I hated grade school. My two daughters love it. I found it, by third grade, to be too arbitrary, too restrictive, too bound up with power. My daughters love the structure. I did poorly grade-wise at school, graduating in the quarter that made the top three quarters possible. I didn’t just refuse to do homework… Continue reading

Just some data re: my post the other day, from Gallup, February 2007. Keep in mind the question here is “Would you vote for the person in your political party if they were of belief/orientation/gender/age X?” The difference from 100% represents the number of people that would either not vote at all or vote against… Continue reading

I just stole food out of the mouths of Kenneth Fearing’s heirs — I pulled down his The Big Clock today from my new favorite book-sharing site instead of forking over the money for it to my local chain bookstore. I think his heirs will survive, but the $26 I would have had to pay… Continue reading

A weird thing happened the other day that I’ve been thinking quite a lot about. Someone asked me when I would run for office. (If you know my political history that makes more sense). I replied offhand what I usually say, which is I wouldn’t have a chance anyway, I’m an atheist. I’ve said that… Continue reading

Not sure how I missed this the first a couple days ago, but luckily @psychemedia called my attention to it today. Scott Leslie has a great post on using Twitter with Google Reader and the implications of that. Money graf is here: I’m not sure how many people actually realize that GReader allows you to… Continue reading

Anyone who thinks that the internet will change the fundamental building-basedness of primary education should ask their friends with children about the joys of parent-teacher conference day. Continue reading

Further interesting trends in bookstores in my neverending attempt to find a bricks-and-mortar business model that can withstand broadband. (And if you don’t understand why that’s important to education, well, I don’t have enough time to help you.) OK, you saw below the recent slump that the chains have hit, compared to Amazon. Well, here’s… Continue reading

I’d been looking for an example of an industry that had successfully altered its business model, and defied the onslaught of BEE (Broadband Eats Everything). Stories about the newspapers and the record industries wake people up, but people need positive models to function and get inspired, one can’t run entirely on anti-patterns. The other day,… Continue reading

Clay Shirky, from a recent post on his blog about bookstores: The local bookstore creates all kinds of value for its community, whether its providing community bulletin boards, putting rocking chairs in the kids section, hosting book readings, or putting benches out in front of the store. Local writers, harried parents, couples on dates, all… Continue reading

I think I’m going to try to get a better balance on this blog. I’m actually excited about a lot of things we are doing at Keene State — but because a lot of the things we are moving forward are fragile I’m in the position a lot of bloggers are in — the rants… Continue reading