Word: rareness
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Stanford International shows what's possible for a public elementary school, although it has the rare advantage of support from corporations like Nintendo and Starbucks, which contribute to its $1.7 million-a-year budget. Still, dozens of U.S. school districts have found ways to orient some of their students toward the global economy. Many have opened schools that offer the international baccalaureate (I.B.) program, a rigorous, off-the-shelf curriculum recognized by universities around the world and first introduced in 1968--well before globalization became a buzzword...
Classes like this, which teach key aspects of information literacy, remain rare in public education, but more and more universities and employers say they are needed as the world grows ever more deluged with information of variable quality. Last year, in response to demand from colleges, the Educational Testing Service unveiled a new, computer-based exam designed to measure information-and-communication-technology literacy. A pilot study of the test with 6,200 high school seniors and college freshmen found that only half could correctly judge the objectivity of a website. "Kids tend to go to Google...
...Litvinenko's fate. On Nov. 23, a few hours after the scientists isolated what was causing his body to disintegrate, he succumbed. His was not the quiet, inexplicable demise that a poisoner usually seeks. Instead, those alpha particles, which were shown to come from the rare isotope polonium 210, opened a box of mysteries that have grabbed the world's attention for weeks and turned a gruesome death into the center of a global manhunt and a potential row between Russia and the rest of the world...
...poison: polonium needs a nuclear reactor to cook it up and extremely careful handling. At first, the discovery of the element seemed to hang responsibility on the Kremlin. Russia is a big producer of polonium (although its annual output, less than a hundred grams a year, shows just how rare it is). The element is hard to procure. In the U.S., it takes a government license to buy more than minute quantities, and according to the website of United Nuclear, which sells isotopes for use in research labs, it would take about $1 million, 15,000 purchases of the largest...
...given fresh urgency in July when same-store sales for the month rose 4%, the slowest pace in nearly five years. The reason, said management: hot weather increased demand for cold drinks, and stores couldn't keep up. Customers saw long lines and kept on walking. It was a rare financial miss, and Starbucks' stock dropped 9% on the news (it's still up more than 20% for the year)--highlighting that in the debate between handcrafted and automated, what investors care most about is results...