masterwordsmith-unplugged

YAY! Streamyx internet connection is now back to normal. WHAT A RELIEF!!! For almost I week, I felt as though the world had come to a standstill when waiting for pages of my favorite websites to load. So today, I have had a veritable feast reading and reading to my heart's delight - after days of withdrawal symptoms!

From one of my favorite magazines, here's a MUST-READ from The New Yorker:

The Voting Rights Act, which passed in 1965, stands as one of the great monuments to civil rights in American history. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, purported to give Americans the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” but it was not until a century later, with the passage of the act, that the right was enforced, and Southern blacks were finally free to cast a ballot. Over the years, an ideologically diverse group of Supreme Court Justices has reviewed and approved the constitutionality of the act many times. But, in a case to be argued before the Court this spring, the current conservative majority has a chance to undo this signal achievement of American democracy. For more, click here.

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Having been in the education industry for more than 21 years, I am increasingly concerned about how many Malaysian parents, particularly those from Penang, are overemphasizing tuition classes for primary school children to the extent that kids are being robbed of their childhood and opportunities to play! Even if they are allowed to play, most resort to PSP or Play Station games etc. that numb their minds and stunt their creative thinking skills. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised to read this article in the Scientific American this morning on "The Serious Need for Play" :

On August 1, 1966, the day psychiatrist Stuart Brown started his assistant professorship at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, 25-year-old Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the University of Texas Tower on the Austin campus and shot 46 people. Whitman, an engineering student and a former U.S. Marine sharpshooter, was the last person anyone expected to go on a killing spree. After Brown was assigned as the state’s consulting psychiatrist to investigate the incident and later, when he interviewed 26 convicted Texas murderers for a small pilot study, he discovered that most of the killers, including Whitman, shared two things in common: they were from abusive families, and they never played as kids.

Brown did not know which factor was more important. But in the 42 years since, he has interviewed some 6,000 people about their childhoods, and his data suggest that a lack of opportunities for unstructured, imaginative play can keep children from growing into happy, well-adjusted adults. “Free play,” as scientists call it, is critical for becoming socially adept, coping with stress and building cognitive skills such as problem solving. Research into animal behavior confirms play’s benefits and establishes its evolutionary importance: ultimately, play may provide animals (including humans) with skills that will help them survive and reproduce.

Most psychologists agree that play affords benefits that last through adulthood, but they do not always agree on the extent to which a lack of play harms kids—particularly because, in the past, few children grew up without ample frolicking time. But today free play may be losing its standing as a staple of youth. According to a paper published in 2005 in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, children’s free-play time dropped by a quarter between 1981 and 1997. Concerned about getting their kids into the right colleges, parents are sacrificing playtime for more structured activities. As early as preschool, youngsters’ after-school hours are now being filled with music lessons and sports—reducing time for the type of imaginative and rambunctious cavorting that fosters creativity and cooperation.

PLEASE READ THIS EXCELLENT ARTICLE BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK. TQ.

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When I was in the Bay Area in the 1990's, I used to enjoy my hot cuppa coffee while reading the San Francisco Chronicle and even read it while on the treadmill or bike when I hit the gym with my cousin. I felt pretty sad when I read the following from Reuters:

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - San Francisco may lose its main newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, as owner Hearst Corp cuts a "significant" number of jobs and decides whether to shut or sell the money-losing daily.

The privately held New York-based publisher already is considering shutting a second West Coast paper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, in the face of a devastating decline in advertising revenue and big losses.

Founded shortly after Gold Rush fever hit California in the mid-19th century, the Chronicle has long been an essential part of daily life for many Bay Area residents, even as it sometimes disappointed or outraged them.

But the Chronicle lost more than $50 million last year and this year's losses to date are worse, Hearst said on its website on Tuesday. It said the paper has lost "major" amounts of money since 2001, a year after Hearst bought the paper. For more, click here.

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In another report by STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM :

On Tuesday, some of the biggest names in American retailing reported steep profit declines. However, chains like Home Depot and Macy’s beat analysts’ expectations and sent their share prices higher — largely because they are making the radical changes necessary to stay alive and grab market share.

Home Depot, for instance, is taking painful steps to make itself leaner, like shutting peripheral businesses including its Expo Design Centers. Frank Blake, chief executive of Home Depot, said on Tuesday: “We have become a simpler company, which is a good thing.”

But while trimming the fat, retailers must also beef up the things that matter to customers. So even though Home Depot reduced inventory levels by $1 billion, its in-stock levels are at an all-time high — meaning that when customers come in looking for a nail gun or a roll of duct tape, they are likely to find it.

Along the same lines, while Home Depot is reducing costs by cutting 7,000 jobs, or 2 percent of its workers, it is not eliminating merit pay increases and bonuses for its top sales staff. This month, the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index showed that Home Depot had the best customer service improvement of any specialty retailer. For more, click here.

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And here's some dismal news...

CATHERINE RAMPELL and JACK HEALY reported in The New York Times today:

The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, offered a sober assessment of the national economy and the prospects of recovery to Congress on Tuesday, as reports of plunging housing prices and consumer confidence reinforced the grim outlook.

Mr. Bernanke told the Senate banking committee that the Federal Reserve was doing everything it could to unlock credit markets and encourage lending and borrowing. Still, a full recovery is potentially at least a year away, he said, and that is if all goes according to plan.

“If actions taken by the administration, the Congress and the Federal Reserve are successful in restoring some measure of financial stability — and only if that is the case, in my view — there is a reasonable prospect that the current recession will end in 2009 and that 2010 will be a year of recovery,” Mr. Bernanke said.

Though he lingered over the seriousness of the financial crisis enveloping the country, the Fed chairman buoyed investors by stating his resistance to any nationalization of the big banks. The prospect of the government taking up to a 40 percent stake in Citigroup in return for more assistance has pushed the idea to the fore. For more, click here.



Have a nice day everyone...enjoy surfing!