According to The Atlantic, Finland's schools break many of the rules we have in America. There's not excessive homework. They pay their teachers well. They encourage creativity and discourage competition among students. And their students do well.
I am currently fuming at FedEx because UPS couldn't deliver a package because they couldn't locate my post office because USPS had to consolidate because congress put a burden on the post office that any other corporation could have sued to get out from under had they tried to inflict it on them. I explain why FedEx in Who is Killing the Post Office?
Current frustrating details: I ordered a new scanner from TigerDirect a few days ago. Today I wondered why it hadn't been delivered. They usually have things at my door within a couple of days. So I tracked it online, and found the UPS reported that the recipient had moved and left no forwarding address.
Me, moved? I haven't moved in 21 years, and regularly get deliveries from this company.
So I called TigerDee. They only knew what I knew from the online tracking.
I called UPS. Several tries at hacking my way through their labyrinthine voice mail system and I finally reached a person who could inform me that UPS now uses USPS for local residential deliveries. 
But as of this month, my local zip code office apparently no longer handles our zip code. And UPS couldn't figure out where to send the package. So they returned it! Because UPS couldn't locate the post office!
This is not the views of Iran that the American Government wants you to see. They would prefer that you see a grotesque cartoon version of Iran that makes you scream for wide scale military violence. When the Soviet Union aimed thousands of long-range missiles tipped with nuclear bombs at us, we acted with restraint and some intelligence, like adults, but we apparently no longer have that capacity.
The Onion Network News is at it again, hitting several targets at once in this "news" report:
Did The Media Treat Bachmann Unfairly Because She's An Insane Woman?
At Common Dreams, Bill McKibben offers this staggering statistic:
The Chamber of Commerce spent more money on the 2010 elections than the Republican and Democratic National Committees combined, and 94% of those dollars went to climate-change deniers. That helps explain why the House voted last year to say that global warming isn’t real.