The Internet Archive discovers and captures web pages through many different web crawls.
At any given time several distinct crawls are running, some for months, and some every day or longer.
View the web archive through the Wayback Machine.
Ah, those fabulous Brits. Leave it to the awesome British, along with we glorious Americans, to stir up controversy at every step. Today I read an article about a sixteen year old gal headed to Britain's High Court because her school won't let her wear her 'purity ring,' a sterling silver ring she wears on the middle finger of her left hand symbolizing her pledge to her, uhm, purity until marriage.
The school she attends has banned all jewelry from being worn by students and believes they have not infringed upon anyone's rights by enforcing this rule.
Lydia Playfoot, the young woman, claims the ring is part of her religious attire, and points out, rightly so, that others are allowed to wear tokens of their religion, such as headscarves and bracelets and they are allowed to wear these items in school. She further purports that she is being discriminated against because she is Christian.
Now, I am a fairly liberal person. OK, I am a really liberal person. The high school I went to was also liberal and I chose it because there I was allowed to wear whatever I wanted to wear. It rocked. My parents didn't really go for some of my outfits of choice, but no one at school said a thing about wearing a t-shirt printed with a tuxedo on it and fishnets with Doc Martens to geometry class. And I got an 'A.'
In the past few years, we've seen a variety of strategies for bailing out failing public schools. Uniforms, individual laptops, non-traditional curriculum, private management of school districts--you name it, it seems like someone has tried it.
But now, the New York City school system is getting back to basics: starting this fall, students can earn up to $500 for showing up for class and doing well on standardized tests. The plan is part of a larger program designed to reduce poverty by teaching good social behaviors. Adults in the program can earn cash incentives for holding down a full-time job and having health insurance.
As part of the school merit plan, according to the New York Times, "fourth-grade students will receive up to $25 for a perfect score on each of 10 standardized tests throughout the year. Seventh-grade students will be able to earn twice as much - $50 per test, for a total of up to $500. Fourth graders will receive $5 just for taking the test, and seventh graders will get $10." The program will cost $53 million, all of which is being raised privately.
I am intrigued by this. I can remember, starting in about sixth grade, having friends who were paid for their grades. One friend got $10 for every A and $5 for every B on her report card. She would literally add up her bonus on report card day. My brother and I were not paid for grades (my dad liked to remind us that getting good grades was our JOB) but for kids who have nothing, I can see how this incentive might really work. I am also intrigued by the idea that you can train someone to be responsible--hold down a job, have proper health insurance--with a cash reward.
What do you think--is this the way to improve education and end poverty, or is it just another band aid?
Okay. I know that I may be setting myself up for lots of heartbreak here, but I can't help but be seduced by bento lunches. My good friend, Gwendomama, has the bento bug and has been making her daughter the most beautiful meals. I have a small pinch of Martha in my personality and now have to try it out as well. I'm hoping that this will convince my kids to expand their food horizions, at least by a little bit. (Perhaps another part of me wants to impress the other moms?) I absolutely love it when I'm in a nice restaurant and the food looks all swank -- so why wouldn't my offspring?
What about you? Do any of you bento? I want to hear about your experiences! Please make a hot dog octopus and tell me how it goes!
Here are some great links that Gwendomama sent me. Prepare to be impressed!
Here's a link where you can check out the gear. And more here. The initial investment may seem a little high (depending on your spending habits) but one of the very best things about bento lunches is the lack of plastic baggies and tin foil. They are so cute and they pay for themselves in the long run. (Do I even have to point out that they're good for the planet?)
I drive my sons to school every day. There are a lot of reasons for this; for starters, my sons go to private school, not to our neighborhood school, and their schools aren't within walking distance of our house. But even to get to the public elementary school in our neighborhood would require my kids to cross two busy streets during rush hour, which scares the living daylights out of me.
It turns out that my kids are not alone; according to a story on NPR's Day to Day, fewer than 15 percent of American school children walk to school these days. Some communities--and the US government--are implementing programs to encourage kids to walk, primarily in order to combat childhood obesity. The strategies include having parent volunteers who take turn chaperoning groups of kids to and from school each day and offering students rewards for walking to school. But some parents say that walking their kids, even if it is only a few blocks, just won't work. One mother interviewed by NPR said that walking her children to school takes 20 minutes while driving them takes less than five. She works and for her, that extra fifteen minutes is an important part of her day.
