The 10% of brain myth is the widely perpetuated urban legend that most or all humans only make use of 10 percent (or some other small percentage) of their brains. It has been misattributed to people including Albert Einstein.[1] By association, it is suggested that a person may harness this unused potential and increase intelligence.
Though factors of intelligence can increase with training, the idea that large parts of the brain remain unused, and could subsequently be "activated" for conscious use, is without foundation. Although many mysteries regarding brain function remain, every part of the brain has a known function.[2][3]
A friend who's been watching the absurd machinations in Congress asked me "what happens if we don't solve the budget crisis and we run out of money to pay the nation's bills?"
It was only then I realized how effective Republicans lies have been. That we're calling it a "budget crisis" and worrying that if we don't "solve" it we can't pay our nation's bills is testament to how successful Republicans have been distorting the truth.
The federal budget deficit has no economic relationship to the debt limit. Republicans have linked the two, and the Administration has played along, but they are entirely separate. Republicans are using what would otherwise be a routine, legally technical vote to raise the debt limit as a means of holding the nation hostage to their own political goal of shrinking the size of the federal government.
In economic terms, we will not "run out of money" next week. We're still the richest nation in the world, and the Federal Reserve has unlimited capacity to print money.
Nor is there any economic imperative economic to reach an agreement on how to fix the budget deficit by Tuesday. It's not even clear the federal budget needs that much fixing anyway.
Yes, the ratio of the national debt to the total economy is high relative to what it's been. But it's not nearly as high as it was after World War II -- when it reached 120 percent of the economy's total output.
If and when the economy begins to grow faster - if more Americans get jobs, and we move toward a full recovery -- the debt/GDP ratio will fall, as it did in the 1950s, and as it does in every solid recovery. Revenues will pour into the Treasury, and much of the current "budget crisis" will be evaporate.
Get it? We're really in a "jobs and growth" crisis - not a budget crisis.
And the best way to get jobs and growth back is for the federal government to spend more right now, not less -- for example, by exempting the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes this year and next, recreating a WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps, creating an infrastructure bank, providing tax incentives for small businesses to hire, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, and so on.
But what happens next week if Congress can't or won't deliver the president a bill to raise the debt ceiling? Remember: This is all politics, mixed in with legal technicalities. Economics has nothing to do with it.
One possibility, therefore, is for the Treasury to keep paying the nation's bills regardless. It would continue to issue Treasury bills, which are our nation's IOUs. When those IOUs are cashed at the Federal Reserve Board, the Fed would do what it has always done: It honors them.
How long could this go on without the debt ceiling being lifted? That's a legal question. Republicans in Congress could mount a legal challenge, but no court in its right mind would stop the Fed from honoring the full faith and credit of the United States.
The wild card is what the three big credit-rating agencies will do. As long as the Fed keeps honoring the nation's IOUs, America's credit should be deemed sound. We're not Greece or Portugal, after all. We'll still be the richest nation in the world, whose currency is the basis for most business transactions in the world.
Standard & Poor's has warned it will downgrade the nation's debt from a triple-A to a double-A rating if we don't tend to the long-term deficit. But, as I've noted, S&P has no business meddling in American politics -- especially since its own non-feasance was partly responsible for the current size of the federal debt (had it done its job the debt and housing bubbles wouldn't have precipitated the terrible recession, and the federal outlays it required).
As long as we pay our debts on time, our global creditors should be satisfied. And if they're satisfied, S&P, Moody's, and Fitch should be, too.
Repeat after me: The federal deficit is not the nation's biggest problem. The anemic recovery, huge unemployment, falling wages, and declining home prices are bigger problems. We don't have a budget crisis. We have a jobs and growth crisis.
The GOP has manufactured a budget crisis out of the Republicans' extortionate demands over raising the debt limit. They have succeeded in hoodwinking the public, including my friend.
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared atRobertReich.org.
