There's a fine, new-to-me blog on The Art of Manliness where lessons in manliness are next to practical tips like Nine ways to start a fire without matches.
When all else fails, a coke can and bar of chocolate will do
Some like John McCain need no lessons but can teach some. Of course, he'll never do it and so it rests on others to tell.
Mr. Day relayed to me one of the stories Americans should hear. It involves what happened to him after escaping from a North Vietnamese prison during the war. When he was recaptured, a Vietnamese captor broke his arm and said, "I told you I would make you a cripple."
The break was designed to shatter Mr. Day's will. He had survived in prison on the hope that one day he would return to the United States and be able to fly again. To kill that hope, the Vietnamese left part of a bone sticking out of his arm, and put him in a misshapen cast. This was done so that the arm would heal at "a goofy angle," as Mr. Day explained. Had it done so, he never would have flown again.
But it didn't heal that way because of John McCain. Risking severe punishment, Messrs. McCain and Day collected pieces of bamboo in the prison courtyard to use as a splint. Mr. McCain put Mr. Day on the floor of their cell and, using his foot, jerked the broken bone into place. Then, using strips from the bandage on his own wounded leg and the bamboo, he put Mr. Day's splint in place.
Years later, Air Force surgeons examined Mr. Day and complimented the treatment he'd gotten from his captors. Mr. Day corrected them. It was Dr. McCain who deserved the credit. Mr. Day went on to fly again.
The way to a man's heart? Through his left ear
New research suggests that declarations of love, jokes, or words of anger are best remembered when they are heard through the left ear, while instructions, directions and non-emotional messages have more impact on the right side.
It is all to do with how our brains process information. Although the left and right hemispheres, or sides, of the brain are similar structures, they have specialised functions. The left side, it is suggested, is more logic-based and dominant, while the right is the more imaginative side, more visual, intuitive, emotional and spatially aware. Because the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, the left ear has been shown in some research to be the route to the emotional side of the brain, and the right ear to the non-emotional, logical side.
The news that left and right ears process sound differently is not so new. A 2004 article in Science found that the left ear of a baby was more attuned to music and the right better at picking up speech-like sounds.
Speak to my right ear, sing to my left
The old wives tale has some truth behind it.
Mom's diet may play role in whether baby is boy or girl
Having a hearty appetite, eating potassium-rich foods including bananas, and not skipping breakfast all seemed to raise the odds of having a boy.
When the Wall St. Journal says it's time to Load Up the Pantry for a good return on your cash, pay attention.
Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.
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Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate.
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Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.
And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.
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You can't easily stock up on perishables like eggs or milk. But other products will keep. Among them: Dried pasta, rice, cereals, and cans of everything from tuna fish to fruit and vegetables. The kicker: You should also save money by buying them in bulk.
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The good news is that it's easier to store Cap'n Crunch or cans of Starkist in your home than it is to store lots of gasoline. Safer, too.
Don't offer theories as to why they got sick, don't ask for their prognosis, don't give unsolicited advice, and don't insist that "everything is going to be just fine."
How to Support a Loved One Reeling from a Cancer Diagnosis
In the long run, it pays to be nice says a new Harvard study.
Common game theory has held that punishment makes two equals cooperate. But when people compete in repeated games, punishment fails to deliver, said study author Martin Nowak. He is director of the evolutionary dynamics lab at Harvard where the study was conducted.
"On the individual level, we find that those who use punishments are the losers," Nowak said his experiments found.
Those who escalate the conflict very often wound up doomed.
"It's a very positive message," said study co-author David Rand, a Harvard biology graduate student researcher. "In general, the thing that is most, sort of, rational and best for your own self-interest is to be nice."
Stainless steel wallets are in your future. Either that or aluminum foil.
Radio-frequency IDs or RFIDs are tags that include both an integrated circuit for storing and processing information and an antenna for receiving and transmitting a signal. They are tiny little objects you can apply to any product, animal or person. They are most often used in inventory tracking and management.
You probably are already familiar with the transponders many have on their windshields allowing them to speed through toll booths without stopping even as the information is captured and the charge for the toll will appear on your credit card statement.
Since 2006 RFID tags have been included in all new passports issued by the United States government. After a demonstration that showed that passports could be read with special equipment from 33 feet away, various barriers and encryption methods have been incorporated. The Wikipedia entry explains more than I ever could.
Boing Boing video shows how anyone can swipe your credit card information and other personal data that is on any card employing RFID by using a reader that cost on $8 on Ebay, just by getting "close to your ass."
The biggest threat to having your identity stolen remains the theft of many thousands of credit card numbers from websites. Hacker Pablos Holman told TechRadar
“I don’t expect this to be a major threat for a while. People are stealing credit card numbers from websites and that’s still pretty easy,” he says, before adding, somewhat more ominously “with a bigger antenna hooked up to this I can go into Starbucks and get the name of everyone in there.
That's why I say stainless steel wallets are in your future. Keep an eye out for them.
After you've worked at Google and YouTube, what do you do next? Howcast is what.
After checking out their categories and featured videos, it looks like a great resource, one to bookmark for those times when you wonder how to do something for the first time.
How to do pretty much anything.
Howcast is the brainchild of a trio of Google refugees who wanted to go YouTube one better by putting together professional video content that viewers can actually use. "There really isn't a lot of high-quality instructional video out there and we wanted to do it across a broad spectrum of topics," says Jason Liebman, the company's CEO. The majority of the videos are produced in-house, though some are uploaded by users. But regardless of the source, the videos are uniformly well-done.
We all have too much stuff. 80% of what we own we never use. We spend an hour a day just looking for things. We hold on to stuff because some day 'we might need it.' Hoarders are greatly stressed by the thought of throwing anything away.
With compulsive hoarders, all that stuff is harming their lives. Some people even die, suffocated by all their stuff, a Death by Clutter.
How many of us are compulsive hoarders? Estimates range from 1.5 to 6 million people in the U.S.
Compulsive hoarding may be a distinctive diagnostic category now that we have brain wave images that show distinct abnormalities.
Hoarders were found to have lower activity in a specific part of the brain that’s involved in decision-making, focused attention and the regulation of emotion.
Submerged in stuff, hoarders keep collecting
“Hoarders have a fundamental inability to keep things organized,” says Frost. “Not just their possessions, but other things, like finishing tasks. We see a lot of attention deficit problems in hoarding.”
For actress Delta Burke, it was antique furniture and porcelain dolls — enough to fill 27 climate-controlled storage units.
For Roger Gorman’s father-in-law, it was books, newspapers, plastic grocery bags and leisure magazines.
“There must have been over 2,000 magazines in his apartment,” says the 53-year-old graphic designer from Manhattan. “There were stacks and stacks of them, columns of them. It looked like the landscape of a city.”
The good news is that hoarding can be easily treated. Pigpen started squalorsurvivors after she learned that "Being keeper for the world is too big a burden for one person to bear."
From Lifehack's 50 tricks to get things done faster, better, and more easily.
50-30-20: Spend 50% of your working day on tasks that advance your long-term, life goals, spend 30% on tasks that advance your middle-term (2-years or so) goals, and the remaining 20% on things that affect only the next 90 days or so.
Timer: Tell yourself you will work on a project or task, and only that project or task, for a set amount of time. Set a timer (use a kitchen timer, or use a countdown timer on your computer), and plug away at your work. When the timer goes off, you’re done — move on to the next project or task.
Do Your Worst: Give yourself permission to suck. Relieve the pressure of needing to achieve perfection in every task on the first run. Promise yourself you’ll go back and fix any problems later, but for now, just run wild.
If you are hiking in the woods and come back to your car only to find that your keys are locked inside, pick up a stone and break the window so you can drive away alive.
Sandra Order didn't. She locked her keys in her SUV and died next to it in the cold and the rain of hypothermia.
The custom used to be that when you got tired of waiting for a bus or train, you'd take out a cigarette and light it. Just how this caused the bus or train to suddenly appear is one of those mysteries that have never been adequately explained.
Now so many people have given up smoking, other ways to make the bus appeared have been tried and found wanting. Many lose patience and decide to walk to the next stop. That option doesn't work as science has discovered.
Lazy option is best when waiting for the bus
Scott Kominers, a mathematician at Harvard University, and his colleagues derived a formula for the optimal time that you should wait for a tardy bus at each stop en route before giving up and walking on. "Many mathematicians probably ponder this on their way to work, but never get round to working it out," he says.
The team found that the solution was surprisingly simple. When both options seem reasonably attractive, the formula advises you to choose the "lazy" option: wait at the first stop, no matter how frustrating
Some 1.5 million Americans are chronic hoarders who can not bear to throw away anything even if their excessive clutter is harming their lives.
Compulsive hoarding may well be a mental disease whereby even the thought of throwing something away causes great stress.
Compulsive hoarders live in an ever shrinking area as the piles of useless stuff grow taller. You can die suffocated under the piles as some do
Lynne Johnson, a professional organizer from Quincy, Mass., who is president of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization...
explains that some people look at a shelf stacked with coffee mugs and see only mugs. But people with serious disorganization problems might see each one as a unique item — a souvenir from Yellowstone or a treasured gift from Grandma.
Many clients have already accumulated numerous storage bins and other such items in a futile attempt to get organized. Usually the home space is adequate, she says, but the challenge is in teaching them how to group, sort, set priorities and discard.
What is decluttering but editing - choosing the best, discarding the rest.
Editing is a skill we all have to learn is we are not to be drowned by our own stuff.
If you don't use it or love it, lose it.
Keep the best, toss the rest.
Another brilliant article by Atul Gawande called The Checklist in the New Yorker's Annals of Medicine.
Intensive-care medicine has become the art of managing extreme complexity—and a test of whether such complexity can, in fact, be humanly mastered.
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On any given day in the United States, some ninety thousand people are in intensive care. Over a year, an estimated five million Americans will be, and over a normal lifetime nearly all of us will come to know the glassed bay of an I.C.U. from the inside.
Wide swaths of medicine now depend on the lifesupport systems that I.C.U.s provide: care for premature infants; victims of trauma, strokes, and heart attacks; patients who have had surgery on their brain, heart, lungs, or major blood vessels.
Critical care has become an increasingly large portion of what hospitals do. Fifty years ago, I.C.U.s barely existed. ...The average stay of an I.C.U. patient is four days, and the survival rate is eighty-six per cent. Going into an I.C.U., being put on a mechanical ventilator, having tubes and wires run into and out of you, is not a sentence of death. But the days will be the most precarious of your life.
They are precarious because the average patient requires 178 individual actions per day and every one involves risks. One of the biggest risks is that of a line infection, infections that are so common they are considered a routine complication. 80,000 people get line infections each year and of those between 5 and 28% die.
The I.C.U., with its spectacular successes and frequent failures, therefore poses a distinctive challenge: what do you do when expertise is not enough?
Intensive care is now too complex for clinicians to carry out reliably fro memory alone. Taking a page from the pilot checklists, designed to help pilots fly planes too complicated to fly from memory alone, Peter Pronovost, a critical care specialist at John Hopkins, designed a checklist to take care of the problem of line infections.
Pronovost and his colleagues monitored what happened for a year afterward. The results were so dramatic that they weren’t sure whether to believe them: the ten-day line-infection rate went from eleven per cent to zero. So they followed patients for fifteen more months. Only two line infections occurred during the entire period. They calculated that, in this one hospital, the checklist had prevented forty-three infections and eight deaths, and saved two million dollars in costs.
Checklists help people with memory recall and make explicit the minimum, expected steps in complex processes.
As the tagline on the New Yorker article says, If something so simple can transform intensive care, what else can it do?
Why didn't someone think of this before? Lights on walkers may cut falls
Forget driving in the dark — sometimes it's dangerous just walking in the dark.
As the population ages, medical teams are responding to more calls from people who have fallen in the night. Many are from older adults who toppled over their walkers while reaching for a light switch on the way to the kitchen or bathroom.
Credit Ron Olshwanger, director of the Creve Coeur Fire Protection District, whose own experience with his own mother ultimately led to his inspiration.
The lights (which are a lot like bicycle lights) cost $34 at Medical West, a medical supply firm that can install them on new or existing walkers.
Olshwanger emphasizes that he and the fire department won't make any profit off the headlights. His inspiration is his mother, Bernice Bormaster, who died five years ago. After breaking her hip, she called her son three times in the middle of the night for help getting back to bed.
"It's a perfect example of what can happen. A lot of these people, their minds are fine, their bodies are just a little weak." Olshwanger said. "These people want to live a normal life, and I think this will help."
HT bookofjoe
Dr. Helen gives some good advice for those for whom going home for the holidays is a bit of hell what with heated political discussions and what all.
May I add that you might argue over the Greatest moments in food history instead for a lot less heat and a lot more fun.
Hat tip Althouse.
If you are troubled in dry weather with a sudden nosebleed, a bunch of cold car keys down the back of your neck seems to cure them instantly.
Slipping a bar of soap between the sheets often works on leg cramps. Ivory soap is best.
Dark chocolate may lower blood pressure better than green tea, research shows. And tastes far better.
Do you or your children sometimes get a nagging cough in the middle of the night? Rub Vicks Vaporub on the soles of your feet and cover them up with socks. The relief comes within 5 minutes and lasts for hours.
Via Instapundit comes the list of 25 Skills Every Man Should Know.
1. Patch a radiator hose
2. Protect your computer
3. Rescue a boater who as capsized
4. Frame a wall
5. Retouch digital photos
6. Back up a trailer
7. Build a campfire
8. Fix a dead outlet
9. Navigate with a map and compass
10. Use a torque wrench
11. Sharpen a knife
12. Perform CPR
13. Fillet a fish
14. Maneuver a car out of a skid
15. Get a car unstuck
16. Back up data
17. Paint a room
18. Mix concrete
19. Clean a bolt-action rifle
20. Change oil and filter
21. Hook up an HDTV
22. Bleed brakes
23. Paddle a canoe
24. Fix a bike flat
25. Extend your wireless network
I can do about half of them which is why I guess I need a man. I'd be interested in what else a man should know how to do.
