Intrepidation

That would be pretty pathetic if people couldn't even print by hand.

I grade school I had to learn and use cursive from 2nd to 8th grade. However, once I got to high school it was never a requirement. Besides my stylized signature I haven't written in cursive in years. I still write things down all the time, just never in cursive. It always seemed like more work than needed to write a note or make a list.

I actually wouldn't mind a Toyota product, especially a Camry wagon. Remember, my goal is to something I won't care about beating the crap out of. :wink: I've seen a couple Subarus...always liked the first gen outbacks, plus AWD would be sweet. However my budget is no more than $500 so finding one that works will be tough. I've seen a couple Saturns for that price, even saw a Silverado is good condition for $400

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Charleston resident Kelli Davis was in for a surprise when her daughter brought home some routine paperwork at the start of school this fall. Davis signed the form and then handed it to her daughter for the eighth-grader's signature. "I just assumed she knew how to do it, but I have a piece of paper with her signature on it and it looks like a little kid's signature," Davis said. Her daughter was apologetic, but explained that she hadn't been required to make the graceful loops and joined letters of cursive writing in years. That prompted a call to the school and another surprise. West Virginia's largest school system teaches cursive, but only in the 3rd grade. "It doesn't get quite the emphasis it did years ago, primarily because of all the technology skills we now teach," said Jane Roberts, assistant superintendent for elementary education in Kanawha County schools. Davis' experience gets repeated every time parents, who recall their own hours of laborious cursive practice, learn that what used to be called "penmanship" is being shunted aside at schools across the country in favor of 21st century skills. The decline of cursive is happening as students are doing more and more work on computers, including writing. In 2011, the writing test of the National Assessment of Educational Progress will require 8th and 11th graders to compose on computers, with 4th graders following in 2019. "We need to make sure they'll be ready for what's going to happen in 2020 or 2030," said Katie Van Sluys, a professor at DePaul University and the president of the Whole Language Umbrella, a conference of the National Council of Teachers of English. Handwriting is increasingly something people do only when they need to make a note to themselves rather than communicate with others, she said. Students accustomed to using computers to write at home have a hard time seeing the relevance of hours of practicing cursive handwriting. "They're writing, they're composing with these tools at home, and to have school look so different from that set of experiences is not the best idea," she said. Text messaging, e-mail, and word processing have replaced handwriting outside the classroom, said Cheryl Jeffers, a professor at Marshall University's College of Education and Human Services, and she worries they'll replace it entirely before long. "I am not sure students have a sense of any reason why they should vest their time and effort in writing a message out manually when it can be sent electronically in seconds." For Jeffers, cursive writing is a lifelong skill, one she fears could become lost to the culture, making many historic records hard to decipher and robbing people of "a gift." That fear is not new, said Kathleen Wright, national product manager for handwriting at Zaner-Bloser, a Columbus, Ohio-based company that produces a variety of instructional material for schools. "If you go back, you can see the same conversations came up with the advent of the typewriter," she said. Every year, Zaner-Bloser sponsors a national handwriting competition for schools, and this year saw more than 200,000 entries, a record. "Everybody talks about how sometime in the future every kid's going to have a keyboard, but that isn't really true." Few schools make keyboards available for day-to-day writing. The majority of school work, from taking notes to essay tests, is still done by hand. At Mountaineer Montessori in Charleston, teacher Sharon Spencer stresses cursive to her first- through third-graders. By the time her students are in the third grade, they are writing book reports and their spelling words in cursive. To Spencer, cursive writing is an art that helps teach them muscle control and hand-eye coordination. "In the age of computers, I just tell the children, what if we are on an island and don't have electricity? One of the ways we communicate is through writing," she said. But cursive is favored by fewer college-bound students. In 2005, the SAT began including a written essay portion, and a 2007 report by the College Board found that about 15 percent of test-takers chose to write in cursive, while the others wrote in print. That was probably smart, according to Vanderbilt University professor Steve Graham, who cites multiple studies showing that sloppy writing routinely leads to lower grades, even in papers with the same wording as those written in a neater hand. Graham argues that fears over the decline of handwriting in general and cursive in particular are distractions from the goal of improving students' overall writing skills. The important thing is to have students proficient enough to focus on their ideas and the composition of their writing rather than how they form the letters. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that 26 percent of 12th graders lack basic proficiency in writing, while two percent were sufficiently skilled writers to be classified as "advanced." "Handwriting is really the tail wagging the dog," Graham said. Besides, it isn't as if all those adults who learned cursive years ago are doing their writing with the fluent grace of John Hancock. Most people peak in terms of legibility in 4th grade, Graham said, and Wright said it's common for adults to write in a cursive-print hybrid. "People still have to write, even if it's just scribbling," said Paula Sassi, a certified master graphologist and a member of the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation. "Just like when we went from quill pen to fountain pen to ball point, now we're going from the art of handwriting to handwriting purely as communication," she said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090919/ap_on_...s_cursive_angst