I have a girlfriend who lives in Kansas City, in a neighborhood where all the kids walk to school. The secret is a bike trail that runs through the backyards of the homes, providing a safe space for the kids and their bikes and scooters. My friend's son is in kindergarten this year and her husband walks to school with him every day (her husband happens to work across the street from the school). She says that the bike path, with its congregations of school-bound children, was one of the reasons they bought that particular house.
I would love to be able to walk my sons to school; I would much rather spend that time in the morning holding my child's hand, not fighting traffic. Our choice of private school makes this impossible, but it leaves me wondering what everyone else is doing. Do you walk your child to school? Why or why not?
Actress Gwyneth Paltrow has taken a lot of heat for disparaging remarks she has made in the past about Americans. For example, the Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias quoted her as saying, "The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans." She not only denies making that statement, she says she never even spoke with the paper. She does admit to giving a press conference in Spain where she says she may have mangled her Spanish and been misunderstood.
If that were the only case of her dumping on Americans, I could give her the benefit of the doubt. But she's been quoted all over the place unfavorably comparing Americans to Brits. In response to the criticisms of her remarks, she has claimed that she is proud to be an American.
So, why is she selling her New York home and buying another in London? Because, according to the Daily Mail, she wants to educate her children, Apple and Moses, in British schools.
It is certainly prerogative to raise her children wherever and however she pleases, but because of her previous comments, I suspect she is going to be roundly criticized for it.
Just when I was done taking some Scandinavians to task, they have to go and be all awesome and tolerant again and make me wish I was a well-spoken Dane with fashionable glasses and a tidy scarf around my neck who'd gone to one of the fine progressive high schools in the fine, progressive nation of Denmark. There is an important tradition at a high school in Silkeborg, Denmark every year, when the cold Nordic winter bends towards a sweet summer on the North Sea, nubile young teens hold a strip tease contest to impress their teachers, and get awarded "the best places on the tables in the canteen." Yeah, the teachers vote on who are the best performers and give the winners the most prestigious seats in the cafeteria. And I thought teachers at my high school had excellent benefits.
But now, the tradition is threatened because some students videotaped the performance on their cell phones and uploaded it to YouTube. I haven't seen it (YouTube removed it), but it reportedly shows the teens stripping naked and touching each other's breasts - then rubbing baby oil over each other's bodies, putting on a lesbian show for their cheering classmates and teachers.
With the leak of the video, some Danish fuddy duddies are trying to put a stop to the annual performance, but officials at the school are fighting to keep the tradition alive. Erik Olesen, the head teacher at the Silkeborg school called the contest "harmless fun" and said "everyone," including the school governors, has long known about the contest. Olesen said the teachers eventually stopped the girls from the lesbian action because they did feel that was going too far, but he did not blame the girls: "I think they forgot what they were doing and where they were. But my concern now is not to punish anyone, but protect the girls who are now all over the internet." Nor did Oleson have any bad words about the kids who videotaped this sacred Nordic tradition, exposing it to the world: "As for the students who recorded the contest, they didn't realize they had done anything illegal and I have had a long talk with them."
Oleson said he had no plans to stop the contest from taking place again next year.
On Wednesdays, Henry has library at school, which includes computer time. When the school year started, I was delighted that he was getting time to work on the computer; because of his fine motor skills delays, doctors have told us, he will always struggle with handwriting and will need to learn to type at an early age so that he can take notes in class. At the beginning of the year, he was playing phonics games on the computer, designed to teach him to read AND type. We saw dramatic improvement in his keyboarding skills and his reading skills and just generally in his confidence level. It seemed like a good thing.
But last week, he came home and told me for about the third Wednesday in a row that he had spent his library period playing Star Wars games at the Lego website. And frankly, it made me mad.
There are a lot of really great websites for kids Henry's age (he is six and in kindergarten). I'm not even entirely opposed to the Lego site; yesterday, we sat and played a Harry Potter game that required the player to guide the characters through a maze using different keys. But I don't want my six year old playing games where he shoots and kills people, for one thing, and I certainly don't want him playing games based on movies he's too young to see.
And I don't want him doing either during the school day.
I am the most frustrated just now because this is the first time I have felt like a school is directly undermining my parenting choices. We've been battling with Henry for a year or so now about what he watches on television ("But Mom, I am the ONLY ONE who doesn't watch Power Rangers!" he will wail). I was ready for that one, and had prepared my speech about how yes, some of his friends get to do things that he does not, but he gets to do things that his friends don't and that's just the way it is. But now I'm stumped because after telling him how important it was that he follow the rules at school and listen to his teachers, even if they were saying something different from what we said at home, I am vehemently disagreeing with what this teacher is allowing.
I'm planning to talk to Henry's classroom teacher this week, and see if she can get a read on what's going on in the library class. And then I will decide what my next step is.
Have you ever had a situation like this, where your child was being permitted to do something at school that you did not allow at home? What did you do?
There is a fascinating article in this month's New York Magazine about whether or not praising intelligence is really to a truly smart child's benefit. The article describes the case of "Thomas" a bright little boy among the top one percent of the top one percent of a school that only accepts the top one percent of applicants (whew!). His parents, however, warn that his intelligence hasn't necessarily translated into confidence in the performance of his studies. "Thomas didn't want to try things he wouldn't be successful at," his father says. "Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn't, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, 'I'm not good at this.'" Thomas abandoned subjects like spelling and cursive and fractions because they did not immediately come easy to him.
Researchers are beginning to note a real distinction between intelligence in children and the importance of effort, and parental praise may have a large role in discouraging effort. According to a survey conducted by Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents think it's important to tell their kids that they're smart. Parental praise is viewed as universally a good thing, as it supposedly bolsters self-confidence. But a growing body of research suggests that unending parental praise of a child's intelligence may actually encourage underperformance. Researchers call it the "inverse power of praise."
I know I am guilty of it. My wife and I are both constantly telling our daughter how smart she is, if only to combat the power of all those strangers also telling her how "pretty" she is. I want her to be confident not just in her looks, but in her mind. But the research described in the New York article is pretty convincing. I wonder if the same is true for telling a kid how good looking he is? Clearly the conclusion to draw from this is not that parents should tell their kids that they are stupid, but parents should probably structure praise in way that both challenges the child to do more than s/he already does, without eroding the confidence that would allow her/him to do it.
After six years without a raise (and, in fact, a net decrease in pay), being called greedy by administrators and a school board, and an ongoing lack of respect from the public and in the media, my wife is considering the unthinkable -- quitting teaching. You have to understand that this is a woman who has known she was going to be a teacher since first grade and who started teaching, first dance then in a regular classroom, at the age of ten.
Over the last six years, her net pay has gone down by almost a thousand dollars a month. That might be tolerable if the school board hadn't labeled the teachers greedy for wanting a raise and wanting to hold onto their medical care. It might be tolerable if the media didn't blame teachers for the incompetence of administration, the lack of parent support and involvement with their children, and, it sometimes seems, all of society's problems.
"After plowing those fields in the hot summer sun, over by the gate lordy here she comes. With a corsage on her wrist and her prom dress on, he makes a little room and she climbs on up. Open up a throttle and stir a little dust, just look at her face---she ain't foolin' him---for his sake, I hope she thinks his tractor's sexy."
I hope they played that Kenny Chesney hit at the New Rockford-Sheyenne High School prom last week, because rather than renting a limousine, Levi Rue took his date to the prom in his 1992 green tractor. Rue didn't break the news to his date, Alissa Bachmeier, until two days before the prom, and she was pretty skeptical at first. Mainly she was worried about her dress getting dirty. Rue showed her a picture of the enclosed-seating and promised the inside would be immaculate, and Bachmeier finally relented, and her lime green dress nearly matched the exterior paint of the tractor perfectly.
'I cleaned it up pretty good,'' Rue claims. Before the dance, he drove his date around in the tractor all over town, and even stopped by his grandmother's house let her see him all classed up for prom.
It was the most exciting thing to happen in New Rockford, North Dakota in many years.
I have had the great pleasure of visiting China. It is a wonderful place. From a tourist's perspective, what I loved seeing best were the people and places that had not been completely westernized: the old men in the Mao jackets, walking alongside their wives early in the morning, holding their own hands behind their back as they walked. The ancient peasants in rural China eternally bent in the rice fields. I loved that the country had not yet been overrun with western superficiality and style. Everywhere you looked, there was an old world still watching a new one invade, even if it was coming via their own young, rather than on the ships of lao wei.
