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How Playing an Instrument Benefits Your Brain

When you listen to music, multiple areas of your brain become engaged and active. But when you actually play an instrument, that activity becomes more like a full-body brain workout.

James Randi: Homeopathy, Quackery and Fraud

Legendary skeptic James Randi takes a fatal dose of homeopathic sleeping pills onstage, kicking off a searing indictment of irrational beliefs. He throws out a million dollar challenge to the world's psychics to prove what they do is real.

The Bus Boys: The Minimum Wage Song

Class, race and music come together as the Bus Boys sing the Minimum Wage song from the kitchen of Carlos and Charlie's restaurant in 1979.

Friday Nite Videos -- November 7, 2014

Portside
Election Day: Money vs Ideas. The Bus Boys: The Minimum Wage Song. First Anti-Corruption Act in US History Passes. James Randi: Homeopathy, Quackery and Fraud. How Playing an Instrument Benefits Your Brain.

Voters Favor Higher Wages, Sick Pay

Samantha Winslow Labor Notes
Election day round up shows a few union victories in local races and in referendums even in conservative states despite the over all tide of labor defeats. When voters saw working-class issues directly on the ballot, like raising the minimum wage or guaranteeing sick leave, they voted for them.

Tidbits - November 6, 2014

Portside
Reader Comments- 2014 Elections; Jim Crow Returns; Toni Morrison, Angela Davis; U.S. Used 1,000 Nazis; Syrian Labyrinth; Draft Could Be Next; Responses to Joel Klein; Nobel Peace Laureates Call Full Torture Disclosure; Activists Block an Israeli Shipping Ship; Women of Afghanistan; Saudi Arabia and ISIS; Fukushima; Announcements-Miners Shot Down-Film Screening-Nov 10; Elections-Who Won? Who Lost?-Nov 14; Folk music greats honor David Amram-Nov 20; PM Press Book Sale

NY Times calls for exchange of Cuban Five and Alan Gross

New York Times Editorial Board The New York Times
In an editorial published in the print edition of the New York Times, Monday, Nov. 3, 2014, in English and Spanish (appearing online the evening of Sun. Nov. 2), the Editorial Board has called for a prisoner exchange of the three remaining members of the Cuban Five for Alan Gross, who is serving a 15-year sentence in Cuba.

5 Facts About How America Is Rigged for a Massive Wealth Transfer to the Rich

Paul Buchheit Alternet
People in the U.S. and around the world are being rapidly divided into two classes, the well-to-do and the lower-income majority. This severing of society will change only when progressive thinkers (and doers) agree on a single, manageable solution that will stop the easy flow of wealth to the privileged few.