It looks obvious

We didn’t have subway in my small hometown, in the Israeli desert, but the norm was the same. I always wonder about the level of independence that our parents gave us compare to what we are giving to our children. My mother claim that the world was very much different twenty years ago, but that cannot be true. I wonder if we are simply more aware for the dangers out there, or if the change in the general culture simply crippling our children:

No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it. And no, I didn’t trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn’t do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, “Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.”

Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.

Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I’ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It’s not. It’s debilitating — for us and for them.

I don’t think that I’ll be ready to let my girls ride the subway alone when they are 9 years old. But I don’t know if i’ll ever be ready….

Finally the Academia start to swing back from it state of madness. It is obvious that an attempt to re-establish classical studies, the core of western civilization, is being fought by the current establishment. It is very interesting to note that those who protect multiculturalism and political correctness are:

As worthy as such projects sound, setting up an quasi-independent institute devoted to the study of Western civilization can easily run afoul of university rules and regulations, not to mention university ideology. In late 1999, about the same time that Mr. George was setting up the Madison Program, political philosophy professor Hadley Arkes was working on a similar project at Amherst College and finding it much more difficult. Eventually, he established Amherst’s Committee on the American Founding, but so far its staff consists primarily of Mr. Arkes himself. He says the university has stymied fund raising by demanding control of most of the money he has drummed up for the program.

"A week doesn’t go by without someone in the administration trying to put restraints on the program or undercut the program," he says of both Mr. George’s project and his own. Other scholars, at the moment wishing to remain incognito, are trying to start Madison-like programs on their own campuses, but they are meeting resistance from the faculty and administration, some of whom worry about the supposed conservative political agenda of such programs.

In November, Hamilton College decided to refuse a $3.6 million grant from alumnus Carl Menges to establish the Alexander Hamilton Center for the Study of Western Civilization. A swirl of outrage from the faculty culminated in a 77 to 17 vote "expressing concern" about the project. Perhaps this was less than surprising from a school that made headlines for its invitations to Ward Churchill, who compared the people killed on 9/11 at the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns," and Susan Rosenberg, formerly of the Weather Underground.

Although the task to bring classical education, and western civilization studies, seems like Herculean it will succeed - and the demand for such studies among students are a good indicator. It will take time but the new dawn of hope, that the  academia will become again center of the western civilization - instead of a tool to destroy it, is raising.

Technorati Tags: Western Civilization - Academia - Multiculturalism - Political Correctness

I am not a member of the three monitors club, but it is only a meter of time. In the meantime two monitors setting, at work and at home, working perfectly fine for me. I guess I’m the middle way between modernization and progress and shunning technology

Technorati Tags: Technology - Monitors - Work Space - Productivity

Growing up in Israel I’m accustomed for a mentality of disconnect between the tax collected and the government budget. It isn’t rare than when discussing an issue it will be referred as "It is free, it is paid by the state", or "The state should fund this" without making the connection to the fact that the source of the money is the collected tax.

Readers of this blog should know by now my dislike for government based solutions or for taxes. However when I need to choose I will favor local government over the federal government. The reasons are simply because local government are by nature limited in the scope and more likely to decide in a way that reflects better the way of life and values of their residents.

Another advantage of local government, and the kind I was not accustom before, is that its offer more direct decision to the public. Decision about the budget are maid by the public and the connection between the tax money collected and the tax money spent are obvious; and the more importantly - tax payer making decision about how do they want that their money will be spent (which is different than wealth distribution).

The results, by the way, are usually better as even some french start noticing.

Technorati Tags: Taxes - Local Government - Tax Payers - Budget - Public Funds

people don’t want to have great conversations with the phone company, they want great service. They don’t want honest, open conversation with the car manufacture, telling them openly how sucks there are – they want great car.

You can trust a PR professional to come with reality distorting theory like this :

“I like companies and products that have the guts to say "we suck" or something close to it. It’s very un PR. It says to me, "hey, we want a best of breed product and we’re going to work our butts off to give it to you." Now that conversation is king it’s critical that companies begin to have these honest discussions with their customers and do it out in the open. Whether they will is another story entirely. However, I bet that those who take to this approach will gain a leg up because they will be seen as more modest and credible.”

Company that want my money better invest its efforts in great product, my English is good enough to carry a conversation about how they are improving while I’m paying for their “suck” product.

A lot was written about the decline of newspaper, most of it correct. The fact is that newspaper as source of immediate news is archaic and the news organizations did not do enough to adopt new approaches.

However, the old fashion that we are, we love to read from paper – books and newspapers. Personally when ever I have the choice of reading from the screen or to hold the paper and read from it I’ll choose the latter.  I like and use the new capabilities of the Internet, for example I buy many of my books through Amazon or Israeli on-line book stores . Never the less it is never as satisfactory as walking into book store (and small and old one are better) smelling and touching the books.

The only way I know to keep having the newspapers and magazine we like is to subscribe to them and so we did. We subscribed to the Wall Street Journal (paper, not the online) and The Atlantic . If you still want to have paper news and not only electronic one go and subscribe to your favorite one – there is no other way.