She Has It in Her Head to Clarify Sayings
Glendale waitress' book shows that English expressions-- a frog in your what? -- aren't idiotic, just idiomatic.

http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ew2z0Mm2NO0G2B0HBO80EZ

By J. Michael Kennedy, Times Staff Writer

After all those years of slinging hash and refilling coffee mugs, May Pare found herself up to her eyeballs in a collection of sayings that would blow the mind of someone trying to learn English.

They were the likes of pay through the nose, using elbow grease, having a hollow leg and being lower than a snake's belly. There were heads will roll, press the flesh and keeping your eyes peeled.

She had hundreds of these sayings, many of them overheard and scribbled down while she was waiting tables at Shakers restaurant in Glendale, where she's worked on and off a but mostly on a for the last 30 years.
The result of her work is a self-published 363-page book that deals exclusively with body part idioms, in chapters ranging from butt to breath and head to toes. Not only is Pare one of the restaurant's most popular waitresses (many customers wait until they can get one of her tables), she is now something of a celebrity in her small world.

The book, "Body Idioms and More," is designed to help foreign-born students who would otherwise throw up their hands in dismay at the odd sayings, some of which give no clue to their real meaning. Think how having a frog in my throat would sound to the uninitiated.

Pare (pronounced Paray) is a scholar of the English language, her specialty both as a student and as a college teacher in her native Thailand. Later, she earned her master's degree from UCLA, with a specialty in English as a second language.

She never bandied that talent around at the coffee shop. She just took notes.
"I've learned a lot from just being here at the restaurant," said Pare as she took an afternoon break from waiting tables. "I picked up a lot of expressions from customers and co-workers."

Over the last few months the book has evolved into something of a coffee-counter project, with customers helping edit the latest edition and waitresses checking the manuscript for spelling errors.

Pare hopes to parlay her modest success (she'd like for the book to be picked up by language classes) into a shot at doing something other than jotting down food orders.

"I knew there was a need for it," she said of her book. "And I needed to do something else so I could get another job. I didn't have anything I could put on my resume."

Pare first sensed the need to define idioms about 10 years ago when she told one of her cousins a joke with an idiomatic punch line. When the cousin looked baffled, Pare told him she was just pulling his leg. The look did not change.

"He didn't get it," she said. "I told him this is the way people talk."
So began her research into idioms, often interrupted by coffee shop work and other commitments. But over the years, she collected enough to compile a book, which she had printed in Thailand during one of her visits there. That small order turned out to be a mere first draft of her anatomical opus.
It was about then that Shakers regulars like Jim Oliver and Japhet Ward came on the scene to help Pare prepare the book for its second printing.
Oliver, a 68-year-old artist who lives in Koreatown, drops into Shakers ("Breakfast All Day") about once a week, usually Sunday. He'd known Pare casually for years, but they had not become good friends because he always ate at the counter, while Pare waited tables.

"I had no idea of her background, except that she was a good waitress," Oliver recalled. "Then one day she said she wanted to show me her book, the first edition. I took it home and started reading it and when I noticed some mistakes I started taking notes. And then I began taking the notes in to her and she was very appreciative. I just sort of fell into being a help to her."

One example of Pare being slightly off point was the definition of having "a stone face," which in the first edition was described as an "ugly face."
"I showed her that it meant immobile or without expression," he said. "When she saw the difference, she was just thrilled." New definition in the second edition: "Like stone, i.e., without expression, cold, granite-like, hard, immobile."

The story was much the same for Ward, who studied music at UCLA but spent the better part of his 76 years as a clocker during early morning workouts for thoroughbreds at Hollywood Park racetrack. He'd been coming to Shakers for years and had known Pare for 19 of them.

"I sit at tables, a lot of times with May as my waitress," he said. "We've been friends for a long time, so if she had a question about a certain word or sentence, I'd tell her what I thought was correct."

Meanwhile, news of the book slowly spread through Pare's circle of customers. Susan Dougherty, the retention coordinator at Glendale Community College, bought a copy and sent it to the head of the college's English as a second language program.

"We have a lot of sayings that don't make any sense," she said. "A lot of people come here from other countries who are educated, but not in our colloquialisms. I found it fascinating to see a whole book just on body parts. I didn't know there were so many."

Robin Robinson, a longtime customer who works in the business office of Los Angeles City College, said Pare never spoke of her education or the fact that she had once taught English to college students in Thailand.
"We just loved having her as our waitress, but then to find out she was a university English professor in Thailand was just a delight," she said. "We went in one day and she showed us the book. She was very excited about it."
Linguist Anthony Aristar said it doesn't surprise him that Pare has come up with so many idioms that deal only with body parts.

"English has a huge vocabulary, much more than most languages," said Aristar, who manages the Linguist List website, which has more than 21,000 subscribers. "One thing it loves to do is borrow. English grammar is so simple you can insert all sorts of things into it."

Aristar said he would not be surprised if most of Pare's idioms are found in other such collections, but singling out body parts makes her work unusual.
"It would not surprise me that others would find this interesting," he said.
Pare, meanwhile, is beginning to think about her next project a perhaps idioms involving clothes or food a even as she hopes that an English as a second language program will include her book in its curriculum.

Pare has ordered 7,000 copies of the book's second edition and has vague plans for the new year. With luck, those plans would not include Shakers, despite all those years of taking orders.

"I shouldn't have been here this long, but time goes so fast," she said. "I appreciate having this job. I'm thankful. But I should move on."

She said she'd like to do workshops with foreign-born students trying to learn English and its many shadings. A good example, she said, is the English-language idiom "from your lips to God's ears."

The closest she could come in Thai was: "I hope it turns out to be true."
*

BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX

Body language

May Pare, a Glendale waitress who earned a master's degree from UCLA specializing in English as a second language, wrote a book dealing exclusively with body part idioms. Here is a selection of her entries and definitions:

Fire in your belly (expression): Enthusiasm/driving force/passion for what you are doing.

Rub elbows with (verb phrase): To interact socially with.

Face the music (verb phrase): To suffer the unpleasant consequences, especially of one's own actions.

A hair-trigger temper (noun phrase): A tendency to become angry very easily.
A six-pack (noun): Toned stomach muscles.

Lose your head (verb phrase): To become confused or crazy about, to lose emotional control over something.

Powder your nose (verb phrase): A polite or humorous way of saying "to go to the toilet."

On your toes (adjective phrase): Alert, ready to act.

A sharp tongue (noun phrase): A tendency to reply sharply or sarcastically.
Love handles (noun phrase): Extra flesh around your waist.

