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Vol. 28, No. 8 • August, 2010 / www.Freeman-Spicer.com
Don’t Burn Bridges . . . . . . Most of us are going to hear “no” a lot in life. The correct response to a “no” should be “thank you.” True, you didn’t get the answer you wanted. But the person who gave you the no also gave you his time and attention, listening to your idea and considering it. Now it’s your job to show that you’ve got class and maturity, that you can accept bad news with grace. Depending on circumstances, you may deal with this person again. He or she will remember you more for how you present yourself than for any one idea. Say thank you! You didn’t get what you wanted, but with your answer you can put money in the bank. (Rules of Thumb)
Kiplinger Prediction . . . . . . Look for crude oil prices to trend down after Labor Day as fuel demand from motorists and truckers eases into the slack season. Prices are likely to slide to the high $60s per barrel by early November, then hover around $60 by year-end. Gasoline prices will start to ebb sooner, declining by about 7 cents a gallon, on average, by early September, then shedding an additional 15 cents or so before the new year. Diesel, also declining, by about 25 cents, to an average of $2.50 a gallon in December. (Kiplinger Newsletter)
Business Web & Bandwidth Use Goes Social . . . . . After analyzing 13 billion URLs businesses used in Q1 - 2010, Network Box found Facebook represented 6.8% of all business Web traffic, followed by Google (3.4%), Yimg (2.8%), Yahoo! (2.4%), and Doubleclick (1.7%). Bandwidth-wise, 10% of all business use went to YouTube, followed by Facebook (4.5%), Windows Update (3.3%), Yimb (2.7%), and Google (2.5%). Network Box’s Simon Heron says the figures show “IT managers are right to be concerned” about social network usage at work, with a top concern being social networking apps that pose security risks. (pctoday)
A Quiz For Bright People . . . . . This is a quiz for people who know everything! These are not trick questions - but good ones for remembering . . . .
1. Name the one sport in which neither the spectators not the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends.
2. What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backward?
3. Of all vegetables, only two can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons. All other vegetables must be replanted every year. What are the only two perennial vegetables?
4. What fruit has its seeds on the outside?
5. In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bottle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bottle is genuine; it hasn’t been cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the bottle?
6. Only three words in standard English begin with the letters “dw” and they are all common words. Name two of them.
7. There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name at least half of them?
8. Name the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form except fresh.
9. Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet beginning with the letter “S”.
Answers last page. Don’t scan down yet - write your answers down before looking. (M. Levy)
Grandpa’s Wisdom . . . . . A woman in a supermarket is following a grandfather and his badly behaved three-year-old grandson. It’s obvious that he has his hands full, what with the child screaming at the top of his lungs for sweets in the sweet aisle, cookies in the cookie aisle, and for fruit, cereal and pop in the other aisles. Meanwhile, Gramps is working his way around, saying in a calm, controlled voice: “Easy, William, we won’t be much longer . . . easy, boy.” Another outburst and she hears the grandpa calmly say. “It’s okay, William, just a couple more minutes and we’ll be out of here. Hang in these, boy.” At the checkout, the little terror is throwing items out of the cart and Gramps says again in a controlled voice, “William, William, relax buddy, don’t get upset. We’ll be home in five minutes; stay cool, William.” Very impressed, the woman goes outside where the grandfather is loading his groceries and the boy into the car. She says to the gentleman, “It’s none of my business, but you were amazing in there. I don’t know how you did it. That whole time, you kept your composure, and no matter how loud and disruptive he got, you just calmly kept saying things would be okay. William is very lucky to have you as his grandpa.” “Thanks, lady,” said the grandfather, “but I’m William . . . . the little terror’s name is Charlie.” (S. Schue)
News Sites: Monthly Unique Visitors: CNN = 65,657,000 - Yahoo! News = 56,038,000 MSNBC = 47,950,000 - New York Times = 32,360,000 - AOL News = 29,858,000 - Huffington Post = 24,393,000 - Gawker Media = 19,272,000 - Washington Post = 16,369,000 - Slate = 6,039,000 and Techcrunch = 3,440,000. (Comscore)
Health and Fitness . . . . . . . .
• Percentage increase in your risk of melanoma when you use tanning beds regularly before age 30 = 75%.
• The average American clocks 5 hours on TV a day; halving that could help you lose 12 pounds or more in a year.
