SF New Mexican:
Junk food out of school vending machines in 2006. Excellent.
SF New Mexican:
Expanding pre-k statewide will cost $59 million. Some benighted individuals view this initiative as an attempt at early ‘governmental mind-control’, rather than the day-care young mothers desire.
Yahoo News:
Where was Senator Stevens when the Sears Catalogue published a model more than filling his boxer shorts, a couple or three decades ago? Indecency in catalog publishing! Imagine all the children corrupted (and we kids certainly passed that one around before our parents got wind of it)! Heaven forfend!
SF New Mexican:
Pennsylvania voters oust school board that backed intelligent design.
LA Weekly:
The Kids Aren’t All Right: Is over-education killing young artists? Overeducated? Hmmm. Imagine my surprise after talking to someone who attended one of the country’s finest art institutions, only to find that they didn’t teach perspective because it was ‘too limiting.’
SF New Mexican:
A new spot for hip-hop: DJs spin at smaller venues, hope to keep music alive. Hip-hop collides with upper-middle-class residential neighborhood. I’ll be interested in the fallout.
Bloomberg:
College Tax Breaks Are a Mess and Should Be Fixed. ” A family investing in a 529 program with a state tax break can double its money over 18 years if it earns more than $335,000, owing to the greater tax benefit conferred to that income level. The family earning $35,000, by contrast, will only accumulate about $1,200 after taxes, Dynarski discovered.”
NY Times Education:
For Some College Graduates, a Fanciful Detour (or Two) Before Their Careers Begin.
NY Times Fashion & Style:.
Parents Fret That Dialing Up Interferes With Growing Up. Hmmm. Yes. Well. At least IM is interaction with a real person. This is what bothers me about shows like “SuperNanny”. There’s no ‘scheduled’ interaction with other kids, parents seem to be the be-all-and-end-all of a child’s social development. Not a healthy thing, in my book. I played with other kids on the block, four-square, kick-the-can, hung out, built things in basements, played frisbee and flew balsa-wood planes. Saturday cartoons were one thing, but who wanted to trade fun for staring at a crummy TV set every day? When a child is in school, other children do not respond as adults do. Limit the child’s social experiences, and you put them at a disadvantage.
SF New Mexican:
ACLU: Rio Rancho teachers can refuse to teach intelligent design. “In one instance, students took up class time in anatomy and physiology class debating evolution and intelligent design, and the next day another student brought the Book of Mormon and wanted to discuss his beliefs, Barbour said. A chemistry teacher reported a student bringing in a Bible and demanding to discuss intelligent design.” As I predicted. The bizarre thing about all this is, science would naturally create an ‘intelligent design’ argument if there was evidence to indicate such. Trying to paste ‘intelligent design’ over processes that are not yet explained, but are expected to be explained, is just silly. Now, if regular patterns were found hundreds of places into pi, as Carl Sagan theorized in his fictional work “Contact”, can anyone argue that some form of “intelligent design” would not become a working theory at that point? It would be vigorously debated, surely, but it would be a valid and very popular theory. My point is that intelligent design doesn’t need to be forced down science’s throat. It’s already available ... it’s just that there’s nothing that warrants its use at present.
I offer this thought: What would happen if someone declared the mechanism that allows the H5N1 virus to jump from avians to humans “irreducibly complex”? Exactly what scientific purpose would that serve? What is the difference between “too complex to figure out with our current level of knowledge” and “irreducibly complex”?
SF New Mexican:
SF New Mexican:
Frito Pie as a deadly weapon?
Fox News:
Should Age of Mother Factor in Fertility Insurance Coverage? Unfortunately, many women who were born in the 60’s and 70’s don’t have the current information on how fast their fertility degrades. It’s a shock to many; I hear it over and over again in social circles. The era emphasized “build that career first!” Men are not immune to age-related reproductive slowdowns, either. You shoot more blanks. I don’t have a fix, but I hear of so many approaching 40 who are getting blindsided by the fact that they look and feel young, but have ‘senile’ sexual reproductive parts.
I lean on the side of helping them rather than penalizing them.
NY Times Letters to the Editor:
One more, No Diapers? No Way! “Child-centric” is part of the disease, certainly. Moderation in all things.
NY Times Movies:
Marketing of ‘Narnia’ Presents Challenge. Are these albums ‘inspired by the movie’, or actual music from the soundtrack? If so, the lyrics quoted here go far beyond what CS Lewis did.
NY Times Letters to the Editor:
Not Walking Yet, but Diaper-Free. I was waiting to see the backlash on the original article! My thought was (and this is after helping diaper 86 foster newborns over many years), is a question of supposed ‘consistency of indicators’ and micromanagement of your (parents’) time. Kids ain’t as consistent as the article intimated.
CNN:
Doctors challenge baby feeding myths. Doctors, as per usual, are not the be-all-and-end-all of knowledge. They extend as far as scholarly studies allow. Parents experiment. Always have, always will. Nothing like the direct feedback of a diaper ...
Guardian.UK:
National treasures. Better education means paying teachers a living wage.
New York Metro.com:
Backward, Christian Soldiers! “Then came August, when I discovered that Bill Gates’s foundation is a principal funder of the Discovery Institute ...” Microsoft and Intelligent Design. Whoo baby.
Orion:
Charlotte’s webpage. “Computers not only divert students from recess and other unstructured experiences, but also replace those authentic experiences with virtual ones, creating a separate set of problems.” The computer is a tool, not a destination.
The New Yorker:
Getting in. Is Ivy worth it?
Oh, jeez ...
Brought to my attention by a friend.
SF New Mexican:
School loses students over No Child. Less students, better teacher/pupil ratio ... one would imagine better schooling might be the result.
NY Times:
Supersize Strollers Ignite Sidewalk Drama. People can be inconsiderate with strollers; to shove one aside is to ‘attack’ their child. But these same ‘doting parents’ shove their small behemoths into traffic first; shove them in crosswalks to stop traffic, at stop lights. Ask any taxi driver in Manhattan about ‘suicide strollers.’ Forgo the parents’ feelings; try to reduce the danger to the innocent children. “Excuse me, but do you really intend to leave your child in the path of that Hummer, there?”
They should make pull strollers, trailers attached to the waist. Then parents would have to stand in the street themselves ...
Hartford Advocate:
Why I’m divorced… and why you’re next. Completely and utterly depressing, but worth the read.
