Multi-ball is what I’m entitling posts with many unrelated thoughts and links. Yes, I’m using a pinball term.

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When asked what I miss most about being an on-campus student at the University of Manitoba, I always answer the chapel at my home college. This year, the chapel at St. John’s College held its annual Christmas Eve service. The choir from Trinity Presbyterian Church sung at the mass and one of their members uploaded a few pictures to a blog. The candles outside on the walkway make me long even more for my resident student days.

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The current education minister in the United Kingdom is calling for a pre-election all-party education debate to occur in the lead-up to the country’s general election latter this year. Britain will experience its first leaders debate later this year after the third large political parties agreed to hold the debate.

It’s an interesting idea, but sadly would be hard to transplant to Canada.

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Pinball news! There are photos of a test model of Stern’s next pinball Machine Big Buck Hunter Pro. pinballnews.com has coverage here: http://www.pinballnews.com/games/bigbuckhunter/index.html

Not sure what I think of the machine right now. It looks like it will be an interesting and challenging game. That said, the last couple of Stern pinball machines have been major disappointments.

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Speaking of pinball, I’ll be skipping again this week. Really behind on school and writing. My own fault, I’ve been slacking.

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The Wall Street Journal’s blog Real Time Economics wrote last week about a novel paper produced by the United States Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia stating that higher education retention rates can be improved by offering insurance policies to cover student debt for those who fail. The paper’s theory is hard to prove or disprove and makes for interesting reading. The WSJ report does a great job summarizing the paper and includes a link to the full document.

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