Mitch/Jack Daniels, Country Driving, and the Songs I’ll Always Associate With Cambodia…

1. Seven Weeks – After spending the last week talking non-stop about going home, it’s weird to be back at site, teaching again, and knowing that I still have seven more weeks before I leave. It’s also really nice. Seven weeks isn’t a lot, but by the time it’s over I’m pretty sure I’ll be ready. 

2. Jerseys in Prey Sundek – Today while I was riding my bike to school I rode past a guy wearing a Wes Welker Patriots jersey. It’s definitely the most random jersey I’ve seen in Cambodia, but far from the only one. Here are a few of the others…

• Chien-Ming Wang – Yankees
• Ichiro Suzuki – Mariners
• Cal Ripkin – Orioles
• Tim Duncan – Spurs
• Kobe Bryant – Lakers
• Emmett Smith – Cowboys

3. Country Driving – Riding on the back of a motorbike through the Cambodian countryside…

untitled

►

Sorry for the sound – I tried to add some music to the video, but I couldn’t get it to upload.

4. Marathon Training: Week Two - It’s never good when the number of beers you’ve drank in a week exceeds the number of miles you’ve run. That’s all I’m going to say about last week, now it’s time to start getting serious.

5. What I’m Reading This Week – Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris and The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris.

There are few historical figures I find more interesting than T.R. and Edmund Morris is a hell of a writer. One of my final Peace Corps reading goals is to finish all three of these books. And if you’re looking for some good nonfiction, I’d highly recommend the first one: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.

6. Two Years in Music - You know that moment when an old song comes on the radio and all of a sudden you’re transported back to some random time or place in your past. Well I was talking about that recently with a friend and it got me thinking about the songs that will bring me back to Cambodia. I’m sure there are more, but for whatever reason, here are a few that immediately came to mind…

• Dark Fantasy – Kanye West
• Dog Days are Over – Florence and the Machines
• Terrible Love – The National
• Empire State of Mind – Jay-Z
• Hey Soul Sister – Train
• Oxford Comma – Vampire Weekend
• You’re Going Back – Tallest Man on Earth
• Love the Way You Lie – Eminem
• Katie Perry – Teenage Dream
• Lisztomania – Phoenix
• Under the Cover of Darkness – The Strokes
• VCR – The XX
• Madder Red – Yeasayer

I think smells have the same power, but it’s a lot tougher to list them.

7. “The only Daniels left in the race now is Jack” – So if Mitch Daniels isn’t going to be the GOP’s savior than who is? I think you’ve gotta assume that either Sarah Palin, Chris Christie or Rick Perry are gonna run. Someone’s gotta shake things up, right?

“It would be unfair to call the current field a vacuum. But it doesn’t exactly represent an overflowing of political talent. And insofar as politics abhors even a near-vacuum, others are bound to get in. I now think the odds are better than 50-50 that both Rick Perry and Paul Ryan run. I also now think they (and others — Sarah Palin, Chris Christie, John Bolton) may not feel they have to decide until after Labor Day — or maybe even until October or even November. The field could well remain open and fluid until Thanksgiving.” (William Kristol Blog)

That being said, right now I’m still putting my money on Timmy P who announced today that he’s officially in…

You gotta admit — it’s a great campaign video.

8. The Gates Effect -  It’s hard to criticize Bill Gates for all his education work, but I wish he would spend more money on students and schools and less on advocating for his educational philosophy. (Behind Grass-Roots School Advocacy, Bill Gates)

The foundation spent $373 million on education in 2009, the latest year for which its tax returns are available, and devoted $78 million to advocacy — quadruple the amount spent on advocacy in 2005. Over the next five or six years, Mr. Golston said, the foundation expects to pour $3.5 billion more into education, up to 15 percent of it on advocacy.

Given the scale and scope of the largess, some worry that the foundation’s assertive philanthropy is squelching independent thought, while others express concerns about transparency. Few policy makers, reporters or members of the public who encounter advocates like Teach Plus or pundits like Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute realize they are underwritten by the foundation.

“It’s Orwellian in the sense that through this vast funding they start to control even how we tacitly think about the problems facing public education,” said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who said he received no financing from the foundation.

Mr. Hess, a frequent blogger on education whose institute received $500,000 from the Gates foundation in 2009 “to influence the national education debates,” acknowledged that he and others sometimes felt constrained. “As researchers, we have a reasonable self-preservation instinct,” he said. “There can be an exquisite carefulness about how we’re going to say anything that could reflect badly on a foundation.”

“Everybody’s implicated,” he added.

If your interested in this story, you should also read the article: Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools, which appeared in the Winter 2010 edition of Dissent Magazine.

9. Sex Scandals and Natural Disasters – Is it just me or have we experienced a dramatic increase in both of these over the last year? I’m blaming it all on global warming.

10. Just For Fun – And finally, two videos guaranteed to bring a little joy to your day. 

Denzel Washington delivers the commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania….

And George Carlin talks about, “Who Really Controls America”….