Those that have read my blog know that I do get on my soapbox from time to time about the state of education in the United States.  I can't help but be concerned about the future for America's young adults.  Too many students are not opting to stay in school to continue their education. If U.S. students continue their lack of motivation in pursuing an education, I can't help but be gloomy on America's place in the 21st century as a world leader.

Taking a different viewpoint, BusinessWeek recently posted an article on academics in the United States stating that U.S. schools are not doing that bad.  The schools could be doing better, but they're not terrible.  The article uses the Two Million Minutes documentary as its backdrop.  The BusinessWeek author points out that academic performance doesn't always dictate the sucess a person may have in the world of business.

"Lessig, known for his decade-long role in trying to loosen the entertainment industry's vice-like grip on popular culture by shaping copyright law, is betting that the energy and dissatisfaction exhibited by voters against the status-quo in Washington DC, and the emergence of collaborative software that enables vast numbers of geographically-dispersed citizens to become politically active on their own schedule, will enable a new kind of transparency and accountability in political campaigns."

Complete Story

US Deputy Assis­tant Secretary of the Navy for Acquisition Management
DASN needed a technical web solution to accommodate consolidation of
three legacy web sites that comprised over 10 years of critical policy
information. eZ Publish from eZ Systems became the solution.

Read the whole story HERE

We Americans can be so stupid at times.  In the country of "land of the free", we spend too much of our efforts working to restrict the freedom of others.

Tomorrow's legal fight may be over Web browser add-ons that let people avoid advertisements. These add-ons are growing in functionality and popularity, which has led legal experts we surveyed this week to speculate about when the first lawsuit will be filed.

If ad-blockers become so common that they slice away at publishers' revenues, "I absolutely would expect to see litigation in this area," said John Palfrey, executive director of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Let me give you my take on this.  I have the right to decide whether I want to place advertisement on my Web pages or not.  You have the right to decide whether you want to view those advertisements or your computer or not.  It really should be that simple.

All I can do is shake my head in the direction education has taken in the United States. I've written about this topic in the past, a little here and on another blog of mine. In one of those blog posts, I wrote the following.

American society as a whole seems to have less value for education, especially in the sciences and math, than when I was growing up. Maybe I’m more sensitive to these numbers since I am a scientist at heart…but isn’t anyone else disturbed by this trend? While I feel there should have been something done to help reverse this downward spiral sooner, I’m glad at least that it is finally getting some some well deserved attention by the Bush administration.

College students in the United States are not showing up in those university programs that are focused on physical science, computer science, math, and engineering. There are a number of politicians, parents, and students that will blame the public school education system for the current state of education in the United States. I have some serious doubts whether fingers should really be pointed in the direction of the teachers or even school system. I think in many ways, those fingers should be pointed right back to the parents and their children. Perhaps life in America is so good that by the time the student becomes a young adult, life hasn't prepared them to face the challenges and disappointments they need to do well in the sciences.

A recent eWeek article reported that a United States "policy think tank" found that in the past decade, information technology boosted the U.S. economy by $2 trillion dollars.

"For the United States alone, what we found was that because of the digital revolution, GDP is $2 trillion larger today than it would have been had growth in the post-1995 era proceeded at the 1974 to 1995 rate," said Robert D. Atkinson, Ph.D., president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

 "We need to recognize this phenomenon and adjust our thinking to make IT a centerpiece of our economic policy--from planning and forecasting to tax policies that incent future growth."

Two trillion dollars - that my friends is a lot of money.   Hopefully, those of us in information technology will not be so hesitant in the future to ask for that raise or time off we so deserve.  Of course, there is one problem for those of us who chose careers as IT professionals.  The problem is we make the IT job look so darn easy that those guys upstairs don't quite recognize difficult IT tasks when they see it.  IT professionals contribute so much more in the business than the business managers want to admit.  I say that it's time we work on our game plan...

"One way or another, many Latinos and other minorities are getting online—but they're missing the full range of interactive Web features."

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The site, eWeek,  posted a little slide show  in honor of Presidents Day.  The slide show lists "10 U.S. presidents who held patents, thought globally and believed in the power of the press—and macaroni".  To the best of my knowledge, none of the presidents have actually managed their own Web site.  What a shame for a US President to not experience the true joys of being a geek.

Actually, I'm more excited about the new Presidential Dollar coins which I blogged about on another site months ago.  Yesterday, I went ahead and purchased a "coin album" for my three year-old to store each the coin for each US president.   I'm excited about it.  My son still thinks he's collecting quarters.

That's right my Canadian friends to the north, we're still using One Dollar paper bills down here.  About a decade ago I tried using a Canadian paper dollar while in Canada and was asked "what is this?" when I tipped my waitress.   It seems Canada made the move to Dollar coins a long time ago and my bank where I exchanged currently didn't know about the change.  I had a very unhappy waitress to deal with that night.  Not sure why, I did ask for a Canadian beer after all.