One of the things I like to see happen is private money

 being put to use for something. I really don't care too much what it is.

I glanced at an article and I guess some private non profit outfit is still looking for Amelia Earhart who was lost trying to fly around the world in the eary 30s.

I guess the organization hired someone and they have used SONAR and located an airplane wreck out smack dab in the middle of nowhere and will probably try and identify it.

Whille I suppose if I felt like it I could write a 36 volume set on the search for her, it is not what I am writing about now. 

I'm writing on the subject of private money and people using it for what they want to use it for.

A number of our richer citizens over the years have put their money to use trying to do various things ranging from good to evil and while I am a supporter of good things, I just like to see people at least get out and try to do something with their money.

If I recall, Ted Turner gave a humongous chunk of money to the UN a few years back. It was his money to do as he saw fit and he did something with it. While I can think of a few causes I'd rather have seen Turner fund, it was his money to give to the UN.

I like seeing big money foundations spend their money on smart people in the form of scholarships and the like as I think that an education is a good thing to have if it is useful. This holds true to engineering and the hard sciences.

I suppose that if a foundation wanted to spend money on special education that'd be fine, too. I notice that these days the amount of money the government spends on special ed seems to have gone up and while it is a humanitarian thing to do the truth is it is money spent we will never see get back to us.

In my opinion special education money should be used to get special needs children put in a position where they can do some good somehow. Sheltered workshops seem to be pretty good places, at least from what I have seen.

I had a cousin that was truly brilliant and managed to snag a full scholarship to Einstein Medical School in New York. While he died as a student there the idea of putting money behind brilliant kids is generally a pretty good investment. I'd just bet that my cousin, had he lived, really would have made a difference.

I suppose that while I am on the subject of putting money into brilliance it should be noted that the present system stifles talent. When have you ever seen a high school truly accelerate a kid?

Yes, they do have 'advanced placement' courses for some of the brighter kids but you have to realize that even most of the kids in the AP courses are just a bit brighter than their peers in the normal courses.

I would imagine that if you had a high school of about 3000 kids and hauled the brightest 2 or 3 kids there and truly accelerated them the rest of the parents would whine about their kids not getting their fair share.

I would love to see the outrage of a parent being told the truth that their kid is fairly bright but not truly brilliant. A lot of parents don't like to face the fact that their kid is fairly normal.

The result, of course, is that we dumb down a lot of things.

Enter private money. 

This would be a great place to spend a little private money. The advantage to it being that the foundation can simply pick and choose the best and brightest and spend their money on them. It's their money to spend.

I had this discussion a couple of years ago and the guy I was talking to asked, "Well, what about MY son?"

"What about him? Pretty bright kid but I don't see him doing Quantum Physics problems or Quadratic equations in his head while he was in 7th grade. That's the kind of brain we're talking about. Not some kid that is simply well above average."

He wanted to argue and I brought him up short.

"You went to the same school your son did," I said. "They didn't even teach you to count because if they did you wouldn't be supporting political candidates that spend money we don't have. It's as simple as that."

He didn't like that but it really was the truth.

Too bad Ted Turner didn't put the billion toward a fund to nurture the top .01% of our kids. Instead of the money being divvied up between a bunch of Third-World countries where it's likely to be stolen by some warlord anyway it could have gone to making all of our lives a little better.

Still, it was Ted's money to do with it as he saw fit.

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html