Word: rote
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...country on the itinerary. But at a morning briefing the day before his departure - as reporters focused on the ouster of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner - Press Secretary Robert Gibbs didn't field a single question about the President's trip. It was a sign of how ubiquitous and rote presidential foreign travel has become. (See the 10 Ideas Changing the World Right...
...inadequate political education. For frustrated farmers or construction workers or street vendors, it may be easier to imagine political change through a groundswell of antigovernment rallies rather than through checking one of many underwhelming candidates on a ballot. Asia's education systems, largely underfunded and over-reliant on rote learning, do little to instruct citizens on the power of franchise or the importance of accountable leadership. Still, as Thais - even those who initially supported the PAD protesters - realized, months of street demonstrations are not pleasant. The protest movement may have gotten what it wanted, but the country now faces...
...make sense. With so much information readily accessible, why waste mental space on facts like the population of Russia or the circumference of a circle? Humans have limited mental capacity. Even Sherlock Holmes had to purge his mind of random trivia occasionally to make room for more important matters. Rote memorization, long a mainstay of the classroom, is now relegated to Classics concentrators and those people who play online trivia games for fun. For the first time in centuries, humans can store all those pesky facts on Wikipedia and devote their entire minds to thinking...
...applying the case method, long associated with business school instruction, to public health, Bloom and his faculty hoped to foster a culture that emphasized interactive problem solving over rote memorization...
These events were designed to give the television networks fresh pictures to remind people to vote. But it's all a kabuki dance. The last days of a modern presidential campaign have a rote feel - quick flights followed by airport-hangar rallies in which McCain makes jokes, strains his vocal cords and repeats the same speech he has been making for about two weeks. If the microphones are not working well, which is often the case, he jokes that they are "brought to you by the Democratic National Committee." When he gets to the part where he calls Barack Obama...