Decision 2008

A few short observations today. I want to start looking at what the different presidential campaigns are starting to do online. The early multi-platform results are not good. Fred Wilson reports his disappointment at what the candidates are offering. He says that it looks closer to 1995 than 2007. No real blogging or grassroots efforts. Screened questions answered by email.

I had lunch today with a friend who's become very involved with creating the King's Academy in Jordan. It's been termed by the New Yorker, CBS and the NYT as Deerfield in the Desert. King Abdallah has modeled it after his alma mater, the centuries old Massachusetts prep school. But it strikes me that he's really on to something. The idea is to deliver a secular education to kids in the Middle East. True, there will be a lot of rich kids, but 15% of the tuition is geared toward providing scholarships to kids from the region. There are also scholarships being put into place for kids from Israel. If there's anything that can be done to broaden the horizons of smart and ambitious kids from the Middle East that does not entail sending them to radical madrasses or religious schools, I'm all for it.