Attention media: We know it's hot. We know you are wracking your simmered brains trying to figure out new ways to talk about the heat. Or rather, you're not, because just like clockwork, heat waves result in a reflexive surplus of photos depicting kids playing in fire hydrants. No one is immune, from wire services to photobloggers to the general public. But we can put a stop to this. Just look at the photo above. It's cute. The kids are wet. Gotta love the expression of existential horror on the kid at left. But let this be an end to it. If you again feel the urge to photograph children playing in hydrant spray, just go outside and take pictures of the sun, over and over again, until it's dark. Or go sit in the van until you pass out. Together, we can end hydrant photography once and for all. Thank you.

Ah, so this is what Palo Alto is doing with the money that would have gone toward universal pre-school. They're training little investors! The Palo Alto Weekly describes a scene in Jordan Middle School's "Money, the Market, and More!" class, where rising sixth-grader Anu Rajan says:

In Silicon Valley, where busy parents need another place to send the kids all day, Proposition 82, the Preschool for All Act, is supported by VC John Doerr and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

When local politicians chatter about a Silicon Valley Walk of Fame, you'd think they created the idea. But Dallas Adams says he thought it up — and he did it for the kids. Best stuff's after the jump.

Apple has set an example for the tech world by apologizing to a nine-year-old girl.

From the AP:

Load a MySpace page today and you'll most likely see this banner at the top:

So. The Park Slope hat. New York reported on it this week, and we brought you the whole email exchange yesterday afternoon. All sorts of things were debated: Is it a boy's hat or is it a girl's hat, or is it for infants with abnormally large heads? Does headgear reinforce gender roles, are parents inadvertent sexist, are Park Slopers crazy P.C. Nazis? (Um, yeah, definitely yes to that last one.) But one thing was never really resolved: What ever became of the hat? This morning, thank God (whomever your god might be), there was an answer:

New York mag has a cute front-of-book item today on an only-in-Park-Slope battle that recently raged on an email list for earnest and progressive parents in that earnestly progressive Brooklyn neighborhood. As Ben Mathis-Lilley explains:

This thoroughly nauseating news — of interest, we're sure, only to a handful of people in the most rarefied Manhattan ZIP codes — was carried in last night's weekly Publishers Lunch deal roundup:

It's almost enough to make you finally pack up and move to Brooklyn:

And in more news from the tristate area:

This is why we should be reading the Houston Chronicle more closely: