Explore the Full Spectrum of a Child’s Strengths

A step-by-step parents’ guide that demystifies “creativity,” and helps children grow up to be 21st century thinkers

In a future that will require visual literacy and innovative thinking, today’s kids will be expected to think across disciplines, come up with imaginative solutions, and have the capacity to invent with many media. In order to succeed, they’ll need creative thinking skills. Yet, we’ve been trained to think that some kids are “born” creative, while others are not.

But as the experienced educators, researchers and co-authors of The Missing Alphabet: A Parents’ Guide to Developing Creative Thinking in Kids (Greenleaf Book Group, October 23, 2012, 288 pages, $17.95) have discovered, this simply isn’t true. Rather, every child is born with a rich creative capacity; parents can build on that by supplying the Sensory Alphabet — the building blocks for creative thinking — an alphabet that is missing in schools today.

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Keep Stress In Check This Holiday Season Before Ending Up in the ER

The holiday season is supposed to be joyous, fun and happy. But it can also be stressful. The nation’s emergency physicians want to remind all Americans to keep your stress in check.

“For many, including emergency physicians, the holidays come with a daunting pile of obligations,” said Dr. Andrew Sama, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. “Don’t overdo it, because you can damage your health and possibly wind up spending the holidays in the emergency department.”

One particular concern is known as “holiday heart” syndrome. It is an irregular heartbeat that occurs in people who are otherwise healthy. It can be the result of stress, lack of sleep, excessive alcohol or caffeine ingestion, and/or dehydration. Emergency physicians say this is more common during the holiday season because of holiday parties and other events. Best advice is to moderate alcohol use and drink plenty of water.   If an irregular heartbeat lasts for longer than a few hours, you should seek medical attention or go to the nearest emergency room immediately.
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Master Your Mac—New from No Starch Press

Macs are great for beginners, because the basics are easy. The challenge comes when you want OS X to do things your way. For Mac users who want to travel beyond the basics,Master Your Mac (No Starch Press, November 2012, 424 pp., $29.95, ISBN 9781593274061) is here to help.

“The great thing about OS X is that a complete beginner can turn on a new Mac and start surfing the web in less than five minutes,” says author Matt Cone. “But things get tricky after that. How do you connect another monitor or create new trackpad gestures? I wrote Master Your Mac to teach people how to do things in OS X that they didn’t even know were possible.”

Master Your Mac takes users to the next level with tutorials on how to change hidden defaults, enable undocumented features, repair disk permissions to improve performance, monitor their systems, and even create a bootable USB drive for emergencies. Readers will also learn how to:

  • Automate tasks with AppleScript, triggers, and Automator macros
  • Handle massive amounts of email and media with synced accounts and spam filters
  • Turn their Macs into a file or Web server
  • Create Safari extensions and use site-specific browsers
  • Secure their Macs with firmware passwords, firewalls, FileVault full-disk encryption
  • Install the best apps to boost productivity and fix everyday annoyances

Sure, anyone can use a Mac fresh out of its pretty packaging, but that’s no fun. Master Your Mac promises to teach readers to customize their machines to make them work their way.

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