Age: Australian education among world’s top five
“”It is based not on the conventional yardstick of how many students reach what level of education, but on testing what pupils actually know and what they are able to do,” UNICEF said.”

I read Louis ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’ de Bernieres‘ Red Dog last night. It’s a really finely observed story about the adventures of a dog in Western Australia. It’s also incredibly upsetting if you’ve left your own knock-about Australian dog half a world away.

Where not to shop: BBC: Gap hit by ‘sweatshop’ protests

I bought myself a vi mug as a ‘I got my work permit!’ present.

Age: Vic programmer among top four in US coding contest

Reasons to hate Microsoft: the error message “Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error ‘80040e14’
Syntax error or access violation”
could mean ‘your user doesn’t have the right to execute this stored procedure’, a syntax error, or ‘could not find the named stored procedure’.
Couldn’t they have spent the extra day it would have taken to write useful relevant error messages? If you’re after a fix for ODBC Drivers error ‘80040e14’, two quick test fixes: check that the stored procedure actually exists, and check that your db user has permission to run it. If you know other solutions, leave a comment and I’ll add them.

Warning of serious Windows hole, just for a change.
“This is the 65th security bulletin issued by Microsoft so far this year.”

Congratulations Lee-Anne! http://www.leeanneart.com/

Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, and George W. Bush arrive
at the Pearly Gates and introduce themselves.
St. Peter says, “Prove to me that’s who you are.”
Einstein takes a piece of paper, writes E=MC squared, and
then starts writing the formulas that lead him to it.
St. Peter says, “I believe you, come on in.”
Picasso takes out a pencil and paper and starts to draw.
St. Peter says, “I believe, you come on in.”
George W. Bush says to St. Peter, “Who were those guys?”
St. Peter says, “Come on in, George.”

11% of Americans could not find America