May 2011

Gregg Breinberg and the PS 22 Chorus: Giving Kids a Voice

May 15, 2011

A decade ago, I bought a CD by the The Langley Schools Music Project. That album, Innocence and Despair, collected 21 songs recorded in 1976 and 1977 by students from the Langley School District in British Columbia. (The songs were recorded in a gymnasium!) According to music teacher Hans Fenger, who organized this project: I […]

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Stephen Hawking Speaks to the New York Times

May 9, 2011

In 1963, when he was 21, Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease). At the time, he’d just begun studying theoretical astronomy and cosmology at Cambridge. Though ALS usually kills its victims within just a few years (you may recall that Lou Gehrig himself only lived […]

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Jessica Watson, the Girl Who Sailed Around the World — Alone

May 3, 2011

What did you do when you were sixteen? I read a lot of comic books, watched too many music videos, and sulked because my parents wouldn’t buy me stuff. You know — standard teenaged angst. When she was sixteen, Australian Jessica Watson did something awesome: She sailed around the world. Alone. Non-stop and unassisted. Watson […]

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