Dogwood

My area of Reston is probably the most diverse and the poorest part. I remember a saleswoman warning me against buying the house I did by citing the mantra: location, location, location. There's an argument housing is a proxy for investment in children--parents choose the best schools by choosing the right school district, which would explain why redistricting gets very heated. Anyhow, the local elementary school has had its problems, despite lots of efforts to improve it, including going to a year-round calendar. Fairfax County is proud of its schools, but my school is the runt of the litter.

Not having kids, I don't follow No Child Left Behind that closely. It seems though from this article that NCLB can get very picky, with the fate of a school coming down to 3 students. I'm ambivalent about that--it's possible for unique circumstances to screw up any bureaucratic rule.

Why Animal Farmers Should Be Afraid

Here's a Treehugger followup to their post on how male chicks are killed. The summary of comments gives some time to those, like me, who argue this is the way you feed the world. But they put the key point at the end: the observation the original post attracted a hell of a lot more comments and interest than did other green issues. Our diet, and how animals are treated, are a very sensitive issue, so there will be lots more attention devoted to it in the future, which will not be good for current animal rearing practices.

What's Up in MA?

TPM has a commenter provide an update on the results of Gov. Patrick's health care reform in Massachusetts.

Noting the second point, maybe we solve the problem by expanding the number of green cards available to doctors and nurses from other countries. Or maybe we should do as the Amish do, send some of our people to Mexico for treatment.

Feeling Talented? Painting with Sand

Via Edge of the American West, the winning contestant in Ukraine's Got Talent. The article gives some context to the painting:

What she depicts is love and war, set amidst the turmoil of The Great Patriotic War, or as we call it in America, WWII. Ukraine was probably the area most devastated in the war, even more than Germany. It was a conflict that saw nearly one in four Ukrainians killed. A population of almost 42 million lost between 8 and 11 million people, depending on which estimate one references. Ukraine represented almost 20 percent of all the causalities suffered during WWII. And that was after Stalin had killed millions during the manufactured famines before the war. It to this day touches every Ukrainian. That's the context of war memory that Kseniya reaches out to.

It's an amazing 8 minutes. Even more amazing is to reflect how much humans bring to their sensations, as we the viewer are constructing the art from some sand on a projection table.

Next Task for Foodies

The foodies are currently driving to improve the menu in public schools, adding locally grown frutis and vegetables and doing away with junk food and the sort of thing bought just to help farmers (i.e., pork and cheese).

You'll know they've won that fight when they start on such efforts as:

• urging the Girl Scouts to sell apples, not cookies
• urging PTA's and sports teams to send their kids out going door to door selling brown rice, not chocolates.
  

Making Life Better for Our Animal Brothers

John Phipps blogs about a proposal to breed animals to reduce/eliminate their pain at being confined, as in CAFO's. Tyler Cowen blogs about researchers who have identified how to create music which tamarin monkeys like.

Once a Teacher, Always a Teacher (in France)?

Dirk Beauregard has an interesting interview with two teachers in France. They are language teachers, but I gather some of their responses apply to the profession generally. The picture is, it's hard to become a teacher but once you're in, you're in. No job switching in the French system.

Is Organic Farming the Wave of the Future? Maybe Not

Google Insights is one of Google's beta projects which tracks the change in the number of searches over time. Just for the heck of it I used it to search for "organic farming". I expected to see a steady rise, as it seems the subject is getting more and more attention. But, no--see this

The US isn't in the top countries and the interest seems to be declining gradually. Of course, one swallow does not a summer make. Maybe the Obama White House garden caused "organic garden" to show an increase? Here the trend line is flatter, and the US is in the top 3, but Obama doesn't seem to sparked enough interest to change the trend.

Angry Drunk Bureaucrat Strikes Again

In the third part of his guide to Pittsburgh for the G-20 conference, discussing shopping areas:

-The South Side - Shopping for young, hip urbanites
- Shadyside - Shopping for older, ironically hip urbanites
- Squirrel Hill - Shopping for Jewish, hip urbanites
- Downtown - Shopping for urbanites that need hip replacements

A good start to the long weekend.

Obama Can't Win

Two leading voices of the right have entirely opposite takes on our President:

Mr. Krauthammer in the Post this morning attacks him as Icarus whose wax wings have melted, an audacious flyer, all left wing, who is now going to have to operate as an ordinary politician. He says:

Obama unveiled his plans for a grand makeover of the American system, animating that vision by enacting measure after measure that greatly enlarged state power, government spending and national debt

Meanwhile, Mr. Brooks in the Times writes on health care reform, seeing Obama as a timid politician who wrongly promised everyone they wouldn't lose an existing health plan if they liked it, urging him to be bold:

This is not the time to get incremental. It’s the time to get fundamental. Reform the incentives. Make consumers accountable for spending. Make price information transparent. Reward health care, not health services. Do what you set out to do. Bring change.