Progressive Wednesday

Monday Morning Motherhood: Pop Goes the Praise Balloon

When we, as adults, go to work, we do exactly that — work. We put forth the effort necessary to do our jobs as expected and required. We are appreciative when our hard work is applauded, and enjoy reaping those benefits, whether they come in the form of a promotion, pay raise, or the key to the executive washroom (ahhh, the executive washroom). What we don't have is someone patting us on our heads, telling us how smart we are, what a good job we’re doing, how intelligent we are, like when we were kids. Damn it, I miss those days. Though, if my boss actually did pat me on the head, it would probably freak me out enough to make me find a new gig with a slightly less weird work environment.

My daughter, in my completely unbiased opinion, is brilliant. Okay, okay, maybe I'm not completely unbiased. Still, she is extremely intelligent. As a result, since she was born, I've told her so — whether it was how she always managed to drool right onto her bib, or her ability to put together a Dora the Explorer puzzle. Admit it, most of us as parents do this. Our general perspective is that by constantly praising our children for being so smart, we're helping them to achieve more, do better in school, and basically do better in life. According to a Columbia University study, 85% of parents feel that praising their child's intelligence and telling them they're smart is very important. Well, Ha, ha, ha on all of us: recent research has popped that balloon animal.

Psychologist Carol Dweck has spent the past 10 years doing research on the effect and consequence of praise on 400 students in New York public schools. The results seem astonishing. There were two sets of tests involved. For the first, children were given a nonverbal IQ test, consisting of puzzles. The puzzles were manufactured to be simple enough so the children would find them easy. After finishing, some of the students were praised for their intelligence, and the others praised for their effort. For the next test, the children had a choice of puzzles. They were informed the first choice would be harder, but that they would learn a lot. The second test was an easy one, just like the puzzle in the first test. The results, you ask? Of the children who had been praised for their effort after the first round of testing, 90% chose the harder puzzle. Alternatively, the majority of kids praised for their intelligence chose the easy test, the cop-out.

You might be pondering, Why did they do this? Dweck's research indicates that the children praised for their intelligence would rather look smart than risk the failure and embarrassment of not being able to complete the more difficult puzzles. She also discovered that a feeling of naturally being intelligent causes children to feel that since they're smart, and because they've been told this since birth, they don't value the importance of effort. They're innately smart, and therefore don't need to expend any effort. Also, believe it or not, even preschoolers aren't immune this.

Of course, praising your child's intelligence is important. I'm definitely not saying don't tell your kid they're smart. Oh, and you probably shouldn’t tell them they’re stupid, either. However, praising the effort a child puts forth seems to play a greater role in a child's development than praising intelligence. Whether they're working on a difficult math problem, trying to build a six-foot tower of Legos, or put a binkie in their mouth all by themselves, remember to commend the effort. This will assist them during their school years and beyond, encouraging them to put forth the effort needed to succeed and advance. And come on now, do you really want your kid to be the bratty, know-it-all on the playground? That’s what I thought.

How to Search Progressive, Part II

Editor’s note: One week ago today, we started our four-part series on how to search the Internet progressively. And yes, there are four better ways to search the Internet than just relying on Google, Microsoft Live Search, Yahoo, or Ask.com. Click this sentence to read what we wrote last week about the problems with searching the WWW, and the first suggestion we made.

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GoodSearch.com

Okay, all that talk from last week about librarians aside, there are times when you need to find out what your ex is up to, or find a time-wasting website or blog, or find things potentially unmentionable to your publicly PG librarians. You're gonna need a search engine.

Allow us to kindly recommend GoodSearch.com. This sucker seems too good to be true, but it ain't. GoodSearch is a search engine, powered by Yahoo, that donates 50% “of its revenue to the charities and schools designated by its users.” So the results you get for your search are good (since a legit engine is powering GoodSearch), and the money is raised solely from advertising, neither the users of GoodSearch nor the charities listed pay anything. Remember: you get to choose the charity or organization of your choice. If you have any questions, here are the FAQs.

Not convinced? You can read what the company has to say for itself here, and for its founders here, and for some of the bigwigs lending them a hand here.

Still not convinced its legit, buckaroo? Check out this New York Times article here, and a CNN piece on the engine here, and a feature on this nonprofit in Entrepreneur Magazine here.

To make life that much easier, you can download a toolbar for IE, Firefox, and Safari right over here. We'd like to recommend passing the word along: just click here. Consider it your progressivism for the day. And here's a way to add a link to Good Search to the bottom of your emails. The more folks who know about this, we think, the better.

We can’t think of an easier way to raise cashola for the charity of your choice.

Fixing Elections (in a Good Way): Bookmark

Bookmark:

It's a little bit difficult to describe Project Vote Smart in 304 words, but here goes:

• This non-profit uses oodles of volunteers (from the right and the left) to examine “voting records, campaign contributions, public statements, biographical data (including their work history) and evaluations of them generated by over 100 competing special interest groups.–
• In addition, they “test each candidate’s willingness to provide citizens with their positions on the issues they will most likely face if elected through the National Political Awareness Test.– In other words, they see if candidates will openly, directly explain what they stand for — a tall order in some instances.
• You can also use Project Vote Smart to learn about judges, congressional legislation, voter registration, polling locales, ballot measures, and lots and lots of accurate et cetera.
• The Project also offers up a Voter's Self-Defense Manual, a must-read for progressives of any political ilk. The booklet can be downloaded as an Acrobat file, or you can order one by giving them a jingle: 1-888-868-3762.
• They are truly bipartisan: “No one can join the Project’s board without a political opposite.– And whose served on the board? Carter, Ford, Dukakis, McCain, McGovern, and Goldwater, to name a few.
• They don't take cash money from special interests. To quote: “We do not accept contributions from any corporations, labor unions, or other organizations that lobby, support or oppose candidates or issues.” The money comes only in the form of donations by individuals (70%) and philanthropic foundation grants (30%). Plus, 83% of their funds go directly into their programs and content.
• U.S. News and World Report has this to say: “Project Vote Smart would make the Founders weep with joy.– The New York Times pointed out that the Project kicks so much tail that “even the Federal Government recommends it.–
• This service — this wonderful, wonderful service — is completely free.

Want to read more? Go check it out for yourself. Then bookmark it. You'll want it down the road: we guarantee it.

We'd also like to ask you to give some love in the form of greenbacks to this incredibly worthy, dare we say essential (okay, we dare), this essential cause. Even if giving means three bucks. Here's the beauty of your generosity: not only do you help out this organization whose sole purpose is to help you as a voter, but your gift is tax-deductible, and you can choose how the money is spent. So give a little and have them spend it wisely.

But remember to bookmark it, baby, remember to bookmark it.

To learn more about Progressive Wednesday, just click here, here, or here.

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To read our other Wednesdays, click here for Wal-Mart and here for Music.

Fixing Elections (in a Good Way): Read

Read:

Adopting Election Day as a national holiday and banging out a Constitutional Amendment guaranteeing the right to vote seem like two it's-about-time steps in the right direction.

There's got to be more we can do to help out so-called “third parties– and their very qualified candidates. Third parties deserve a greater voice in our country, and having more voices, more opinions, and options seems incredibly American to us. Two-party domination seems a bit archaic, a bit undemocratic.

There are several suggestions out there for ways to change the ways we vote and the ways third party candidates get treated on ballots. These ideas include:

• Fusion voting.
• Instant run-off voting.
• Popular voting.
• Range voting.

We'll be returning to the topic of election fixes in the future, and we're curious what your thoughts are about each of the various options. After you read about each, let us know what you think by leaving a comment or by contacting us. Let us know which you prefer, which you have questions about. Your comments will help us decide which ones to support down ye ole road. So, thanks in advance.

To learn more about Progressive Wednesday, just click here, here, or here.

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To read our other Wednesdays, click here for Wal-Mart and here for Music.

Use a Dictionary & Thesaurus Progressively

Problem:

Sure, sure, sure — you might be thinking, Hey Progressive Wednesday gals and guys, how in the name of all that is holy and sacred could you possibly search for the meaning of words and their synonyms more progressively? Believe you me, we thought the same. But as it turns out, you can.

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Make Progress:

As Mark Twain once wrote: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and lighting bug.– You want your writing to sizzle, you want your text to be ebullient, effervescent at times, precise as a knife. If your language is appropriately variegated without seeming too erudite or painfully pedantic, well, you’re not just good, you’re Frosted-Flakes “Grrrrrreat!– Cogent writing is potent writing. While you’re at it, you might as well tacitly fill the tip jars of some privately owned businesses in the lexicon business.

1. Okay, to us, OneLook.com is the mac daddy of them all. One Look is a word search engine that allows you to hunt down definitions and translations from 931 online dictionaries indexing 7,563,812 words. If you’re not sure how to spell a word, you can rely on the engine’s ability to guess, or you can use its wildcard search feature. We’re fans of intellectual property so we dig that One Look “provides a way to find and explore third-party content but does not incorporate it directly into the site.– Besides clicking on links provided to definitions, One Look gives you a quick definition provided through “public domain and open source databases.– You can also use One Look to cheat on crosswords.

One Look is run by Datamuse, and generates revenue, like other search engines, through banner ads. The thing is, you can turn off these banner ads with the blessing of One Look. There’s even a Firefox search box plug-in available here. (To read more about why Firefox rocks the casbah, check out our Browse Progressively tool.)

We know we’re gushing, but we all-but worship this site. And you needn’t just take our word for it — One Look’s been high-fived by the New York Times, Houston Chronicle, USA Today, PC World, Yahoo!, and Entrepreneur.

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2. The OED puts other dictionaries to shame — it almost makes us feel bad for poor little Webster’s. But there’s two-fold trouble with the OED.

One: the OED is Forbes-400 expensive — $295 a year for an online version; $895.00 for the 20 volume, 22,000 page, book-shelf-breaking version; $295.00 for the CD-ROM version. Two: its content is absolutely massive — we’re talking over a half a million words.

However, that 500,000 is also plus. See, it’s the dictionary, the record of the English language, or to put it in their own words, “the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium.– Also, if you need or want to know the history of a word, this is the most legit place to look. If you’re lucky, and you probably are, your local library system pays for a subscription that you can access via their website. You’ll probably just need to enter your library card number. You might also live a stones throw from a college or university and be able to access the OED from computers on campus.

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3. Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com come to you from Lexico Publishing Group, LLC, “an independent, privately-held company based in Los Angeles, California, offering online reference and learning services through its destination Web sites, Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com– ¦, whose

mission is to promote lifelong learning and sharing of information with easy-to-use reference tools and interactive learning services.– And, frankly, they live up to their billing. The interface is easy on the eyes, and the content comes from a bevy of sources, including Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law, Merriam-Webster’s Medical Dictionary, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, and The Random House Unabridged Dictionary. This is a great resource, and one whose URL is about as easy to remember as a URL can get, no string around your finger necessary. Thesaurus.com (beside being our favorite dinosaur that never was) is our favorite web-based synonym finder and is based on Roget’s New Millennium Thesaurus. Both sites make their kessef through fairly innocuous banner ads, and as an LLC ourselves, we don’t mind this at all.