Quick hits

• On Tuesday, USA Today published an opinion article by Patrick Welsh titled For once, blame the students in which Welsh writes:
  

  Failure in the classroom is often tied to lack of funding, poor teachers or other ills. Here's a thought: Maybe it's the failed work ethic of todays kids. That's what I'm seeing in my school. Until reformers see this reality, little will change.

  
  Here's a thought: the kids are with their teachers for a large part of the day. Until the teachers know how to inspire a strong work ethic in the kids, little will change.



• It turns out that Kansas is not, in fact, as flat as a pancake. It's actually flatter.



• This is by far my favorite post of any that I first discovered though the Koufax awards. It came about during one of the regular three month flair ups of where-are-all-the-women-in-politics, and it is perhaps the single best article I've ever seen written on the subject.



• At The Dark Wraith Forums, I ran across this gem from MSN Money that explains that our economy isn't as rosy as the Bush administration would like you to think. Money quote*:
  

  In fact, reading this article, you will conclude that there's no way out, short of running the printing presses.

  
  Now that is a scary thought.



• Until recently I was against a la carte cable. I fear that people generally won't want to pay for the channels I like, such as the various Discovery Channels, the Science Channel, and NASA TV. But then Digby pointed out that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell don't like a la carte either, a fact that quickly changed my mind. The televangelists are worried that they will go out of business because nobody will buy their TV programs. That sounds pretty good to me.
  
  Frankly, I don't watch TV that much anyway -- not even the channels I listed above. While I'd hate to see them go, I wouldn't mind sacrificing them for the greater good.
  
  Here's something else that occurred to me. A la carte can't be good for the 24 hour news networks in the long run, either. The networks ratings often fluctuate. Under an a la carte system, when one network's ratings start declining and another's starts rising, it only makes sense that people will jump ship from the dying network to its stronger competitors. As that happens, the inevitable result will be consolidation, which means there will be less pressure to compete with each other and more time to vet their stories. If I'm right, in ten years there will be only one giant news networks instead of the proliferation of smaller ones we have now.
  
  Hey, a guy can dream.



• If you haven't heard it already, go grab Willie Nelson's Cowboys Are Secretly, Frequently (Fond of Each Other) off of iTunes. It's a great song.

* Yes, that was a pun. Please forgive a poor blogger his vices.