The Printing Press and Dictionaries Crystallized Spelling

English spelling was at first practically fonetic, like the spelling of Latin, Spanish, Italian, Polish, and most other languages, and changed as pronunciation changed. In its case, however, various causes com- bined to interfere with this orderly process. Among them wer the variations in the early dialects, the dif- ferent spelling sistems of the Norman conquerors, the later different spelling sistem of the imported Dutch printers, the bungling attempts during the Renaissance to mak...

 All Human Acheivement is the Result of Networking

Human achievement is entirely a networking phenomenon. It is by putting brains together through the division of labor—through trade and specialization—that human society stumbled upon a way to raise the living standards, carrying capacity, technological virtuosity, and knowledge base of the species. We can see this in all sorts of phenomena: the correlation between technology and connected population size in Pacific islands; the collapse of technology in people who became isolated, like n...

 Differing Definitions of Intelligence in Children

;ct. What parents want even influences the very ways they label children. Sara Harkness and Charles Super found that when parents in three cultures were asked about intelligence, their views of what constitutes a smart child differed.^^ In America, an "intelligent" child is one who is aggressive and competitive; in Holland, die intelligent child is one who is persistent, strong-willed, and demonstrates a clarity of purpose; for the Kipsigis Africans, the most intelligent child is the responsi...