The list is put out by Popular Mechanics, clearly geared to guys. I wonder what magazine would put out a similar list for gals that women would seriously pay attention to. Oprah's my first guess. I
Services Help Unsnarl Medical Bills, Wall St Journal (link for subscribers only)
If you have a lot of medical bills and can't make sense of the explanation of benefit statements, there are now web-based services and tools that can help unsnarl those medical bills, get you organized and give you a single summary of all your bills.
Many analysts recommend consumers create their own personal health records, essentially a record of an individual's important medical information. That's because the person who will truly be responsible for one's health care in the end is that person. If people change jobs frequently, their health-insurance companies and doctors will also change. Analysts also add that it's a good way to keep track of children's immunization records or early doctor's appointments for a newborn.
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"For better or for worse, people are more and more on their own in health care," says Ron Klain, executive vice president of Revolution Health, based in Washington, D.C
Here's the chart the WSJ put together of useful sites. Click the image for full size and readability.
You already know that you should check your credit score at least once a year so that you can correct mistakes.
What you probably didn't know is that your medical records could contain errors that should be corrected. Incorrect medical information can lead to ineffective or harmful treatment and affect your insurability
The Wall Street Journal, Patient Records Need Reviews (subscribers only)
Errors in medical records aren't uncommon. "They happen all the time," says Joy Pritts, research associate professor at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute.
Mistakes can arise from a mistyped diagnosis code or transcription error to an inaccurate diagnosis or a diagnosis that is out-of-date, say because a patient has gotten his or her cholesterol under control. And, if you have a common name, other peoples' records can end up in your file, says Ms. Pritts. Part of the problem is that the U.S. health-care system relies mainly on paper records, which make it harder to coordinate care and spot errors.
Many hospitals use electronic health records, but until the U.S. develops a comprehensive, consolidated system, the burden falls to individuals to keep tabs on their health histories.
I sometime spend so much time on the web that I get nothing done during the day.
If you're like me, this might help The 20 Biggest Online Time Wasters and 6 Strategies for Beating Them
Here's a good tip from the Unclutterer on how to be organized after an auto accident.
All you have to do is download a worksheet to keep in the glove compartment of your car along with your insurance card and registration.
Jerry Seinfield's advice
He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.
He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain."
"Don't break the chain." He said again for emphasis.
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It works because it isn't the one-shot pushes that get us where we want to go, it is the consistent daily action that builds extraordinary outcomes. You may have heard "inch by inch anything's a cinch." Inch by inch does work if you can move an inch every day.
Daily action builds habits. It gives you practice and will make you an expert in a short time. If you don't break the chain, you'll start to spot opportunities you otherwise wouldn't. Small improvements accumulate into large improvements rapidly because daily action provides "compounding interest."
Skipping one day makes it easier to skip the next.
One of my new favorite blogs is the Unclutterer which is beginning a new series on handling inherited clutter.
How do you unclutter a person’s things after they die? My grandfather died this weekend, and we dread the idea of going through all his things—not just emotionally and psychologically, but from a logistical standpoint. How much stuff do we keep? Nobody has room in their houses for all the sentimental treasures of their departed loved ones, but it feels callous to throw away their old anniversary cards and favorite mediocre artwork. How do we deal with it all?
If you need it or love it, keep it. If something is very important to you because of its great sentimental value, keep it. If something is important because of its historical value, keep it or give it to an archive where it will stay safe.
That's what Mary Custis Lee did with two old steamer trunks
The trunks were stuffed with Lee family papers -- a priceless cache of 4,000 letters, photographs and documents. DeButts carted them to the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, which houses the world's largest collection of Lee papers. He spent a week there, sitting at a desk in the research library, reaching into Mary Custis Lee's trunks and picking out treasures and trash.
Thanks to her foresight, we now have A Portrait in Letters of Robert E. Lee.
After reading Iced Coffee? No Sweat in the New York Times, I decided to give it a try.
I used a glass tea-pot with a removable infuser into which I put four scoops of coffee. Then I left it on the back porch for the day.
Result? Absolutely better. Delicious with no trace of bitterness.
Speaking of iced coffee, why don't people in the South drink it? Now I have nothing against iced tea which I drink year round, but iced coffee in the summer is delicious too and just the thing when you need an extra boost. Or with beignets.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to get iced coffee in New Orleans?
You would think they would know, but no, I have to explain to waiters who say they have none to bring me a tall glass of ice and a cup of coffee.
I expect only the mermaid will convince them.
The best way to make complex, tough decisions is to sleep on it. Well, you already knew that, but now scientists are confirming that.
