Link

A few months ago Bill Gates gave a speech to our nations governors, warning them that our high schools are obsolete.  Frightening, to say the least:

When I compare our high schools to what I see when I’m traveling abroad, I am terrified for our workforce of tomorrow. In math and science, our 4th graders are among the top students in the world. By 8th grade, they’re in the middle of the pack.  By 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring near the bottom of all industrialized nations. 

Bill goes on to say that our school systems are puposefully designed to limit the upward mobility of most of our students:

Our high schools were designed fifty years ago to meet the needs of another age.  Until we design them to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting – even ruining – the lives of millions of Americans every year. Today, only one-third of our students graduate from high school ready for college, work, and citizenship. The other two-thirds, most of them low-income and minority students, are tracked into courses that won’t ever get them ready for college or prepare them for a family-wage job – no matter how well the students learn or the teachers teach.  This isn’t an accident or a flaw in the system; it is the system.  

It's a recipe for disaster.  Countries like India are pulling ahead of us:

In 2001, India graduated almost a million more students from college than the United States did. China graduates twice as many students with bachelor’s degrees as the U.S., and they have six times as many graduates majoring in engineering. In the international competition to have the biggest and best supply of knowledge workers, America is falling behind. 

We clearly have to design our schools to prepare every student for college.  We have low expectations for many of our less fortunate children.  Apparently that's not an excuse in China and India.  At this rate we are in for a serious re-allignment of intellectual and economic power in the coming century.   But we'll have the best damn high school sports teams in the world!

This is a fun quiz that opened my eyes to a few expressions that are specific to the western Great Lakes.

Link

From the Onion, here are some tips on how to be a good house guest:

• Always help your hosts after dinner: Offer to clear the table, wash the dishes, or teach them to cook.
• Ensure that you do not overstay your welcome by asking your host if you are overstaying your welcome every couple of minutes.
• Avoid an awkward moment later on by telling your host upfront that you're a bedshitter.
• Playing your host's stereo at top volume after midnight is rude. Bring your own boombox.
• Don't just act like a guest in someone's house. Be a guest in someone's house. 
• It's considered good form to replace any cats you drown.
• Cooking a meal for your host is a nice gesture, but ordering a pizza and offering to chip in for your part is way easier.
• Should an unfamiliar household situation arise, do not speak. Stare blankly at a fixed point on the wall until it all blows over.
• Don't monopolize the bathroom: Take sponge baths in the kitchen sink, and pee in a bottle and hide it under the bed.
• It's customary to take a souvenir from your host's home as a reminder of your wonderful stay.

I recommend this free software download from Google:
Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you will recognize. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organized.

Picasa also makes advanced editing simple by putting one-click fixes and powerful effects at your fingertips. And Picasa makes it a snap to share your pictures – you can email, print photos home, make gift CDs, instantly share via Hello™, and even post pictures on your own blog.

http://www.picasa.com/

Remind you of anyone?

http://www.compfused.com/directlink/636/

This just in from The Onion...

EPA To Drop 'E,' 'P' From Name
WASHINGTON, DC—Days after unveiling new power-plant pollution regulations that rely on an industry-favored market-trading approach to cutting mercury emissions, EPA Acting Administrator Stephen Johnson announced that the agency will remove the "E" and "P" from its name. "We're not really 'environmental' anymore, and we certainly aren't 'protecting' anything," Johnson said. "'The Agency' is a name that reflects our current agenda and encapsulates our new function as a government-funded body devoted to handling documents, scheduling meetings, and fielding phone calls." The change comes on the heels of the Department of Health and Human Services' January decision to shorten its name to the Department of Services.

From Slate.com:

To attain the rank of grand master of memory, you must be able to perform three seemingly superhuman feats. You have to memorize 1,000 digits in under an hour, the precise order of 10 shuffled decks of playing cards in the same amount of time, and one shuffled deck in less than two minutes.

Wow.  Ten shuffled decks of playing cards.  Knowing my drivers license number by heart no longer seems impressive.

Later in the article they mention the advice of the Frank Felderbaum, who is recognized as one of the worlds leading memory experts.  His advice to contestants:  Eat a large helping of wild Alaskan salmon the night before the contest - high in Omega 3 fatty acids.

