You can get the grades out of the ghetto, but...

...you can't get the ghetto out of the grades.

Yeah. That whole thing about "school of choice" and putting inner-city students in nicer schools and neighborhoods to help boost grades and make better citizens? It's been officially debunked.

Unfortunately, the Washington Post article is mostly full of quotes from people trying to dream up ways to save the politically correct theory, who basically say that the students didn't move to good enough neighborhoods.

I do agree with this snippet, however:

...Many of the parents had little faith that better teaching in better schools would help their children. They felt it was up to their children to make education work.

My opinion? It's not a child's environment that affects his or her achievements. It's the culture of the home. Does the child's family value studying, hard work and independence? If not, that family is only awarding the child all the benefits of ghetto living. And not all cultures are created equal.

Recognition for the Left

There's a big difference between leftist and lefty. I proudly eschew the former, and applaud the latter. And what better day to do it than today: Left-handers Day!

So find your favorite lefty. Give him or her a big hug, and maybe a candy bar. And stop criticizing the handwriting!

Ames Chooses Romney

The much ballyhooed Ames, Iowa straw poll, which is seen as a bellwether for the success of Republican presidential candidates, has given another solid and significant victory to Mitt Romney, who has maintained his upward momentum over the grueling past 12 months or so.

This result should narrow the field of Republican contenders significantly--particularly those who were hoping to slide into a close second place behind Romney and knock him off balance. In fact, Tommy Thompson had stated that he would drop out if he didn't achieve first or second place. I think others will probably follow suit. Bye bye.


Here are the results:

1. Gov. Mitt Romney with 4516 votes and 31%
2. Gov. Mike Huckabee with 2587 votes at 18.1%
3. Sen. Sam Brownback with 2192 votes and 15.3%
4. Tom Tancredo with 1961 votes, 13.7%.
5. Ron Paul with 1305 votes, and 9.1%
6. Tommy Thompson, 1,039 votes, 7.3%
7. Fred Thomson with 203 votes.
8. Rudy Giuliani with 183 votes.
9. Duncan Hunter with 174 votes.
10. John McCain with 101 votes.
11. John Cox with 41 votes.

Farewell, Faust.

James E. Faust 1920-2007

James E. Faust, Second Counselor in the First Presidency of the LDS church (Mormons), passed quietly away early yesterday morning. This is significant to me as there was never a time in my life that he wasn't a high-ranking leader in my church. His conference talks were always gentle yet firm, and sparkled with the luster of truth.

From the article,

"Jim Faust was a great warrior for truth and goodness, who knew no shortcuts," said LDS Apostle M. Russell Ballard on Friday. "He was a great example to us all."

And,

Faust's life was best understood by "his adherence to principles and the priority assigned to his family that permeated his being," wrote the late Apostle Neal A. Maxwell in a 1995 biographical essay in the church's monthly magazine, The Ensign, after Faust's call to the church's governing First Presidency.

Maxwell related how Faust and his family had a special family home evening in 1972 when he was first called as a general authority in which he told his children that he could not succeed as a general authority unless he was a good father.

A similar family meeting took place in the Faust home in 1995 when he was called to the First Presidency, although this one involved 22 grandchildren, too.

"Accompanying his fixed priorities is immense integrity," Maxwell wrote. "Those who know him understand that President Faust will not yield to mere pressure, but he can be persuaded by principles."

Back from Bryce

Well, I've let my blog fall into neglect and disrepair over the last few weeks. I figure my readership has dropped from five to two.

So what better way to reengage with my audience than with a short pictorial of my awesome trip to Bryce Canyon? Check it out, and see why you should make plans for a visit if you haven't done so already.

Thank You, Renewable Bio-Fuel, for the $4 Gallon of Milk

Golden Corn !
Originally uploaded by Lydd_Nel

Short-sighted policies based on the crisis du jour invariably produce many unwanted side-effects--the total of which almost always outweigh the perceived benefits. Thanks to the increased demand on corn for the production of "green" fuel ethanol (which by some accounts isn't any more green than gasoline), milk could soon be $4 per gallon. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Thanks to the world's growing and insatiable demand for energy, the use of ethanol could lead to even more starvation for the poorest populations. Plus, it's hardly any cleaner than gasoline emissions.

Sure, it's not just environmentalism run amok that's driving the ethanol surge. Tight oil production and instability in the Middle East is largely to blame. But even with increased ethanol production, the oil companies are taking the cue to decrease expensive oil production and refining, leaving fuel prices about the same.

I don't know where I'm going with this, except that a lot of people are going to get rich off ethanol (I'm talking to you, South Dakota), and the government will spend billions to ensure it happens, while the rest of the country takes the hit. Bottom line, ethanol is a fake solution to a fake problem.

Freaks and Geeks Makes a Happy Father's Day

I was extremely happy this Father's Day to get the complete series of Freaks and Geeks. Sure, it ran for only a season, but was the funniest, most realistic coming-of-age show I've ever had the pleasure to watch. "Dramedy" doesn't begin to come close.

Let me put down a chunk of the letter from Paul Feig, the creator of the show:

For me, this journey started back in 1998, when I was driving around the country with a very low budget independent feature film I made called Life Sold Separately. As I was out on a long college tour with the film, driving around from state to state in the Midwest, I decided it was time to write something I'd been wanting to write for a while: a one-hour TV show about my experiences in high school while growing up in Michigan. I wanted it to be about the real people I knew, the people I had never seen portrayed accurately on TV or in movies. I wanted to write about the burnouts, or freaks, who were always getting in trouble an yet who seemed to be questioning the world around them more than the school system apparently wanted them to. And I wanted to write about my friends.

I'll be honest. My friends and I didn't consider ourselves to be geeks back then. We knew kids who were nerdy, who were the super smart kids who knew they were going to be valedictorians and eventually run the world, and yet we weren't really a part of that group. We simply weren't that smart. But we didn't exclude them from our group, since our group didn't exclude anyone. Because we never really were a group, at least not as far as we were concerned. We were basically awkward, slightly immature kids who didn't fit in to any other clique. Looking back, I guess that made us a group, which I then chose to call "geeks" when I started writing the script (and, hey, it rhymes with "freaks," right?).

By the way, Paul Feig has made quite a name for himself since Freaks and Geeks, and has had a hand in many projects including directing Arrested Development and The Office, and playing a bit part in an episode of Facts of Life.

If you've never had the chance to watch it, rent it--and then buy it.