> 4) Hitachi Foundation Opens Youth Community Service Awards
> Nomination Process
>
> Deadline: April 1, 2006
>
> The Hitachi Foundation ( http://www.hitachifoundation.org/ )
> presents the Yoshiyama Award for Exemplary Service to the
> Community each year to ten high school seniors from around
> the United States on the basis of their community-service
> activities.
>
> The award is accompanied by a gift of $5,000, dispensed
> over two years. Recipients may use the award at their
> discretion. (The award is not a scholarship.)
>
> Yoshiyama Award selection is based upon service and the
> opportunity for longer-term social change rather than on
> academic achievement or extracurricular activities. Grade-
> point averages, SAT scores, and school club memberships
> are not considered in the selection process.
>
> To be eligible for the award, candidates must be gradu-
> ating high school seniors in the U.S. or U.S. territories
> (nominees need not be college bound); individuals whose
> activities impacted a socially, economically, or cul-
> turally isolated area; nominated by someone familiar with
> their service (clergy, school official, teacher, service
> agency representative, etc.); individuals whose activities
> created longer-term, sustainable social change; individuals
> whose service has surpassed what is ordinarily expected of
> a socially responsible citizen; individuals who have
> demonstrated self-motivation, leadership, creativity,
> dedication, and commitment in pursuing their service; and
> individuals who have made a conscious effort to involve
> and inspire others to participate in community action.
>
> Students must be nominated for the award. Self-nominations
> and nominations from family members are automatically
> disqualified.
>
> Visit the Hitachi Foundation Web site for complete program
> guidelines and nomination procedures.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.fdncenter.org/pnd/10000114/hitachi
>
> For additional RFPs in Children and Youth, visit:
> http://fdncenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_children.jhtml
>
> ------------------------<<>>--------------------------
>
> 5) VSA arts Invites Entries From Students and Teachers for
> Playwright Discovery Award
>
> Deadline: April 14, 2006; and July 1, 2006
>
> As part of its mission to help create a society where all
> people with disabilities learn through, participate in,
> and enjoy the arts, VSA arts ( http://www.vsarts.org/ )
> administers awards and events that recognize the artistic
> achievements of young artists with disabilities, as well
> as the leadership of cultural institutions and educators
> for excellence in inclusive arts programming.
>
> The VSA arts Playwright Discovery Award invites middle
> and high school students to take a closer look at the
> world around them, examine how disability affects their
> lives and the lives of others, and express their views
> through the art of playwriting. Young playwrights with
> and without disabilities are encouraged to submit an
> original one-act script that explores any aspect of dis-
> ability. Entries may be the work of an individual student
> or collaboration by a group or class of students. Authors
> must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents of the U.S.
> and must be a middle or high school student (i.e., grades
> six through twelve). Winning playwrights receive a $1,000
> award and a trip to Washington, D.C., to attend the VSA
> arts Playwright Discovery Award Evening and see a profes-
> sional production or staged reading of his/her play at
> the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
> (Deadline: April 14, 2006.)
>
> The VSA arts Playwright Discovery Teacher Award was
> established to recognize middle and high school teachers
> who creatively bring disability awareness to their
> classrooms through the art of playwriting. A panel of
> theater professionals and educators will select one
> middle or high school teacher for this award. The
> selected teacher will receive national recognition,
> funds to purchase playwriting resources for the class-
> room, and a trip to Washington, D.C., to be honored at
> the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
> Teachers must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents
> of the U.S. and must teach students in middle or high
> school (i.e., grades six through twelve). Teachers may
> self-nominate themselves for this award, or they may be
> nominated by a middle or high school colleague.
> (Deadline: July 1, 2006.)
>
> Complete program guidelines and application forms are
> available at the VSA arts Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.fdncenter.org/pnd/10000115/vsarts
>
> For additional RFPs in Disabilities, visit:
> http://fdncenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_disabled.jhtml
>
>7) Teachers Invited to Apply for ING Unsung Heroes Awards
>
> Deadline: May 1, 2006
>
> Created as a way for financial services company ING
> ( http://www.ing.com/ ) to demonstrate its commitment to
> the education community, the ING Unsung Heroes awards are
> given to K-12 educators pioneering new teaching methods
> and techniques that improve learning.
>
> Each year, educators submit applications for an ING Unsung
> Heroes award by describing projects they have initiated or
> would like to pursue. Each project is judged on its
> innovative method, creativity, and ability to positively
> influence students. The awards program selects one hundred
> finalists to receive a $2,000 award, payable to both the
> winning teacher and his or her school. At least one award
> is granted in each of the fifty states. Of the one hundred
> finalists, three are selected for additional financial
> awards: $25,000 for first place; $10,000 for second place;
> and $5,000 for third place.
>
> All K-12 education professionals are eligible to apply.
> Applicants must be employed by an accredited K-12 public
> or private school and be a full-time educator, teacher,
> principal, paraprofessional, or classified staff with
> an effective project that improves student learning
>
> Visit the ING Web site for complete program information
> and an application from.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.fdncenter.org/pnd/10000117/ing
>
> For additional RFPs in Education, visit:
> http://fdncenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_education.jhtml
>

The aurora borealis (not too sure about the australis version) will be moving. Perhaps those to the west will see more of them. In the meantime, here's a more convenient way to see them.
mpb

>From: Dawn Wiseman <dawn@encs.concordia.ca>
>
>-------- Original Message --------
>Subject: Aurora Mega-Gallery
>Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 14:04:51 -0500
>From: SpaceWeather.com <swlist@spaceweather.com>
>
>Space Weather News for Dec. 29, 2005
>http://spaceweather.com
>
>AURORA MEGA-GALLERY: We've collected every aurora photo ever published on
>SpaceWeather.com
>into one "mega-gallery." There are spooky auroras, man-made auroras,
>auroras in Florida,
>auroras at the South Pole, auroras beneath the space shuttle--thousands of
>photos.
>Together, they are a unique chronicle of space weather since the year 2000.
>Browse the collection at http://www.spaceweather.com/aurora/gallery.html .
>
>_______________________________________________
>Nae mailing list
>Nae@nativeaccess.com
>http://nativeaccess.com/mailman/listinfo/nae_nativeaccess.com

