Greenland ice cores reveal warm climate of the past

Public release date: 23-Jan-2013
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Contact: Gertie Skaarup
skaarup@nbi.dk
45-35-32-53-20
University of Copenhagen

In the period between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago, Earth's climate was warmer than today. But how much warmer was it and what did the warming do to global sea levels? as we face global warming in the future, the answer to these questions is becoming very important. New research from the NEEM ice core drilling project in Greenland shows that the period was warmer than previously thought. The international research project is led by researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute and the very important results are published in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature.

In the last millions years the Earth's climate has alternated between ice ages lasting about 100,000 years and interglacial periods of 10,000 to 15,000 years. The new results from the NEEM ice core drilling project in northwest Greenland, led by the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen show that the climate in Greenland was around 8 degrees C warmer than today during the last interglacial period, the Eemian period, 130,000 to 115,000 thousand years ago.

"Even though the warm Eemian period was a period when the oceans were four to eight meters higher than today, the ice sheet in northwest Greenland was only a few hundred meters lower than the current level, which indicates that the contribution from the Greenland ice sheet was less than half the total sea-level rise during that period," says Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and leader of the NEEM-project.

Past reveals knowledge about the climate

The North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling project or NEEM, led by the Niels Bohr Institute, is an international project with participants from 14 countries. After four years of deep drilling, the team has drilled ice cores through the more than 2.5 kilometer thick ice sheet. The ice is a stack of layer upon layer of annual snow fall which never melts away, and as the layers gradually sink, the snow is compresses into ice. This gives thousands of annual ice layers that, like tree rings, can tell us about variations in past climate from year to year.

The ice cores are examined in laboratories with a series of analyses that reveal past climate. The content of the heavy oxygen isotope O18 in the ice cores tells us about the temperature in clouds when the snow fell, and thus of the climate of the past. The air bubbles in the ice are also examined. The air bubbles are samples of the ancient atmosphere encased in the ice and they provide knowledge about the air composition of the atmosphere during past climates.

Past global warming

The researchers have obtained the first complete ice core record from the entire previous interglacial period, the Eemian, and with the detailed studies have been able to recreate the annual temperatures almost 130,000 years back in time.

"It is a great achievement for science to collect and combine so many measurements on the ice core and reconstruct past climate history. The new findings show higher temperatures in northern Greenland during the Eemian than current climate models have estimated," says Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Niels Bohr Institute.

Intense melting on the surface

During the warm Eemian period, there was intense surface melting that can be seen in the ice core as layers of refrozen meltwater. Meltwater from the surface had penetrated down into the underlying snow, where it once again froze into ice. Such surface melting has occurred very rarely in the last 5,000 years, but the team observed such a melting during the summer of 2012 when they were in Greenland.

"We were completely shocked by the warm surface temperatures at the NEEM camp in July 2012," says Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen. "It was even raining and just like in the Eemian, the meltwater formed refrozen layers of ice under the surface. Although it was an extreme event the current warming over Greenland makes surface melting more likely and the warming that is predicted to occur over the next 50-100 years will potentially have Eemian-like climatic conditions," she believes.

Good news and bad news

During the warm Eemian period there was increased melting at the edge of the ice sheet and the dynamic flow of the entire ice mass caused the ice sheet to lose mass and it was reduced in height. The ice mass was shrinking at a very high rate of 6 cm per year. But despite the warm temperatures, the ice sheet did not disappear and the research team estimates that the volume of the ice sheet was not reduced by more than 25 percent during the warmest 6,000 years of the Eemian.

"The good news from this study is that the Greenland ice sheet is not as sensitive to temperature increases and to ice melting and running out to sea in warm climate periods like the Eemian,as we thought" explains Dorthe Dahl-Jensen and adds that the bad news is that if Greenland's ice did not disappear during the Eemian then Antarctica must be responsible for a significant portion of the 4-8 meter rise in sea levels that we know occurred during the Eemian.

This new knowledge about past warm climates may help to clarify what is in store for us now that we are facing a global warming.

