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May 20, 2013
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
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Jewish World Review
Thanks for the lack of memories
By
Jim Mullen
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
After the news hit last year that Navy SEAL Team 6 got Osama bin Laden, the Twitterverse lit up with 13-year-olds tweeting, "Who's Osama bin Whatever? Was he in a band?" And, really, how would they know about something that happened when they were in diapers?
The sad thing is that they weren't asking their parents who Osama was, or Googling him, or looking him up on Wikipedia, or looking him up in their history books. They were asking those infallible fonts of all knowledge -- other 13-year-olds, which is the same place they get all their answers about sex, drugs and nutrition. What could go wrong?
I mention this only because it's easy to forget that with all the brain rot on Facebook and Twitter, there's still lots of room left on the Internet for amazingly useful stuff. I just enrolled in a free online class in computer programming that promises I will be able to build my own search engine after just seven weekly classes.
You may ask, "Why on earth would you want your own search engine?" There is no good answer to that except that I'm hoping to regain some of the brain cells I lose every day by using Facebook and Twitter and their latest partner in time-sucking crime, Pinterest.
By learning to build my own search engine, I will also learn a lot about basic programming. And someday, because I took this free course, I may end up inventing the next Facebook, thus becoming the world's next (and oldest) multibillionaire, which has been a dream of mine since, oh, last week.
Far-fetched as it may seem, my chances of becoming an Internet billionaire are actually much better than they are of winning the jackpot in the Powerball lottery. I know, because I just Googled it. And then I spent half an hour online checking my mail, my Twitter, my Facebook and my Pinterest accounts. I watched some funny videos of cats my sister sent me and a few viral videos, then got down to work.
Many college courses and lectures are available for free online. I've watched several lectures from professors at Yale, MIT, Princeton and Stanford, schools that certainly never would have let me in as a paying student but don't mind me watching their classes for free.
But I'm finding out the high-tech world has made me a worse student, not a better one. I'm finding out that memory is a muscle, and if you don't use it, you lose it.
When was the last time you memorized something? A phone number. A poem. A shopping list. Why bother? If we need them, they are a click away.
I know a 90-year-old man who can recite verse after verse of poems he learned in grade school. I can't even remember grade school, and I completed more than a few of the grades twice.
So I watched the first lecture on how to build my own search engine and took all the quizzes and was buzzing right along. Piece of cake -- until the homework.
"Write code that assigns to the variable URL a string that is the value of the first URL that appears in a link tag in the string page."
I'm sorry, what? It was as if I couldn't remember a word of a lecture I had heard moments before. It seemed so simple when the professor wrote it on the whiteboard. "Of course," I thought, "that makes perfect sense. Why, a child could do it." Now that he was gone, it made no sense at all.
How would I ever become the next Mark Zuckerberg if I couldn't even do the homework from the first of seven lessons? It was like singing along to the radio in the car. The words come effortlessly. Now do the second verse, by yourself, without hearing the song. Not so simple, is it?
Let me tweet someone for help -- maybe a 13-year-old.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Jim Mullen is the author of "It Takes a Village Idiot: Complicating the Simple Life" and "Baby's First Tattoo."
Previously:
Help wanted: Teenage life coach with all the answers
Sorry, wrinkles are not legal proof of age
Dead mice tell no tales
GOING PAPERLESS -- PRICELESS!
Should bad behavior be rewarded?
The perplexing problems of the rich and famous
Do these glasses make my gut look big?
More expensive by the dozen
In one year and out the other
Thank heaven it's Black Friday
Planning for the long term ---- tomorrow
READING THIS WILL MAKE YOU THIN AND HAPPY!
The Seven Secrets of Success
It's tough living off the gridIt's tough living off the grid
How not to clean the houseIt's tough living off the grid
The yellow badge of cowardice
Any way you slice it
Home sweet homeschooling
Don't Head for the Borders
Money ball
Golf and death go hand in hand
Tune in, turn off, unplug
The radar curtain
Is Steve Jobs clouding my privacy?
The gift of garbage
Johnny Intern, Ph.D.
Twenty-foot fences make good neighbors
You must remember this…
TV experts and real news
Hey caller, where's the fire?
My sad cushy life
Pacemaker, don't you mess around with me
Big Brother is skinny
Flight of the snowbirds
This HDTV needs child support
Dear Future: Where's the dome?
Not so elementary, my dear Watson
A vacation revolution
Your call is very unimportant to us
Life: There's no app for that
Bam! Practical kitchen magic
Poisoning myself
Ban Huck Finn in schools --- even the sanitized version!
$38,000 for traffic and weather updates
2011 Predictions: Nostradamus was a hack
2010: A year of annoying junk
Why do bad things happen to stupid people? Moving on from movie theaters
Money never sleeps, but it does pass out
President Trump kept it classy
Stalking your college kid won't change a thing
Putting my life in Jeopardy
Mo' government, mo' problems
iLostIt
Dressed for excess
Expert tease
The mysteries of Jersey
You are a toilet, where am I?
Don't we all cheat at the game of life?
What happens when I forget where Google is?
Don't let the doorman hit you on the way out
Picasso fiasco
Purple (hair) Daze
Let me hear your body talk
Working from work
Babies deserve clean restrooms, too
3-year-old bear-killers are a thing of the past
Money-making ideas on the fly
Collecting and hoarding
Chain of fools
Please come pick up your acting awards, ESPN commentators, you've earned them
You've been superpoked by the U.S. gov't
e-Readin', e-Writin' and e-Rithmatic
A pose by any other name
Warning: Column contains 2010 spoilers
He loves only gold, only gold
Think about direction, wonder why …
Flushing your money down a diamond-studded toilet
More like wack Friday
The good, the ad and the ugly
The desert of the real
Let books be large and in charge
I was insulting people way before the Internet
GPS drill sergeant: Left, right, left!
Butterfly in the sky, you make winds go twice as high
Music to my ears it's not
You don't light up my life
Fair or not: Country living is far from Little House
A parable for the ages
Top 100 Cable news stories of the century
Green dumb
A developing story
Thinking outside the lunch box
What's good for the goose is good for the scanner
Newspapers will survive, but network TV?
A really big show of generation gaps
When pigs flu
The reports of our decline have been greatly exaggerated
Mergers and admonitions
Invest in gold: little, yellow, different
Stuck in Folsom Penthouse
Collecting karma
Setting loose the creative juice
It's all in the numbers
You're damaging your brain with practical skills
The real rat pack
The unspeakable luxury of the Park-O-Matic
Gross-ery shopping
© 2009, NEA
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ZeitGeist
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Baloo
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Everything's Relative
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Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
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Bruce Williams
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