It was not without a degree of sadness that I read this article, about how some Chinese kids are so embarrassed of their parents and the way they dress and act that they are actually hiring more modern, stylish adults to come to their schools to pretend to be their parents. One girl named Pingping from Northeast China's Liaoning Province never told her parents about the meetings they were required to attend at her school. Instead she paid a classmate's aunt to pretend to be her mother. When her parents asked her why, she answered that her mother had made her "lose face" when she was asked to tell about her experience bringing up the fastest-improving student in the class. At first her mother had been very hesitant to speak, and she spoke "with a strong Dalian accent and said, 'My girl is doing a good job this time. I feel pretty happy.'" Pingping's mother didn't have anything else to say. Pingping is like many members of her generation, embarrassed by her mother's peasant-like attributes (once so revered in Communist China), her stout figure, and her uncultured behavior. Eventually Pingping moved to a new school and concocted the plan to use a phony parent for meetings.
Isn't it every parent's god-given right to embarrass their children? Still, this story made me sad.
Tiffany Kalabus was, by all accounts, an enthusiastic and well-liked biology, earth and physical science teacher at Orchard Farm High School near St. Louis. But colleagues, students, and parents were left to wonder, following her resignation Tuesday, why she had an explicit x-rated VHS tape lying around in her classroom. Speculation has been running wild, but all that is clear is that she left the tape with a substitute teacher to show during a lesson on volcanoes, and that after reading the lesson she'd prepared for her students, the substitute slipped the tape into its slot and the classroom erupted in orgiastic moaning and groaning from several of the finest performers in the adult entertainment industry participating in a natural, zesty enterprise right there on the AV department's television. The whole affair only lasted about 15 seconds before the tape burst forth from the VCR, which, for most high school students, is probably pretty average.
Some students and parents have speculated that it was a student who switched the tapes as a practical joke, but school Superintendent Dan Dozier seemed to allude that Kalabus had given him reason to believe that the tape was not placed there by any student. The school board promptly accepted her resignation on Tuesday.
I've been thinking a lot this week about the balance between school safety and paranoia. In the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech (where school officials have been criticized both for a policy that shut key readers in the dorms off at 7:00 am and for not locking down the 2,600 acre campus fast enough after the first two shootings) it is impossible NOT to think about.
My sons' both go to schools that are locked during the day. Henry's school has keypad locks on all the external doors and closed-circuit TV cameras in the halls, but individual classrooms are open; Charlie's pre-k class is in the same building as the church, so the building is open but the classroom door stays locked. Both boys have had lock down drills at school this year; neither has been frightened or alarmed by these drills.
But neither school has ever had a tornado drill.
We live in Oklahoma where, quite frankly, my kids are at higher risk of being killed by a tornado than they are of being shot at school. We have tornado drills at home each spring; every Saturday when the sirens sound their test blast, we talk about what to do in a REAL tornado emergency. But when I ask my kids if they know what to do if the sirens sound while they are at school, they both look blankly at me.
I trust their schools to take care of them; I feel certain that the schools have a plan for a tornado emergency. Henry's school had to be evacuated last fall when a gas line on an adjoining property exploded, and the teachers and administrators did an incredible job of making sure the students were safe and calm. But I worry sometimes that we are so overwhelmed by what we see in the media, by the horror of school shootings in Pennsylvania and Virginia, that we are overlook the things that are most likely to happen in favor of preparing for what will most likely never happen.
Do you feel like your kids are safe at school? What specifically is your school doing to promote student safety? What do you wish they would do
I wouldn't believe this story if I weren't looking at the police report as I type.
On March 28, a 6-year-old kindergarten student at Avon Elementary School in Avon Park, Florida had a tantrum that landed her in the back of a squad car, and then hauled off to the county jail. Desre'e Watson's teacher called police after she was reportedly "disruptive of the normal classroom activities." You know, she was "crying and wailing" and "refused to leave the classroom." Then she reportedly struck her teacher and continued to cry and wail while being carried to the front office. The police report describing the officer's attempt to subdue the 50-lb girl reads like a game warden's account of trying to cage a cornered cougar. Even handcuffed, she struggled to get away from the officer and stuck her foot in the path of squad car door to prevent it from closing.
Attempts to reach Desre'e's mother during the episode failed. When the pess caught wind of the arrest and charge of a 6-year old with multiple offenses, including felony assault, here's what the department had to say:
"When there is an outburst of violence, we have a duty to protect and make that school a safe environment for the students, staff and faculty. That's why, at this point, the person was arrested regardless what the age," said Chief Frank Mercurio, Avon Park Police Department.
I spent a large part of today flipping between CNN and MSNBC, for news about the shootings at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, VA. I am always horrified and saddened by events like this, both as a parent and as a former teacher.
