Bill Chapman

the Marines were reported to have murdered "12 people --  including a 4-year-old girl, a 1-year-old boy and three elderly villagers.''  According to a report by Carlotta Gall of the New York Times, a "16-year-old  newly married girl was cut down while she was carrying a bundle of grass to her  family's farmhouse. (U.S. troops at the time took the camera of an Afghan  Associated Press photographer who happened to come upon the scene and "deleted"  photographs from it, including ones "of a four-wheel drive vehicle where three  Afghans had been shot to death inside.")

he paid about $2,000 per death to  family members. The military calls these "condolence payments" and makes  similar ones for deaths judged wrongful, in Iraq.

After reading a news story titled "I tweet, therefore I am," Lopez and his classmates concluded it might be true that they don't feel as though they exist unless they constantly share their thoughts and experiences, even if all they're doing is brushing their teeth.

And for all that, she said, "I don't talk to my family anymore, and I don't know what's going on in the world."

This is the way her students live their lives, said teacher Meyer. They're wired to everything but connected to nothing meaningful.