I hope that intro copy was meant ironically. EVERYONE thinks things are "so much worse" now than when they were in school. Of course if you look at math alone, the US is going to lag behind other countries. This is because the US is one of the few countries that believes in wholistic, liberal education that puts equal stock in the sciences and humanities. We educate the individual, not the next number pusher. And the juxtaposition of the foreign students and the American students answering the president question was a perfect exercise in propaganda. I could go ask 100 people any question I want right now and just clip together the five dumbest answers to prove a point. What's the point of the continual "bad schools" message? Well, for starters it's predominantly directed a public schools to scare parents into sending their kids to private schools or to support voucher programs, et al. I don't know what Oprah is getting out of sending this message. Since you can't access test results from private schools (if the kids take them anyway) you have know what of knowing whether they are better off than the public ones. They do succeed at segregation based on wealth and race, though.

"Beiug a maid of honor at a wedding does not mean that you officially endorse the marriage."

Actually, depending on the church the friend is getting married in, it can. I got married in the Episcopal church, and the idea behind being a maid of honor/best man, being a "witness," was that you were officially endorsing the wedding. I do not know if that is the case for other religions.

I think Cary's advice is spot-on in this case.

Though I refuse on principle to listen to "Jack," because the whole idea of computer-controlled media scares me, the thing that really gets me about Jack is the "We're Jack" part. And the billboards in my city that say "Jack FM: Playing What We Want." This is a computer program, right? So, when I read "Playing what we want," I'm thinking, 'What? Is this computer program sentient?' And, if so, how can it "want"? If it has musical preferences, what other preferences does it have? Isn't that scary? I feel so much closer to August 29, 1997....