###

Niels Bohr Institute: http://www.nbi.ku.dk/english/

Documentary films: http://www.nbi.ku.dk/english/sciencexplorer/earth_and_climate/

For further information contact:

Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Centre for Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Leader of the NEEM project. +45 3532-0556, +45 2289-4537, ddj@gfy.ku.dk

---

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 23-Jan-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Gertie Skaarup
skaarup@nbi.dk
45-35-32-53-20
University of Copenhagen

In the period between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago, Earth's climate was warmer than today. But how much warmer was it and what did the warming do to global sea levels? as we face global warming in the future, the answer to these questions is becoming very important. New research from the NEEM ice core drilling project in Greenland shows that the period was warmer than previously thought. The international research project is led by researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute and the very important results are published in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature.

In the last millions years the Earth's climate has alternated between ice ages lasting about 100,000 years and interglacial periods of 10,000 to 15,000 years. The new results from the NEEM ice core drilling project in northwest Greenland, led by the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen show that the climate in Greenland was around 8 degrees C warmer than today during the last interglacial period, the Eemian period, 130,000 to 115,000 thousand years ago.

"Even though the warm Eemian period was a period when the oceans were four to eight meters higher than today, the ice sheet in northwest Greenland was only a few hundred meters lower than the current level, which indicates that the contribution from the Greenland ice sheet was less than half the total sea-level rise during that period," says Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and leader of the NEEM-project.

Past reveals knowledge about the climate

The North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling project or NEEM, led by the Niels Bohr Institute, is an international project with participants from 14 countries. After four years of deep drilling, the team has drilled ice cores through the more than 2.5 kilometer thick ice sheet. The ice is a stack of layer upon layer of annual snow fall which never melts away, and as the layers gradually sink, the snow is compresses into ice. This gives thousands of annual ice layers that, like tree rings, can tell us about variations in past climate from year to year.

The ice cores are examined in laboratories with a series of analyses that reveal past climate. The content of the heavy oxygen isotope O18 in the ice cores tells us about the temperature in clouds when the snow fell, and thus of the climate of the past. The air bubbles in the ice are also examined. The air bubbles are samples of the ancient atmosphere encased in the ice and they provide knowledge about the air composition of the atmosphere during past climates.

Past global warming

The researchers have obtained the first complete ice core record from the entire previous interglacial period, the Eemian, and with the detailed studies have been able to recreate the annual temperatures almost 130,000 years back in time.

"It is a great achievement for science to collect and combine so many measurements on the ice core and reconstruct past climate history. The new findings show higher temperatures in northern Greenland during the Eemian than current climate models have estimated," says Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Niels Bohr Institute.

Intense melting on the surface

During the warm Eemian period, there was intense surface melting that can be seen in the ice core as layers of refrozen meltwater. Meltwater from the surface had penetrated down into the underlying snow, where it once again froze into ice. Such surface melting has occurred very rarely in the last 5,000 years, but the team observed such a melting during the summer of 2012 when they were in Greenland.

"We were completely shocked by the warm surface temperatures at the NEEM camp in July 2012," says Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen. "It was even raining and just like in the Eemian, the meltwater formed refrozen layers of ice under the surface. Although it was an extreme event the current warming over Greenland makes surface melting more likely and the warming that is predicted to occur over the next 50-100 years will potentially have Eemian-like climatic conditions," she believes.

Good news and bad news

During the warm Eemian period there was increased melting at the edge of the ice sheet and the dynamic flow of the entire ice mass caused the ice sheet to lose mass and it was reduced in height. The ice mass was shrinking at a very high rate of 6 cm per year. But despite the warm temperatures, the ice sheet did not disappear and the research team estimates that the volume of the ice sheet was not reduced by more than 25 percent during the warmest 6,000 years of the Eemian.

"The good news from this study is that the Greenland ice sheet is not as sensitive to temperature increases and to ice melting and running out to sea in warm climate periods like the Eemian,as we thought" explains Dorthe Dahl-Jensen and adds that the bad news is that if Greenland's ice did not disappear during the Eemian then Antarctica must be responsible for a significant portion of the 4-8 meter rise in sea levels that we know occurred during the Eemian.

This new knowledge about past warm climates may help to clarify what is in store for us now that we are facing a global warming.

###

Niels Bohr Institute: http://www.nbi.ku.dk/english/

Documentary films: http://www.nbi.ku.dk/english/sciencexplorer/earth_and_climate/

For further information contact:

Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Centre for Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Leader of the NEEM project. +45 3532-0556, +45 2289-4537, ddj@gfy.ku.dk

---

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?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/uoc-gic012213.php

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Green Blog: Sea Level and the Limits of the Bathtub Analogy

In my article in Tuesday?s Science Times about the risks of long-term sea level rise, and in an accompanying podcast, I reported on the link between past instances of global warming, caused by natural fluctuations in the climate, and higher shorelines.

Based on a study of these past variations, some scientists believe that even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, we would be due for a substantial rise in sea levels over the long term as ice sheets slowly respond to the warmer temperatures brought on by the greenhouse gases that humans have already dumped into the atmosphere.

The paleoclimate record, as it is known, suggests that even a slight amount of global warming can produce a rise of 25 to 30 feet. And if scientists are anywhere close to right in their projections, the warming over the coming century due to human activity is going to be more than slight. That means a long-term rise in sea level of as much as 80 feet cannot be ruled out.

As I noted in the article, that would take quite a long time to occur, at least hundreds and more likely, thousands of years. On the time scale that people tend to worry about, the next century, the rise would be much less. A common estimate is three feet, although there are persistent fears that the situation could turn out to be worse than that.

What I did not point out is that, now matter how fast it happens, the increase of sea level will not be an even rise everywhere on the planet. Rising sea level, it turns out, is ?lumpy? ? the sea goes up more in some places than others.

This may seem strange, since we tend to think of the ocean as a giant bathtub filled with water. If you turn on the faucet and add water to a tub, of course, it rises evenly. Why doesn?t the ocean work that way?

Scientists say sea level rise in a given location is actually influenced by a multitude of factors. To take one of the most obvious, land can be sinking even as the ocean is rising. This is happening today across much of the East Coast of the United States, with especially high rates of sinking in the Chesapeake Bay region and in southern Louisiana.

The converse can also be true, of course ? land in some places is rising fast enough to outpace the rise of the sea. That is happening today in parts of Alaska and Scandinavia.

If land is sinking, that worsens the local effects of a global increase in sea level. And it turns out that sinking land is going to be one of our biggest problems, worldwide, as climate change proceeds. That is because many of the world?s great cities are, like New Orleans, built on river deltas ? which is to say, on mud.

Humans have interrupted the flow of sediment to those deltas in most places, and the land surface is sinking as the older sediment underlying the cities compacts and settles. Withdrawal of groundwater or petroleum can worsen the situation, although water withdrawals have been limited in many places specifically to slow the sinking.

If we get a global increase of sea level of several feet by the end of this century, as many scientists expect, the effects are going to be felt most strongly in the big cities with brisk rates of land subsidence. Aside from New Orleans, examples include Tokyo, Houston, Shanghai, Bangkok and Venice.

The complexities do not stop there. As water is added to the ocean basins, the basins themselves adjust to the extra weight, behaving less like a bathtub and more like a kid?s pool made of flexible plastic. The ocean floor can actually sink. The deformation is slow, but it changes the distribution of ocean water over time.

Another factor that can alter sea levels is a shift in wind patterns. The prevailing winds can cause water to pile up in some locations, as happens today off the eastern coast of Asia.

All of these factors complicate any forecast about sea level rise, and most or all of them can be important for a given locale. But to me, the strangest and most interesting variable has to do with gravity.

The ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica are immense, and it turns out they exert enough gravitational pull to draw a substantial amount of ocean water toward them. So if you imagine the whole Greenland ice sheet melting, for instance, something quite bizarre will happen nearby: sea level will fall across an area stretching more than a thousand miles from the ice sheet.

?If Greenland should catastrophically melt tomorrow, sea level will fall in Scotland, it will fall in Newfoundland ? and it will fall in Greenland, by a lot,? said Jerry X. Mitrovica, a Harvard scientist who helped to pioneer the study of such effects. Something similar would happen in the vicinity of Antarctica if the West Antarctic ice sheet, believed to be highly vulnerable to a modest global warming, were to melt.

