Morning News: Smart Kids Rule

Amy Kuras — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:00:00 GMT

•   All hail the smart kids! And one of them, Kavya Shivashankar, of Olathe, Kansas, won the National Spelling Bee last night. She spelled “Laodicean” (and no, I don’t know what it means) to bring home a ginormous trophy and $40,000 in cash and prizes.

•   In other competition news, turns out that nice Adam Lambert, the guy who came in second on American Idol, is gay? Who could have guessed? Well, judge Kara DioGuardi, for one, who outs him in an interview on “The View” airing today.

•   Remember how nine years ago the melding of Time Warner and AOL was supposed to be some harbinger of the triumph of new media over old? Well, new media did pretty much win, but AOL is just a footnote in the explosion of the Internet. And now that storied marriage is being undone, with Time Warner spinning off AOL.

•   Here’s another juxtaposition of old and new — the longest serving Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Orrin Hatch, said yesterday that barring any serious issues yet to be uncovered, Sonia Santomayor is likely to be confirmed as Supreme Court justice.

•   According to the latest census bureau estimates, multiracial people – people who check off more than one race on the census form – comprise the fastest growing demographic group in the United States. Many factors play in, including an increase in interracial marriages, but probably the biggest is just a growing acceptance of such relationships. Here’s a quote from Kayci Baldwin, a 17-year-old girl who runs a national club for interracial kids among other things: "I went to my high school prom last week with my date who is Ecuadoran-Nigerian, a friend who is Chinese-white and another friend who is part Dominican," she said. "While we are a group that was previously ignored in many ways, we now have an opportunity to fully identify and express ourselves."

That is always good news.

Spelling Dork Nearly Loses With 'Numbnut'

Madeline Holler — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:56:00 GMT

Sameer Mishra, who went on to win the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, thought the judges were calling him names during one of the late rounds in the contest.

Mishra approached the microphone, the judge called out the word, the audience laughed, and, as is protocol, the 13-year-old repeated what he heard with a slight panic in his voice: "numbnut."

Turns out, the judge had said, "numnah," a Hindi word for a kind of blanket. He spelled it correctly. In an interview before the final round, he said of the misheard word, "there are just so many ways to spell it!"

That kid ain't no numbnut (or knumnutt, or nummnut, or ...)

Vidoe: YouTube/ESPN

Strollerderby : national spelling bee

Morning News: Smart Kids Rule

Spelling Dork Nearly Loses With 'Numbnut'