Joseph Rago of the Wall Street Journal reports and comments on the latest professorial lunacy on a college campus. This one involves a professor accusing her students of an anti-intellectualism that violated her civil rights. The student’s crime? Questioning the validity of the professor’s theory. Read the piece for some eye-rolling amusement.

National Priorities Project has a great website that illustrates how your money is spent by the federal government on a state by state average. (note: this doesn’t mean state tax dollars are being spent, just the average breakdown for federal taxes paid by residents of a certain state.) The biggest finding? For every $42 we [...]

Public Policy Polling has the numbers (pdf file)… After a week in which both candidates spent a lot of time in North Carolina Barack Obama has retained a large lead in the state, according to the newest survey from Public Policy Polling. Obama leads Clinton 54-36. His lead is particularly strong among likely voters who [...]

Wow, color me impressed… (02-19) 23:49 PST Palo Alto — In a radical change to its financial aid program, Stanford University will announce today that it will no longer charge tuition to students whose families earn less than $100,000 a year. In addition, the university will waive room and board fees for students whose families [...]

I think I speak for all the teenagers in the world when I say, “Let’s do it!” From NY Times: Research shows that teenagers’ body clocks are set to a schedule that is different from that of younger children or adults. This prevents adolescents from dropping off until around 11 p.m., when they produce the [...]

Gotta love the ole USA: American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an [...]

Three stories that explore the boundary between what’s reasonable and what’s not, what’s criminal and what’s not, and what’s ethical and what’s not. What’s reasonable? A California school district has taken to billing parents who take their kids out of school for nonmedical reasons — like a family ski trip. The price? $36.13 for each [...]

I’m a Missourian, so any news about a Missouri senator has some amount of special signifiance. Apparently, Bond wants to be the President of the University of Missouri school system, a very cush job with a fat salary. From Wonkette: According to a Wonkette operative who heard this from two different sources, Republican Senator Kit [...]

Our education system works, but for a lot of kids it simply offers a way to pass the time and little else. I look back on my education and wonder why I didn’t have more options to follow the interests I felt were more in line with what I wanted to pursue. The NY Sun [...]

When our children were little, their grandparents really liked talking “baby talk” to them. I’d watch as supposedly intelligent adults spent hours talking nonsense to unresponsive infants. Both baby and adult seemed to enjoy it. I hated it. Why? Because my wife and I were convinced that it stunted brain development. Because of that, and [...]

I have to hand to Arnold. He seems to be making some very sound decisions recently, and this latest piece of legislation is no exception. Basically, it keeps poorly performing teachers from being able to slip through the cracks in the system. From SF Gate: (09-29) 04:00 PDT Sacramento — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a [...]

In case any of you despair about the workers who will be supporting you in retirement: Educational doomsayers are again up in arms at a new adult literacy study showing that less than 5 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it. The obsessive measurement of long-form literacy is once [...]

Is it reliable? Can we trust it? Well, head-to-head tests may show that the online encyclopedia (even though some dispute it) is just as accurate as its real world, hard-bound counterparts. But why? Because the collective experts in the world can make things right? Can’t vandals make changes? Yes, of course…but still…some change and some [...]

Beware may be a strong word, but they aren’t just answering our customer service calls anymore. They’re making our tractors and televisions. Simpy put, other countries are besting our manufacturing capabilities because they have more affordable labor. This has been the case for years, but this trend is more obvious than ever before. And do [...]

A followup to my post yesterday, the creationists/intelligent designers/what-have-yous were largely voted out in favor of moderate candidates who’ll keep religion out of science classes. From USA Today: TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) â€â€? Conservative Republicans who brought international attention to Kansas by approving academic standards calling evolution into question lost control of the state school board [...]

Today’s the day in Kansas when voters go to the polls and vote on the State Board of Education members. Will they vote the creationists out? Well, the NY Times wrote today about how a bi-partisan group of evolutionists are mounting an offensive to the inclusion of creationism: Less than a year after a conservative [...]

Althouse has a post on Title IX and the new phenomenon of men being in the minority on college campuses. When colleges add or emphasize sports teams to attract more male students, they can be accused of violating Title IX, not providing equal athletic opportunities for women. There are many interesting comments. This was mine. [...]

Yale isn’t going to let a former Taliban member get a degree… A student at Yale University who was once a roving ambassador for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan has been denied admission to a degree-granting program at Yale, one of the student’s financial supporters said yesterday. However…they’re still letting him roam the campus? The [...]

From Seth Chalmer, also quoting Jared Lefevre of The Split Rail. Jared: 1. A strategy for Iraq, set in clear terms… 2. Securing ports and borders… 3. Initiatives to support the development of green technology. Governmental power (grants, tax breaks, etc.) should be used to support a growing industry that will not only protect us [...]