The Economist keeps at China

The Economist loves nothing more than keeping China's feet over the fire.  Banyan's article points out the similarities between China's repressive "democracy" (one party democracy because that one party is unanimously popular?!?) and the Muslim-world autocracies Tunisia and Egypt that have fallen, and the others that could be lined up like dominos. The only area I would not agree with him is that since China doesn't a single, central polarizing figure like Hosni, this defuses some resentment.  They don't need one - all Chinese know who their target is - their government - and whether it has a face or not its policies and lack of freedom is still as equally stultifying.

http://www.economist.com/node/18178177

The Bitter Recriminations of a sometime teacher ...

To think I gave up the verdant slopes of the Maoist infested Himalaya for this, a year and a half venture (so far) in lower education in the armpit of the Bay Area, the East Bay (and it is an unshaven armpit), somewhere south of Oakland and north of Hindustan, er, Fremont. There's few things more rampantly mediocre than public education in the US, and this is manifest in a myriad of ways in the schools ... the school administration, the district honchos, the school board (how is it that in a city where about 30% of the population, at best, is white, the school board is about 80% white ... and old ... and unhappy about all of these non-white types parading around the streets), the tenured teachers, the text books ... and the kids? They run rampant in the school - a brand new campus that is aging daily, sagging under the weight of teen age hysterics, criminal activities, sex in the bathrooms, gang activities, sex in the classrooms (blowjobs in math class), drugs in their backpacks, and more. In the past month I've developed a constant tension headache, and before that, last summer, sciatica ... all in the effort of educating the masses ...