• A new word: bleachorexia, the compulsion for ever-pearlier whites that has Americans spending $3433 million yearly for at-home teeth-whitening kits.
• Women who drank skim milk after exercising lost 3.5 pounds of fat in 12 weeks. Those who sipped sports drinks ended up gaining weight. Milk’s protein improves the ability to burn calories and build muscle. (Women’s Health)
WalMart Senior Greeter . . . . . . Charlie, a new retiree-greeter at WalMart, just couldn’t seem to get to work on time. Every day he was 5, 10, 15 minutes late. But he was a good worker, really tidy, clean-shaven, sharp minded and a real credit to the company; obviously demonstrating their “Older Person Friendly” policies. One day the boss called him into the office for a talk. “Charley, I have to tell you, I like your work ethic, you do a bang up job. But, being late so often is quite bothersome.” “I know boss, and I am working on it.” “Well good, you are a team player. That’s what I like to hear. It’s odd though, your coming in late. I know you’re retired from the Armed Forces. So, what did they say it you came in late back then?” “They said, ‘Good morning, Admiral, can I get you coffee, sir?” (Fournier)
Household Product Database . . . . What’s under your kitchen sink, in your garage, in your bathroom, and on the shelves in your laundry room? Learn more about what’s in these products, about potential health effects, and about safety and handling:
http://www.householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Maya Angelou
How Much Have You Saved . . . . . . . Years of behavioral research have proved that saving is easier if it’s automatic. And, by automating, you take advantage of a tendency that normally works against you: inertia. Once you commit to diverting 6% of your paycheck into a retirement plan, you’re unlikely to go to the trouble to undo it. At companies that automatically enroll new employees in a 401(k), 90% of workers participate vs 68% at other companies. Even more important than starting to save is increasing that amount as your income goes up. Committing to automatically save more with every raise yields dramatic results. (Money)
Rainy Day Activity With The Kids . . . . . . Make fun little paper critters - Believe it or not, paper can be a lot of fun for children and grandchildren. They can use it to draw, write stories or make creations like paper dolls. It’s a tangible and tactile experience. Kids these day spend more time with intangible objects. Images on a TV screen are a good example. Well, now you can get customized little digital critters on the computer. There are tons of options to choose from. And you can even import your own images. Once a critter is created, you can print it out. The printout can be folded to create an actual critter. You can create as many as you want. It’s easy to get an entire menagerie. This makes a great craft time for kids. But it can also be used as a wacky decoration idea. There’s really no limit on your creativity! (K. Komando)
Answers To First Page Quiz:
1. The one sport in which neither the spectators not the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends: Boxing!
2. North American landmark constantly moving backward: Niagara Falls. (The rim is worn down about two and a half feet each year because of the millions of gallons of water that rush over it every minute.)
3. Only two vegetables that can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons: Asparagus and rhubarb.
4. The fruit with its seeds on the outside: Strawberry.
5. How did the pear get inside the brandy bottle? It grew inside the bottle. The bottles are placed over pear buds when they are small, and are wired in place on the tree. The bottle is left in place for the entire growing season. When the pears are ripe, they are snipped off at the stems.
6. Three English words beginning with “dw”: Dwarf, dwell and dwindle.
7. Fourteen punctuation marks in English grammar: Period, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe, question mark, brackets, parenthesis, braces, and ellipses.
8. The only vegetable or fruit never sold frozen, canned , processed, cooked, or in any other form but fresh: Lettuce.
9. Six or more things you can wear on your feet beginning with “S”: Shoes, socks, sandals, sneakers, slippers, skis, skates, snowshoes, stockings, stilts.
T-Trivia . . . . Why were T-Shirts invented? T-shirts wre invented for sailors by Britain’s Royal Navy and later adopted by the American Navy to hide dark chest and underarm hair that showed through the lightweight white uniforms. In 1938, Sears and Roebuck featured the shirts in its catalog and called them gob shrits, “gob” being a slang term for a sailor. Gob shirts soon got the name t-shirts because of their resemblance to the capital letter “T”. It wasn’t until 1950 when
Marlon Brando wore one in A Streetcar Named Desire that T-shirts became acceptable as a fashion statement and not just an undershirt. (Uncommongoods.com)
Sincerely,
Edward C. Levy
President