math resources

>Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 10:57:49 -0500
>From: Dawn Wiseman <dawn@encs.concordia.ca>
>
>2006 MATHEMATICS GAME - Judy Ann Brown
>
> http://mathforum.org/yeargame/2006/
>
> Write expressions for each of the counting numbers 1 through
> 100, using the digits in the year 2006, standard operations,
> and grouping symbols. This puzzle is appropriate for students
> in grades 3-12 with a general knowledge of mathematics.
>
> Students may use the Web form to submit solutions starting
> January 1, 2006; revisit the site after February 1, 2006,
> to see the first solutions.
>
> Pages available for printing:
>
> Worksheet
> http://mathforum.org/yeargame/2006/2006.worksheet.html
>
> Rules of the Game
> http://mathforum.org/yeargame/2006/2006.rules.html
>
> Manipulative Worksheet
> http://mathforum.org/yeargame/2006/2006.manipulative.html
>
>-|-\-/-|-\-/-|-\-/-|-\-/-|-\-/-|-\-/-|-\-/-|-\-/-|-\-/-|-\-/-|-
>
> ALGEBRA IN SIMPLEST TERMS
>
> http://www.learner.org/resources/series66.html
>
> In this series, host Sol Garfunkel explains how algebra is
> used for solving real-world problems. Look for the "VoD" icon
> to play video online.
>
> Free sign up is required for first-time users. Hearing the
> sound and viewing the video require Windows Media Player, a
> Javascript-enabled browser, and a broadband connection: DSL,
> a cable modem, or a LAN connection to a T1 line or greater.
> More information is provided here:
>
> http://www.learner.org/faq/faq_broadband.html
>
> Annenberg Media's multimedia resources are designed to help
> teachers increase their expertise in their fields and assist
> them in improving their teaching methods. Former names of
> Annenberg Media are: Annenberg/CPB, The Annenberg/CPB
> Project, and The Annenberg/CPB Math and Science Project.
>
> Use the "Browse Teacher Resources:" pull-down menu to view
> other resources by discipline and by grade.
>
>_______________________________________________
>Nae mailing list
>Nae@nativeaccess.com
>http://nativeaccess.com/mailman/listinfo/nae_nativeaccess.com

new TV show

>To See a World in a Tree Puppet
>
>The weekday-morning PBS series "It's a Big, Big World," which
>premiered Monday on KCET, is a life-sciences show for
>preschoolers, which is to say it will not go deeply into organic
>chemistry. What it will do is introduce animals to preschoolers by
>using science, Shadowmation and a sloth. By Robert Lloyd
>[Television Review].
>http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ew3m0Mm2NO0G2B0HBUv0EV


By Robert Lloyd, Times Staff Writer

The weekday-morning PBS series "It's a Big, Big World," which premiered Monday on KCET, is a life-sciences show for preschoolers, which is to say it will not go deeply into organic chemistry or the origin of species, and there will not be a test at the end.

Made in Shadowmation, which puts team-operated puppets into virtual computer environments, it takes place in a rain forest in a big tree called the World Tree, which is as much of the big, big world as we are going to see. But it is a very big tree, with a good long view from the top. (William Blake only needed a grain of sand to see the world, and we are way ahead of him here.) The effects are impressively three-dimensional and fluid, although the shifting angles and pans a as if to show off what Shadowmation can do a at times make the image pitch and yaw like a boat on choppy seas.

The series is a kind of tropical variation on creator Mitchell Kriegman's earlier "Bear in the Big Blue House," (He also created Nickelodeon's seminal sitcom "Clarissa Explains It All") with a large but gentle furry thing at the center of a lot of smaller creatures. Kriegman has taken the Mister Rogers paradigm, which holds that the way to address very young children is slowly and quietly, with no sudden movements, to its logical conclusion and has made his host a giant tree sloth named Snook.

Though Snook's species, and those of some of the rest of the cast argue for a South or Central American locale, he has the demeanor of a West Coast surfer. "Woooah," he says, and "no way!" and "innnnterresting" and "lookin' good!" Self-described as "awkward, clumsy, slow" and in need of sleep almost to the point of narcolepsy, he will seem familiar to anyone who has ever known a teenager.

The subject here is mostly animals a where they live, how they live, what they need to live, how they get around, how they grow. The inaugural episode was about a tadpole that became a tree frog, and the word for the day, repeated so you'll remember it, was "met-a-mor-pho-sis."

"Every creature is perfect in their own way," says Oko, a wise old monkey who is a master of tai chi. "But sometimes they change." Every creature being perfect in its own way is indeed the overarching message being posted here.

"Hey," says Snook, addressing his small fry viewers through the camera, "did you know you are an animal too? Ha-hah! Welcome, fellow animal. We are all animals." This is, of course, not news to children; it's just the adults who need to be reminded of it.

Among the other nonhuman animals inhabiting this very large tree are a pair of bickering sibling marmosets, a tree frog, a bird, an anteater with an unnatural affection for ants and a librarian turtle. There is also a fish living in a pool at the foot of the tree. Naturally, they all coexist in herbivorous comity or do their dining off-screen a this is not the sort of nature in which things are run down and ripped apart or swallowed alive and whole.

There are songs too, the sort of world beat pop one hears in Disney films, cheery sing-alongs made from a cocktail of African, Caribbean and Polynesian ingredients. I think children may like them, but they make me reach for my Metallica.

According to the educational philosophy page of the series' website, it will "model good scientific inquiry" and "will also introduce kids to geography, providing them with a basic understanding that the world is quite big while giving them a sense that they are an important part of a larger community." And well it might, or it might not.

If PBS is out to create new generations of biologists and geographers or simply citizens sympathetic to scientific inquiry and to the idea that the Earth is not the exclusive property of Homo sapiens, I am wholly behind them; learning to respect other species might even help a person to treat other people well. Possibly. Maybe. I'm not sure that this (or any) television show can accomplish it, but I applaud the attempt. Meanwhile, "It's a Big, Big World" is a low-stress half-hour, free of commercials and cacophony, and it is certainly nice to look at.

'It's a Big, Big World'
Where: KCET (PBS)
When: 8:30 to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday
Creator: Mitchell Kriegman ) Produced at Wainscott Studios, a
state-of-the-art animation and production facility in Wainscott, N.Y.

Natural History magazine many years ago had an article about the evolution of Mickey Mouse. From a pointy rodent (Steamboat Willy) he became the neotonous (cute) Mickey.
mpb

The Cute Factor
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

>Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a
>wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make
>something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face,
>a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter
>gait, among many others.
>
>Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness
>and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian
>sense. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they
>can't lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings
>must be wired to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of
>infantile desire.
>
>The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that
>it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human
>baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually
>every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly
>bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller
>rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.
>http://tinyurl.com/9ws6o

The New York Times January 3, 2006
The Cute Factor
By NATALIE ANGIER

WASHINGTON, Jan. 2 - If the mere sight of Tai Shan, the roly-poly, goofily gamboling masked bandit of a panda cub now on view at the National Zoo isn't enough to make you melt, then maybe the crush of his human onlookers, the furious flashing of their cameras and the heated gasps of their mass rapture will do the trick.

"Omigosh, look at him! He is too cute!"

"How adorable! I wish I could just reach in there and give him a big squeeze!"
"He's so fuzzy! I've never seen anything so cute in my life!"

