they really should post this in every classroom and give one to every incoming freshman...

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1 : Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6 : If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8 : Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9 : Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11 : Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

so apparently you can't increase your child's ability to learn words and/or increase their intellegence with a dvd. shocking! :) click here to read the whole article.

do you sometimes feel that you aren't getting as much gas as the pumps says? the truth is, sometimes you really aren't. in texas now, the state aggriculture department has made public the fuel station out of compliance report. the information is on the stations that have been out of compliance for the past 60 days. this report is updated periodically and is current only as of the date indicated in the header of the report. They even provide the definitions of the offenses. some offense are minor and are not harmful to consumers, such as "LED Outage" but others are more serious. austin has a handful with major violations, mainly with smaller gas stations. houston on the other hand, lots that are shorting people. it's bad enough that it takes $50-$60 to fill up my camry these days...i don't need people shorting me on gas. check out the list before you go fill up.