| | Big Idea | Small Detail |
| Money | U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and a couple of long-gone Obama nominees had trouble calculating and paying their taxes on time. But Americans are expected to pony up by April 15—no excuses. (A related sore point: the $4,700 raise Congress gave itself for 2009.)
| If you're more conscientious than they are about paying what you owe, Reader's Digest contributor Beth Kobliner (Get a Financial Life, Simon & Schuster) suggests irs.gov as a resource. Her advice: Use any refund to pay down credit card debt, or save it in an IRA. "If you owe the IRS," Kobliner says, "don't pay with a credit card. Interest and fees are likely higher than what the government's installment plan will charge."
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| Science | Coming sooner than you think: a whole host of inventions that once seemed possible only in comic books and movies. They include, according to New Scientist: - super-vision (radar that can detect beating hearts and breathing)
- disappearing cloaks (they manipulate light waves)
- jet packs (available later this year, for $100,000, from Martin Aircraft Company)
| Sometimes the oldfangled science can't be beat: Sleep more than seven hours a night and you'll fight off colds three times more effectively than those who sleep less, researchers say. They have already shown that sleep boosts the immune system and that people who sleep more tend to weigh less.
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| Education | News the troubled book industry can use: For the first time in more than 25 years, the proportion of adults who said they've read at least one literary work in the previous 12 months increased, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. | Readers who want to make every book count can check out the following sites for recommendations: |
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