A guard's sonorous voice rises above the burble. "OK, folks, five oohs and aahs per person, then it's time to let someone else step up front."
The 6-month-old, 25-pound Tai Shan - whose name is pronounced tie-SHON and means, for no obvious reason, "peaceful mountain" - is the first surviving giant panda cub ever born at the Smithsonian's zoo. And though the zoo's adult pandas have long been among Washington's top tourist attractions, the public debut of the baby in December has unleashed an almost bestial frenzy here. Some 13,000 timed tickets to see the cub were snapped up within two hours of being released, and almost immediately began trading on eBay for up to $200 a pair.

Panda mania is not the only reason that 2005 proved an exceptionally cute year. Last summer, a movie about another black-and-white charmer, the emperor penguin, became one of the highest-grossing documentaries of all time. Sales of petite, willfully cute cars like the Toyota Prius and the Mini Cooper soared, while those of noncute sport utility vehicles tanked.
Women's fashions opted for the cute over the sensible or glamorous, with low-slung slacks and skirts and abbreviated blouses contriving to present a customer's midriff as an adorable preschool bulge. Even the too big could be too cute. King Kong's newly reissued face has a squashed baby-doll appeal, and his passion for Naomi Watts ultimately feels like a serious case of puppy love - hopeless, heartbreaking, cute.

Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.

Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability,
harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian sense. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they can't lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings must be wired to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.

The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.
The greater the number of cute cues that an animal or object happens to possess, or the more exaggerated the signals may be, the louder and more italicized are the squeals provoked.

Cuteness is distinct from beauty, researchers say, emphasizing rounded over sculptured, soft over refined, clumsy over quick. Beauty attracts admiration and demands a pedestal; cuteness attracts affection and demands a lap. Beauty is rare and brutal, despoiled by a single pimple. Cuteness is commonplace and generous, content on occasion to cosegregate with homeliness.
Observing that many Floridians have an enormous affection for the manatee, which looks like an overfertilized potato with a sock puppet's face, Roger L. Reep of the University of Florida said it shone by grace of contrast. "People live hectic lives, and they may be feeling overwhelmed, but then they watch this soft and slow-moving animal, this gentle giant, and they see it turn on its back to get its belly scratched," said Dr. Reep, author with Robert K. Bonde of "The Florida Manatee: Biology and Conservation."
"That's very endearing," said Dr. Reep. "So even though a manatee is 3 times your size and 20 times your weight, you want to get into the water beside it."

Even as they say a cute tooth has rational roots, scientists admit they are just beginning to map its subtleties and source. New studies suggest that cute images stimulate the same pleasure centers of the brain aroused by sex, a good meal or psychoactive drugs like cocaine, which could explain why everybody in the panda house wore a big grin.

At the same time, said Denis Dutton, a philosopher of art at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, the rapidity and promiscuity of the cute response makes the impulse suspect, readily overridden by the angry sense that one is being exploited or deceived.

"Cute cuts through all layers of meaning and says, Let's not worry about complexities, just love me," said Dr. Dutton, who is writing a book about Darwinian aesthetics. "That's where the sense of cheapness can come from, and the feeling of being manipulated or taken for a sucker that leads many to reject cuteness as low or shallow."

Quick and cheap make cute appealing to those who want to catch the eye and please the crowd. Advertisers and product designers are forever toying with cute cues to lend their merchandise instant appeal, mixing and monkeying with the vocabulary of cute to keep the message fresh and fetching.
That market-driven exercise in cultural evolution can yield bizarre if endearing results, like the blatantly ugly Cabbage Patch dolls, Furbies, the figgy face of E.T., the froggy one of Yoda. As though the original Volkswagen Beetle wasn't considered cute enough, the updated edition was made rounder and shinier still.

"The new Beetle looks like a smiley face," said Miles Orvell, professor of American studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. "By this point its origins in Hitler's regime, and its intended resemblance to a German helmet, is totally forgotten."

Whatever needs pitching, cute can help. A recent study at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center at the University of Michigan showed that high school students were far more likely to believe antismoking messages accompanied by cute cartoon characters like a penguin in a red jacket or a smirking polar bear than when the warnings were delivered unadorned.
"It made a huge difference," said Sonia A. Duffy, the lead author of the report, which was published in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. "The kids expressed more confidence in the cartoons than in the warnings themselves."

Primal and widespread though the taste for cute may be, researchers say it varies in strength and significance across cultures and eras. They compare the cute response to the love of sugar: everybody has sweetness receptors on the tongue, but some people, and some countries, eat a lot more candy than others.

Experts point out that the cuteness craze is particularly acute in Japan, where it goes by the name "kawaii" and has infiltrated the most masculine of redoubts. Truck drivers display Hello Kitty-style figurines on their dashboards. The police enliven safety billboards and wanted posters with two perky mouselike mascots, Pipo kun and Pipo chan.

Behind the kawaii phenomenon, according to Brian J. McVeigh, a scholar of East Asian studies at the University of Arizona, is the strongly hierarchical nature of Japanese culture. "Cuteness is used to soften up the vertical society," he said, "to soften power relations and present authority without being threatening."

In this country, the use of cute imagery is geared less toward blurring the line of command than toward celebrating America's favorite demographic: the young. Dr. Orvell traces contemporary cute chic to the 1960's, with its celebration of a perennial childhood, a refusal to dress in adult clothes, an inversion of adult values, a love of bright colors and bloopy, cartoony patterns, the Lava Lamp.

Today, it's not enough for a company to use cute graphics in its advertisements. It must have a really cute name as well. "Companies like Google and Yahoo leave no question in your mind about the youthfulness of their founders," said Dr. Orvell.

Madison Avenue may adapt its strategies for maximal tweaking of our inherent baby radar, but babies themselves, evolutionary scientists say, did not really evolve to be cute. Instead, most of their salient qualities stem from the demands of human anatomy and the human brain, and became appealing to a potential caretaker's eye only because infants wouldn't survive otherwise.

Human babies have unusually large heads because humans have unusually large brains. Their heads are round because their brains continue to grow throughout the first months of life, and the plates of the skull stay flexible and unfused to accommodate the development. Baby eyes and ears are situated comparatively far down the face and skull, and only later migrate upward in proportion to the development of bones in the cheek and jaw areas.
Baby eyes are also notably forward-facing, the binocular vision a likely legacy of our tree-dwelling ancestry, and all our favorite Disney characters also sport forward-facing eyes, including the ducks and mice, species that in reality have eyes on the sides of their heads.

The cartilage tissue in an infant's nose is comparatively soft and undeveloped, which is why most babies have button noses. Baby skin sits relatively loose on the body, rather than being taut, the better to stretch for growth spurts to come, said Paul H. Morris, an evolutionary scientist at the University of Portsmouth in England; that lax packaging accentuates the overall roundness of form.

