Word: standardized
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...package into pieces, called tranches. Then, you pay to play. Some of the pieces are the first in line to get hit by any defaults, so they offer relatively high yields; others are last to get hit, with correspondingly lower yields. The alchemy begins when rating agencies such as Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings wave their magic wand over these top tranches and declare them to be a golden AAA rated. Top shelf. If you want to own AAA debt, CDOs have been about the only place to go; hardly any corporation can muster the credit worthiness to garner...
...some lawmakers like Virginia Senator Jim Webb, this double standard is unconscionable. The former Navy Secretary and highly decorated Vietnam vet is trying to goad Congress into updating the G.I. Bill, whose benefits have failed to keep pace with the rising cost of a college education, by providing full tuition to a state university plus a $1,000 monthly stipend to all veterans who have served a total of two years in Iraq or Afghanistan since 9/11--reserve forces included. His rationale for extending equal benefits to National Guard veterans: "Same battlefield, same soldier...
...take for granted that those with IQs at least three standard deviations below the mean (those who score 55 or lower on IQ tests) require "special" education. But students with IQs that are at least three standard deviations above the mean (145 or higher) often have just as much trouble interacting with average kids and learning at an average pace. Shouldn't we do something special for them as well? True, these are IQs at the extremes. Of the 62 million school-age kids in the U.S., only about 62,000 have IQs above 145. (A similar number have...
...reality about IQ tests: more boys score at the high end of the IQ scale (and, it should be said, more score at the low end; girls' IQ variance is smaller). And for reasons that no one understands, African Americans' IQ scores have tended to cluster about a standard deviation below the average--evidence for some that the tests themselves are biased...
...where she was headed was someplace very unusual. By the early 1980s Murray was routinely breaking out of the confines of the standard rectangular canvas, going instead for supports shaped like thunderbolts, clouds or shapes-with-no-name that she would combine sometimes into complicated puzzle pieces. Working in a jumped-up palette of citric yellows, Band-Aid pinks, acidic greens and plum purples, she made pictures that were semi-abstract, but full of teasing references to the outside world, like the outlines of shoes and tables. Or two conjoined canvases might take on the shape...