'We Must Act Then'

I am not particularly politically or economically minded however the recent economic crisis was nearly impossible to miss. Although I was personally shocked to find how many people where completely taken by surprise. Economists had been warning us of the likelihood of this exact situation for several months, even years. The implications of this disaster were noticeable in neighborhood stores, as well as global exchange. Never the less people continued to go about their daily lives, possibly hoping it would go away. Unfortunately the economy is incapable of correcting itself completely.
I was drawn to read an article: The article expresses the current situation and plans of correcting it. The government has already taken steps to control this crisis by banning companies from "short selling" 799 financial groups and companies. This moratorium may prove to be little more than speed bump for this financial slide. Also in regards to the financial bailout it seams it will anger many and have a very important sway in this years election.

p://money.cnn.com/2008/09/19/news/economy/paulson/index.htm?postversion=2008091910&eref=rss_topstories

Reading Minds?

Recently I read an article in Scientific American about how we predetermine what we are going to hear or read based on the contexts and beginning sounds of the word. After pondering over this article for a few days it occurred to me that this may also be the same mental process that allows us to read sentences even if the words themselves are scrambled in the middle. What our brains do is go through thousands of possibilities of what we will hear before we have heard the complete word and fills on the blanks, the reason I thought this may be a similar reasoning process so that when we are reading a sentence with scrambled words we subconsciously read the word only by the first and last letters and rule out all words that do not have those first and last letters or fit the context of the text. Our reasoning abilities are astounding with conscious thought but what are truly astounding are our subconscious abilities.
This article also made me wonder if we are able to rule out possibilities based on personal trends, for example if you know a person really well can you predict more closely what they are going to say. If that is true then it may be why close friends and loved ones often finish each other’s sentences unintentionally. On some occasions could it be possible to replace our need to hear the first part of the word with our knowledge of our friends speaking habits? I have noticed that with people I know closely I can finish their sentences how they are going to do so even if the context of the word does not fit which leads me to believe it is a definite possibility. Finally could our ability to preprocess sentences also be used unconsciously in situations and possibly explain the phenomenon of Déjà vu?

beautiful day

Each year thousands of students pass through their high schools doors for the last time before their reunion. At first I thought this year is my year to become one of those thousands but it's not. Yes, I will be passing through this hallway one more time but I know it will not be the end. I know that as many of those nearly nameless students never turn back, I will. It is a part of what brings us together at my school, our determination to step out of tradition, to stand out, and to stand up when no one else will.
So now as I sit in a busy classroom staring at the outside world I will quickly will be thrown into, I am not scared to leave my friends, mentors, and family. It seams that as I watch the world is rushing by yet to pick me up in its flow but the water is rising now and it wont be long, but lucky for me I have always loved to swim.