Baby movements are notably clumsy, an amusing combination of jerky and delayed, because learning to coordinate the body's many bilateral sets of large and fine muscle groups requires years of practice. On starting to walk, toddlers struggle continuously to balance themselves between left foot and right, and so the toddler gait consists as much of lateral movement as of any forward momentum.

Researchers who study animals beloved by the public appreciate the human impulse to nurture anything even remotely babylike, though they are at times taken aback by people's efforts to identify with their preferred species.
Take penguins as an example. Some people are so wild for the creatures, said Michel Gauthier-Clerc, a penguin researcher in Arles, France, "they think penguins are mammals and not birds." They love the penguin's upright posture, its funny little tuxedo, the way it waddles as it walks. How like a child playing dress-up!

Endearing as it is, Dr. Gauthier-Clerc explained that the apparent awkwardness of the penguin's march had nothing to do with clumsiness or uncertain balance. Instead, he said, penguins waddle to save energy. A side-to-side walk burns fewer calories than a straightforward stride, and for birds that fast for months and live in a frigid climate, every calorie counts.

As for the penguin's maestro garb, the white front and black jacket suits its aquatic way of life. While submerged in water, the penguin's dark backside is difficult to see from above, camouflaging the penguin from potential predators of air or land. The white chest, by contrast, obscures it from below, protecting it against carnivores and allowing it to better sneak up on fish prey.

The giant panda offers another case study in accidental cuteness. Although it is a member of the bear family, a highly carnivorous clan, the giant panda specializes in eating bamboo.

As it happens, many of the adaptations that allow it to get by on such a tough diet contribute to the panda's cute form, even in adulthood. Inside the bear's large, rounded head, said Lisa Stevens, assistant panda curator at the National Zoo, are the highly developed jaw muscles and the set of broad, grinding molars it needs to crush its way through some 40 pounds of fibrous bamboo plant a day.

When it sits up against a tree and starts picking apart a bamboo stalk with its distinguishing pseudo-thumb, a panda looks like nothing so much like Huckleberry Finn shucking corn. Yet the humanesque posture and paws again are adaptations to its menu. The bear must have its "hands" free and able to shred the bamboo leaves from their stalks.

The panda's distinctive markings further add to its appeal: the black patches around the eyes make them seem winsomely low on its face, while the black ears pop out cutely against the white fur of its temples.

As with the penguin's tuxedo, the panda's two-toned coat very likely serves a twofold purpose. On the one hand, it helps a feeding bear blend peacefully into the dappled backdrop of bamboo. On the other, the sharp contrast between light and dark may serve as a social signal, helping the solitary bears locate each other when the time has come to find the perfect, too-cute mate.

     * Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Self-Help's Big Lie

Everyone from Dr. Phil to the Lakers' Phil Jackson is peddling
personal empowerment these days. Author Steve Salerno has the
antidote: Bring back a healthy sense of our own limits. By Steve
Salerno.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ew2z0Mm2NO0G2B0HBO60EX


Self-help's big lie
By Steve Salerno, Steve Salerno's latest book is "SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless."

EVER SINCE the United States began weaning itself off the sociological junk food of victimization and its culture of blame, the pop-psychology menu increasingly has been flavored by an antithetical concept a empowerment a that can be summarized as: Believe it, achieve it.

Nowadays, Fortune 500 conglomerates draft business plans with bullet points drawn from Laker coach-cum-inspirational guru Phil Jackson's Zen optimism. Couples write partnership covenants based on the utopian blather of John Gray. Millions of everyday Americans owe their feelings of "personal power" to erstwhile firewalker Tony Robbins, arguably the father of today's mass-market empowerment. And there is Oprah, who is seldom categorized as a guru in her own right but whose status as the movement's eminence grise is beyond dispute: The road to self-help's promised land, and a bite of its $10-billion fruit (as tracked by Marketdata Enterprises), runs straight through Harpo Productions. The nostrums delivered by these and other self-help celebrities form a cultural given, an uncontested a and, we are led to believe, incontestable a foundation for today's starry-eyed zeitgeist.
Lost in the adulation is the downside of being uplifted. In truth, the overselling of personal empowerment a the hyping of hope a may be the great unsung irony of modern American life, destined to disappoint as surely as the pity party that it was meant to replace.

In U.S. schools, the crusade to imbue kids with that most slippery of notions a self-esteem a has been unambiguously disastrous (and has recently been disavowed by a number of its loudest early voices). Self-esteem-based education presupposed that a healthy ego would help students achieve greatness, even if the mechanisms necessary to instill self-esteem undercut scholarship. Over time, it became clear that what such policies promote is not academic greatness but a bizarre disconnect between perceived self-worth and provable skill.

Over a 20-year span beginning in the early 1970s, the average SAT score fell by 35 points. But in that same period, the contingent of college-bound seniors who boasted an A or B average jumped from 28% to an astonishing 83%, as teachers felt increasing pressure to adopt more "supportive" grading policies. Tellingly, in a 1989 study of comparative math skills among students in eight nations, Americans ranked lowest in overall competence, Koreans highest a but when researchers asked the students how good they thought they were at math, the results were exactly opposite: Americans highest, Koreans lowest. Meanwhile, data from 1999's omnibus Third International Mathematics and Science Study, ranking 12th-graders from 23 nations, put U.S. students in 20th place, besting only South Africa, Lithuania and Cyprus.

Still, the U.S. keeps dressing its young in their emperors' new egos, passing them on to the next set of empowering curricula. If you teach at the college level, as I do, at some point you will be confronted with a student seeking redress over the grade you gave him because "I'm pre-med!" Not until such students reach med school do they encounter truly inelastic standards: a comeuppance for them but a reprieve for those who otherwise might find ourselves anesthetized beneath their second-rate scalpel.
The larger point is that society has embraced such concepts as self-esteem and confidence despite scant evidence that they facilitate positive outcomes. The work of psychologists Roy Baumeister and Martin Seligman suggests that often, high self-worth is actually a marker for negative behavior, as found in sociopaths and drug kingpins. Even in its less extreme manifestations, confidence may easily be expressed in the kind of braggadocio a "I'm fine just the way I am, thank you" a that stunts growth, yielding chronic failure.

Then again, one never really fails in this brave new (euphemistic) world. "There is no such thing as failure," posits a core maxim of
neuro-linguistic programming, the regimen from which Robbins drew much of his patter. Among empowered thinkers, reality becomes an arbitrary affair, with each individual deciding his or her personal truth.

