Word: pencils
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...women maroon themselves for as long as 39 days on an isolated tropical island, building driftwood huts and lunching on rats. Meanwhile, 10 folks agree to spend as long as three months sequestered, sleeping in communal bedrooms and living without TV or newspapers in a house that lacks only pencil shavings on the floor to qualify as a human hamster cage--all for cash prizes, under constant camera surveillance for a prime-time audience...
...Holbrooke over the weekend described the conflict as "an old-fashioned border dispute," but this one has a flavor particular to a continent whose political map is riddled with straight lines depicting borders established with pencil and ruler in distant capitals during the colonial era. The Ethiopia-Eritrea border dates back to a 1902 treaty between Italy, which had colonized Eritrea, and Ethiopia's King Menelik II, which for the most part used rivers to separate their respective territories, but drew a straight line in the vicinity of Badme to connect two rivers. That straight line disappeared from many maps...
...conversation is good stuff. And, while we're on dining hall conversation topics, I'd also like to offer my appreciation for the folks who talk about really random stuff in really loud voices. The other day I overheard a very heated argument about the origin of the word pencil. Hmmm. That's great procrastinating trivia. I appreciate...
...arithmetic, such as long addition and multiplication, they say; let the children find their own methods for adding and multiplying two-digit numbers, and for larger numbers, let them use calculators. One determined reformer puts it decisively: "It's time to acknowledge that continuing to teach these skills (i.e., pencil-and-paper computational algorithms) to our students is not only unnecessary, but counterproductive and downright dangerous...
...course I want work, vacations, significant people of all kinds, lots of sunshine and several blocks of libraries. But I have learned better than to pencil these in: Besides living by libraries, developing your instinct for choices and taking your chances can be more trustworthy than plans anyone--even you--developed years ago, before you knew what you know...