BBC NEWS | South Asia | Pakistan gets women combat pilots

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Pakistan gets women combat pilots: "The women were part of a batch of 36 cadets who were awarded flying badges after three years of gruelling training at the PAF academy at Risalpur.

Being a fighter pilot has until now been a purely male domain. Women could join the armed forces but only for non-combat jobs like the medical corps.

Three years ago the PAF decided to allow women to train as fighter pilots."

DisneySpeak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

DisneySpeak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "A term used by Disney employees that refers to the process of adding little things to a ride, show, attraction or work of art that already seems very good. Walt Disney did plussing on every project he was involved in to reach perfection and outdo competitors. Examples of plussing include everything from adding fireworks to the rooftop scene in Mary Poppins to continuously adding things like a playable 'scavenger hunt game' in the waiting area of the Haunted Mansion attraction at Disneyland Park."

Wired News: Brain Teasers

Wired News: Brain Teasers: "A light bulb went off. If Tetris looked precisely like an IQ test, then maybe playing Tetris would help you do better at intelligence tests. Johnson spun this conceit into his brilliant book of last year, Everything Bad Is Good For You, in which he argued that video games actually make gamers smarter. With their byzantine key commands, obtuse rule-sets and dynamic simulations of everything from water physics to social networks, Johnson argued, video games require so much cognitive activity that they turn us into Baby Einsteins -- not dull robots.

I loved the book, but it made me wonder: If games can inadvertently train your brain, why doesn't someone make a game that does so intentionally?

I should have patented the idea. Next month, Nintendo is releasing Brain Age, a DS game based on the research of the Japanese neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima. Kawashima found that if you measured the brain activity of someone who was concentrating on a single, complex task -- like studying quantum theory -- several parts of that person's brain would light up. But if you asked them to answer a rapid-fire slew of tiny, simple problems -- like basic math questions -- her or his brain would light up everywhere."

Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math - New York Times

Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math - New York Times: "Schools from Vermont to California are increasing — in some cases tripling — the class time that low-proficiency students spend on reading and math, mainly because the federal law, signed in 2002, requires annual exams only in those subjects and punishes schools that fall short of rising benchmarks.

The changes appear to principally affect schools and students who test below grade level.

The intense focus on the two basic skills is a sea change in American instructional practice, with many schools that once offered rich curriculums now systematically trimming courses like social studies, science and art. A nationwide survey by a nonpartisan group that is to be made public on March 28 indicates that the practice, known as narrowing the curriculum, has become standard procedure in many communities.

The survey, by the Center on Education Policy, found that since the passage of the federal law, 71 percent of the nation's 15,000 school districts had reduced the hours of instructional time spent on history, music and other subjects to open up more time for reading and math. The center is an independent group that has made a thorough study of the new act and has published a detailed yearly report on the implementation of the law in dozens of districts."

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This is a really sad state of affairs in such a highly developed country. There is something fundamentally wrong. And the worst part is no seems to have an understanding of what it is. This country is facing a whole new set of problems whose solution they have no clue about.

Branded eyes

I saw this guy at the gym wear a worn out white T-shirt, and the very next second I saw a picture of tha man playing Polo at the bottom right-side of his shirt. My impression about this piece of clothing and the person wearing it changed within a fraction of  a second.
Maybe they teach you this in the marketting classes, but I still find this concept of a brand an interesting mindgame. We are taught to associate an image with high quality and social standing. Just like in India a slightly plump person is thought to be from a wealthier family. In the 'blink' of an eye we sum up the person based on a small picture at the corner of their attire.

Meals That Moms Can Almost Call Their Own - New York Times

Meals That Moms Can Almost Call Their Own - New York Times: "Takeout pizza was a mainstay, except on the nights when Chinese food seemed more appealing. When Ms. Robbins cooked, it was spaghetti or tuna casserole over and over, with rarely enough time to make a salad.

Their routine was expensive, fattening and boring. In the rush to get through the day, the family had lost control of the dinner table.

So Ms. Robbins now goes to Dream Dinners in West Seattle, where she spends just under two hours assembling dishes like cheesy chicken casserole and Salisbury steak from ingredients that have been peeled and chopped for her. She does not have to pick up a knife, turn on a stove or wash a dish.

All she has to do is pop the meals in her oven and, for about $3.50 a serving, experience the satisfaction of putting a home-cooked meal — of a sort — on the table.

Americans, pinched for time and increasingly uncomfortable in their kitchens, have been on a 50-year slide away from home cooking. Now, at almost 700 meal assembly centers around the country, families like the Robbinses prepare two weeks' worth of dinners they can call their own with little more effort than it takes to buy a rotisserie chicken and a bag of salad."

Math Trek: From Counting to Writing, Science News Online, March 11, 2006

Math Trek: From Counting to Writing, Science News Online, March 11, 2006: "Although other scholars tend to agree that Sumerian tokens could have been devices for keeping track of goods, some argue that writing was a largely independent development. These skeptics insist that there's little evidence that cuneiform writing arose directly out of a token-based accounting system. Moreover, it's likely that writing developed independently in different parts of the world—in Mesopotamia, in the Indus River valley, and in Egypt—with each region producing its own unique form of expression for its own purpose.

In response, Schmandt-Besserat contends that she has strong archaeological evidence—thousands of tokens and hundreds of clay envelopes and early tablets—to support her theory.

Schmandt-Besserat is now exploring how the development of writing influenced art by providing a way of presenting stories on vases and other surfaces. Before writing, the patterns were largely geometric; after writing, there was narrative, she says.

At the same time, art influenced writing, helping it shift from a mundane accounting tool to an evocative form of expression, beginning as a way to preserve the names of deceased members of a family."