Over the last 15 years, I whittled down close to six figures of debt I acquired from living beyond my means. In that time, I alternated between ignoring it, agonizing over it, and finally, taking action; I became debt-free last year. Along the way, I read lots of books about money. Since April is National Financial Literacy Month, I wanted to share these nine books about personal finance that each taught me something valuable about managing my money.
The first few are more about the emotional aspects of money, which is where I faced my biggest financial stumbling blocks, while others get into the nitty-gritty of managing your money. I haven’t followed any single book to the letter, which would be impossible since some give contradictory advice. I also don’t necessarily agree with everything each of these authors writes. I have, however, gained the confidence and knowledge I’m using to keep my finances on an upward trajectory. I also learned what doesn’t work for me. I know reading any single book can’t make money simply appear in your bank account (though wouldn’t that be wonderful?), but diving into the topic helped me grapple with the ways I treated money that I wanted to change.
A child’s brain is not a miniature adult brain. It is a brain born under construction that wires itself to the world. And it’s up to parents to create a world — both physical and social — that is rich with wiring instructions.
Based on years of research in neuroscience and psychology, follwing are seven parenting rules to help your kid build a brain that is flexible and therefore resilient.
New South Wales (abbreviated as NSW) is a state on the east coast of Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria to the south, and South Australia to the west. Its coast borders the Coral and Tasman Seas to the east. The Australian Capital Territory is an enclave within the state. New South Wales’ state capital is Sydney, which is also Australia’s most populous city. In June 2020, the population of New South Wales was over 8.1 million, making it Australia’s most populous state. Just under two-thirds of the state’s population, 5.3 million, live in the Greater Sydney area. The demonym for inhabitants of New South Wales is New South Welshmen.
The Colony of New South Wales was founded as a British penal colony in 1788. It originally comprised more than half of the Australian mainland with its western boundary set at 129th meridian east in 1825. The colony then also included the island territories of New Zealand, Van Diemen’s Land, Lord Howe Island, and Norfolk Island. During the 19th century, most of the colony’s area was detached to form separate British colonies that eventually became New Zealand and the various states and territories of Australia. However, the Swan River Colony was never administered as part of New South Wales. Wikipedia
Since the novel coronavirus began its global spread, influenza cases reported to the World Health Organization have dropped to minuscule levels. The reason, epidemiologists think, is that the public health measures taken to keep the coronavirus from spreading also stop the flu. Influenza viruses are transmitted in much the same way as SARS-CoV-2, but they are less effective at jumping from host to host.
As Scientific American reported last fall, the drop-off in flu numbers was both swift and universal. Since then, cases have stayed remarkably low. “There’s just no flu circulating,” says Greg Poland, who has studied the disease at the Mayo Clinic for decades. The U.S. saw about 600 deaths from influenza during the 2020–2021 flu season. In comparison, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated there were roughly 22,000 deaths in the prior season and 34,000 two seasons ago.
Because each year’s flu vaccine is based on strains that have been circulating during the past year, it is unclear how next year’s vaccine will fare, should the typical patterns of the disease return. The WHO made its flu strain recommendations for vaccines in late February as usual, but they were based on far fewer cases than in a common year. At the same time, with fewer virus particles circulating in the world, there is less chance of an upcoming mutation, so it is possible the 2021–2022 vaccine will prove extra effective.
“Is he in his own room yet?” is a question new parents often field once they emerge from the haze of life with a newborn. But sleeping apart from our babies is a relatively recent development – and not one that extends around the globe. In other cultures sharing a room, and sometimes a bed, with your baby is the norm.
This isn’t the only aspect of new parenthood that Westerners do differently. From napping on a schedule and sleep training to pushing our children around in strollers, what we might think of as standard parenting practices are often anything but.
Parents in the US and UK are advised to have their babies sleep in the same room as them for at least the first six months, but many view this as a brief stopover on their way to a dedicated nursery.
In most other societies around the world, babies stick with their parents longer. A 2016 review that looked at research on children sharing not just a room but a bed with one or more of their parents found a high prevalence in many Asian countries: over 70% in India and Indonesia, for example, and over 80% in Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Research on bedsharing rates in countries across Africa is patchy, but where it does exist suggests the practice is near-universal.
Phoenix is the capital and most populous city in Arizona, with 1,680,992 people (as of 2019). It is also the fifth-most populous city in the United States, the largest state capital by population, and the only state capital with a population of more than one million residents.
Phoenix is the anchor of the Phoenix metropolitan area, informally known as the Valley of the Sun and formally centered in the Salt River Valley. The metropolitan area, which includes part of neighboring Pinal County, is the 11th largest by population in the United States, with approximately 4.73 million people as of 2017. Phoenix is the seat of Maricopa County and the largest city in the state at 517.9 square miles (1,341 km2), more than twice the size of Tucson and one of the largest cities in the United States. Wikipedia
Want to raise successful kids? Make them do chores. The science backs you up, and it’s the kind of technique I cover in my free e-book How to Raise Successful Kids, which you can download here.
Now, it turns out there’s a fairly simple way to get them to cooperate. This new technique (well, new to a lot of us, anyway) makes so much sense, you’ll wonder why we all haven’t been doing it already.
Here’s the specific, two-part strategy, according to Michaeleen Doucleff, author of Hunt, Gather, Parent, along with why it’s so beneficial both for you and for their later success in life.
On February 18, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover, the most complex scientific robot to ever journey to Mars, finally landed. A suite of experiments onboard are fine-tuned to discover new secrets, confirm theories, and set up a future mission to return precious Martian soil to Earth.
But one of these experiments, buried in the cornucopia of science taking place on the SUV-sized rover, stems from a decades-long effort to record the sonic landscape on another planet. NASA is sending two microphones, the Entry Descent and Landing Microphone and the SuperCam microphone, to Mars. For the first time, we will be able to listen to the sounds of Percy’s Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) sequence—the most gut-wrenching seven minutes of any Mars mission—and if all goes according to plan, the whistling winds of the Martian landscape itself.
I chatted with the two engineers who’ve made it their mission to record the sounds of the Red Planet. You can listen to an edited version of our conversations and the story behind Percy’s microphones in the audio player below, or read the following transcript.
NASA’s Perseverance rover is ready to make its debut on the Red Planet. The intrepid spacecraft is designed to search for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars, collect geologic samples for return to Earth and send the first helicopter into the skies of another world. That’s just the beginning.
For the first time ever, two microphones aboard the spacecraft—the Entry Descent and Landing Cam microphone and the SuperCam Microphone—will sample Mars’ sonic landscape. It could reshape our understanding of the Red Planet. It’s a project that has been decades in the making. One that traces its origins back to the mid-90s and the Mars Polar Lander Mission.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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Credit: Katie Peek
