"facts are stubborn things;

and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." - john adams

america's 15-year-olds performed below the international average in math and problem solving, according to test results released by the program for international student assessment (pisa). given in the spring of 2003, the pisa test assesses the abilities of 15-year-old students from 41 countries to apply learning to problems with a real-world context. twenty-three other countries outperformed the u.s. in math and 25 outperformed us in problem solving.

students who had access to multiple computers at home or who used pcs several times a week at school experienced a significant falloff in their math and reading performance, according to a recent german study. the study consisted of 175,000 15-year-olds in 31 countries.


meanwhile, major league baseball continues its pitchers' merry-go-round. the new york yankees are on the verge of acquiring 41-year-old randy johnson from the arizona diamondbacks. the red sox were hoping to respond with a bold move of their own by acquiring oakland's tim hudson.

but instead, hudson, a georgia native, is headed here to atlanta in exchange for two young pitchers and outfielder charles thomas. plus, the braves were able to move john smoltz out of the bullpen and back into the starting rotation by acquiring closer dan kolb from the brewers. so, with pedro martinez in new york with the mets, who also have former brave tom glavine in their starting rotation, it looks like the braves will be using hudson and smoltz to face martinez and glavine next summer during the regular-season braves-mets games.

meanwhile, the sox will be facing johnson in pinstripes over in the american league.

i'm not making any playoff predictions at this time, though . . .