Word: basics
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...study reported that when graduating seniors were quizzed on the U.S. Constitution, the Puritans, and the like, they answered an average of only 54 percent of questions correctly. This proves empirically that most Americans are either dumb enough to forget the basic “civic literacy” that they are taught in grade school, or else so bad at paying attention that they never actually learned it in the first place...
Clearly we're looking for lots of things, but they're not all geographical. So, I checked our Internet usage from a different angle: what are the top searches that send traffic to the 174 mapping sites that Hitwise tracks? Once you get past basic queries for the URLs of sites like Mapquest and Yahoo! Maps, it turns out that the top searches aren't for countries, states or cities. People don't want to know where the Iraq is. Rather, the most popular search requests are for the closest "Wal-Mart," followed by "Best Buy," "Pizza Hut" and "Costco...
This trend is spreading to some surprising places. When French carmaker Renault introduced the midsize Logan in 2004, it expected to sell the bulk of the basic sedans in Eastern Europe. But the Logan, which Renault builds in Romania and Russia and costs as little as $7,200--about 40% less than rival sedans--quickly took off in wealthier Western Europe as well. The car now sells in more than 50 countries, and Renault is struggling to meet demand. "Our aim is to produce the most affordable car in its segment, and because we're doing that well...
...among fourth-grade students edged up a few points to reach a historic high, as did math scores for both fourth- and eighth-graders. But there wasn't much narrowing of the achievement gaps between white and minority students. And there are still far too many kids scoring below basic levels in math and reading, as detailed in the maps above. [This article contains a diagram. Please see hardcopy...
...smarts in Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow. Conley's company was almost wiped out by the post-9/11 downturn. But the theories of renowned psychologist Abraham Maslow provided "mouth-to-mouth resuscitation," says Conley, a Stanford M.B.A. (In miniature: Maslow believed that as their basic needs are met, human beings and companies are able to strive for higher goals.) Despite a few New Age-y concepts like "karmic capitalism" and a tendency to throw around phrases like "self-actualization," which will prove a little woo-woo for some readers, anyone who has ever been...