Consider healthcare, where vague notions of personal empowerment are a key factor in the startling American exodus from traditional medicine. A comprehensive study reported in the medical journal JAMA pegged the number of patient visits to alternative-medicine practitioners at 629 million a year, easily eclipsing the 386 million visits to conventional MDs. In theory, these defections represent a desire for "self-empowered healing" that will "put people in charge of their healthcare destiny," to quote one holistic health website. In practice, the trend puts hordes of Americans at the mercy of quacks who shrewdly position themselves at the nexus of mind and body. It behooves us to remember that feeling better about a health problem is not the same as doing better.

Nonetheless, with such highly visible exponents of latter-day empowerment as Robbins, Winfrey and Winfrey's principal protege, Dr. Phil McGraw, fanning the flames, a generation has come of age on the belief that a positive mental attitude will carry the day. Far from helping his disciples, the empowerment guru does them a disservice by making them "think positive" about a situation in which the odds of success are exceedingly low. As top management consultant Jay Kurtz argues: "The most dangerous person in corporate America is the highly enthusiastic incompetent. He's running faster in the wrong direction, doing horribly counterproductive things with winning enthusiasm."

You cannot have a life plan predicated on the belief that everything is equally achievable to you a especially if that same message has been sold indiscriminately to all comers. In the grand scheme of things, knowing one's limitations may be even more important than knowing one's talents. " http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-...story?track=tottext
=========================================
=========================================
and speaking of self-esteem instruction and toys,
http://www.babybushtoys.com/products.html and parental testimonial http://www.babybushtoys.com/test.html

72e7a5a.jpg





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Old and new in Seven Wonders poll
People around the world are being invited to vote in a survey for the New Seven Wonders of the World.

A privately funded organisation, the New 7 Wonders Foundation, has put forward a shortlist of 21 landmarks from across the globe.

They include Rome's Colosseum, Jordan's ancient city of Petra, Britain's Stonehenge and the Great Wall of China.

The Swiss-based foundation is asking people to vote for their favourites by phone during 2006.

The winning septet will be announced on New Year's Day 2007.

Half of the money raised will go towards funding the Foundation's heritage work.

Man-made monuments

The list also includes a number of more modern candidates, such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, New York's Statue of Liberty and the Sydney Opera House.

NEW WONDERS?
Acropolis, Athens
Alhambra, Spain
Angkor Wat, Cambodia
Chichen Itza, Mexico
Kyomizu Temple, Kyoto, Japan
Kremlin, Moscow, Russia
Pyramid of Giza, Egypt
Taj Mahal, India
Timbuktu, Mali

The Great Pyramid of Giza, which is included in the new list, is the only original wonder to remain in contention.

The Seven Wonders of the ancient world were selected by a Greek
philosopher, Philon of Byzantium, over 2,000 years ago.

All of his choices were situated around the Mediterranean basin.

To be included on the new list, the wonders had to be man-made, completed by 2000, and in an "acceptable" state of preservation.

The New Seven Wonders Foundation, which includes among its members the former head of the United Nations cultural agency, Unesco, says it is using its survey to alert the world to the destruction of the world's cultural heritage.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/4574336.stm

Published: 2006/01/02 05:08:00 GMT

&#A9; BBC MMVI

Call for Artistic Submissions by Arctic Youth
Dec 9, 2005 | General News

Arctic Council is looking for artistic contributions for its website for young Northerners.

Arctic youth between the ages of 12 -25 are welcome to submit an original poem, photograph or drawing which reflects life in the North. Only youth who are residents of Northern Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Faeroe Islands, Alaska or Northern Canada (North of 60) are eligible to send in submissions.

Application forms can be found here.

More information can also be found on the Arctic Council Website for Arctic Youth at http://www.ookpik.org.

http://news.uarctic.org/000343.html#more

This first site is about "International English from a British viewpoint" so should be useful in watching Masterpiece Theatre and other PBS type shows.

>Investigating English
>
>Language is the fiber of communication, a system of symbols that enables
>conversation, storytelling, instruction, and a host of other human
>interactions to occur. While the English language has become a word-filled
>melee of metaphors, expressions, references, sayings, etc., many of us who
>use such statements are unfamiliar with their fascinating origins.
>
>Micheal Quinion, master lexicographer and founder of WorldWideWords.org,
>has created this website for the benefit of the English-speaking public.
>There are interesting articles on odd topics; from the correct spelling of
>Aluminum to the distinct vernacular used in British Lotteries to the
>highly developed linguistics of the Star Trek universe.
>
>In addition to reading the articles, users can search through an
>alphabetical list of bizarre words. One in particular we found
>entertaining is the word Eyerobics, 'eye exercises for toning and
>strengthening vision for all kinds of compulsive watchers'.
>
>http://www.worldwidewords.org/

The Symphony: An Interactive Guide

While classical music is popular all over the world, many listeners are uneducated about the rich processes behind the creation of the music. This is a great site for anyone who loves classical music but often feels lost when it comes to understanding the nature, form and history of the symphonies they listen to.

This website offers an interactive tour through the many aspects of the symphony. Visitors will learn about the history of the music, the life and work of many famous and talented composers, and the many components that make up an orchestra.

Listen to clips of symphonies listed on the site, take a 'crash course in symphonic form', or go on a 'quick-tour' of the history and development of classical music. And you don't even have to dress up!!

http://library.thinkquest.org/22673/index.html

>
>Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 13:21:52 -0500
>From: Dawn Wiseman <dawn@encs.concordia.ca>
>
>Just before the holidays, we sent out a message regarding an information
>gathering exercise we are conducting on behalf a growing network of
>people across the country who are interested in engaging Aboriginal
>young people in math and science. Through a survey at
>http://www.nativeaccess.com/teacher1/survey2.php, we are hoping to
>compile a complete inventory of existing programmes, projects,
>initiatives etc. for Aboriginal children and youth (and their parents
>and communities) which focus on math and science. We are particularly
>interested in programmes which provide means for young people to examine
>both indigenous and western approaches to understanding the world and
>the way it works.
>
>Do the young people in your community participate in any science/math/IK
>focused programme operated by the tribal authority, community centre,
>region, province, school or an enthusiastic local teacher? It could be
>a science fair or camp, a cultural fair, an after school club or a
>community centre group. We know there are many excellent and exciting
>programmes out there, and are hoping to find a way to more effectively
>share information about them.
>
>Please visit the following site to submit information about programmes
>in your local area,
>http://www.nativeaccess.com/teacher1/survey2.php.
>
>There is a deadline of February 10, 2006, 17h00 EST for submission.
>
>In order to encourage your participation in this project, everyone who
>submits a programme to the inventory will be eligible for a drawing for
>a $500 gift certificate from Chapters. Please note that we are
>particularly interested in programmes based in Canada, however,
>programmes based in the US or other countries which allow for
>participation of students from Canada can also be submitted.
>
>Thanks to everyone who has already sent in information.
>
>Best,
>Dawn
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Nae mailing list
>Nae@nativeaccess.com
>http://nativeaccess.com/mailman/listinfo/nae_nativeaccess.com

