of Ms. Bresch’s MBA award anywhere.  Ms.  Bresch protested that she had an agreement to substitute work experience for the final 22 (out of 48) hours she needed for an MBA, and that it was a records issue.  A WVU committee found that it was, indeed, a records issue, and gave MS Bresch her MBA 10-years after she walked away from Morgantown. Full Story »

While Rep. Bruce Douglas of the state legislature makes comments that make all thinking Coloradans squirm, back here in the Old Dominion, we’re hard at work trying to create our own crowds of illiterate peasants, thanks so much for caring.

The Pittsylvania County (VA) Board of Supervisors has just voted to cut the school system budget for per pupil expenditures for the county’s school system by $686,000.

This in and of itself might not raise your eyebrows, hard hearted/hard headed pragmatists that all you readers are - we’re in tough economic times after all. But, as those classic commercials say, wait - there’s more…. Full Story »

If US News holds true to form, it will publish its 2009 undergraduate college rankings in August 2008, just in time to drill its way into the heads of all those eager new high school seniors who have to decide where to apply for early decision before November 1, and for regular decision before January 1. 

Not to mention what the rankings do for their parents’ bragging rights.

The US News rankings are controversial, especially among those colleges that aren’t highly ranked.  They complain that the magazine doesn’t measure what actually goes on in the classroom and the learning outcomes at various universities, and they’re right.  Of course, the schools themselves don’t know that stuff either.  No one knows that stuff.  I can’t even find a college that clearly defines exactly what skills and knowledge an undergrad should have before getting a degree, nor can I find one that tests to make sure their graduates have what the schools haven’t yet defined. Full Story »

By overwhelming, popular demand (and if you haven’t met Doc Slammy, you don’t know the meaning of the word “overwhelming”), here is a point-by-point translation of Lena Antman’s letter to the editor that prompted me to write the first article in this series. I know I said before that I wouldn’t do this because it would be insulting your intelligence, but rest assured: I’m not insulting your intelligence, I’m insulting Slammy’s intelligence.

Here’s my analysis. Once you’ve read it, I’ll give my take on (drum roll please) exactly why so many, many bright kids steer clear of state universities. Full Story »