From April through June etc . . .
- Parenting and technology--"When I see Josie clutching her grandmother’s Kindle to play Angry Birds for the 10th straight time, or I watch my son stuporously soaking up a cartoon, I’m really seeing myself as a kid — anxious, needy for love but willing to settle for electronic distraction to soothe my nerves or hold tedium at bay. And if experiencing this blast from the past weren’t troubling enough, I also get to confront my current failings as a parent." (NYT)
- A teacher reflects on teaching, upon retirement--"First, accept that meeting the individual learning needs of 110 students every day is simply impossible. No matter how many benchmark tests you administer, how precisely you think you have identified each student’s Achilles heel, how much you love them — you can’t control when they went to bed (or didn’t) the night before; what they ate for breakfast (or didn’t) that morning; whose parent just went to prison or lost a job. Life doesn’t get measured very well on Quia tests, when you get right down to it."
- "I’ve often thought that the single most devastating cyberattack a diabolical and anarchic mind could design would not be on the military or financial sector but simply to simultaneously make every e-mail and text ever sent universally public. It would be like suddenly subtracting the strong nuclear force from the universe; the fabric of society would instantly evaporate, every marriage, friendship and business partnership dissolved. Civilization, which is held together by a fragile web of tactful phrasing, polite omissions and white lies, would collapse in an apocalypse of bitter recriminations and weeping, breakups and fistfights, divorces and bankruptcies, scandals and resignations, blood feuds, litigation, wholesale slaughter in the streets and lingering ill will." (NYT)
- A fun exploration of regional accents and language usage
- A writer reflects on his son's autism (Guardian)
- Frank Bruni, on the impact of the SCOTUS same-sex marriage ruling (NYT)
- Frank Bruni, on religion and the Boy Scouts (NYT)
- Two blogs on old age and dementia (NYT)
- On analysis of the mysterious Voynich manuscript (BBC)
- Recipe for Mary Todd Lincoln's "Courting Cake"
- An Israeli program to keep Holocaust memories alive (BBC)
- The coffee klatch of death (NYT)
- "Worst End of School Mom Ever" --"We are limping, limping across the finish line, folks. I tapped out somewhere in April and at this point, it is a miracle my kids are still even going to school. I haven’t checked homework folders in three weeks, because, well, I just can’t. Cannot. Can. Not. I can’t look at the homework in the folder. Is there homework in the folder? I don’t even know. Are other moms still looking in the homework folder? I don’t even care."
- Nellie's revenge! The actress from Little House on the Prairie's success (NYT)
- An experiment on high-density living
- Paul Krugman's op ed "Sympathy for Luddites" on jobs
- On the educational practice of grouping kids by level (NYT)
- A life-saving article, "Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning"
- Civil War reenactors' alternate universe (Slate)
- Pareidolia, or seeing faces in inantimate objects (BBC)
- Battling cancer together
- "What Not to Say at the Bedside"
- Baby fat:--"In our weight-obsessed culture, parents may try to restrict a robust child with a hearty appetite because they assume that enjoying food and eating a lot means she will get fat. It doesn’t, and it doesn’t work." (NYT)
- Fat and gut bacterium
- "The Courage of Teachers" in the tornado in OK and elsewhere
- "How American Became a Third World Country" (Guardian)
- Smithsonian gets a slave cabin
- "Is the NRA Un-American"
- Talking with kids about sex --Room for Debate
- Sleep deprivation and education (BBC)
- Antibiotics and back pain
- No rich child left behind
- Is the US inherently violent? NYT op ed
- Great book list for kids of 1970s and 1980s
- Jane Austen, Game Theorist
- Do you "like" cancer survivors? Don't.
