Just What the Professor Ordered

·         Although I’m no longer a student, I can remember the pain of the first day of classes. Yes, paying for those expensive textbooks! The other day I was passing by The Coop, MIT’s bookstore, and I saw students going in smiling and leaving with heavy bags and, well, no smiles. This Op-Ed proposes an interesting solution to the problem!

·         This piece in the NY Times talks about the roots of Islamic Fundamentalism, and although much ink (maybe too much) has been spilled talking about this subject, this piece offers some new ideas and uses some historical perspective.

·         Friedman talks about his “flattening world” again. And although I’m sick of him trying to sell his new book by using this expression over and over and over again, he talks about an interesting program called HeyMath that was started in India and is being implemented in Singapore (where he’s writing from). It makes best teaching practices from around the world available online, so teachers anywhere could access them.

·         And in the US, shame apparently is not a word in today’s Republican dictionary. Apparently, the Heritage Foundation doesn’t believe the White House is doing enough to use the Katrina disaster to promote political and business agendas (with the exception of Halliburton contracts of course). Just check this out!