[FoxNews] The US has a mismatch between workforce preparation and the jobs of today and tomorrow. We’re missing a national strategy to connect people to opportunity.
Margaret Spellings, served as U.S. education secretary from 2005 to 2009. She is currently president and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center.
This generation’s Common Core? Let’s first see what AI ends up capable of providing before training students to use it. More important is training students to think and master basic skills.
#2
If you're a native American teenager or pre-teen,
and you want to be employable one day,
learn Spanish.
By all means, learn other stuff as well.
But learn Spanish, to Level C1 or better.
It is not that difficult.
For almost any job, you will go to the front of the employment line.
It's fun, and it also opens up social opportunities South America + Central America.
#3
Hell, too many in government operated schools today fail to achieve basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills. Shut down the academic paper mills turning out 'administrators and teachers' that just keep this monster going.
If every single child were not required by law to attend K-12, then those for whom it's doing no good ... could leave, get on with life, look for work.
Mandatory K-12 was not a thing for thousands of years.
No Mandatory K-12 was needed for
- the pyramids
- Roman roads
- aqueducts
- invention of gunpowder
- invention of international navigation
- invention of electronics
- invention of internal combustion automobile
- development of planes and helicopters
- telegraph, radar, telephone
[IslanderReports]
LNG shipping rates have gone from $40,000 to $300,000 per day — a 650% vertical climb in less than a week — and the men who ordered the strikes that caused this are still strutting around the Oval Office talking about “strength.” That is not strength. That is the economics of catastrophe unfolding in real time, and it will reach every kitchen table from Tokyo to Turin before anyone in the beltway finishes reading the intelligence brief they probably won’t bother to read anyway.
#2
Ships transmitted the Straits of Hormuz during the entity of the Iran-Iraq War. Pretty sure this is short term.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/07/2026 10:01 Comments ||
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#3
Right, it would have been so much better if we had just allowed a maniacal regime to develop nuclear weapons. Acting has risks, but so does not acting.
Posted by: Matt ||
03/07/2026 10:03 Comments ||
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#4
I don't suppose the good folks at IslanderReports would mind if the Mad Mullahs nuked Jerusalem. But I'm pretty sure if they ever got their hands on The Bomb they'd use it. Then just think of all the disruptions to shipping when the Israelis retaliated by nuking the Mad Mullahs.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/07/2026 13:57 Comments ||
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#5
Mexico makes cement. Not really great cement, but they do.
[FoxNews] So that's what happened! Survivors with higher biological age had more difficulty with memory and attention span years after treatment
Surviving cancer as a child or young adult may have a lasting impact on aging, new research suggests.
Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center looked at whether life-saving treatments, like chemotherapy and radiation, could speed up biological aging.
They also aimed to determine whether this age acceleration was linked to cognitive issues related to memory, focus and learning.
The team analyzed blood samples from a group of 1,400 long-term survivors treated at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, using epigenetic clocks — tools that estimate biological age by examining chemical tags on DNA.
Biological age is determined based on damage the cells accumulate over time, versus chronological age, which is measured by how long someone has been alive, according to scientists.
"These well-established aging-related biomarkers have previously been associated with neurocognitive impairment and decline in older non-cancer populations, particularly in cognitive domains related to aging and dementia, such as memory, attention and executive function," the study stated.
Most of the group consisted of acute lymphoblastic leukemia survivors, or Hodgkin lymphoma survivors. Participants were at least five years past their treatment, though some had survived for several decades.
They underwent neurocognitive testing to measure their attention span, memory and information processing speed.
Chemotherapy was found to have the greatest impact on aging acceleration. The study suggests the treatment can alter DNA structure and cause cellular damage.
"It's no surprise to find out that young people with cancer who have chemo early in life are affected in terms of long-term aging," Dr. Marc Siegel, senior medical analyst for Fox News, told Fox News Digital.
Researchers also found that cellular aging was closely linked to cognitive performance, as survivors of a higher biological age had more difficulty with memory and attention.
"Chemo poisons and damages cellular function — hopefully the cancer cells more than normal cells, but there is a significant impact on normal cells as well," said Siegel, who was not involved in the study.
"There is also something called ‘chemo brain,’ which causes at least temporary difficulty with memory, concentration, word finding and brain fog," the doctor added.
The research team hopes to use these findings to focus on intervention efforts, specifically by determining when accelerated aging begins.
"Young cancer survivors have many more decades of life to live," lead study author AnnaLynn Williams, PhD, said in a press release. "If these accelerated aging changes are occurring early on and setting them on a different trajectory, the goal is to intervene to not only increase their lifespan, but improve their quality of life."
There were some limitations to the study. The researchers could not adjust for chronic health conditions or education because they are directly impacted by treatment.
Additionally, the study only looked at the survivors at a single point of time, so it could not directly prove causation.
The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/07/2026 1:46 Comments ||
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#2
There was a young muzz of Toronto
Who wanted some wisdom, and pronto,
But his brain was all knobby:
"Rasul! Kemosabe!"
"You fool! Go learn Arabic, Tonto!"
Posted by: Bob Trotsky1892 ||
03/07/2026 2:43 Comments ||
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[TurkiyeToday] The first thing to grasp about revolutions, counterrevolutions, regime changes, and all the other tidy terms used in the White House is that they never follow the script. The second thing to understand is that the exiles are always ready to play the new fearless leader.
