The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su08/elite-deresiewicz.html

 

interesting read.  i disagree on a few things though. 

- think he over-glorifies the opportunity cost of simpler jobs.  pretty sure the majority of american schoolteachers aren't there because it's the most exciting line of work.  and i've been in enough sub-par inner-city public schools to know that in that setting, half the job is maintaining class discipline, let alone teaching.

- dunno much about harvard or yale conformity, but the misfits and outliers at cornell had no problem representing themselves / rebelling against the mainstream.

- his opening paragraph where he can't communicate with a plumber is the exact reason i tell FK our kids are going to get SOME public education so they're not stunted (think john kerry), overly-preppified, privileged, entitled mediocrity (think Dubya).

- hmm... i had some other points but my stunted elite education must have not trained me to think past 3 points at a time.

Absent Green Thumbs Update

our growing patio garden before the 3 day trip to the outer banks.  everyone looked pretty healthy.  i gave them all a big dousing of water and moved them into the shady part of the patio before leaving.  although it was going to be 95 degrees through the weekend, there was a 30% chance of rain each day (we get a lot of these sudden and quick flash storms down here) so we didn't ask the neighbors to water them.



after the trip (below), the bonsai tree and hanging plants looked fine.  think the brown stuff holding the hanging plants traps moisture.  and the bonsai tree has bark and thick leaves to hold moisture.  seargent angel (the big green non-japanese peace lily) looked terrible - all his leaves were lying on the floor - but a few days of water and he's perked back to life with only a few crusty brown scars on his leaves.  FK's plant hasn't recovered as quickly but there's a little more green in her leaves than the day we returned.



note to self: ask neighbors to water plants when gone...

fknyc.com Upgraded

on call this weekend while FK flew off to a wedding in san fran.  had some free time and upgraded http://www.fknyc.com/index.html using iWeb 2006 version. 

since it's obviously not a .mac account, i had to save the entire contents to my hard drive and then upload it to the dreamhost server.  imagine that'd be a significant pain if a site gets larger...

anyone using iWeb 2008?  supposedly it allows you to sync to non-.mac accounts.  but it looks like the process is no different --- it doesn't selectively upload only the pages that have been changed.