Shift Happens

There’s a group of friends I hang out with online, all of us online entrepreneurs. One sent a URL around urging us all to “take 8 minutes to watch the video,” adding “if you care about such things, please consider blogging about it and/or passing it on.” What things? Our kids. Or, more accurately, the education of our kids. The world is a very, very different place than it was when we were kids.

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Jerry Falwell, American Taliban

Jerry Falwell died this week. There’s quite a bit of traffic coming into my page where I dubbed Falwell one of the American Taliban in disgust over his using the 9/11 terrorist attacks to further his own agenda. I followed some of those links back to the blogs which were quoting me, with titles such as “JERRY FALWELL IS DEAD. Good.” and I’m glad he is dead. Indeed there were so many that I Googled the combination of “Cassingham” and “Falwell” …and got a couple of hundred hits.

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Keeping the Balance Balanced

Yes, True is sometimes a touch raw. Usually it works out fine — it’s balanced well between tragedy (like a school committing a grievous Zero-Tolerance punishment on a truly innocent kid) and comedy. But now and then, after I’ve written an issue, something comes up that tilts the balance, and the result is awkwardly off-kilter.

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Zero Tolerance: Fighting Fire With Fire

Just when I think there can’t be even more outrageous examples of Zero Tolerance — in schools or in real life — I come across more that I just can’t resist telling you about. But there is hope, which I’ll get to in a minute. First, one of the ZT stories from this week’s (25 February 2007) issue to illustrate:

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Another Day, Another Cry-Baby

Quite a few Premium subscribers actually stay on the free distribution specifically to see the advertising. That’s cool: the advertisers pay for this free distribution, so it’s nice that people actually look at the ads! But now and then people whine about the ads. That’s dumb: without them, they wouldn’t be getting the newsletter at all, would they?!

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War on Drugs

I fully expect to be called “anti-police” for the lead story this week. One doesn’t have to be “anti” anything to decry stupidity, or even to call to task organizations you fully support when they do something wrong.

Here’s the story, from True’s 17 December 2006 issue:

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