Surf's Up

Wow, work has been crazy so I have been slow on the posting.

Here are some stories I find interesting today:

The Budget Battle as it is being called is coming to the House of Representatives.  I have to admit, the GOP leadership is faced with a problem--the tea-party freshman are a big enough block to be reckoned with.  The tea party freshmen are holding the mirror up and trying to get serious cuts to the budget.  The schism on spending has been behind closed doors, but it is becoming public.  The freshman could become a real pain for Speaker John Boehner.

A couple of teacher stories.  First a high school English teacher in the Philadelphia area blogged about her students and it has gotten her in trouble.  The story is not clear if the teacher actually named her students and the blog has since been deleted.  But the teacher apparently wanted to write on student reports the truth as she saw rather than the canned resonses urged by her employer.  Parents want the teacher fired.  Do you think that is bad, try a teacher in Silver Spring, MD who has been arrested and held in jail for physically assaulting her students.  This is bad, very bad.  It is made worse by the fact that her students are 6 and 7 years old.  Not teenagers--kids--first graders.  The galling thing to me--the teacher who is in jail--has been place on administrative leave.

As NASA is planning their final shuttle mission, there is a wonder about the future of space flight in the U.S.   I think the idea of privatized space flight is a good idea.  If you don't think so, take a look at the Star Trek: First Contact movie, the man who invented warp drive for humans in that film was revered by Capt. Picard and his contemporaries in their own time.  But when they travel back in time (it is not as bad as you think) that same "hero" turned out to be a guy looking to make a buck.  It is not so bad to be interested in making a dollar and inventing something that benefits everyone in the long run.

Glenn Reynolds has a bit on being a conservative in academia.   Are academic conservatives the gays of 2010?

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