Archive for Washington Post

what we’re reading

May 21, 2008 at 2:25 pm · Filed under hno content and tagged: , , , , ,

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.

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what we’re reading

April 24, 2008 at 4:52 pm · Filed under hno content and tagged: , ,

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.

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what we’re reading

April 10, 2008 at 2:44 pm · Filed under hno content and tagged: , , , ,

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.)

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what we’re reading

March 28, 2008 at 7:03 pm · Filed under hno content and tagged: , , , , , , ,

From Hoops to Hipsters
The Washington Post
“Half the history of Converse is about basketball, and the rest is about something far more complicated, about the ways a plain sneaker is consistently adored by anticonsumer consumers,” Hank Steuver writes on the shoes’ 100-year anniversary.
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Young Drivers on the Radar
The Wall Street Journal 
According to the National  Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were13 million 15-20 year old drivers in 2006; the 3,490 deaths by vehicle accidents make them the leading cause of death for the age group.  The Wall Street Journal’s Personal Journal writes on insurers who are offering discounts to teen drivers, a group M.P. McQueen writes, “that they’ve traditionally tried to avoid.”  An accompanying article on the in-car cameras and GPS trackers that parents are using on their teenage drivers is worth the read for one parent’s explanation of the monitoring services alone: “‘Around my house, we have the golden rule.  He who has the gold makes the rule … If you want my checkbook and my car with my name on it, these are my rules.’”
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 ”Colorful Converse Shoe Star”by Patty Mitchell on Flickr.  Creative Commons.

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