Update:  Apparently my two year old daughter chews fish oil tablets like they are candy.  My wife decided to give one to her, just on a whim.  She chewed it up and asked for another one.  We expect her to reject Teletubbies shortly and start earning a living on the intellectual talk circuit. 

Wired has a good article about the largest encyclopedia on the planet.

Link

He is the best musician around today, in my estimation.  I find myself referring to the complicated and meaningful memes that he weaves into his music frequently.  His piano talent is unmatched in todays popular music scene -- except for the mighty Vanessa Carlton.  Ha.

Here is a video that looks more like a home movie of his 3 year old son:  Link

My horoscope for this week, thanks to The Onion:

Cancer: (June 22—July 22)
It's true that secret agents have crossed international borders with microfilm hidden in their colons, but you should've known better than to try it with three liters of duty-free scotch.

Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central's Daily Show has provided a critique of "The Gates", which is a 21 million dollar art installation in Central Park.

"The gates is a triumph of contemporary installation art, each gate redefining it's section of the park as not a public place for private reflection, but a private place for public reflection, juxtaposed with the bareness of mid winter, the gates posits a chromatic orgy, this riot of color achieves a rare re-defamiliarization with the nature of place time, the whatness of our whereness, no longer framed ... (pause) ... I'm sorry ... (pause) ... I've run out of crap."

Here is a link to the entire Stephen Colbert audio clip (6MB download):

Link

Adware and Spyware might be the two most frightening developments in technology yet.  Worse than viruses, which are obvious and easy to spot.  Adware infects your machine and subtly releases pop up ads designed to look like they are coming from the Website you happen to be surfing.

So they're influencing your behavior against your will, without you knowing it.  Manchurianized. 

Here's a link to remove adware and spyware off your Windows machine:  Away, ye demons of pop up ads!

Careful, this software is still in beta with Microsoft.

Futurist Joel Kotkin, a fellow of the New America Foundation, wrote a column for the Washington Post titled "Rule Suburbia," declaring that the land-use debate is now over and suburban sprawl is the undisputed winner.

"Once we acknowledge this reality, we can turn to the task of making the best of it." Kotkin wrote.

He makes a good point.  Americans have spoken with their feet, and their feet are not being used for walking, they are being used for driving to the suburbs.  The suburbs provide an undeniable allure of safety, natural beauty, and open space.  Add in the low cost of suburban land and you've got yourself a cultural revolution.

He says that the main challenge of the 21st century is to "transform suburbia into something more efficient, interesting, and humane".  And then he points toward the future of suburbia, which is an evolution toward village building.  Suburban areas are quickly becoming grid locked by traffic jams.  Services and products that are made available nearby to these suburban meccas are very profitable.  Suburban villages that are capable of delivering goods and services locally are already popping up in fast-growing regions all over the US.

If we are in fact headed for a global peak in oil production which drives fuel prices sky high, the "suburb as village" model may well be our saving grace.  Centralizing our goods and services within clusters of suburban villages could help us transition to a more sustainable delivery model. 

For instance, right now you can save money by driving to Walmart even if it's a 30 mile journey.  But eventually that 30 mile journey will cost far more than the savings you realize on your Walmart purchases.

Similarly, it currently makes sense to create one huge high school and bus thousands of kids to a centralized location.  But the cost of fuel could force busing prices through the roof.  Consequently it would save money to build small schools in the village and keep the kids close to home.

And the list goes on:  Health care, day care, entertainment, restaurants, and civic venues will all be rebuilt with the suburban village in mind.  Eventually the suburban wasteland of strip malls and McMansions will have to evolve or die.

The Kyoto Protocol took effect today.  One small step toward the reforms that are needed to avoid disaster in the coming decades.

From the Associated Press:

"We have been calling on the United States to join. But the country that is the world's biggest emitter has not joined yet, and that is regrettable," Japan's top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda, told reporters.

In case you are interested, the global temperature for 2004 averaged 0.97° Fahrenheit (O.54°C) above the 1880-2003 average.  2004 was the 4th warmest year on record.  Here is more information.