Sleep on it, decision-makers told
Reserve your conscious mind for simple choices. For complex decisions, get all the information you need, then call in your unconscious by sleeping on it.
The best way to make complex, tough decisions is to sleep on it. Well, you already knew that, but now scientists are confirming that.
Sleep on it, decision-makers told
Reserve your conscious mind for simple choices. For complex decisions, get all the information you need, then call in your unconscious by sleeping on it.
Here's a good tip from the Wall St Journal about allergy cards.
If you have food allergies or dietary restrictions, carry allergy cards that list the foods you can't eat so you can give them to a waiter or restaurant manager when you dine out.
Allergycards.com has free templates. Selectwisely can translate them into any language if you are going abroad. They also have a number of testimonials from customers who say how invaluable the cards are.
Once you have your cards done, you can adapt them to business card size and have them printed free, except for a shipping charge at Vistaprint.
If you have a serious allergy, allergy cards could just save your life.
More good news about honey.
Honey could save diabetics from amputation
Spreading honey on a diabetic ulcer could prevent the need to amputate an infected foot, researchers say.
Honey therapy involves squeezing a thick layer of honey onto a wound after all the dead skin and bacteria have been removed.
The honey kills bacteria because it is acidic and avoids the complication of bacterial resistance found with standard antibiotics, Jennifer Eddy, a professor at the University's School of Medicine and Public Health, told AFP.
"This is a tremendously important issue for world health," Eddy said.
She tried honey therapy as a last resort six years ago with a 79-year-old diabetic patient who had developed foot wounds resistant to standard treatments.
"I tried it only after everything else had failed and... we had essentially sent him home to die," she said. "All antibiotics were stopped when we started honey, and his wounds rapidly healed."
Last summer, I noted how honey heals wounds faster than antibiotics and recommended you tuck away jar of honey in your emergency supplies kit.
Since just about anyone can find out all sorts of detailed information about you, consider that the best defense is a good offense.
Why You Should Spy on Yourself in the Wall Street Journal tells you how find out beforehand what a prospective employer, college admissions officer or others might reveal about you.
In a 2004 study by U.S. Public Interest Group found that 79% of consumer-credit reports contained at least one mistake.
1. Get your free annual credit report
The first step in running a background check on yourself: Order your credit report. These are from major credit-reporting agencies Equifax, TransUnion and Experian and can be obtained from www.annualcreditreport.com or 1-877-322-8228.
Check for unauthorized credit-card accounts and loans, bad addresses and unfamiliar names that could be evidence of identity theft. Notify the agencies and creditors if anything seems amiss.
The good news: Background reports prepared by agencies like these are regulated by the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. As a result, you're supposed to be notified of the reason if a negative report results in a missed opportunity, giving you a chance to correct mistakes.
2. Do a pre-employment self check
While Choicetrust will give you a free annual report, expect to pay about $25 for a national criminal file check or $50 for a search that included employment or education verification that will include information from public records and some courts.
At Choicetrust you can also review credentials of health care professionals, verify nursing home credentials and check for lawsuits, liens and judgments against those you are thinking to employ.
Lexis-Nexus will also give you a free copy of information contained in a background screening report if you call 877-913-6245.
3. Do a Stolen ID search
StolenIDSearch.com, a new free service from TrustedID, lets you find out whether your Social Security or credit-card numbers are among some 2.3 million compromised pieces of identification in its database, which it obtains from organizations that compile lists of numbers recovered in fraud investigations.
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4. Clean up unflattering online postings
Among the toughest problems to fix can be unflattering online postings. Even just a few years ago, no one would have worried about it. But the fact is, they can linger in cyberspace forever. ReputationDefender.com is designed to scour the Web for unflattering material about you, then will try to either have it removed or make it show up less prominently in search results.
Martha Stewart gives us 100 Reasons To Get Rid of It.
We have too much stuff
Because it's fun
Because Someone else needs it
It can be turned into something else
It will make your life better
You can get something back.
Because it's old/expired
Or Just Because
Professor Piers Steel who calls himself a reformed procrastinator began studying procrastination 10 years ago, before it began a sharp rise. Now he has come up with a unified theory and a mathematical formula to explain it.
Steel's formula, called the Temporal Motivation Theory, calculates procrastination like Albert Einstein's equation for energy, E=MC2. It factors the person's expectancy for succeeding at a given task (E) or self-confidence; the value of completing the task (V); its immediacy or availability (Gamma); and the person's sensitivity to delay (D) to come up with the desirability of the task (Utility).
Utility = E x V / (Gamma) x D
"Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task," Steel said. "Perfectionism is not the culprit. In fact, perfectionists actually procrastinate less, but they worry about it more."
... in general, human behavior is marked by people's judgment of value and their expectancy--whether or not they expect to get something.
