Many people like to think that any child, with the proper nurturance, can blossom into some kind of academic oak tree, tall and proud. It's just not so.
Multiple intelligences provides a kind of cover to preserve that fable. "OK, little Jimmie may not be a rocket scientist, but he can dance real well. Shouldn't that count equally in school and life?" No. The great dancers of the Pleistocene foxtrotted their way into the stomach of a saber-tooth tiger.
That is the root of the matter. Too many people have chosen to believe in what they wish to be true rather than in what is true.
The United States has been an affluent nation since its founding. But the country was, by and large, not corrupted by wealth. For centuries, it remained industrious, ambitious and frugal.
Over the past 30 years, much of that has been shredded.
The dot-com crash of the early 2000s should have been followed by decades of soul-searching; instead, even before the old bubble had fully deflated, a new mania began to take hold on the foundation of our long-standing American faith that the wide expansion of home ownership can produce social harmony and national economic well-being. Spurred by the actions of the Federal Reserve, financed by exotic credit derivatives and debt securitiztion, an already massive real estate sales-and-marketing program expanded to include the desperate issuance of mortgages to the poor and feckless, compounding their troubles and ours.
That the Internet and housing hyperinflations transpired within a period of ten years, each creating trillions of dollars in fake wealth, is, I believe, only the beginning. There will and must be many more such booms, for without them the economy of the United States can no longer function. The bubble cycle has replaced the business cycle.
An excerpt from the 1958 "Disneyland" TV Show episode entitled "Magic Highway USA". In this last part of the show, an exploration into possible future Transportation technologies is made. It's hard to believe how little we've accomplished on this front since 1958, and how limited the scope for imagining such future technologies has become. Witness an artifact from a time where the future was greeted with optimism. Note the striking animation style here, achieved with fairly limited animation and spectacular layouts.
It's a real shame how any kind of relly interesting work in this space is totally dead. Personal rapid transit? Forget it! The problem these days isn't a lack of technology, it's a lack of imagination on the part of the people in a position to set a new course!
As Lewis Black said, "The millenium sucks! No flying cars, no flying cars!"
Iran Broadcasts New Video of Seized Britons - New York Times
Topic: Society
12:33 pm EDT, Mar 30, 2007
“Gunboat diplomacy is a thing of the past, even if we could find a spare gunboat,” Mr. Norman said. “The days when Britain had the stature, self-confidence and façade of moral authority to play sergeant to the U.S. chief inspector on the global stage are over, and the villains know it.”
U.S. Set to Begin a Vast Expansion of DNA Sampling - New York Times
Topic: Society
5:48 pm EST, Feb 5, 2007
The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering that will include hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, by far the largest group affected.
In Tuition Game, Popularity Rises With Price - New York Times
Topic: Society
3:48 pm EST, Dec 12, 2006
John Strassburger, the president of Ursinus College, a small liberal arts institution here in the eastern Pennsylvania countryside, vividly remembers the day that the chairman of the board of trustees told him the college was losing applicants because of its tuition.
