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Debt ceiling debate: Preaching to the choir
CNN: The White House continues to issue dire warnings about the economic consequences should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling this month. President Barack Obama told Wall Street to be "concerned" and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Congress is "playing with fire." But despite all the drastic pronouncements, some Republicans in Congress aren't buying it. For one thing, they doubt that October 17 is the date when the Treasury will be unable to meet its obligations. Rep. Lee Terry, R-Nebraska, is one of those lawmakers. ... Which side is right? Before default is reached, it's hard to know.
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What Do You See in The Face Of The GOP?
I’ve worked in Washington, DC, for decades, so I have witnessed a fair number of political logjams, even a few government shutdowns. So I’m not quick to panic when the two parties’ leaders stubbornly stake out what are seemingly irreconcilable positions. But I confess that listening to House Republicans this time around—especially but not only the Tea Party zealots—is making me nervous. This is not just the usual posturing and brinkmanship. I really think they perceive a different reality than the rest of us. Is that possible? Can people be so biased by their political attitudes that they look out and see a different world, a world where up is down and black is white?
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The Mind of a Furloughed Worker
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers remain on furlough from their jobs, hoping the congressional budget standoff will end in time for them to pay their rents and mortgage installments. It's a situation that is all too familiar to countless private sector workers who were laid off - either permanently or temporarily - from their jobs amid the economic crisis that spanned the globe over the last five years. What’s it like to live in a time of such uncertainty? According to brain studies, that depends on your personality type. Research shows a glimpse of how employees will differ in the way they deal with such unknowns as a work stoppage.
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‘Brain Training’ May Boost Working Memory, But Not Intelligence
While brain training programs might strengthen your ability to hold information in mind, they probably won’t benefit the kind of intelligence that helps you reason and solve problems.
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Studying The Science Behind Child Prodigies
NPR: Matt Haimovitz is 42 and a world-renowned cellist. He rushed into the classical music scene at age 10 after Itzhak Perlman, the famed violinist, heard him play. "By the time I was 12, 13 years old I was on the road playing with Israel Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic and some of the great orchestras. So it was pretty meteoric," Haimovitz says. "I grew up with a lot of classical music in the household. My mother is a pianist and took me to many concerts." But nothing in his family history explains where Haimovitz got his extraordinary talent. And that's typical, Ellen Winner, a psychology professor at Boston College who has studied prodigies, tells NPR's David Greene.
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How ‘impermanence’ can help us all get along
The Boston Globe: We are born colorblind—literally. Newborn color vision is limited, lacking many of the visual distinctions that characterize mature sight. Soon enough, though, color takes over, figuratively as well as physiologically: We learn to see ourselves and others as parts of particular groups. Are we black or white? Male or female? What’s our religion, our language, our preference in music or food? Each time a child hears a description of a person or witnesses a human interaction, it contributes to the formation of her identity and sense of her role in the world. ...