Think about the implications of this finding: If sea level is going to fall near the melting ice sheets, that means it has to rise more than the average in other places, right?

And that is bad news for some countries. It means an average global rise in sea level of 30 feet, say, could translate to a 40- or 50-foot rise in some parts of the world.

Scientists think the exact distribution of sea level rise will depend on which of the two ice sheets melts ? or, more likely, what proportion of each melts. If you live on the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States, for example, a given amount of melting in faraway Antarctica will produce a substantially larger increase of sea level than the same amount of melting from nearby Greenland. It?s counterintuitive, but true.

On top of all this, as the ice sheets melt, the redistribution of mass around the planet will be large enough, according to Dr. Mitrovica and several of his colleagues, that it will actually alter the rotation of the earth. That, in turn, will cause another modest redistribution of ocean water.

With so many moving arrows, the effort to predict exactly what will happen with sea level rise is a work in progress. But we already know that both Greenland and West Antarctica are starting to melt and dump extra ice into the ocean in response to climate change. Globally, sea level is now rising at a rate of about a foot a century and the rate appears to be accelerating.

Given the immense growth of human settlements near the ocean over the last century, the risks of this situation are pretty clear. Scientists fear a perpetual humanitarian crisis will begin before the 21st century is out, as people are forced to flee the rising sea.

At my request, the researcher Benjamin H. Strauss at the organization Climate Central, made a rough calculation of the number of people living within 10 meters, or 33 feet, of sea level: 710 million, or about 12 percent of the world?s population. And about 1.3 billion people, or 21 percent of the population, live within 82 feet of sea level. In other words, the kinds of long-term increases in sea level that scientists are talking about could wind up displacing a substantial fraction of the human population.

So far, the advice from scientists to reduce the level of risk by limiting greenhouse emissions has basically fallen on deaf ears, and global temperatures are rising.

In my article, I quoted Dr. Mitrovica as pointing out that the temperatures expected later this century have, when they occurred in the past, caused the catastrophic collapse of the ice sheets in both Greenland and West Antarctica. In an interview, he added, ?I don?t think you should have any confidence that we?re going to somehow escape that if we continue with these temperatures.?

Source: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/sea-level-and-the-limits-of-the-bathtub-analogy/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Plane blows tires during aborted takeoff in Denver

Courtesy Jimmy Diffee

Southwest Airlines Flight 513 blew three tires during an aborted takeoff from Denver International Airport on Monday afternoon.

By John Newland, Staff Writer, NBC News

A Southwest Airlines jet blew three tires Monday afternoon as the pilot aborted a takeoff from Denver because of a fire warning light in the cockpit.

The Las Vegas-bound Boeing 737 carried a full load of 137 passengers and five crew members. No one was injured.

Three buses were sent onto the runway to retrieve the evacuated passengers, and another plane was slated to take them to Las Vegas, Denver NBC station?KUSA-TV?reported.

Southwest spokeswoman Olga Romero told?The Denver Post?that the plane's rapid deceleration caused the jet's brakes to overheat and led to the tires blowing out. She credited the pilot with heeding the warning light.

"There was no fire," Romero added. "Procedurally, the pilot had to stop the flight. He made the right decision to ensure everything was safe."

On Monday evening, mechanics were trying to determine why the light came on, Romero said.

Airport spokeswoman Cyndi Karvaski told the Post that it was common for brakes to overheat and tires to blow out when a pilot stops a plane quickly before takeoff.?

The incident was the second in as many days involving blown tires on a commercial flight.

On Sunday, a United Express commuter plane from western New York blew four tires as it landed at Newark Liberty International Airport and veered off a runway.

The plane was carrying eight passengers and five crew members. No one was hurt.

