Author Archive
what we’re reading
The Smithsonian explores the march towards absolute zero – while NOVA asks if an absolute maximum temperature exists. / The Wall Street Journal on expecting families who are giving their first baby (read: dog) sensitivity training. / Theyrule offers an interactive guide to the networks that connect the directors of the world’s largest corporations.
what we’re reading
Newsweek released their 2008 rankings of the best high schools in America. Huntingtown slipped to 568th, 144 positions below last year’s rank of 424th (which was a marked improvement on 2006’s 891st ranking). Jay Mathews explains the methodology behind the rankings here.
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We’re also following the Washington Post’s weeklong series on chidlhood obesity: poor diets and sedentary lifestyles have pushed more than one third of all children into the ranks of the overweight or obese, triple what they had been a generation ago. Elementary school children, the Post writes, are now subject to high blood pressure, cholesterol, and Type 2 diabetes – creating the very real possibility that our generation will live far shorter than our parents. Read the reports on PE classes, school lunches, and a ‘fat school‘ where tuition costs upwards of $6000 per month to help students lose weight.
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And, TechCrunch reports on Facebook’s upcoming changes to profile designs. The company, TechCrunch writes, wishes to make profiles more refined and easier to manage.
what we’re reading
The Wall Street Journal on how elementary school fundraisers have perverted our childhood. / With less than a third of teenagers with real jobs this summer, a profile of teenagers who are making as much as $2,000 per month as virtual contractors and designers on Second Life for their summer job. / GameDaily speculates that PS3 and Xbox 360 price cuts are near – with perhaps a Blu-ray enabled 360 even closer. / Inside Higher Ed on the future of foreign language education in the United States.
what we’re reading
On The New Republic’s The Plank, a how-to guide on how to survive a Colbert interview. To put Colbert on the defensive, Thomas Schaller writes, make some of your answers less than a sentence to throw him off. Colbert has to ad-lib the transition from one question to the next. The more you say, the greater the potential folly.
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It’s a great time to be a kid says the nonprofit Foundation for Child Development: mortality rates among kids are down, we feel safer at school, parents are reading to their children more, television is being restricted and obesity is up. By all means, draw your own conclusions if you must.
what we’re reading
From the Wall Street Journal this week: a profile of three college super-delegates who have become important to the Obama and Clinton campaigns. Also, a look at hooking-up among campaign staffers – Amy Chozick’s article notes that Sen. Bill Bradley’s 2000 camaign resulted in at least five marriages and six babies.
what we’re reading
and occasionally watching too. Frontline reports on how the Internet is changing 
childhood in the first generation to grow up with the Internet – the entire program is available online. Elsewhere, Anne Trubek, a college professor, freelance writer, and parent writes on the increasing irrelevancy of handwriting. “Boys and girls, it’s time to put down your pencils.” And from The Washington Post, Eli Saslow’s story on Pittsburgh’s 28-year old mayor – the youngest in modern US history. (Photo from pghgov.com.)
what we’re reading
what we’re reading
In one of my favorite episodes of The Office (which returns April 10th), Michael, played by Steve Carell, blindly follows his GPS system into Lake Scranton. Jennifer Saranow reports in The Wall Street Journal that he is not alone: the dramatic fall in price of navigation systems (halved to $225 last Christmas) means that some 49 million devices – in cars or mobiles – are now in use. The “all-knowing boxes” have sent their users into oncoming traffic, and random houses mistaken as restaurants or government buildings. TeleAtlas has some 5.5 million streets in its U.S. database – to which it makes some 3 million changes per month; apparently, not enough to keep some drivers from naming their boxes after Stephen King’s “Christine.”
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Slate has an excellent Explainer column on “What are mortgage backed securities, anyway?” offers insight on the financial instruments at the heart of the financial maelstrom that is still, in David Leonhardt’s piece in The New York Times, beyond our grasp.
what we’re reading
“A Full Kid Press” | Amy Orndorff
The KidsPost isn’t the first place I look for stories for the Reader – but this week’s article on the kid reporters who are covering the presidential election for Scholastic News caught my eye as a former member on the Scholastic Kids Council back in fifth grade.
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Do check out NPR Music’s coverage of SXSW 2008 – including their downloads and streams from the concerts.
what we’re reading
Time | Carolyn Sayre
The beard brigade
Time reports on the renewed popularity of the beard – that, Huntingtown students knew. What is news is the existence of international facial-hair-growing competitions: Beard Team USA finished first in five out of seventeen competitions last year, including freestyle mustache.
US News & World Report | Eddy Ramirez
Before that diploma, one more requirement
High schools are increasingly requiring their students to complete capstone projects – in the case of Maine, all students are required to complete a college application to graduate. Elsewhere, schools like Denver’s Arrupe Jesuit High School require students to work in a professional setting all four years of high school, working “one day a week in banks, alw firms, veterinarians’ offices, and other businesses.”
Shaj Mathew
kahutzler
