Peyton Manning's Legacy

Nine post-season wins
One Ring, and nine losses?
Not the greatest.

A Good Step

An excellent government decision shouldn't be noteworthy, but it is. This one comes in the foreign aid department. The U.S. is shifting its funding from an American NGO - Catholic Relief Services - to local South African organizations in its AIDS funding for that country. Read all about it.

The Perfect Classroom

In a NYTimes editorial, educator Susan Engel outlines the perfect elementary classroom. Her goals are clear:

So what should children be able to do by age 12, or the time they leave elementary school? They should be able to read a chapter book, write a story and a compelling essay; know how to add, subtract, divide and multiply numbers; detect patterns in complex phenomena; use evidence to support an opinion; be part of a group of people who are not their family; and engage in an exchange of ideas in conversation.

And her methods sound attractive, but challenging to produce:

In our theoretical classroom, children would also spend a short period of time each day practicing computation... Once children are proficient in those basics they would be free to turn to other activities that are equally essential for math and science: devising original experiments, observing the natural world and counting things, whether they be words, events or people.

The article is worth reading. The pedagogy she describes - lots and lots of reading, some writing, some applied math - is strikingly similar to the homeschool education I received.

Thanks, Mom & Dad!

Why do some journalists write against their interests?

The BBC has a smarmy, patronizing article about U.S. voters "voting against their interests". It is assumed that interests means solely monetary ones, and the author sings the praises of Obamacare. The slip-shod journalist can't be bothered to get a single quote from a conservative, nor to note that liberals can hardly agree on what should constitute "reform".

But the BBC is a British government organ, and in advocating the socialization of U.S. health care, they are hurting their own future health care. After all, most advances in medicine come from the U.S., where innovation is rewarded with money. Why do some journalists write against their interests?

Even Canada, which has a far better health care system than its parent, relies on U.S. advances and uses private U.S. hospitals for the most serious cases. Newfoundland's Premier, a multi-millionaire, is coming to the U.S. for heart surgery. Hat tip to Drudge.

Don't get me wrong: the US healthcare system needs reform. But reform is a process, not a particular bill, and the process has a long way to go.

The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs

Aesopean version:

A family has a goose that lays golden eggs. They decide to kill it, open it, and take the gold that must be inside. However, they find it just like any other dead goose. The End.

Modern version:

A family has a goose that lays golden eggs. One day, it suddenly starts laying only rotten eggs. The family attempts to mollify it. After a week, they are frustrated and kill the goose. The End.

A New Life

I don't know if my sister intended this as a poem, but it is one.

I used to have a life. It is gone. Can you imagine that? Everything that you knew, everything that made up your day – gone. Now, I have a new life, but it does not resemble my old life.

I used to have a job, several jobs actually. They are gone, buildings disappeared into piles of rubble and patients disappeared to the countryside. Now, I have a new job, but it does not resemble my old job.

I used to have friends. They are gone: dead, injured, or evacuated. Now, I have new friends, friends that I love, but they do not resemble my old friends.

I used to have a home. It’s gone, replaced by a dormitory for relief workers and a storage room constantly filling and emptying. I have a home, but it does not resemble my old home.

I used to have a community. It is gone, shattered by death, fear, forced evacuation, and insecurity. Now, I have a new community, made of amazing neighbors and little children, but it does not resemble my old community.

The rest of her post, from which this is drawn, is compelling to the point of tears.

WFP WTF

Where's the outrage? A United Nations agency is distributing essential food aid with blatant and absolute sexism:

Also on Sunday, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) began a large-scale aid distribution at 16 sites across Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince, aiming to feed two million people.

Only men will be allowed to collect the 25kg (55lb) rice ration, enough to feed a family for two weeks.

They can't be serious. Only giving food to the men? Granted, you don't want families to double-dip, but this is an international government organization: it shouldn't be allowed to perform this kind of flagrant social engineering, discriminating against female-headed households.

OK, I lied. That's not what the article says. It says only women will be allowed to collect the rice. That's fine, right? There's no such thing as a family without a mother, right? Earthquakes never kill women, after all.

What's more, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted in 1965, welfare for families channelled through women marginalizes fathers, sending an unsubtle message that they are unneeded, unwanted and not to be trusted in the care of their families. Are we still surprised that female-targeted government assistance increases fatherlessness?

Haitian men are scary to aid agencies. After all, they sometimes are gang members. Worse still, they're black men. We don't want any of those scary Haitian men interfering with our harmonious, postmodern effort to restore Haiti!