Monday Round Up

Alright, I decided if I can waste my day creating camp newsletter headings and chatting on gmail, I certainly have time to do a news roundup.

I'm still having the ethical issue with giving a survey to the 7th graders, but I think I'm going to need to move on. What's in the news today? Well, Business Week has a special on Bill Gates - his upcoming retirement as well as his educational philanthropy. I won't lie, I'm reading it tonight (or later this afternoon) since I don't have time to pretend to work, dink with photoshop, chat on gmail, and type this blog entry all at the same time. Apparently the Hoover Institute's faithful have some sort of response, called "Gates' warped idea of generosity" in the ocregister.com. It's a pretty ridiculous opinion piece, really, about how Gates doesn't owe anything to anyone. Yeah, but our tax code is set up to encourage people to give, and why shouldn't a successful businessman, if he wants to, try to have a positive influence on society? In fact, I always believed that was the conservative mantra - get rich and then influence society. Guess not.

Anyway, back to Business Week. They have a comprehensive spread on Gates, and worth checking out! Plus online they have some other features. I think it might take days to read this. Once I do, however, you will be sure to have a response! (I hope).

The National Review has a blog (one contributor is John Miller, a writer for the NR who came to my higher education curriculum class and spoke/insulted us, at least according to everyone in the class but me) called "Phi Beta Cons" - great elitist title, by the way - and I think it's worth a look-see. They're trying to be controversial, but at least they're talking about the issues. At one point they say that the reason our boys are lagging in school is because single motherhood is "sacred." Question mark. There's also a link to some commentary on the 2005 MLA conference, which suggests we should drop the "L" from MLA (stands for Modern Language Association, and it's a professional organization that represents English and foreign language teachers, although more the former than the latter). This is a touch dated, but an interesting read. Reminds me of my liberal professor who thought that teaching grammar was racist. (Shush. I don't care why you think that. It's stupid, and you know it.)

-Sigh- I have more to say, but I think I'm a touch exhausted. More to come once I peruse this week's Business Week, Economist, WSJ, etc, etc, etc.