Couple of things

- I think this is well-intentioned, but somewhat misguided. For the past two years, the state government has slashed funding to services - including threatening to eliminate funding for school nurses - and the revenues continue to fall. The problem isn't that state legislators aren't willing to cut, but rather that the only answer they have is to cut. I'm not on board with, say, expanding the sales tax to services, but I'm fully content with establishing a more progressive tax system and reviewing our annual tax exemptions.

- Speaking as the guy who covered both the Oconee County and Commerce state title games, the problem is talent, but there's honestly nothing you can do 'build that up' in the grand scheme of things. Those teams were once-in-a-generation teams that were overflowing with talent. Commerce, a Class A school with 300 students, had four Division I-A prospects on its state championship team, including two - Monte Williams and Michael Collins - ranked in the Top 100 by most recruiting analysts. Oconee County's 1999 championship squad had five or six Division I-A prospects. Those are instances of catching lightning in the bottle, and it's hard to repeat that (Greene County was close during Josh Nesbitt's junior season, but they got upset in the Class AA semifinals).

- Speaking of Williams, watch 'The Run' ... it's still the most ridiculous football play I've ever seen.

- Here's a really cool story on the role of New Media technology in the classroom.

- As a programming update, the past week has been rather busy - which, given the economy, is a very good thing - but it has slowed blogging somewhat. In addition, soem of that business can be attributed to, well, the blog. We've got some ideas we're sorting through, and some I've had for quite a while, but they're taking some time to work on. We've got some more information coming your way soon.