It's been quite the deadly weekend here in the gun-toting US of A, as some of our fellow countryfolk have taken it upon themselves to go on shooting sprees that have ended lives, caused unfathomable pain and suffering for dozens of families, and turned places where people once felt safe into memorials where people will mourn the senseless loss of life for years to come. So far:
Please, nobody give me any reason to update this list! Go hug somebody, plant a flower, bake a pie, draw a cat picture, play some badminton, anything. Just stop shooting each other.
“Safe House” was designed by Kwk Promes Architects Warsaw, Poland. The aim of the project was to create a two-level “fortress” that would provide a high level of security for the owners. Which is why the house features movable concrete walls that can pretty much isolate the entire residence when the owners are away for example. The house can literally be “closed” and “opened” according to the needs of the inhabitants. Here is more from the architects: “When the set of 15 meter-long retractable walls on the eastern and western side are slid all the way out, the entry plot is enclosed into a temporary courtyard space. The back of the house, which faces an expansive garden to the south, features a 6 meter-high roll-down gate that completely opens up the interior to the exterior. Floor-to-ceiling windows provide a panoramic view of the surrounding landscape, presenting the living space with an effectively contrary impression to the one offered by the solid mass of the building".
The 6,100 sq. ft. home features movable concrete walls that can literally be opened or closed according to the needs of its residents. In order to enter, security codes are required. Once those are entered, guests are led into the "safety zone," an area bordered with concrete walls, before finally being let inside the house.When the fortress is in its closed state, it turns into a big concrete cube. When it's open, a draw bridge lowers, connecting the home to the indoor swimming pool. This house is also equipped with movable walls, mobile shutters, and a rising aluminum gate, which gives off an expansive garden view. Since the entire home transforms with built in electronic engines, everything opens and closes with just a touch of a button.The architects “When the set of 15 meter-long retractable walls on the eastern and western side are slid all the way out, the entry plot is enclosed into a temporary courtyard space. The back of the house, which faces an expansive garden to the south, features a 6 meter-high roll-down gate that completely opens up the interior to the exterior. Floor-to-ceiling windows provide a panoramic view of the surrounding landscape, presenting the living space with an effectively contrary impression to the one offered by the solid mass of the building.”
A Halifax man scammed out of $14,000 by a fake online romance is speaking out to help others.
Rob Rogers said his misadventure began with a MySpace message from a flirtatious woman. He wrote back to say she'd made a mistake.
"I wish I'd never even written her back to say anything, but I did," he said Wednesday.
The two began emailing back and forth and then switched to instant messaging. Eventually they started talking on the phone. The woman said her name was Rams Murtala and that she was a lonely widow in Ghana.
She also said her in-laws were mistreating her and she asked Rogers to help.
"It was probably four to six weeks before she asked about getting her power turned back on, which at the time seemed like a simple request," Rogers said.
Rogers began lending her small amounts of money, but it added up to $14,000. Rogers dipped into his pension savings to cover her needs.
One day Murtala agreed to fly to Canada from Africa to meet Rogers in person. He waited for her at the airport, but she never came.
"I don't even know if I could describe the emotions when I was watching other people coming off the planes, and hugging one another, and reunions going on," he said.
"Loved ones finding each other. I don't even know if I could find words to describe what that emotion was like when I realized that I was sitting there for no reason."
Rogers then discovered that Murtala never existed and that the photo she used was in fact of an adult actress called Raven Riley. Riley was not involved in the sting.
Rogers said the emotional damage was terrible, but he turned it into a plan to help others avoid similar scams. He is a peer counsellor on the website Romancescams.org. It offers a check list to see if you may be falling victim to a scam.
Halifax Regional Police do not keep numbers for such scams, but an officer said they have seen crimes like the one Rogers fell for before.
Det. Const. Dana Drover said there are ways to test if your online romance is real.
"A criminal wants to be anonymous, they don't want to be found," he said.
"In many cases they'll never ever engage in a webcam conversation, because that can be recorded. And clearly they don't want their identity being known."
Drover said scammers play off the victim's emotional needs. Rogers agreed.
"They knew that I had no children and I would have wanted children," Rogers said.
"She started playing with the, 'Well, I'd love to have children with you and come over and be with you.'"
Rogers said he is still single and has given up on finding love online — unless they can easily meet in person.
