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Weekend Reads 10/3/15

These kids were geniuses — they were just too poor for anyone to discover them

The screening test flagged thousands of children as potentially gifted, and school psychologists started working overtime to evaluate all of them. Out of that process, Broward identified an additional 300 gifted children between 2005 and 2006, according to Card and Giuliano's research. The impact on racial equity was huge: 80 percent more black students and 130 percent more Hispanic students were now entering gifted programs in third grade.

Good luck, Trevor Noah: Stephen Colbert just raised the bar very, very high

Colbert is now himself — a thoughtful, well-informed, religious, nice and clearly progressive individual with a sharp sense of humor. He can be sarcastic without being snarky, because his concern about the state of the world is a passion, not a pose. It’s his mix of talents, and the combination of entertainment and education, that allows the show to appeal to a broad audience and makes it more than a late-night version of “Meet the Press.”

Bible as common ground

At a moment when the political spotlight shines on those who say the most outrageous things, it is worth noting Sanders’s attempt to broaden the political conversation. Conventional wisdom says that the primary candidates need to rush to the margins and shore up the base. Sanders is unusual in his apparent willingness to say what he thinks to anybody who will listen.

No, That’s NOT What the Earth Would Look Like Without Water

For a perfectly homogeneous object (say a big nonrotating drop of water in space) the geoid would be a sphere. For the Earth, well, it’s what’s shown in the graphic. In other words, that graphic doesn’t show the Earth without water, it shows what the shape of the Earth’s surface would look like if the surface were entirely covered in water.

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