He's absolutely right. There's such low demand for wagons and such a stigma against them. People want crossovers. Wagons are a very low percentage of the US car market these days.

Hah, that's awesome. I do that very thing when I need to paint a little area and only have spray paint handy.

What he could do is mask off the ares around the trim piece with say, painter's tape to avoid spillage, that might work.

Pics would help, but 3M make a lne of adhesive that will work. Forget the exact name, but just ask at any auto parts store. As for surface prep...you'll want it to be as clean as possible for best adhesion.

Sounds really cool.

Man there's some pretty good ones out there, found this on LHF.

Its that time of year again. Winter is only a few months away and with it will come snow, ice, and worst of all, salt. With all the work that' been done t the Intrepid I really want it to sit the winter out again this year. However I also want to keep the Prizm out of the stuff as much as possible, because I don't want it to rust away. I'm just casually looking around for now, nothing serious. It's always fun to look. If I do get something 'm planning to do it around November. I'm looking for dirt cheap really. Something I won't feel bad about. I'd really like a wagon or a minivan...I miss that utility, but anything that is mechanically sound where it counts will do. Of course, if I were to end up with the GM I'd be happy with that. Sure I care about the car but it's a tank and its got snow tires on it, I'd just actually wash it and studd regularly unlike a pure beater. Anyone else looking for a beater?

Happy Birthday!

So far the only person I don't care for is one of the guys who was hired when I was. He's probably in his 40's or so. he's one of those people who will take any chance to insert what he thinks is a funny and witty comment when it's stupid and annoying. Luckily we're busy so he doesn't get much opportunity and while I've got my headphones on I don't have to listen to it. Besides that though, I quite like the people I work with.

The driver is an idiot. I would have gone postal if someone rear ended me (again), especially for such a stupid reason like this. I have to admit, to Cavaliers together like that looks pretty funny.

WEYMOUTH, Mass. -- An "itsy bitsy spider" caused a big crash in Weymouth. Amber Buckner, 26, was at the corner of Princeton and Bridge streets when she was distracted by a spider inside her car. She rear-ended the car in front of her, which went straight up onto two wheels and collapsed on top of her car. Buckner, her passenger and Danielle Evju, the driver of the car she struck, were all taken to the hospital with minor injuries. "She's like 'Oh my God, is everybody all right? I was just paying attention to the spider, the spider that was on my windshield.' And that's all that she was paying attention to," Evju said. Buckner is being charged with following too closely and with driving an unregistered vehicle. "I think that it's absolutely ridiculous, that she should have pulled over, I think paying attention on the road, I mean these are people's lives." Firefighters told Evju that the way her gas tank was hit, she could have been killed. (Copyright © 2009 Sunbeam Television Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/BO124842/

Clicky

Good for the student. Obviously if the cops had bothered to catch the guy again it would have been repeating cycle. He would have committed crimes again. The kid defended his property and himself when lunged at, he better not be charged with anything. One less low life in this world.

That's astonishing.

I like the intro. The site itself is nice although unremarkable.

That made my day.

I admit, I actually laughed at that.

That's awesome, good for your friend, put that little $h! and is $h!ty car in their places.

I'm with aaaantoine, I don't really like wheel skirts. It's not a styling element I want to see make a return. Different strokes for different folks.

Needs better wheels but otherwise cool.

So much for new cars but whatever, we're talking expensive cars though. I'll throw in the DBS the Viper ACR and the Corvette ZR-1 Although I would want mine in red.