It's one of the most overused cliches of the universe but you really don't know how much you use something until it's gone. Without warning, my computer has stopped working entirely; not even responding to being plugged into the wall. I?ve done as much as I can to figure out what's going wrong to no avail. Hardware problems are beyond my experience and I?m trying to figure out where to go from here. Lots of mitigating circumstances, complications and headaches.

So, I have another quibbling excuse for not writing as much as I have material.

But, here are a few things that have caught my eye recently:

Growing up in a family of teachers, I can tell you that this is all too true:

Talk the Edutalk

Take a look at this interesting and revealing story about a focus of real power behind the president:

The Strong, Silent Type

I also got this email forwarded to me and thought that it deserved to be distributed to the paltry readership of my blog:

The American Family Association, an anti-gay organization, is doing a poll on gay marriage. They are going to present the results to Congress, hoping to gain support for the federal constitutional amendment to define "marriage" as solely a heterosexual union. However, anyone can take their poll, so please pass this URL far and wide. (I doubt they expect anyone but their own, anti-gay members to answer it.)

Marriage Poll

Note: If the link doesn't work, go to www.afa.net and in the upper right corner of the web page is the poll link.