“Baby Einstein” makes kids stupid.

Scientists report that those “Baby Einstein” videos do nothing to make the kids who watch them smarter. In fact, they found that they’re so bad that the researcher would rather kids watch American Idol, because “there is at least a chance their parents would watch with them”.

Learning: Turn It Off, Baby – Newsweek Periscope – MSNBC.com

UK Schools shying away from teaching history

There’s an article on the Telegraph’s site about research that shows that schools in the UK are shying away from teaching history because they don’t want to upset the sensibilities of their students or their students’ parents. The most outrageous part of the article is this:

“In another department, the Holocaust was taught despite anti-semitic sentiment among some pupils, but the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (for 11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have directly challenged what was taught in some local mosques.”

I don’t really know how to respond to that but here’s a stab at it: teach history, teach truth and leave no room for the consideration of whatever propaganda is being fed to students in their mosques–or churches or synagogues for that matter. Isn’t one of the most touted reasons for teaching history to students that “if you don’t learn from history, you’re doomed to repeat it”?

No lessons on the Holocaust | Telegraph.co.uk

Presents

No, this isn’t about Christmas presents, it’s about some gifts that our dear President Bush has received, namely a bicycle or three. Not just any bicycle, no, a $5000 bicycle.

I was reading the Washington Post site and noticed an article about President Bush’s bicycling in the “More on washingtonpost.com” section of an info box. The president rides a custom-painted, $5000 Cannondale mountain bike. That price tag got me to thinking about how many semesters of college that one bike could pay for. $5,000 will pay for 2.29 semesters of tuition at a local state university. But he doesn’t just have one bicycle.

According to the article, he has three with a total value of $13,200. That amount of money would pay for six semesters of tuition at the same local university. I find it kind of amazing that some kids can’t go to school because they can’t afford it while the President rides around with a year’s tuition under his backside.

Bush Transforms Into Avid Mountain Biker – washingtonpost.com