Scot,
You asked about prospects for seeing Google’s Chrome OS on the Mac. Two things: firstly, I’m not sure, but suspect the Mac’s system and software architecture is a lot less open and harder for third parties to develop core components for. And secondly… why on earth would someone who has invested in the beauty and simplicity of OS X want to replace it? Seriously, I don’t think there’ll be much overlap between the kind of people who typically buy a Mac and the kind of people who want to be able to use a lightweight, mainly cloud-based system. (That’s not meant to sound elitist, by the way!)
Rob

Thanks for the shout out Scot.
As to Dowd vs. Brooks. She knows how to do one thing, sometimes well, but it get’s old fast. One wonders how she’s kept a gig like that so long. Great column by Brooks. May the pendulum swing back in his direction, or rather in the direction of dignity.

By far the best op-ed read this week was by former Reagan speech writer Reggy Noonan, who addressed the phenomenon which is Sarah Palin as a Republican millstone. She knocked it out of the park!
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/declarations.html

I’m a bit surprised with Kristof’s list of books for kids. Granted there are some great books on that list, but it leaves of some major classics and (as he admitted in a follow up post) it consists of “classics with white middle class protagonists, or animals that behave like middle class white families [which] may not resonate quite as much among poor kids who need to read. Given the type of stuff he usually takes on, I’m surprised that his list was so limited in that way.

On the grade-changing requests: Why am I not surprised?
I look at this phenomenon (and it’s even happened at the community college I’m taking classes at in prep for my teaching degree) as a fallout of the “gold stars for everyone” mentality that’s pervaded so much of our educational system. We’ve gone so far in the self-esteem department that we’ve produced an incredibly narcissistic generation that believes that if they do “most” of the work, they “deserve” a good result.
Excuse me, but I don’t seem to recall that being true in any of my classes. If you only do most of the work, you only know most of the material, and it shows up on your test, when there are questions you didn’t study for! Give me a break. I think with the whole idea of self-esteem curriculum, we’ve given ourselves enough rope with which to hang ourselves.

Tweet of the week. Maybe someday that’ll rival the Nobel?

Just to answer the question on Chrome for the Mac: technically, you can run any operating system on a Mac. Many people have installed various Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc.) onto Macs either in addition to or in replacement of OSX (though, I agree that there is never a reason to replace OSX). Chrome OS is basically a Linux distribution, though it will be a very unique one.
So yes, it will be possible, though it does require a bit of geekery to set up a computer to boot multiple operating systems. It will also be possible to virtualize it, like many people do with VMWare Fusion or Parallels to run Windows on Macs, so that the systems can access each other and switch back and forth without restarting.

I think Mark Roberts’ missional post does a good job in addressing the issue RJS brought up (not setting up missional work and programs within the church as an either/or) in comments on my Friday/Friends post a week ago.

Pujols is quite a hitter. Must have been fun to see him, even if it meant another loss for your Cubbies.