Melissa and I have been keeping our eye open for a smallish SUV over the last few weeks to replace our aging Chrysler Cirrus sedan. The SUV would be our secondary vehicle, primarily getting used when we need to haul things (surprisingly often, lately) or in adverse weather conditions where our 2006 Honda Civic, an otherwise excellent car, doesn’t cut it. Over the weekend, while we were in Bedford for Chinese New Year, we were emailing with a dealer in Woodbridge who had a black 2003 Mitsubishi Outlander on the lot for a good price.
Apple CEO Lambasts Teacher Unions
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, Inc., is a smart man. Single-handedly, he turned Apple from a ‘beleaguered’ corporation on the brink of bankruptcy into one of the most impressive turnaround stories in the history of business. Like many others in the computer industry (including Bill Gates), Jobs has some choice words for our failing education systems. He knows what most intelligent observers of public education know: the unionization of teachers has created an environment where the worst teachers keep teaching and the best ones either avoid entering the profession or burn out and leave it early.
- Apple CEO Lambasts Teacher Unions (AP via Houston Chronicle [no longer available]).
Announcing the Intersanity Foundation
Melissa and I are proud to announce the creation of the Intersanity Foundation, a not-for-profit public service organization. The Foundation operates independent public service projects, contributes to charities and foundations (both religious and secular), and contributes to open-source software projects. Initial projects of the foundation include the Ziggy Project (our computer refurb/at-cost sale project) and web consulting for young non-profits. We have other projects in the works that aren’t quite ready yet, so stay tuned!
State of the President: Ineffective; Repetitious
Lots of media attention has been paid to President George W. Bush’s (R) plans for a troop ‘surge’ in Iraq (which I naively thought, after years of listening to Democrats’ claim that we needed a troop increase to stabilize Iraq, would receive a warmer reception from the new Congressional majority). But rather than argue against this new stance of the Democratic Party with the very arguments it made six months ago, I’d like to focus on a more underreported element of Bush’s 1/23 State of the Union address.
State of the Union Address Tonight
President George W. Bush (R) is scheduled to give the annual State of the Union address tonight at 9:00 p.m. EST before a joint session of Congress, followed by a Democratic Response to be delivered by Senator Jim Webb (D-VA). As always, I recommend watching C-SPAN for unfettered coverage of both. The Constitution requires that the president report to Congress annually on the state of the union, but does not specify the method or form of this report. The in-person State of the Union address has been a tradition since 1913 (transcripts 1945-2006 available from C-SPAN).
Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.