They’re ready before the bombs fall. Ready before the speeches. Ready before the smoke even clears over the gutted Iranian Assembly of Experts in Qom.
Somewhere in a comfortable townhouse in Northern Virginia or a condo in Monaco, a man with a polished accent and an impressive family tree is already rehearsing his acceptance speech for a country he hasn’t lived in for decades.
This brings us to Reza Pahlavi, the slicker-than-an-onion son of the late Shah, who has spent most of the last 45 years abroad, reminding the world that he would be happy to help run Iran if the current leadership were to suddenly vanish in a puff of regime-change smoke.
History suggests the odds of that working out are roughly the same as finding baklava in a gas-station sushi tray.
BELTWAY’S FAVORITE UNDERSTUDIES
The U.S. has a long and troubled tradition of auditioning exiles for leadership roles in countries undergoing American-assisted “transitions.”
Sometimes the candidate is a banker. Sometimes a general. Occasionally, a philosophy professor who hasn’t set foot in the country since disco was popular.
Almost always, the plastic surgery is a mess.
You could build a small museum of these experiments. The Washington-endorsed Iraqi exile politicians, after the fall of Saddam; the parade of anti-Castro figures in Miami who were perpetually one speech away from retaking Havana; the Venezuelan opposition leaders repeatedly proclaimed the future president from safe distances.
The operatic design is simple: the farther the would-be diva lives from the country, the more certain Washington becomes that he’s the perfect choice.
Iran is now drifting into that familiar libretto.
The current war, punctuated by missile strikes, leadership decapitations, and an alarming number of late-night briefings, has left Iran’s political structure wobbling like a broken weather vane.
President Donald Trump has described the situation with his customary bedside manner precision.
“I’ve killed all their leaders. That room is gone,” he declared recently, summarizing the geopolitical landscape with the subtlety of a bowling ball through a window. And just in case that left any ambiguity about Washington’s role in Iran’s future, he added another thought: “I want to be involved.”
He said this in reference to selecting Iran’s next supreme leader.
Which is how, in the span of a few days, the question of who will lead one of the Middle East’s most complicated societies began sounding suspiciously like a casting call.
TONGUE-TWISTERS IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Inside Iran, however, the conversation is far less theatrical.
Names circulating among political and clerical circles include Mojtaba Khamenei, the influential son of the late supreme leader; judiciary chief Gholam‑Hossein Mohseni‑Eje’i; cleric Alireza Arafi; ultraconservative theologian Mohammad Mehdi Mirbagheri and political veteran Ali Larijani.
These are the people Iranians themselves are discussing as possible successors—figures embedded in the country’s clerical networks, security apparatus and factional politics.
Which raises an entirely separate problem.
Imagine President Trump attempting to pronounce their names.
This is, after all, a man who has spent years demonstrating a certain improvisational approach to proper nouns. During his presidency, he famously tangled with the names of Tim Cook (whom he briefly called “Tim Apple”), Yosemite National Park (rendered as “Yo-semite”), and even Elon Musk (whose name has occasionally received experimental phonetic variations).
How terribly clever the writer is. Is he rich?
Now picture him confidently announcing the appointment of Ayatollah Mohammad Mehdi Mirbagheri.
Cable news anchors would require phonetic subtitles.
Still, the White House appears eager to weigh in, even if the new supreme leader is a rotisserie chicken.
Meanwhile, events inside Iran continue moving at their own pace.
The war has begun to produce small but symbolic fractures in the state apparatus. Since the escalation began, at least two Iranian diplomats stationed in Europe, including officials in Geneva and Vienna, have defected and sought asylum rather than return home.
Two diplomats may not sound like much.
But in a system that prizes loyalty and ideological discipline, defections are the political equivalent of cracks in a dam wall. Small at first. Then, suddenly, very interesting.
That’s when the exiles start circling again.
They always do.
Somewhere outside Iran, a microphone is already waiting for the Shah’s son. Somewhere in Washington, a policy memo is quietly suggesting that a familiar face, preferably one who speaks fluent English and owns a suit without missile shrapnel in it, could stabilize the country.
And somewhere inside Iran, millions of people who have spent decades navigating the strange, stubborn reality of the Islamic Republic are watching all of this with a certain scepticism. They have seen outside powers pick their leaders before and remember how that story ended.
Which is why revolutions rarely follow the scripts written for them abroad. Why history intimates that the next leader of Iran will almost certainly emerge from inside the country’s labyrinthine political machinery, not from an exile’s living room.
Even if, somewhere in Washington, someone is still rehearsing the pronunciation.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
03/07/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1816 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
I recommend Barrack Obama.
Posted by: chris ||
03/07/2026 5:09 Comments ||
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#2
Be carful if you are in formation and everyone else takes a step back.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/07/2026 10:03 Comments ||
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#4
There's a new ayatollah in town,
None too keen to be queen. ["Ooh, a crown!']
Moans the chorus of ghosts,
"Oh, no! Two talkshow hosts?"
"Man, they canned us for Candace?"
"Get down!"
["Make my funk a P-Funk. I wants to get funked uh-hup..."]
Posted by: Bob Trotsky1892 ||
03/07/2026 15:08 Comments ||
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#5
^snaps fingers
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/07/2026 18:47 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
