August 2006
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Improving Scores with Gender Segregation
In classrooms across the US today, some 80% of teachers are female. A recent report shows that in these classrooms, it is quite likely that the teacher in front of these classrooms then affects how those students learn – but perhaps not in the way you might think….
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Everything's Smaller in New Orleans
As on-again, off-again Ernesto bears down on Florida, we're reminded that it was one year ago today that Hurricane Katrina was battering New Orleans, and this produced an entirely new paradigm. As people in Texas like to say that everything there is bigger, when you speak of New…
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Proposing an Official Language
I'll admit that I'm a white guy who is all too rapidly approaching middle age and doesn't get a lot of things, and at the risk of sounding even more clueless than usual, one of those is why so many people are against an official language for the…
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Coastal Wine Trail of Southeastern New England
On our recent trip to Rhode Island, we decided to visit a winery. Surely there are wineries in the area, right? As it turns out, there are. But first, we thought it would be even more interesting to stop and get some cheese when we stumbled upon this…
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Pluto, We Hardly Knew Ye
The International Astronomical Union, meeting in Prague, agreed on a proposal to define what exactly makes up a planet – and in so doing, trimmed our solar system to eight "classical" planets, unceremoniously giving Pluto the boot. The new rules say that not only must a planet orbit…
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Blockbuster Rewards Are Anything But Rewarding
After our first trimester of participating in the Blockbuster Rewards program, I'm not happy, I'm not feeling rewarded and if there was ever any doubt in my mind why this company is financially troubled and young upstarts such as Netflix are so popular, it's long gone. First, an…
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Are Security Checkpoints the Way to Go?
While undoubtedly there are those who will tout the announcement that the UK has foiled a massive plan to blow up a series of trans-atlantic planes a success and we should all be growing warm fuzzies about now, I'd suggest that perhaps the exact opposite is true: About…
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The Root of All Evil
It appears that Dennis Kozlowski, the former head of Tyco and infamous for being one of the executives associated with looting their companies while shareholders suffered, is the recipient of another blow. What's so special about this one? His wife, Karen Kozlowski, has filed for divorce. Nothing odd…
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Public Schools versus Private Schools
Not so very long ago, we made the decision to enroll our kids in a private school. Though I've never particularly been against private schools, I haven't really been for them either. I always figure that they were a bit unnecessary. But we made the decision, and with…
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Chrysler's 30-Day Return Program
Have you seen those commercials for the 30 day test drive? Chrysler is billing it as employee pricing plus – like you're getting employee pricing on the car plus one heck of a great deal. I submit that you may or may not be getting the employee price,…