The Dumbing Of America - washingtonpost.com

Another MLP (mindless link propagation)
The Dumbing Of America - washingtonpost.com

I read the entire article and I think the author is, sadly, right. The international report on Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study isn't friendly on the United State either: it's one of the last 1st world country.

The most interesting bit was comparing Canada to the US. In 2003:
-The US average was roughly equal the the 25th percentile of either Quebec or Ontario
-The US 75th was roughly equal to the average of either Quebec or Ontatio.

Meaning that 75% of Quebec Students had better scores than the average US student and that the average Ontarian student was better than 75% of US student...

Asus EEEpc

I just bought a Asus EEEpc, the 8g model. I'm writing this on it, in the bus on the way home. It's a neat little machine. I won't go into hardware details because several websites already covered the thing in detail. There is a very active modding community centered around the eeewiki, that spell out almost anything you would want to know about the hardware. Someone posted a complete description (Pictures included) of how to add lots of hardware to the little PC.

I can note a couple of limitations:

• The keyboard has some “getting used to”, like the small backspace, or the half-size shift key.
• The screen is small. 7 inches. I wish Asus had remove the speakers on te sides to make more room for screen space.

But it also has several features I like:

• The form-factor makes it easy to carry around. It can't fit into a pocket, but it' small enough to be hand-carried.
• The webcam on the 8g edition is a definitive plus.

Other interesting things to note:

• The interface is... interesting, to say the least. I like the idea of a task-based interface, and would love to install this kind of Interface on my parent's computers. But, for myself, I'm too used to a more “traditional” approach of listing applications.
• I can't shake the feeling that I should be careful about writing stuff to the drive. The onboard SSD has a life limited by write cycles, somewhere in the 10000-20000 range. Someone on the EEE user forum pointed out that, even with frequents writes, that would put the onboard SSD in the years ranges.

All things considered: I like it :)