Congratulations to ¡Gringo Unleashed!, accessorize, accesorize, and today's articles
Congratulations to ¡Gingo Unleashed! on his new job as website editor/resident full-time blogger for the Alliance for School Choice. I'm adding the Alliance to the blogroll in the Websites category. Another school choice blogger, Andrew Colson, is working at the Cato Institute as director of the Center for Educational Freedom.

Speaking of Cato, don't miss their report on Katrina relief, titled Government Disaster Efforts Ill-conceived. Months ago they were discussing what the press and Congress are just now starting to realize.

Another blog we like, Camp Katrina, has a new section dedicated to how the US military are Helping Women. Camp Katrina's a daily must-visit.

Accessorize, accesorize!
Yesterday Neo-neocon was discussing what Your mother (or grandmother, or great-grandmother) should know: gloves and the flu. Neo's point was on contagion, but I focused on the fashion aspects.

My mother was the youngest of ten children, and her older sisters were in their twenties when my mother was born. Like their mother, the older sisters always wore hats and matching gloves when going out. Of course they had lovely complexions and hands. The accessorizing possibilites are endless. And there are other possibilities, too: Neo's commenter ElMondoHummus added

I can't comment from the ladies end of the fashion scale, but if gloves came back as an acceptable accessory for men, that would reopen a whole world of old-school provocations. Who hasn't wanted to challenge someone to a duel by slapping them with a glove? :)

Or pull the Bugs Bunny stunt of filling the glove with bricks, horseshoes, gravel, etc. BLAP

Maybe I'll start wearing gloves in warm weather.

Maria's articles
Congress's Secret Saddam Tapes: The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is studying 12 hours of audio recordings between Saddam Hussein and his top advisers that may provide clues to the whereabouts of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. We'll see if the papers (other than the Sun) write on this.

The death of handwriting: Could it really all be over for handwriting?

Personally, I don't know when I last had a milkman, still less when I last left him a billet doux. A more persuasive argument for the maintenance of handwriting is surely that, as students learn this skill, they are building other developmental skills such as sequential memory and fine motor ability. These fundamental skills assist students in other essential academic areas such as maths. There is also a strong aesthetic argument: we shouldn't neglect the sheer beauty of which handwriting is capable. As Professor Rosemary Sassoon, author of Handwriting: The Way to Teach It, says: "Handwriting is an imprint of the self on the page."

The national curriculum, in any event, now stresses handwriting skills. The four criteria of the Sats level two handwriting test are legibility, consistent size and spacing of letters, flow and movement, and a confident personal style. But there is a problem. Anecdotal evidence suggests that young children have fewer opportunities for developing pre-writing skills, such as balance, hand-eye coordination and muscle control, which can themselves be critical in developing good handwriting ability as the child grows.

The yearly checkup is reassuring -- but unnecessary. To make it matter, doctors and patients must talk.

(technorati tags School, Katrina, fashion, Saddam Hussein)