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/22/16637070-southwest-plane-blows-three-tires-during-aborted-takeoff-in-denver?lite

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'Hoarders': Former Supermodel Goes From Beauty And Riches To Dumpster Diving (VIDEO)

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<strong>"CSI," CBS</strong> <br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Renewed<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> Whenever the time comes, the "CSI" mothership will end with a lot of fanfare, but not this year. With new faces Ted Danson and Elisabeth Shue around, there is going to be at least one more season.<br />

"CSI: Miami"

<strong>"CSI: Miami," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Canceled<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> Out of the three (!) "CSI" programs on the air, "CSI: Miami" is the one to say goodbye first. The one-time ratings giant has been affected by football overruns (just as "The Good Wife" has) and "CSI: NY" has the edge in terms of total viewers, meaning a "Miami" sunset was inevitable. <br />

"CSI: NY"

<strong>"CSI: NY," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Renewed<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> Of the two "CSI" spinoffs, "CSI: NY" is the stronger -- pulling in more than 10 million viewers on a Friday night is no easy task -- and with "CSI: Miami" canceled, "CSI: NY's" renewal was a no-brainer.

"The Good Wife"

<strong>"The Good Wife," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Renewed<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> This critical darling suffered after its move from Tuesdays to Sundays thanks to sports overruns. The viewers are frustrated, but given its strong cast and Emmy love, the show is still coming back for more.

"Hawaii Five-0"

<strong>"Hawaii Five-0," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Renewed<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> Despite the scheduling setback as Alex O'Loughlin seeks treatment, Season 2 is still doing well for CBS in a very competitive timeslot.<br />

"How To Be a Gentleman"

<strong>"How To Be A Gentleman," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Canceled<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> Not even having "The Big Bang Theory" as a lead-in could save this David Hornsby project, which only lasted three episodes.

"How I Met Your Mother"

<strong>"How I Met Your Mother," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Renewed<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> CBS renewed "How I Met Your Mother" for two more seasons in March 2011, so fans can look forward to being strung along about the titular mother's identity for a bit longer.<br />

"The Mentalist"

<strong>"The Mentalist," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Renewed<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> Although the show hit a season ratings low in the middle of February, its fanbase and overall ratings were enough to have it return for another season.

"Mike & Molly"

<strong>"Mike & Molly," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Renewed<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> Thanks to an Emmy win and Oscar nomination, Melissa McCarthy is a Hollywood power player and CBS is keen to keep her around. Just look at the multiple pilots she has in the works as a behind the scenes player! "Mike & Molly" will be back for a third season.

"NCIS"

<strong>"NCIS," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Renewed<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> The long-running procedural has become a ratings juggernaut at a time when most shows start shedding viewers. Season 10 is now happening.

"NCIS: Los Angeles"

<strong>"NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong>Renewed<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> This show has gone up in the ratings over the last couple of years, and people can't get enough of L.L. Cool J and Chris O'Donnell.

"NYC 22"

<strong>"NYC 22," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Canceled<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> This "Rookie Blue" clone from executive producer Robert DeNiro didn't really move the needle when it premiered midseason; CBS officially axed it with three episodes left to air.

"Person of Interest"

<strong>"Person of Interest," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Renewed<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> With ratings matching juggernauts like "Grey's Anatomy" and fans popping up everywhere, we'll be seeing another season of "Person of Interest."

"Rob"

<strong>"Rob," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Canceled<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> "Rob's" spot after ratings juggernaut "The Big Bang Theory" probably went a long way in helping it survive to see the end of its first season, but that's as far as it'll get.

"Rules of Engagement"

<strong>"Rules of Engagement," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Renewed<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> This show has moved around so much it's hard to remember when it's on, and with six seasons under its belt it's had quite a nice run. Despite slipping ratings and the aforementioned constant switcheroos, there's still a future for "Rules of Engagement."

"Survivor"

<strong>"Survivor," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status: </strong>Renewed<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> Of <em>course</em> we have "Survivor" coming back for another season. Where else are we going to see petty squabbles and insane behavior on some of the most beautiful beaches in the world?

"Two and a Half Men"

<strong>"Two and a Half Men," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Renewed<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> Despite a less-than-favorable critical response, the revamped "Two and a Half Men" keeps pulling in respectable numbers every week. Ashton Kutcher, Jon Cryer and Angus T. Jones will all return for a Season 10.