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Most people who procrastinate are impulsive; they value what they can have today more than what they can have tomorrow--and long-term goals don't have motivational force.
There are 3 types of procrastinators
1. Those who have a hard time getting started. These are classic procrastinators.
2. Those who get bogged down in details. These are the classic perfectionists
3. Those who are too distractible. They always find something else to do that's more interesting or gratifying to do be it email, television, the phone or a party. all those tech gadgets that offer immediate gratification.
Technology creates "motivationally toxic environments" by giving people a constant source of putting things off, Steele says.
Boy is that the truth.
If you want to make progress on a long-term project, some part of everyday walling yourself off from such tech temptations else it's like, in the words of Professor Steel
trying to diet with a floating spoon of ice cream following you around.
The Consumerist tells us Don't Fly Without a Copy of Rule 240 and gives us links to the rules of the major airlines.
These rules the conditions of carriage which specify the circumstances in which you are entitled to airline compensation.
Don't depend on the agents to know their own rules.
Hey, I don't know if it works, but it might,
Application of Vicks Vaporub to the soles of the feet effectively counters nighttime cough.
Vaporub works to ease nasal congestion when rubbed on a chest and on sore muscles. You can use it to remove ticks, and on your forehead to ease a headache, even on sore, cracked heels.
The active ingredients of camphor, menthol and eucalyptus are similar, but not identical to Tiger Balm which I prefer and have used for years on headaches, insect bites and sore muscles. Tiger Balm uses the oils of clove, cinnamon and cajuput and absolutely no tiger parts,
It's very refreshing when rubbed on the temples say when you're trapped in a hot, crowded subway or anytime when the heat can make you lightheaded.
You can find Tiger Balm in teeny, tiny tins usually in a Chinese store, that are so small you can always keep one in your purse.
Just be careful you don't get any in your eyes or on any private parts or you'll be sorry.
Good advice from Paul Graham
The most impressive people I know are all terrible procrastinators. So could it be that procrastination isn't always bad?...No matter what you work on, you're not working on everything else. So the question is not how to avoid procrastination, but how to procrastinate well.
There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That last type, I'd argue, is good procrastination.
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I think the way to "solve" the problem of procrastination is to let delight pull you instead of making a to-do list push you. Work on an ambitious project you really enjoy, and sail as close to the wind as you can, and you'll leave the right things undone.
Good and Bad Procrastination
Update. I forgot to give a hat tip to Armed Liberal for the link. And to add this a propos quote from Carolyn Myss.
You cannot change anything in your life with intention alone, which can become a watered-down, occasional hope that you'll get to tomorrow. Intention without action is useless.
It looks as if the "good" procrastinators found a way to make their most important stuff, urgent.
If you're in the market for a new cell phone by all means know what you're up against by reading 8 confessions of a former Verizon sales rep via Instapundit.
If you're of the Cingular persuasion, then go to 7 confessions of a Cingular sales rep.
If you've never heard of mind-mapping, this YouTube video will show you how to maximize the power of your brain.
Tony Buzan, a top lecturer in the brain and learning explains Mind-Mapping in 5 minutes.
A mind map is a thinking tool that reflects externally what goes on inside your head.
Mind-mapping is a Swiss army knife for the brain.
The brain is radiant, thinks centrally and explodes out in all directions.
The brain thinks by imagination and association.
Traditional note-taking in lists and lines is counter-productive is because it doesn't have associations
If you don't have associations, you don't have connections. If you don't have connection, you don't have memory and you don't have thinking.
When you're swimming and a shark comes by and grabs you by the head, poke him in the eye.
That forces the shark's jaws to release and you can struggle free.
Eric Nerhus did just that and saved his own life.
He escaped with deep puncture wounds to the chest and shoulder and a broken nose. His weight vest prevented more serious injuries.
Good tips from Bottom Line Secrets.
1. You get the best rate by calling the hotel's local number, not the 800 number. The manager on duty, the general manager and the director of sales have authority to negotiate rates.
2. Rooms are more expensive in the morning. Best time to call is right after 6 pm when all no-shows unsecured by credit card are wiped out. In NYC and San Francisco, the deadline is 4 pm.
3. Everything is negotiable. Even parking.
4. Rooms are available even when a hotel has no vacancies. Tell the manager you are willing to take an 'out of order' room.
5. A thief takes only one credit card, not your entire wallet. Check if you've left it unattended and take only the cards you need when you travel.
6. It pays to tip the housekeeper every day. $2 or $3 matters a lot to the most under-appreciated people in the hotel.
7. Your bags aren't safe with the bellhop. Make sure that they are kept in a secure room if you plan to leave your bags for several hours.
8. Hotel rooms are infested with germs. Worst spots - TV remote control, telephone and clock radio. Do travel with anti-bacterial wipes so you can clean them off.