My kids are too little to notice news stories like this one, but those of you with older children, particularly high school kids who are looking toward their own college departures, may be wondering how to talk to them about what happened today at Virginia Tech. The PBS Parents website offers some useful tips for talking about difficult issues, including school shootings. Begin by asking your child if she has heard about the event, and what specifically she has heard. "If your children have not heard about this news, explain the event simply, telling them just what they need to know, why they are safe, and what is being done to stop the violence and solve the crime." The site reminds parents to keep information age-appropriate, and to respond specifically and factually to your child's concerns. This piece, at MSNBC, provides a more detailed list of strategies for talking with kids about school shootings, including expressing your own feelings about school violence and validating whatever fears your child may have. But remind your child that as frightening and sad as school shootings are, they are rare, and talk with her about any specific safety procedures her school has in place. My sons' schools both have lock down drills fairly regularly, and we use those days as an opportunity to remind them how safe their schools are, and how confident and comfortable we feel sending them there every day.
I don't know that I will talk with my kids about this particular shooting, but I am certainly thinking about the members of the Virginia Tech community today. My heart goes out to them.
Edited to add:Common Sense Media offers more tips for talking to your kids, including a suggestion that you NOT let kids under 14 watch any of the video of events like today's shootings. I have to say that I agree with this; a school shooting is difficult enough to explain without the visual images.
In the past few years, we've seen a variety of strategies for bailing out failing public schools. Uniforms, individual laptops, non-traditional curriculum, private management of school districts--you name it, it seems like someone has tried it.
I drive my sons to school every day. There are a lot of reasons for this; for starters, my sons go to private school, not to our neighborhood school, and their schools aren't within walking distance of our house. But even to get to the public elementary school in our neighborhood would require my kids to cross two busy streets during rush hour, which scares the living daylights out of me.
Actress Gwyneth Paltrow has taken a lot of heat for disparaging remarks she has made in the past about Americans. For example, the Portuguese newspaper 
Just when I was done 
On Wednesdays, Henry has library at school, which includes computer time. When the school year started, I was delighted that he was getting time to work on the computer; because of his fine motor skills delays, doctors have told us, he will always struggle with handwriting and will need to learn to type at an early age so that he can take notes in class. At the beginning of the year, he was playing phonics games on the computer, designed to teach him to read AND type. We saw dramatic improvement in his keyboarding skills and his reading skills and just generally in his confidence level. It seemed like a good thing.
There is a 
After six years without a raise (and, in fact, a net decrease in pay), being called greedy by administrators and a school board, and an ongoing lack of respect from the public and in the media, my wife is considering the unthinkable -- quitting teaching. You have to understand that this is a woman who has known she was going to be a teacher since first grade and who started teaching, first dance then in a regular classroom, at the age of ten.
"After plowing those fields in the hot summer sun, over by the gate lordy here she comes. With a corsage on her wrist and her prom dress on, he makes a little room and she climbs on up. Open up a throttle and stir a little dust, just look at her face---she ain't foolin' him---for his sake, I hope she thinks his tractor's sexy."
I have had the great pleasure of visiting China. It is a wonderful place. From a tourist's perspective, what I loved seeing best were the people and places that had not been completely westernized: the old men in the Mao jackets, walking alongside their wives early in the morning, holding their own hands behind their back as they walked. The ancient peasants in rural China eternally bent in the rice fields. I loved that the country had not yet been overrun with western superficiality and style. Everywhere you looked, there was an old world still watching a new one invade, even if it was coming via their own young, rather than on the ships of lao wei. 
Tiffany Kalabus was, by all accounts, an enthusiastic and well-liked biology, earth and physical science teacher at Orchard Farm High School near St. Louis. But colleagues, students, and parents were left to wonder, following her resignation Tuesday, why she had an explicit x-rated VHS tape lying around in her classroom. Speculation has been running wild, but all that is clear is that she left the tape with a substitute teacher to show during a lesson on volcanoes, and that after reading the lesson she'd prepared for her students, the substitute slipped the tape into its slot and the classroom erupted in orgiastic moaning and groaning from several of the finest performers in the adult entertainment industry participating in a natural, zesty enterprise right there on the AV department's television. The whole affair only lasted about 15 seconds before the tape burst forth from the VCR, which, for most high school students, is probably pretty average.
I've been thinking a lot this week about the balance between school safety and paranoia. In the wake of the 
I wouldn't believe this story if I weren't looking at 
I spent a large part of today flipping between CNN and MSNBC, for news about the 
