Brian Gongol
"The higher the price of oil, the sooner an alternative will be found"
Why, yes, that's right. And if the value of turning solar power into energy rises sufficiently, then Africa may be the best place to be for the next energy boom -- it has more landmass at or near the Equator than any other part of the world, and the Sahara Desert is practically the world's largest solar collector.
Losing money but buying prestige
Schools will only ever be as good as the community wants them to be
Talk of state and Federal standards for education blindly overlooks the fundamental fact that schools will never be any better than local communities want them to be. Funding and resources, of course, will always play a role in determining the quality of local education. But far more important is whether the families raising the children who go to school care about how good those schools are. Education is a person-to-person process, so expecting new rules, guidelines, and legislation to make any serious difference is fundamentally misguided.
Translating MIT into Chinese
A Taiwanese millionaire has devoted part of his wealth to funding the translation of materials from MIT's Open CourseWare into Chinese. One can certainly imagine some meritorious outcomes should a few of the 1.3 billion people living under Communism in China come to realize that there's some value in liberty and freedom as a result of exposure to those classes.
Hasbro claims intellectual-property infringement against Scrabble, but the Internet doesn't appear to care
Oil spill threatens drinking water in New Orleans
