First of all, good news.    There has been sufficient agreement on increasing the national debt ceiling . The next new ceiling will again become a crisis point in early 2025 after the next presidential election. Appears that there will be some Democrat concessions regarding work requirements and standards on recipients of food stamps.  Medicaid will remain untouched. As Janet Yellen has more recently indicated an absolute deadline of Thursday, June 8, there will be some discussions in the House on Tuesday, where there will be grudging approval, followed by action in the Senate, probably on Wednesday.  Then the President signs on Thursday and the world will be saved from a Great Recession.  Might take a day later than Yellen's warning, but everything seems at this point  to be okay. I guess there will not be a fatal Act Two by Republicans.  What's that?   Read my posting of 26May2023 . So my take: Speaker Kevin McCarthy said that he has 95% of the his members happy, and while

First, from the   Sunday New York Times :  The Sunday Question:  How long will McCarthy last as speaker?  McCarthy's concession to win the job made it easier for hard-right lawmakers   to oust him,   so his tenure could be short.  But Democrats looking to cut deals with McCarthy could  supply votes to save him   if conservatives revolt. Also, tomorrow night, TCU vs Georgia for the NCAA football championship, and on Tuesday, the release of Prince Harry's memoir,  Spare . I yesterday watched on my local PBS channel,  First Contact:  An Alien Encounter , a British program dramatizing what would happen if we encountered an incoming alien signal and/or artifact.  While this  Guardian  review  did not take the effort too seriously, I did agree that it was mostly boring.  Yet, triggered was my posting of today on this subject, and the subject of the day...imagination.  Oh, here is a  list of 655 films featuring extraterrestrials , so my wild dabblings are sometimes popular. Sunday is

QUORA today had a query on the subject: 10 unusual signs indicating high intelligence - explained by the hunter-gatherer hypothesis You can read the entire exposition, but let me just indicate the 10 plus 1 such signs  You are ( with my responses ): Messy:  maybe not totally, but my kitchen table can be improved and I never make my bed. Thin:  I was on the high side of normal most of my professional career, but was skinny until the age of 35 or so, and seem now to be heading back in that direction. Night owl:  I'm relatively normal on this one, but now and then get up in the middle of the night to do something on my computer Distrust authority:  I tend to rely on authority. Worry a lot:  yes, I do. Non-conformist:  that's me. Funny:  I like to think so Doubt yourself:  all the time. Didn't have sex until after high school:  yup. Need a lot of alone time:  I was around people all my life until my wife died a little more than a decade ago, and learned that I actually liked to