9. The lost and found is a great resource for cell phone users. Forgot your recharging cord? Most hotels are willing to lend you one from their lost and found.
The nation's largest banks take in between $30 billion and $50 billion a year, about 44% of all their revenues.
A quest for 'more info' on bank fees.
That's an awful lot of $3 unexplained monthly fees.
Which might explain why banks approve new cards on torn-up credit card applications. Cockeyed has photos and more.
Since I don't have a shredder, I tear them up and wait until I can mix them up with garbage - coffee grounds and old Chinese take out works well - before I throw them out,
Supposing you were stranded in the woods, having never read Surviving in the Wilderness.
Would you have a fierce will to live or would you rather die than spend one more night in the forest?
From Lost in the Amazon
George in the comments said,
When confronted with a life-threatening situation, 90% of people freeze or panic, says Gonzales in this exploration of what makes the remaining 10% stay cool, focused and alive.
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Pinpointing why and how those 10% survive is another story. "They are the ones who can perceive their situation clearly; they can plan and take correct action,
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Gonzales does share some rules for adventure gleaned from the survivors themselves: stay calm, be decisive and don't give up.
The book he refers to is "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why by Laurence Gonzalez.
A little bit of gin or whiskey added to the water for your paperwhite narcissus or daffodil bulbs will keep them from tipping over.
The booze acts to stunt the growth of stems and leaves, but not the blooms or their fragrance.
A 5% solution is best say the horticulture experts at the Flower Bulb Research Program at Cornell.
Okay, maybe you're not hiking through the Northern woods in the winter, but would you know what to do if you were in a small plane crash or your car went off the road in Death Valley or on your way to Quebec?
From Popular Mechanics, Outdoors Survival Strategies along with case studies from some of the 50,000 wilderness search and rescue
missions each year in the United States. Now, I'm not a regular reader of the magazine, so a tip of the hat to Instapundit who shares my interest in disaster preparedness, but not my interest in Heloise.
Here are 8 practical tips to stay alive for three days so rescuers can find you.
1. Leave a detailed plan with someone on the home front. When you don't arrive, rescuers will know where to start looking.
2. Bring the right clothes.
3. Stay found by carrying and using a map so you can always where you are.
4. Remain in one place if you are in trouble. Think of your car is your survival ark, giving you shelter from the wind and the rain
5. Stay warm. It's the rule of 3s. You can live for 3 minutes without oxygen, 3 hours without heat, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food.
6. Signal for help in the most obnoxious way possible. Blow your car horn. Make a giant X so that you are visible from the air. Hang clothing from branches or lay out anything colorful so that it's visible from the air. What catches the eyes of rescuers are contrast and movement.
7. Build a fire. Keeps you warm and signals where you are.
8. Find water if necessary. Don't ration the water you have. Better to stay hydrated. Drink found water even if you think it's impure if you have to. Who cares about an intestinal bug if the water can save your life?
Finally, determine you will survive and live. Most of survival is psychological. Don't ask why this happened to you, a fruitless, useless question just about anytime. Ask instead, What is the best things I can do in this situation.
Gear
If you're smart, you already have a first aid kit, a flashlight, a few bottles of water and some fruit and nut bars in your car just in case. Any of these inexpensive additions may save your life if you're lost in the wilderness.
Trash bags, large ones. Good for staying warm. Crawl right in.
Duct tape. Did you know it prevents blisters and can splint broken bones.
Whistle
Dental Floss It's so strong, you can repair a backpack or tie together branches.
Waterproof match cases. Two of them. One with matches, the other with Vaseline-soaked cotton balls. Who knew they were such excellent fire starters?
Condoms. Excellent for carrying a gallon of water.
CD. If you don't have a signal mirror, you can use a CD to signal aircraft. Just line up the aircraft in the hole and flash, ideally in a series of 3.
If survival is mainly psychological, so is preparedness. Preparedness is the determination to be your best strong and courageous self whatever happens. So read the tips again and may you remember them when you need them most for both know-how and will.
Seems like there's science behind the most typical English response to any stressful or traumatic event - a cup of tea.
Stressed? That cup of tea really will make it better
Scientists at University College London found that drinking tea lowers post-stress levels of cortisol, the hormone released when we experience physical or emotional trauma and which increases blood pressure and makes our hearts race.
So when you get home after battling traffic and the crowds in the supermarket for the last bits you need for dinner tomorrow, have a cuppa.
The Book of Joe has the definite answer, probably.
Running in the rain keeps you drier than walking which is why everyone does it.
Just when I needed it most with my mother in the hospital and various siblings calling from hither and yon, I left my cellphone in a pocket of my pants and threw both in the washer to get my laundry done.
