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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2006-10-20

Quick Hits

--Favorite education quote of the day [courtesy NRO]:

Nearly 40 percent of U.S. 8th-graders said they were confident in their math skills. Only 6 percent of South Korean kids expressed the same sentiment. But the latter significantly outperform the former on credible international math tests. Similarly, while 66 percent of U.S. teachers said they tried to connect their math lessons to students’ daily lives, only 14 percent of Japanese teacher expressed the same aspiration. But it will be the Japanese students whose math lessons connect to their daily lives as adults — because they will have actually learned math.

--So It Isn't Just Me [courtesy Brit Hume]:

But a study by the Business and Media Institute says when it comes to the economy, broadcast network news stories are overwhelmingly and intentionally negative.

The year-long study of evening news programs revealed more than twice as many negative economic stories as positive — and the negative stories were in full -length reports — while the positive were in shorter forms.

--Yes, the Tet Offensive analogy is quite appropriate

As I wrote FIFTEEN MONTHS ago, Tet is exactly the right analogy:

The NLF and the NVA [Vietcong] lost around 35,000 men killed, 60,000 wounded and 6,000 POWs for no military success. The US and ARVN dead totalled around 3,900 (1,100 US). But this was not the conflict as the US public saw it. Without there being an active conspiracy the US media reports were extremely damaging and shocked the American public and politicians. Apparently the depth of the US reaction even surprised the North Vietnamese leadership, as well as delighting them.

Posted by: Michael / 10/20/2006 12:01:00 AM

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