"Undercover Boss"

<strong>"Undercover Boss," CBS</strong><br /> <strong>Status:</strong> Renewed<br /> <strong>Why:</strong> The inherent addictiveness of this show has gone a long way in securing loyal viewers -- it has been on top of the ratings several times this season alone.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/hoarders-former-supermodel-video_n_2523759.html

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Lowering Standards in Public Education at A Geek With Guns

This is unlikely to surprise most of you but fewer and fewer kids leave the state?s K-12 education system with, what I will call, functional literacy. In fact the problem is finally becoming prevalent enough that the state is actually looking to address it:

Fast forward to high school reading today, and you might find that a lot of high school English teachers are identifying with Holden more than their students are identifying with him. Reading scores for American students have dropped dramatically, and the solution could see their world change as well.

?So many kids, often as many as 50 percent, graduate high school ? demonstrably not ready for the demands of a first-year college course or job-training program,? says David Coleman, president of the College Board, a nonprofit membership organization that administers standardized tests like the SAT.

When I say the state is moving to address the problem I don?t want to imply that it is trying to determine and address the root cause, that?s not how the state operates. Instead I mean to imply that the state has looked at how it defines functional literacy and is adjusting it, while throwing in a few destructive curriculum changes, so that the numbers appear to be higher without actually fixing the problem:

Coleman is the lead architect of the Common Core Standards Initiative, a sweeping curricula change that integrates nonfiction text into the English program. So where does it leave The Catcher in the Rye and similar literary classics?

That question is one stirring debate over how to integrate nonfiction works into English programs to improve reading scores, while not abandoning the novels that have become the gold standard of high school reading lists.

[...]

Coleman tells weekends on All Things Considered host Jacki Lyden that fiction remains at the heart of English and language arts programs under Common Core, but high-quality literary nonfiction, like the founding documents of the United States, is introduced as well.

In my opinion one of the biggest hurdles to functional literacy is the materials pushed on kids during their K-12 years. Elementary and high schools like to assign kids reading material that is considered classic but that isn?t very useful when kids have no desire to read such works. Instead of encouraging kids to read the state?s education system discourages kids to read by assigning material that most K-12 students find exceptionally boring. I remember the crap we were assigned to read in elementary and high school, none of it appealed to me. Fortunately I had a habit of doing what I wanted instead of what I was told so I read voraciously. For assignments I would, as I assume most kids today are doing, skim just enough material to complete any required test or report or I would forgo reading the material entirely so I could return to reading books I actually cared about (before high school I was reading novels like Jurassic Park and 2001: A Space Odyssey).

Focusing more on nonfiction isn?t going to solve the problem, in fact it may exacerbate it. In order to find things like the founding documents of the United States interesting one must also have enough historical knowledge to put those documents into perspective. Needless to say most state schools fail to teach much in the way of history (and what history they do teach is watered down and entirely boring) so forcing students to read historical material is an exercise in futility. Furthermore the founding documents of the United States are a rather dull read. Most people don?t want to read legal documents such as the United States Constitution. Legal documents lack a story, which requires some kind of conflict. Religions generally teach their laws and doctrines by using parables, which end up being more interesting since they contain story elements such as conflict and character interactions. This was likely done, at least in part, because the writers of religious texts understood that people were usually uninterested in reading and listening to lengthy sterile legal documents. Perhaps it is time we apply that understanding with children today and push them to read fiction instead of nonfiction.

I think the best way to improve functional literacy rates in this country is to introduce a little anarchy into the state?s schools (it?ll never happen unfortunately). Allow students to read material they?re interested in. This doesn?t mean assigning everybody in the class to read Twilight, it means allowing each student to select books they?re personally interested in. If a kid wants to read Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings let him read it an receive due credit instead of forcing To Kill a Mockingbird down their throats.

Source: http://christopherburg.com/2013/01/22/lowering-standards-in-public-education/

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Video: The Philips uWand Is All I Want in a Smart TV Remote Control

The remote control is often the biggest pain point in a smart TV platform. Too many buttons, and it's a burden; too few, and it's useless. The Philips uWand offers a pleasant compromise between these different types of remotes.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/lj-VqqC8oXY/

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First Time Cruising: Explore Europe aboard the World&#39;s Best Luxury ...

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Source: http://first-time-cruising.blogspot.com/2013/01/explore-europe-aboard-worlds-best.html

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