Laundering your cellphone voids the warranty, renders it absolutely useless, and causes to vanish every phone number you have entered into your phone directory. A replacement phone at full retail price can cost $250 and I was forced to buy one off eBay and waiting for a full week before it was delivered.
How I wish I had read How to Save a Wet Cell Phone. from Wikihow.
When posting an online resume, be sure to clear it of all personal information. Never ever post your social security number. Be sure you are dealing with legitimate companies and recruiters before giving up any of your personal info.
Just assume that Identity Thieves are Reading Your Online Resumes.
When you post a resume, clear it of personal information. Cyberthieves have been able to gain access to resume databases and troll for Social Security numbers and other personal information, such as where you live and your contact information, says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, a public interest research group in San Diego.
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Think twice before revealing personal information by email or phone. Con artists "phishing" for information through fake interviews may ask for, say, information such as your Social Security number or a scan of your driver's license or passport, says Ms. Dixon, and claim it will expedite the application process.
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You can start by searching on the company's name on the Better Business Bureau's Web site. Another helpful Web site is Lookstoogoodtobetrue.com, maintained by a joint federal law-enforcement and industry task force.
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If the company that contacts you appears to be a well-known employer, don't think you're in the clear. Criminals are copying company Web sites and tweaking the contact information or links, says Ms. Dixon of the World Privacy Forum. Although a Web site may look credible, do an Internet search of the company to make sure the URL of the official Web site matches the address the employer refers you to. If there's a mismatch, find the phone number of the company's corporate headquarters on the official Web site to verify that the hiring manager who contacted you is an employee.
Since we're speaking of the importance of safeguarding your personal information, here's an ultimate guide to identity theft .
Hey, it's okay if you don't eat breakfast say some scientists and nutritionists. No breakfast, no problem.
I say listen to your body. Do what works for you.
When I'm working at home, I eat breakfast for lunch.
Be very careful about any products you use that contain hormones because you might be the cause of pre-school puberty in your children.
Like the father who used a testosterone skin cream that was determined to be the cause of the onset of puberty to his two pre-school children who developed pubic hair and enlarged genitals.
Don't let your boys use shampoos containing lavender or tea tree oils because their breasts might enlarge.
Preschool Puberty and a Search for the Causes.
You can make international phone calls for free if you connect to one of Futurephone's gateway access numbers, like 712-858-8883.
Once the gateway answers, enter 011 then the country code and number you want to reach.
Futurephone promises
• No signup
• Complete privacy
* Unlimited calls
* Call anytime
HT David Pogue at the New York Times.
Some super-obvious ways to immediately improve your life from Merlin
at 43 folders.
1. Reduce noise
2. Write things down
3. Focus on action
4. Get out of your inbox
Inboxes are delivery systems, not workspaces. The real work is happening in your brain and practically every other place that’s not an inbox.
5. Get pickier.
Interesting news about blue light.
A recent pilot study found that Alzheimer's patients show that they sleep better and wander less if exposed to blue LED lighting a few hours before bedtime.
If you have trouble waking up in the morning, you can use blue light to turn off the production of melatonin which is only produced during darkness.
Seems contradictory doesn't it.
Why you hate Mondays via Tinkerty Tonk
A new study has found that lazy Saturday and Sunday lie-ins can disturb your body clock, leaving you fatigued at the start of the week.
The cure is to stop sleeping in on the weekends.
Get up early, do all your weekend errands when nobody's around, then go home and take a nap instead.
From LifeHacker, One phone number to rule them all.
GrandCentral is a brilliant new web app that lets you consolidate all of your phone numbers into one number, meaning someone can call you on your GrandCentral phone number and all of your phones (cell phone, work phone, home phone) will ring. And then it gets interesting.
I'm not ready quite yet.
You know those annoying cuts you get on the tip of your index finger or your thumb? Bandages never seem to work because they fall off too soon and you hit your thumb again right where the cut is.
My solution.
1. Treat the cut with neosporin.
2. You can try a bandage if you want.
3. Cut off the tip of any finger on any rubber glove, the thinner the glove the better. Place just the tip on your cut finger or thumb and go about your business.
How much do you believe in what companies say about their own products?
If you're like me, you take just about everything companies, experts, politicians, academics and government officials with a touch of salt and an ounce of skepticism.
Each year, the public relations giant Edelman publishes its Edelman Trust Barometer. In the U.S., trust in a "person like me" has increased from 20% in 2003 to 68% in 2006. Seems to parallel the growth in the blogosphere doesn't it?
Experts may know much more about their chosen fields than you do, BUT I've found that the best advice about most things comes most often from other people speaking from their personal experience, not from experts.
Aggregating both personal and expert product reviews in an easily accessible format is the core idea behind Wize, It's a very good looking site, very easy to use. They us ea ranking system, giving each product a final score, called "Wize rank"