Excerpt:
It appears that this egocentric stance towards the world is present mostly in younger children. They are unable to separate their own beliefs, thoughts and ideas from others. For example, if a child sees that there is candy in a box, he assumes that someone else walking into the room also knows that there is candy in that box. He implicitly reasons that "since I know it, you know it too". As stated previously this may be rooted in the limitations in the child's theory of mind skills. However, it does not mean that children are unable to put themselves in someone else's shoes. As far as feelings are concerned, it is shown that children exhibit empathy early on and are able to cooperate with others and be aware of their needs and wants.
Inventive Spelling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_spelling
Excerpt:
Inventive, or invented, spelling is the non-conventional spelling of a word created by a novice reader or writer. It contrasts with conventional spelling, the correct or standard spelling.
Inventive spelling is not an instructional technique but rather something that is encouraged or discouraged by a child's teachers and parents. Inventive spelling is not universally accepted. Whether teachers and parents encourage inventive spelling is generally connected to those individuals' perspectives on the importance of experimentation in learning. Inventive spelling programs may also be known as "words their way" in many schools.
Critics of Parot inventive spelling have made compelling arguments, based on scientific research, that inventive spelling does not produce superior writing skills. Studies show that inventive spelling may actual hinder writing development by failing to correct improper spelling through a teacher's misinterpretation of the intended word or failure to follow up with a student in order to teach the correct spelling.http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CEFDD1738F937A35757C0A964958260
Excerpt:
But Valerie Plame Wilson may be having the strangest Cannes experience yet. The former CIA covert operations officer came here on behalf of not one but two films. She appears in the documentary "Countdown to Zero," in which she serves as a nuclear counterproliferation expert; and later this week she will attend the world premiere of "Fair Game," a dramatization of her memoir in which she's being played by Naomi Watts.
Wilson, along with Queen Noor of Jordan and former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, turned out for a news conference Sunday after a screening of "Countdown to Zero," which makes a swift, soberingly urgent case for the comprehensive elimination of nuclear weapons in a world that has gone from Cold War certainties to asymmetrical chaos. (Queen Noor and Brundtland are both active in the nonproliferation movement.)
"What are the odds?" Wilson said when asked about her film festival appearances. "Beyond what the physicists at Los Alamos could calculate."
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20105534,00.html
April 17, 1995
Little Help for His Friends
William Aramony Faces Prison for Diverting the United Way His Way
TO LORIVILLASOR, WILLIAM ARAMONY seemed the perfect lover. When they met in late 1986, she was 17, just out of high school and desperate to escape the squalid Macclenny, Fla., trailer park where she grew up with her mother and three siblings. He was 59 and married, the chief executive officer of the United Way of America, and living the kind of life she had only dreamed of. He wooed her with champagne and roses, whisked her away on romantic vacations to London and Egypt, provided a monthly stipend for her of up to $1,833, even paid to have braces put on her teeth. And when Lori's younger sister LuAnn finished high school in 1989, he treated both girls to a lavish trip to New York City and Las Vegas as a graduation gift.
"It was the first time I ever had lobster," LuAnn, now 23, recalled recently. "It was the first time I ever rode in a limousine. It was the first time I ever stayed in a nice hotel. Mr. Aramony taught me how to eat because I didn't know what to do with more than one fork." During one game of craps on their Vegas jaunt, he gave LuAnn $100 each time she smiled at him.
But what Lori Villasor saw as tokens of love, a U.S. attorney treated as evidence of fraud. Last week, after seven days of deliberation, an Alexandria, Va., jury agreed, convicting Aramony—and associates Thomas Merlo, 64, and Stephen Paulachak, 49—of tunneling some $600,000 for their own use from the United Way of America and the Partnership Umbrella Inc., a spinoff company, from 1981 to 1992.
Excerpt:
United Way of New York City has paid its 1991-1992 dues of $556,000 to headquarters annually; the next payment, due this summer, is being reviewed pending the results of the law firm's study.
The Los Angeles affiliate, United Way Inc., has called a meeting of its board Monday to discuss the problems, said Gillian Nash, senior vice president of marketing and communications for the affiliate. "We are deeply concerned by the allegations," she said.
At the meeting, she said, the group will discuss the question of dues payments. That affiliate pays annually, and its next installment is not due until June.
The 37-member board of governors of the United Way of America, a who's who of corporate and labor leaders, has been showing increasing concern about the local reactions, as evidenced by this evening's conference run by the board chairman, John F. Akers, who is also chairman of the I.B.M. Corporation.
Photo: William Aramony has led United Way of America for 21 years. (The New York Times)
