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How Smart Is Your Right Foot?

Happy 11-11-11

On the same day in 1911, The New York Times ran an article about the special day on Page 1. You can read the whole front page here.

Thought of the day

Economics: the missing class

In all of our headlong rush toward improving education, we have missed an important facet. From kindergarten through a kid’s senior year in high school, a student is not required to take any economics courses. Why do we ignore something as important as math and English when we design the curriculum?

Called the dismal science, economics can be a rather dry discipline. It is, however, one of the foundations of modern life, and students who don’t understand it are doomed to be at the economic mercy of a system that does understand it.

Economics is the ultimate predictor of behavior. In the grandest sense, every decision we make is based on some very basic principles; supply and demand, scarcity, opportunity, cost and other rudimentary principles guide our decisions from what breakfast cereal to buy to what career to choose. An education system that fails to teach these principles is setting its students up for failure. A kid who doesn’t know the difference between compound interest and a compound fracture is a prime candidate to become a slave to debt and interest. With bankruptcies and foreclosures at record levels, you’d think that we’d provide our kids a real life skill by teaching them how money works. Instead, we teach them how to take standardized tests. We’re not doing them any favors.

Demonstrators Test Mayor, a Backer of Wall St. and Free Speech

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has expressed his support for free speech while disagreeing with the message of Occupy Wall Street.

By KATE TAYLOR

Shortly before noon on Wednesday, the barricades that impeded foot traffic along Wall Street for weeks came down. Elected officials praised the mayor. Shopkeepers breathed sighs of relief.


But just seven hours later, the barricades went back up. Occupy Wall Street protesters were on the move, and the police were worried they would flood the street.


Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who over the last seven weeks has struggled publicly with how to manage New York City’s response to the demonstration Occupy Wall Street, on Thursday offered a staccato analysis of his administration’s latest effort at finding a way forward:

When KFC meets McDonald's

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Dhyāna in Buddhism