Of all the proposals aimed at improving America’s failing schools, there’s one idea kids will really like: more video games and fewer books. At least a number of educators hope so, arguing that children would get more    14    about school and that video games can present real-life problems to solve. Nobody is talking about putting    15    video games into classrooms, particularly those which may encourage aggressive behavior.    16    , educators such as Indiana University professor Sasha Barab are developing alternative video games that can teach as well as entertain. For instance, in one game designed by Barab, the player assumes the role of an investigator seeking to find out why fish are dying in a virtual park.

     The life of Levi Strauss is a US success story. A German who immigrated to America in 1847 at age
nineteen, Levi Strauss began by selling needles, thread, and buttons in New York. On the invitation of his brother-in-law, he sailed to San Francisco in 1853.
    Gold had been discovered in California a few years before, and the Gold Rush had begun. The population exploded as more and more people came to try to get rich overnight. Suddenly, thousands of people started mining for gold. Strauss noticed that the miners complained that their pants were always tearing easily and that the pockets ripped apart as soon as one put a few nuggets in them.
    Levi Strauss saw a business opportunity. He began making pants out of some heavy brown canvas he had brought to use for tents or wagon covers. These new pants were stiff, but they sold briskly. When the original fabric was used up, Strauss went to Europe for more. What he got was a lighter, more flexible fabric from Nîmes, France, called serge de Nîmes. This cloth, which became known as denim, proved even more useful for pants, since it was just as strong but much more comfortable. With indigo, the pants were dyed the familiar blue color.
    Miners still complained about problems with their pockets. On the advice of Nevada tailor Jacob Davis,Strauss went to a blacksmith and had the jeans pockets reinforced with metal rivets. In 1873, they patented the popular innovation. The rivets, along with the patterned stitching on the hip pockets, became Levi trademarks.

     Venezuela has long been considered a country of extraordinarily beautiful men and women. It has won the biggest number of international beauty awards: 5 Miss Universes and 5 Miss Worlds. In Venezuela, beauty queens are a national obsession. There are beauty pageants in elementary schools, corporations, villages, the military, even in prisons. Venezuelans proudly point out that their country is best known for three things: oil,baseball stars, and beauty queens. Nearly two-thirds of Venezuela’s women and half its men think about their physical appearances all the time. For Venezuelan women, being beautiful is not only desirable; rather, it’s a responsibility. They not only dress up for daily life but also get plastic surgery to have a beautiful body. Almost every Venezuelan woman wants to have surgery and many from poor backgrounds save up for an operation.
    But one also needs to take classes to be a beauty queen. In Venezuela, there are many beauty schools teaching students to apply the right amount of makeup, pose for a photo, choose the right clothes, walk like a princess, and speak with style. The average cost of such a course is $700, a price many middle-class parents are eager to pay to see their little girls stand out. A school founder denies that girls should value appearance over intellect, saying the culture of beauty integrates intelligence, good manners, a positive attitude, self-confidence, and discipline.

     If you are unfamiliar with kohlrabi, it’s worth checking out. Its name comes from German and literally means cabbage turnip. Not commonly used in American cuisine, it is widely used in Central Europe and Asia. It is still patiently waiting to be discovered in this country. Kohlrabi is in season from summer through early fall so you can find it at your local market right now. It belongs to the Brassica family, the cancer fighting vegetables that include cabbage, broccoli, and turnips. This turnip-shaped vegetable comes in green or purple and can be eaten raw or cooked. When kohlrabi is raw, it’s crunchy and tastes like broccoli stems; when cooked, it tastes like a mild turnip. When you buy kohlrabi, the leaves may be attached to the bulb. Usually smaller kohlrabi is the sweetest and most tender. Bulbs that are much bigger than the size of a tennis ball won’t be as tasty. Though kohlrabi might look like an alien life form, it is packed with Vitamin C and provides a healthy dose of fiber, iron, and calcium. Most importantly, it is delicious.

     Neuroscientists used an instrument called functional MRI to study the brains of two groups of bilingual people. One group consisted of those who had learned a second language as children. The other consisted of people who learned their second language later in life. When placed inside the MRI scanner, which allowed the researchers to see which parts of the brain were getting more blood and were thus more active, people from both groups were asked to think about what they had done the day before, first in one language and then the other.
    The researchers looked specifically at Broca’s area, in the left frontal part, which is believed to manage speech production. The two groups of people demonstrated different uses of their Broca’s area. People who learned a second language as children used the same region in Broca’s area for both languages. But those who learned a second language later in life made use of a distinct region in Broca’s area for their second language—near the one activated for their native tongue.
    Researchers concluded that when language is being hard-wired during development, the brain may
intertwine sounds and structures from all languages into the same area. But once that wiring is complete, the management of a new language, with new sounds and structures, must be taken over by a different part of the brain.