Remember That 85 MPH Raceway Between San Antonio and Austin? -- Now the 67,000-Square-Foot Convenience Store

Google roadside stopper: can something be too big in Texas? -- WSJ, page A1.

Billed as the world's largest convenience store, the 67,000-square-foot colossus on Interstate 35 between Austin and San Antonio is 20 times the size of a 7-Eleven and longer than a football field. It features 60 gasoline pumps, 80 soda dispensers, 31 cash registers, 23 flavors of fudge and entire aisles devoted to varieties of popcorn and beef jerky. The pièce de résistance: 84 gleaming toilets, each with its own dispenser of hand sanitizer and shined at all hours by a small army of attendants.

This will become a "must-see, must-stop" potty break.

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Whooping Cough Shots Questioned -- WSJ, page A2.

For "seniors," those DPT shots we got were horrendous, due to the "pertussis" component, the "P" in "DPT."  The diphtheria component was bad, and the "full-strength D" cannot be given to adults due to severe side effects.

But the "P" was horrendous. But it worked.

It appears the new and improved acellular "P" vaccine loses its efficacy over time. It appears that the efficacy of the current "P" vaccine diminishes about as badly as Bakken wells decline in production. A study has ...

...found that protection against the disease diminished substantially over five years in immunized elementary school-aged children. That age group was once considered well immunized against the highly contagious disease after receiving five doses of diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine—the last given between the ages of 4 and 6.

North Dakota's pertussis rate is 2 to 3 times the national average. At the link, a graphic shows the whooping cough rate across the United States. Not surprisingly, the northern tier states are the hardest hit.

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A great op-ed in today's WSJ, page A15: Striking Teachers, Divided Antipathies. The best observations:

• No chance here of the adversaries declaring their true concerns. If they did, the union would announce its desire for more money and less outside interference by way of enforced teacher evaluations, pay raises based on merit, the imposition of a longer school day, the disposition of the fate of teachers whose schools have been closed, and job security generally. The city would announce that in addition to being concerned about an expected $3 billion budget shortfall in education over the next three years, there is also the public-relations worry about an educational system producing such pathetic results. Something like 40% of the 350,000 kids who go to public schools here do not graduate from high school, which makes Chicago and those who run it look very bad indeed.
• With rare exceptions, anyone in Chicago who can afford it avoids sending his kids to public school. (Mayor Emanuel, in the best limousine-liberal tradition, sends his children to the University of Chicago Lab School. In his position, let me add, I would do the same.)
• ....the matter of finding enough good teachers is an even greater part of the problem. Nobody likes to mention it, but grammar and high-school teaching took a terrific hit from feminism. So many of the superior grammar and high-school teachers of the past were women—women, to be sure, who had little else open to them in the way of occupational choice. Now, with feminism having led the way, women are free to join the wider workforce and try to avoid becoming second-rate lawyers, otiose psychotherapists and real-estate salesmen. Ah, the old choreography of progress: one step forward, two steps back.
• Mayor Emanuel wants to seem a leader in educational reform but has only a crude grasp of what is entailed in serious education. For example, his notion of an extended school day—that is, more of the same, but longer—can only mean more torture for kids not really receiving a good education to begin with.

No solutions but nice observations and great writing, regardless of which side of the debate you are on.

A random thought: based on several years of substitute teaching, and much of my life spent in an academic setting, I would shorten the amount of didactic instruction for the brighter, more-motivated students and increase the amount of didactic instruction for the students who need more one-on-one.  The length of the school day is a social issue (day-care, working parents, etc) and has little to do with quality of education.

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Speaking of the "three R's," we now have the "three S's." -- WSJ, page A8.

If the Sunnis and Shiites weren't bad enough, now we have the Salafis. When I say "bad enough," I'm not talking about their beliefs, values, views, methods, or anything else that might get me in trouble with the PC crowd, I'm talking about the fact that it has become more difficult to keep these sects straight.

The "9/11 event" in Libya, which the administration seems to have ignored, is being blamed on the Salafis.