Saturday Morning Notes

This is mostly for the archives, for my granddaughters. If you came here looking for the Bakken, scroll to the right (the sidebar), scroll down, or later, scroll up. There are plenty of Bakken articles, including the top stories for the past week, just posted a few minutes ago.

But now, I'm relaxing. I just skimmed through the Saturday edition of the Wall Street Journal and am very, very excited. There are at least two long articles in the book review section that look very, very interesting.

First: a full page review of Scott Anderson's Lawrence in Arabia. I have never read a biography of "Lawrence of Arabia" but have always been fascinated. Perhaps it is time. The question that Mr Anderson raises: "Britain committed vast quantities of materiel and a million men to fighting in the Middle East during World War I. How did an archaeologist with no military training and the largely ineffectual Arab Revolt get all the credit?"  This should be absolutely fascinating.

And then this: a long review of Robert Wilson's biography of Mathew Brady. You all remember Mathew Brady, right? Brady was the photographer who shot all those iconic photos of the US civil war. The blurb: "Brady's efforts to collect portraits of every notable American helped create a sense of a single nation in a time of turbulent change."

The Mathew Brady book might not normally interest me but our older granddaughter shows an interest in the civil war. Some years ago I developed a fairly impressive programmed learning text on the Civil War in the western theater for middle school students. It was based on General US Grant's memoirs.

Those two reviews would be enough but then there's a full page article about a movie director's look at the "problems" of US education (public school elementary through high school). The director: M. Night Shyamalan. I never had any clue that he would be interested in education. It's a nice article and he comes up with some nice conclusions.

Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! One should read the entire article, but if pressed for time, the article might be summed up here:

"That was the click," says Mr. Shyamalan. It struck him that the reason the educational research was so inconsistent was that few school districts were trying to use the best, most proven reform ideas at once. He ultimately concluded that five reforms, done together, stand a good chance of dramatically improving American education. The agenda described in his book is: Eliminate the worst teachers, pivot the principal's job from operations to improving teaching and school culture, give teachers and principals feedback, build smaller schools, and keep children in class for more hours.

Over the course of his research, Mr. Shyamalan found data debunking many long-held educational theories. For example, he found no evidence that teachers who had gone through masters programs improved students' performance; nor did he find any confirmation that class size really mattered. What he did discover is plenty of evidence that, in the absence of all-star teachers, schools were most effective when they put in place strict, repetitive classroom regimens.

Interesting. I think back on my own principal who taught sixth grade back when I attended Wilkinson School in Williston. She already knew all that.

That's about all I remember from today's WSJ. 

There was one article on page A3 (and we've talked about the importance of page 3 stories in the past) that caught my attention. If one wants to see the O'BamaCare train wreck up close and personal, watch the impending debacle in Oregon. And Oregon has generally been considered a front-runner among the states in implementing O'BamaCare.  

Oregon's health-insurance exchange—the marketplace created by federal law to let consumers shop online for coverage—will open for business on Oct. 1, but with a glitch: Consumers won't be able to access it online.

In Oregon, for at least the first couple of weeks of the enrollment period, people will have to visit an agent's office, or find one willing to come to their houses for that, Ms. Fauver said. Or, they can wait until the site goes live.

This is very, very interesting. Talking to experts in the field, it turns out that it is very "dangerous" for homeowners to insure their own homes on-line -- there are so many little things the average person does not think about when insuring a home, and only a good insurance agent can point those things out. There is risk in going-it-alone when insuring a home. Think about that. If the average person takes on risk insuring one's home, which should be pretty straightforward, think about finding a health program on-line by oneself.

I look at all the folks who shop at Wal-Mart. It is hard for me to imagine these folks signing up on-line at one of President O'Bama's health care exchanges. 

Train wreck might be too optimistic; the Asianic aircraft that crashed at San Francisco comes to mind.

But ObamaCare is for another day. The book reviews now, and NASCAR later today.