Clearing off the spindle, which creates an awesome series of links to cool stuff

I spent the morning going through the 800 or so emails I’d allowed to pile up in my inbox.  I deleted most of them, which were automatic emails from various lists to which I belong, but there were definitely gems hiding in that stack.  Now I get the chance to pass those gems on to you.  Here goes….

This isn’t new news, but it’s still the best post I’ve seen on Sebelius’ boast that ObamaCare hastened the private medical insurance “death spiral.”

On the education front, I’ve got an unusually high number of education links.  To begin with, I found an email introducing me to a site called Education News, which is an amazing resource for people interested in just about any educational issue.  Perhaps I’m deluding myself (which I have been known to do out of an excess of optimism), but it also seems to be very open to a conservative view of these same educational issues.  Very open.  If you care about education professionally or personally (either as a student or a parent), I think you’ll want to check it out.

Here’s a good example of Education News fare, with this one focusing on the virtues of old-fashioned approaches to math.  I didn’t learn math the old way, and I’m perfectly certain I wouldn’t learn it the new way either.  The old way relied too much on memorization for me (and I can’t remember things I don’t understand), while the new way relies way too much on theory without any basic facts or necessary memorization.  Give me Maria Montessori’s approach, which manages to ensure that students both understand and memorize.

I always hated the Norton Reader, a volume of turgid prose that caused me much mental anguish, and extreme boredom, while I was getting my undergraduate degree.  What’s really depressing is that it’s worse now, as are all the other pieces of Leftist indoctrination forced onto college freshman.

Did they really need a study to show that non-fiction reading is good for the brain?  I’d add a caveat, which is that, in the old days (my days), fiction reading was often very heavy on knowledge and facts.  If it was a little didactic, it was still good.  After all, how many American girls learned about the pioneer experience from reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book.  The problem nowadays is the fiction, which is all fantasy and feelings.  There is no knowledge involved.  Just fairies and navel gazing.

Although Patrick O’Hannigan wrote three weeks ago about the Catch-22 hampering the Republican candidates, a time period that is an eternity in the fast-moving blogosphere, the points he makes are as applicable three weeks on, and will continue to be applicable right up until November.

And just for your own amusement, you might want to see how many of the goals set out in The Naked Communist, a book written from the conservative perspective back in 1958, the Obama administration has already achieved.

As always, please feel free to chime in here.