One of those issues concerns the health of children. That is where electronic smog comes in. It is the term that has been created to capture the fact that the electricity that powers our civilization gives off a range of effects that appear to be dangerous.Scientific evidence has begun to show that it may be causing cancer and miscarriages as well as making some people allergic to modern life.

In an effort to cope, schools are coming up with a range of strategies--all of which involve cutting services. In Minnesota, for instance, one district plans to eliminate classes every Monday to come up with the extra $65,000 it needs to fill its buses' tanks. The superintendent commented "I know $65,000 may not sound like a lot, but it's more than one teaching position,"

To deal with the problem, schools have placed one technique into center stage. It goes by the name of “journal writing.”

But the project has lots of valuable things to say about ways to fix our schools and strengthen the economy. Those who want to keep up with the state of education today can turn to http://www.edin08.com/

It started when a mother brought her six year old son to see me because he had not made any progress in reading during this school year and she was, understandably, distraught.

I began some preliminary testing. In the one-to-one situation, it was not easy, but at least it was possible to keep his attention to the task at hand. However, if at any point, I did not attend directly to him (for example, when I turned to the mom to get some information), he bounded out of his seat in an instant. Then he raced over to one or another of the toys in the room. It would not be amiss to characterize his behavior as much like “a jack in the box.”

Across the state, the number of California college students between the ages of 50 and 64 rose 61 percent between 1986 and 2006. Among people ages 40 to 49, enrollment increased 32 percent. Overall enrollment climbed 33 percent during the same two decades.

"Despite extensive use of standardized tests by the 50 states, 30-year reading trend data show minimal if any improvement for 9-, 13-, or 17-year-old children since the early 1970s...Further, the testing of adult literacy in 1992 and again in 2003 shows little or no improvement in literacy at the lowest levels and a decline at the highest levels."

Given that certain families produce abundant numbers of musicians, sci­en­tists have long sus­pected that talent in this realm mu­sic might have ge­net­ic roots. Now research indicates that they may be right. Sci­en­tists in Finland say they’ve found ap­prox­i­mate loca­t­ions in our ge­nome where genes af­fect­ing mu­si­cal tal­ent may lie. The find­ings suggest not only that mu­si­cal abil­ity is partly ge­net­ic but it may share ev­o­lu­tion­ary roots with lan­guage.

For example,

An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds.

More than a million drop out every year.

These are among the highest dropout rates in the industrialized world. Roughly a third of all American high school students drop out. Another third graduate but are not prepared for the next stage of life — either productive work or some form of post-secondary education.

Think about it! Two-thirds of all teenagers old enough to graduate from high school are leaving, without the skills to negotiate the modern world.

Time is a great healer, but a terrible beautician.

If #2 pencils are the most popular, are they still #2?

I live in California, and my watch is three hours fast, I can't fix it, so I'm moving to New York.

Living on Earth is expensive, but it does include free trips around the sun.

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked and drycleaners depressed?

It's not who you know, it's whom you know. (It's so nice when jokes also teach some language.)

Fortunately, there are other paths that are open. Reichenberg-Ullman & Ullman in a well researched book Ritalin Free Kids report their experiences in treating ADD children via homeopathy. If you are interested in learning more about this, you can go to http://www.amazon.com/Ritalin-Free-Kids-Effective-Homeopathic-Behavioral/dp/0761507191

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1. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger."

2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says "Dam!"

According to a new national study, about a third of the nation’s eighth-grade students are proficient writers. The results are even worse for high school seniors where only roughly a quarter achieve this level. The results are about the same as those in 2002, when a similar exam was last given.

A success rate of 30% may not sound like much--and indeed, it isn't. But it is the best performance by eighth-grade students in any subject tested in the national assessment in the last three years. For example, only 17 percent of eighth graders were proficient on the 2006 history exam, for example.