Melinda Gray Ardia Environmental Foundation

29)Environmental Education
Melinda Gray Ardia Environmental Foundation is accepting applications for the development and implementation of holistic environmental curricula that incorporates basic ecological principles and field environmental activities within a primary or secondary school setting. Individual grants NTE $1K. Responses due 4/6/06. For more info, go
to: http://www.mgaef.org/index.html. (RFP Bulletin 11/22/05)

Here is an on-line copy of the article I refered to previously--

A BIOLOGICAL HOMAGE TO MICKEY MOUSE
  Stephen Jay Gould"
http://www.towson.edu/~sallen/COURSES/311/ESSAYS/MM.html

and reprinted here
"THE PANDA'S THUMB
More Reflections in Natural History
By Stephen Jay Gould."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/09/home/gould-panda.html

This is a mind-bloggling topic. I've been playing around experimenting with blogs as a means of collecting notes and ideas for writing up later; as a research collection; as community advocacy given the lack of any news outlet in the community. I guess most people use them for gossip or daily mental exercise. Professional blogs can be quite useful, such as Panda's Thumb or others on evolution; Boing Boing for fun; etc.

Any way, I ran across these specific to teachers. I don't know how different they are for actual use vis-a-vis MUDS, MOOGS, First Class, WIKIs, Blackbaud, etc. except that these are on the Internet and not an internal intranet. If you have better examples or want to share your experiences with blogging, let me know.

A widely used web logging service is now owned by Google, the
http://blogspot.com or "blogger" but it is basic. I don't think any of these are usable without learning a few tweaking steps. But some hosting sites offer better tech support than others (Blogspot is getting better at Tech Support. Blogsome uses a different format and has no tech support beyond searching their user forums. Both are free sites. Free and not needing much info about programming are the allure of web logs over other Internet homepage options)

The Quicktopic site I copy to is an early, free, and semi-private site -- I use it for archive of FYI articles. It is interactive.
http://www.quicktopic.com/26/H/7sSUC5pTZDRNV A Blogspot/Blogger example -- http://theelderlies.blogspot.com A LiveJournal example (Live Journal is more suitable for building user communities. From what I gather, it is not as wild as MySpace.com which has received recent new coverage about young teens and tweeners publicizing too much info about themselves. I found it awkward to use.) http://www.livejournal.com/users/hlthenvt/ but I am currently transferring the stuff on LiveJournal to Blogsome, hoping it might be easier to use and index because it uses an open source programming language called WordPress. It *should* be better to organize with, but I haven't yet stumbled upon the secret. http://cerebraloddjobs.blogsome.com/
A way to find blogs for teaching, classroom use--
go to http://Blogspot.com and use their search http://search.blogger.com/ (Google's blog searcher)
Go to http://del.icio.us/ or Technorati http://technorati.com/search/ and search their blogfinder for keywords (no, I don't understand social bookmarking yet. Why make the government's job easier to spy on your reading material?) A similar one, but for research and sponsored by Nature magazine is http://www.connotea.org/

mpb
=========================================
Using Weblogs in Teaching and Learning
http://www.blogs2teach.net/usingblogs.html
http://blogsavvy.net/how-you-should-use-blogs-in-education

http://edublogs.org/
>If you'd like your school students to be able to set up blogs try out
>http://learnerblogs.org.
>Or, for higher education and tertiary students, there's http://uniblogs.org
>This is a "totally unique project aimed at teachers, researchers, writers
>and educators the world over. Basically you get to set up a free WordPress
>blog, 10MB of upload space (extending to much much more down the line), an
>enormous stack of beautiful themes and to be part of a unique community."
>Reviewer's Note: edublogs.org s a no-strings-attached, open source,
>ongoing and freely available service for you and you're invited to take part!

These are based at http://incusub.org

>incsub will install, host and support your work for free at incsub.org if
>you're a teacher, researcher or trainer.
>You could be playing around, teaching a subject online, constructing a
>digital thesis or providing an environment to help learners communicate
>online. Anything you like.
>This project exists in order to help teachers, trainers and researchers
>explore the use of these emerging technologies which we think can change
>the way we teach and learn online.
>
>It's supported by our time, incsub consulting and hosting and the amazing
>open source software applications available.
>To help you get your head around what you might use we've put together
>three explanatory pages giving you the lowdown on blogs, wikis and CMSs:
>What is a blog? | What is a wiki? | What is a CMS?
>If you're interested in any of these please get in touch and we can
>discuss what type of tool and online environment might work best for you.


>Blogs 2 Teach has been produced for UK education practitioners and their
>learners.
>It allows you to easily create, setup and manage free personalised weblogs
>starting from our selection of 22 basic themes.
>There are no cost implications and you retain full admin control over your
>weblog.
>We will also provide free advice and guidance on how to use the tool, as
>well as giving information and examples on how blogs can used within
>teaching and learning.
>You can also use our weblog tool to build a WebQuest. Find out more by
>checking out our WebQuest page.
>Need images? Why not use our copyright free image gallery.
>Built from the Wordpress platform"
http://www.blogs2teach.net/

"Using and working with images with learners"
http://www.aclimages.net/learners.html

Their demo on a webquest looks interesting--http://susan.aclblogs.net/
somewhere to start to look into blogging sites (but really, Blogspot.com, which is now Google's, is a pretty easy way to start)
http://www.e-learningcentre.co.uk/eclipse/vendors/weblogging.htm

GUIDE TO BLOGGING FREELY USING WORDPRESS
http://leonalim.com/blog/index.php/2005/06...ly-using-wordpress/

Just as people must share seal meat and oil to maintain physical and social well-being, so, too, must they share knowledge--so that their minds will not rot.
For Your Information, Teachers, et al.
http://www.quicktopic.com/26/H/7sSUC5pTZDRNV
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A fresh start in Northwest Arctic education

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113~7252~3194319,00.html

Saturday, January 07, 2006 - KOTZEBUE--Democracy works: Voters are transforming public education in Northwest Arctic Alaska.

The winds of change for K-12 education in Northwest Arctic Borough schools first began blowing strong four years ago. Back in early 2002 this remote, 11-site, 38,000-square-mile school district was moving deeper into some of its darkest days. Big problems were brewing at Kivalina's village school, 71 air miles northwest of Kotzebue. By mid-March 2002 Kivalina had been making statewide headlines for weeks after the central administration abruptly closed the school, citing threats to school personnel.

Less well-known at the time, the administration also was instigating a teacher exodus in Kotzebue, where local residents were circulating petitions and pouring into public meetings, supporting local teachers. Nevertheless, 62 percent of the Kotzebue Middle/High School teachers, many&#F8; feeling forced out, left the school that year.

Feeling stonewalled by the central administration and advisory and regional boards, local citizens vowed to shake things up at the ballot box.
They did. In fall 2002, voters defeated several longtime regional board incumbents by whopping margins. But it would still require three more elections before a transformed board could oust the central administration, which as recently as last spring nearly obtained passage of a "speech code" bylaw that would have prohibited teachers, other district employees, and regular citizens from talking freely to board members.

The district also was being infiltrated by trendy educational jargon.
But today, our 9-year-old twins are no longer in grade "intermediate entry" at the local elementary school. Or was it intermediate exit? Can't remember. They are still in the same class, but now it's once again called "fourth grade." Also, our kids and everyone else's kids in the Northwest Arctic schools will again be receiving traditional letter grades such as A's and B's.

"We're going back to regular grades," said Norm Eck, the district's newly appointed superintendent. "Instead of all that jargon, we're going to be calling a grade a grade. The vast majority of feedback from the school board and community was, 'We don't understand our kids' report cards.'"
Some of the district's seemingly constant testing also will stop so teachers can teach more. Holding kids back is gone, too, Eck said, because the research shows it actually hurts student achievement.

How did Norm Eck, who says an "A" is an "A" and fourth grade is fourth grade, suddenly jump from principal of Kotzebue Middle/High School to the district's top job mid-year? Well, when Robert Boyle, the outgoing superintendent, tendered his resignation recently, he expected to exit in June. Instead, the regional board immediately installed Eck, a veteran Northwest Arctic administrator whose experience includes five years as principal in Selawik, an outlying village.

"I've spent my whole career working with Native Americans," said Eck, whose doctorate degree targeted Native American education. He also worked many years with the Navajo tribe in Utah.

Just prior to this October's local elections, we had written a commentary for the local newspaper saying voters might finally oust the regional board's "old guard," triggering "a major shakeup."

The housecleaning came far sooner than many had anticipated. Eck himself fully expected to finish the school year as a principal. But with a recently signed two-and-a-half-year superintendent's contract, Eck said it's time to bring people together "to do what's best for kids."

"We are certainly looking to the future now, but I do appreciate all the hard work of former school board members and administrators who got the district to this point," he said.

With an upbeat spirit on the board, in the administration, and in the classroom, and as schools in the region improve, maybe our twins and other students can stay home for high school instead of following their older siblings to Mt. Edgecumbe boarding school in Sitka or other places in search of a better education.

The Northwest Arctic is a great place to live. But now it's even better, thanks to the wisdom of its citizens as expressed at the ballot box.
Susan Andrews and John Creed are humanities professors at Chukchi Campus, the Kotzebue branch of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and co-editors of "Authentic Alaska: Voices of Its Native Writers."

A Pair of Web Pathfinding Gems

By
<http://searchenginewatch.com/feedback.php/...php/3572241>Mary Ellen Bates, Guest Writer
December 20, 2005

  Though we rely heavily on search engines these days, sometimes a good "old fashioned" human edited directory is a better choice for helping us locate high quality information on the web.

I'm currently working on a book about how to conduct research on the web, (to be published by O'Reilly next year) and I had a chance to really look closely at a couple of librarian-built web directories that I've used for years. Looking at them in a new light reminded me of how valuable these resources are.

So, even though you've probably got your own favorite web directory sources (perhaps <http://dir.yahoo.com>Yahoo! Directory or the
<http://directory.google.com>Google version of the <http://dmoz.org>Open Directory Project, I encourage you to pay these old favorites another visit.
<http://www.ipl.org>Internet Public Library

The Internet Public Library (IPL) began in 1995 as a graduate seminar project in the School of Information and Library Studies at the University of Michigan. In some ways, it still retains the flavor of a public library in addition to a hierarchical subject directory, it includes sections for "Ready Reference" (encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs and so on), the Reading Room (links to web sites that provide access to the full text of books, magazines and newspapers), and KidSpace and TeenSpace (resources for kindergarten through high school students).

It also has a collection of "<http://ipl.si.umich.edu/div/pf>Pathfinders" guides to both print and online sources for topics ranging from heart disease to Greek mythology. The Internet Public Library has a far smaller collection of sites than Open Directory Project or Yahoo! Directory, but the web sites included are high quality.

The Internet Public Library also comes with an
"<http://www.ipl.org/div/askus>Ask A Question" service, supported by students in graduate library science and information classes, by professional librarian volunteers and by IPL contributors. The idea is to help library students practice how to provide reference services, especially in an email environment. Allow three days for a response, since this is staffed by students and volunteers.

<http://www.lii.org>Librarians' Internet Index

The Librarians' Internet Index (LII) was founded in 1993 and is maintained by librarians, in this case a small staff supported by funds from the California State Library system and the Washington State Library, and several dozen volunteer contributors, most of whom work in public, university or school libraries. It is organized into broad categories and then subcategories, as with most other web directories.

The summaries of the web sites included in the LII are more detailed than most directories, and includes useful cross-reference information. For example, the Politics category includes cross-referenced categories, such as "Activism" and "Notable People: Government", indicated by bold type. Recent additions to the category are in a box on the right.

And take a look at each individual entry. If you click the magnifying glass icon to the right of the title, a pop-up box will display additional cataloging information about the site (all the topics within the LII in which the site is listed, when the site was added to LII, and so on). If you click the small box next to the magnifying glass, you can send a comment to the LII staff about the site (perhaps suggesting another category it should appear in or commenting on the description of the site). And clicking the envelope icon lets you email that site description to anyone.
Note also that below the description of the site is a list of the other categories in which this site appears. Unfortunately, this is not a complete list of all the categories; a better option is to click the magnifying glass icon to see all the places the site appears within LII.
One limitation of LII is that it is sometimes California and
Washington-centric, reflecting its origin and the background of its contributors, who are librarians in California and Washington. There are a number of California-specific categories&mdashCalifornia: Travel, California: History, and so on&mdashfor which there is no LII equivalent for other states except Washington.

LII offers a weekly newsletter, New This Week, which contains all the entries added to the Index in the last seven days. You can receive the newsletter in email or via RSS feed by filling out the
<http://www.lii.org/pub/htdocs/subscribe.htm>subscription form, or you can <http://www.lii.org/cs/lii/query/q/54>read the newsletter online.
Mary Ellen Bates is the principal of <http://www.batesinfo.com>Bates Information Services, a research and consulting business based in Boulder, Colorado.



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<http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3572241>Go to source: A Pair of Web Pathfinding Gems