Word: skills
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Garfield, 31, a world-class juggler himself, founded a rival organization called the World Juggling Federation (WJF), dedicated to promoting juggling as a sport, not a sideshow. There are no clowns in the WJF. In WJF events, contestants are judged on the difficulty of their routines and the technical skill with which they execute them, and nothing else. The object is not to entertain but to win. "I wanted to see people competing like athletes," Garfield says. "Kind of like an X Games for juggling...
...People with every imaginable skill are needed - bookkeepers and lawyers and park rangers and meat inspectors. Many of these are better jobs than the private sector offers. A "service worker" for the feds isn't a fast food cashier. She's a police officer protecting public safety. A "maintenance worker" isn't a janitor - he's repairing airplanes. The government especially needs scientists. The feds employ so many scientists of every variety that it's their No. 1 job category. (Yes, there are even more scientists than paper pushers...
...penmanship expert would look at that sorry trend and say, "What a disaster! The adoption of the personal computer has led to a marked deterioration of an important communication skill." But that assessment would be meaningless without factoring in all the benefits I've enjoyed from switching to the keyboard. Not only can I put words together at 10 times the speed of using pen and paper, but I can also transfer those words to the digital realm, where they can be edited, spell-checked, e-mailed, quoted, blogged and Googled...
...yourself this question: In the offices of the future, which skill set will today's kids draw upon in their day-to-day tasks? Mastering interfaces, searching for information, maintaining virtual social networks and multitasking? Or doing algebra? I think the answer is obvious. It's a good bet that 99% of kids will never use algebra again after they graduate from high school. And yet thanks to the testing establishment, we know a staggering amount about the algebraic skills of today's teenagers but next to nothing about the skills they're actually going...
...Protecting New Hampshire, though important to any presidential contender (or contender's spouse), is just one reason some people are angry about the deal. Critics say it further compresses the time in which to test candidates, puts a premium on money and fundraising over retail political skill, and risks a chaotic competition for first-in-the-country bragging rights. "The people who want this have the votes, so the process is going ahead," says Don Fowler, the former DNC head who is on the committee that will make the change, "but I think it's going to cause tremendous confusion...