I Believe that Children Are Our Future Dept.

Email of the Day from America's Youth: I get a lot of emails from students requesting help with their high school projects. Here's the latest (and all-time greatest):

hey steve my name is gus, i am doing a project at school in a group. i need some info on whale sailers in the 1700 please help me man i have to find out the requirements to be one or what their lives were like

thanks man

I'd love to write your report for you, Gus, but, tragically, the Sailers are descended from Swiss ropemakers ("seilers"), not whale sailors.

(By the way, the switch in spelling from "Seiler" to "Sailer" came a few hundred years ago when an ancestor was elected mayor of the village of Wil and decided to change the name to show off the family's high-falutin' new status, just like an Englishman changing his name from "Smith" to "Smythe.")

Another email has just arrived:

yo steve since your helping that other guy with his whale sailer project..... could you help me with a school report on stevedores?

Like what they do, how much they make, etc?

This of course is why I'm qualified to comment on the Dubai Ports controversy, and, say, David Brooks is not. His expertise is in floods, fishing, and fighting giants.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer