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Great article on the intelligence and learning capabilities of infants and toddlers -- has implications for how we approach pre-school learning with children.

7.21.09 * The Princeton economist Alan Blinder argues that the crucial distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with more or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered over a wire and those who must do their work in person or on site. * A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive. * As I sat in my K Street office, Fred's life as an independent tradesman gave me an image that I kept coming back to: someone who really knows what he is doing, losing himself in work that is genuinely useful and has a certain integrity to it. * It would probably be impossible to do such work in isolation, without access to a collective historical memory; you have to be embedded in a community of mechanic-antiquarians. * Good diagnosis requires attentiveness to the machine, almost a conversation with it.... * The regularity of the cubicles made me feel I had found a place in the order of things. I was to be a knowledge worker. * A good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world. Academic credentials do not guarantee this. * In the boardrooms of Wall Street and the corridors of Pennsylvania Avenue, I don't think you'll see a yellow sign that says "Think Safety!" as you do on job sites and in many repair shops, no doubt because those who sit on the swivel chairs tend to live remote from the consequences of the decisions they make. * Our peripheral vision is perhaps recovering, allowing us to consider the full range of lives worth choosing. For anyone who feels ill suited by disposition to spend his days sitting in an office, the question of what a good job looks like is now wide open.

In the wake of Sunday's [July 5, 2009] deadly riots in its western region of Xinjiang, China's central government took all the usual steps to enshrine its version of events as received wisdom: it crippled Internet service, blocked Twitter's micro-blogs, purged search engines of unapproved references to the violence, saturated the Chinese media with the state-sanctioned story.

*In the wake of Sunday's [July 5, 2009] deadly riots in its western region of Xinjiang, China's central government took all the usual steps to enshrine its version of events as received wisdom: it crippled Internet service, blocked Twitter's micro-blogs, purged search engines of unapproved references to the violence, saturated the Chinese media with the state-sanctioned story. *"They're getting more sophisticated. They learn from past mistakes...."

7.20.09 *In the wake of Sunday's [July 5, 2009] deadly riots in its western region of Xinjiang, China's central government took all the usual steps to enshrine its version of events as received wisdom: it crippled Internet service, blocked Twitter's micro-blogs, purged search engines of unapproved references to the violence, saturated the Chinese media with the state-sanctioned story. *"They're getting more sophisticated. They learn from past mistakes...." *"For Twitter or the Internet, when they see too many factors they cannot completely control, they shut down and block. But for foreign journalists, they feel that as long as they can keep those people under control, it may serve better the government's purpose."

""This is gym; we shouldn't have to teach writing." Mr. Thomas said he replied, "If you want to work at Brockton High, it's your job.""