Word: problem
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2000
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
They set their sights on a huge problem: some 700,000 Mississippi adults--almost a third of the state's population--read below the eighth-grade level, mainly because of poor schools and illiterate parents. "We believe that education and the ability to read are the core of anyone's life--their economic life and social enjoyment," says Jim. "Your third-grade reading level is so important. It is the No. 1 early predictor of high school dropout rates." If you can't read, you can't learn social studies, science or history, he notes...
...problem is that Britney Spears is not going to marry that young man from 'N Sync after all. So I have nothing to do but watch the egrets stand guard at the edge of the marshes, and stare dumbly at the strips of current that flow like gun-gray paint from the creek to the bay. Did you ever see such a day? Did you ever taste such tomatoes! Did you ever hear the one about the minister, the priest and the rabbi? (Why is it that ministers, priests and rabbis get together only in jokes?) Did you ever...
...microphone roots, albeit a return that's augmented by a retinue that includes her partner Anne Heche (who's making a documentary) and, on a night this writer saw it, a goat. "My comedy got lost, and my sexuality overshadowed it," said DeGeneres. (Alan Greenspan faces this problem every day.) She was afraid to do stand-up again until Chris Rock told her to "get [her] ass back out there...
DeGeneres is by no means the only comedian with this problem. Fame isn't good for comedy. (Seen Robin Williams do anything funny recently?) Neither, alas, is happiness. (Why so quiet, Jerry Seinfeld?) DeGeneres is dealing with a triple-barreled assault on her humor resources. And perhaps it's better to be happy and a hero than to be funny. But it doesn't augur well for her new comedy-variety show, scheduled to air on CBS in November, which she, worryingly, describes as an old-fashioned comedy show. Please, Ellen, no hugs...
...treadmill. I'm exhausted. A growing number of parents agree. This year some Minneapolis suburbanites founded Family Life 1st to call for limits on extracurricular activities (you can visit the group's website at Family Life1st.org) Says the group's organizer Bill Doherty: "The problem is consumerism--overscheduling our kids because we think of them as products to develop...