PICTURES OF THE RUSSIAN PAST

Old pictures on Russia around 1900 with color added. Little did they know the pain that the 20th century would bring them.

UN CONTACT FOR ALIENS

The United Nations has appointed a representative to be contacted by aliens who wish to communicate with earthlings. I am not sure if the UN can even communicate with Arabs and Jews.

COMPUTER ATTACK

Iran's nuclear facilities are facing a computer worm. I wonder who. . .

Mahmoud Alyaee, secretary-general of Iran's industrial computer servers, including its nuclear facilities control systems, confirmed Saturday, Sept. 25, that30,000 computers belonging to classified industrial units had been infected and disabled bythemalicious Stuxnet virus.

The experts say it is beyond the capabilities of private or individual hackers and could have been produced by a high-tech state like America or Israel, or its military cyber specialists.

SPASENIE

Enjoyed this group.

PARENTING OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Interesting.

I was reminded how we got this generation of students -- many of whom are not prepared to deal with setbacks and whose egos need to be stroked all the time -- when I was at a friend's home for dinner. The parents beamed as their 11-year-old son showed off a ribbon he got for coming in second in a race.

After he went to bed, I found out that in that particular meet, only two kids participated. Better yet, the school makes sure that every child gets at least one ribbon, so that his or her tender self-esteem will not suffer.

RANKING COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD

Newsweek has an interactive tool that gives the comparative data of countries in areas like education, health, the economy, etc.

HISTORY OF THE SOVIET UNION

Anyone remember the old computer game, tetris? The complete history of the Soviet Union!

AMERICAN CULTURE. . .IN DECLINE AGAIN???

"10 best places to survive the apocalypse". . .but they limit it to America. People spend time on this?

Farmville is a corporate conspiracy sucking in dumb Facebookers.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE

Barone sees the higher education bubble bursting.

Government-subsidized loans have injected money into higher education, as they did into housing, causing prices to balloon. But at some point people figure out they're not getting their money's worth, and the bubble bursts.

Some think this would be a good thing. My American Enterprise Institute colleague Charles Murray has called for the abolition of college for almost all students. Save it for genuine scholars, he says, and let others qualify for jobs by standardized national tests, as accountants already do.