Monthly Archives: February 2004

Astronaut Jim Lovell visits Madison

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Apollo and Gemini astronaut Jim Lovell spoke last night at an American Family Children’s Hospital Fund Raiser at Monona Terrace VR Scene.
There aren’t too many places Jim Lovell hasn’t been. (Google) (All The Web) (Teoma) (Yahoo Search)
The 71-year-old former astronaut has made two trips to the moon — the historic first lunar orbit flight, December 1968’s Apollo 8, and the aborted Apollo 13 mission in April 1970.
I posted some photos here.

William Winter & the Education of Mississippi

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In 1980, when William Winter became governor of Mississippi, there was no state funded kindergarten. School attendance was not compulsory. Mississippi ranked last in the nation among most educational indicators. And in the more than 25 years that had passed since the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, the state had not been able to come to terms with school desegregation.
In 1982, Gov. Winter succeeded, against all odds, in passing the most sweeping education reform the state had ever seen, which among other things established kindergarten for all Mississippians.
NPR

1968

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Charles Andres posts an interesting look at 1968 vis a vis 2004
http://www.e-pix.com/1968/
Recent comments about how we live in dangerous and chilling times (after 9/11) should be seen in perspective to 1968, when

  • 25000 American soldiers had been killed in 3 years of the Vietnam War.
  • The leading proponents for change (Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy) were assassinated.
  • The Soviet Union was considered a nuclear threat that could wipe out the United States in a day.
  • Protesters against the war in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention were stopped with police-state tactics.
  • I have posted rare video tape footage of CBS News on April 4, the day Martin Luther King was assassinated, and ABC News coverage of the Democratic National Convention from Aug 28, 1968, the night of the largest riots, the fight over the Vietnam War plank (whether to change Democratic party plank to allow Vietnam the right to determine its own government and stop bombing the north) and Vice Presidents Humphrey’s nomination.

Viet Dinh on the Patriot Act

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In May 2001, the professor of law at Georgetown University was tapped by the Justice Department to work for two years as an assistant attorney general, working primarily on judicial nominations for the department.
But three months later the World Trade Center towers collapsed, and Dinh was drafted to work on the USA Patriot Act, a bill that would give the government some of its most controversial surveillance powers. The bill, coupled with the government’s subsequent treatment of immigrants and native-born citizens, prompted critics to charge the administration with overthrowing “800 years of democratic tradition.” Wired.

Tom Peters on Outsourcing

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Tom Peters posts 16 points on outsourcing/offshoring. Points 6 and 7 are interesting.
6. Americans’ “unearned wage advantage” could be erased permanently. (“There is no job which is America’s God-given right anymore.” — Carly Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard)
7. The wholesale, upscale entry of 2.5 billion people (China, India) into the global economy at an accelerating rate is almost unfathomable.
His conclusion: we need to train many, many more creative, risk-taking entrepreneurs. That will require a massive shift in how we educate our youth. The only reliable indicator of whether you will be an entrepreneur: you are the son or daughter of an entrepreneur. If that skillset can’t be transferred more generally, most people will be left behind.
Thanks to John Robb.
I’ve lived in the west, and there’s no question, that residents in Wisconsin and the Midwest in general need to start to take some business risks, and grow more entrepreneurs (It is truly genetic, I believe).