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As people make advances every day in technology, we also lose stuff that we don't need to know anymore. When was the last time you rewound a videotape? If you can think of anything you don't need to know anymore, check to see if it's on this list of Obsolete Skills.
I don't agree with all of them (you still need to know how to compute sales tax if you are a business owner!), but it's a pretty good list nonetheless.
I'm not absolutely certain about this, but I think I have a similar basic understanding of Leonardo Da Vinci as your typical educated U.S. citizen. I know he was a brilliant artist during the Renaissance and dabbled a bit in science and engineering endeavors.
With the multitude of problems facing education in America today, it's oftentimes difficult to even consider that anything will ever be resolved. However, there is one thing afforded to U.S. citizens that can give educators hope: the ability to vote. With the presidential primaries in full swing, and the general election coming up in the fall, here's a quick rundown of where each major candidate stands:
Democrats
If you have managed to ignore all talk so far about the upcoming presidential election, I commend you from a particular standpoint. How on earth can you tune out something as important as that? Do you have the new Bose BodyPhone, which enables a person to completely shut off the real world entirely? I thought the BodyPhone was only in prototype?
At a typical office job in the 21st Century, you are guaranteed to come into contact with a number of individuals who have no idea what they are talking about. Of course, that doesn't mean that they cannot pretend they are intelligent.
If you are familiar with the Periodic Table (and if you aren't, please have a chat with your chemistry teacher soon!), you might be interested to know that someone has compiled a list of English words that can be spelled with chemical symbols.
No, the person wasn't me. Actually, the computer did most of the work, but Dr. Nandor's Exhaustive Chemical Words Pages shows a multitude of ways to combine elements to form words.
I'll be heading back to familiar territory this weekend as I host a book talk in Crawfordsville, Ind., at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Crawfordsville Public Library. A little later in the day (3 p.m. CST), I'll be at the Champaign, Ill., Borders.
I lived in Crawfordsville in 1998-99, working at the Journal Review during my time there. I will be discussing writing and publishing at the library, as well as explaining the process of putting together my novel, The Developers.
There are thousands of way to make your Webpage interactive these days, from Java applets to Flash to sticking your head through your computer screen and giving the monitor a twirl. But today we will be discussing forms, one of the most elementary ways to conduct hand-to-hand combat on the Internet warfront.
Either your guy won or he lost. OK, maybe he didn't run at all, or maybe your guy is imaginary. Regardless, the voting is over, so it's time to move on.
But will everyone be nice to each other? At Vigil For Civility, that's the hope. The site asks people to basically support the winner of the presidential race and try to work toward uniting the American people again.
Today, March 14, is Pi Day. Well, according to the Wikipedia entry about it, March 14 is the unofficial celebration for Pi Day, because the date is 3/14. Other countries read dates a little bit differently but it seems appropriate due to other factors, listed by Wikipedia: