Neurohumanities offers a way to tap the popular enthusiasm for science and, in part, gin up more funding for humanities.

There are schoolteachers around the country that work second jobs after their teaching duties are done: one woman in North Dakota I spoke to was heading off to clean houses after the final bell in order to pay her rent.

When I was 13, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground made more sense to me than anything else.

Teaching has always been a poorly paid profession, particularly considering its educational requirements and responsibilities.

Like other elements of childhood for the precociously gifted - private or home schooling, overstructured activity, and proto-professional training - edutainment products are part of a system that divides children into haves and have-lesses.

Giftedness gives you this amazing tool kit for handling self-discipline and gives you an area of knowledge, but then it also gives you this weird set of aspirations.

Approximating authenticity online is not such a tall order. In fact, it may be the very least we can do.

While households that make anywhere from $48,000 to $250,000 can call themselves middle class, to group such a wide range of incomes under one label, as politicians love to do, is to confuse the term entirely.

Uber is hardly the first company to exploit the financial vulnerability of teachers - and the desperation of public schools more broadly - to score PR points. Amazon, Boeing, Bank of America, and other corporations have played the part of school benefactor, offering everything from reward programs to school supplies.

For the rich and powerful, pregnancy might not be an obstacle - it might even help one's career. But for the rest of us, it remains a hindrance.