Newsletter March 2014
News from your mortgage consultant for
life
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Ronald’s Home News
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News To Help You Save Time And Money March
2014
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Director’s
Cut
Before beginning one of his marathon writing sessions, Simenon would go for a physical to make sure he was up for the task. Then he’d tackle the project with a fierce single-mindedness. He refused to take phone calls, spoke to no one, lived “like a monk.”
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Inside This Issue
n Director’s Cut
n A Wise Motto
n Why St. Patrick’s Day?
n Make Rainy Day Fund Top
Priority
n Prevent Laptop Death
n Defeat Might Lead To
Junk Food
n Why Do We Say “White
Elephant”
Gift?
n Peanut Butter &
Alzheimer’s
n Realism Vs. Art
n Flowers Know When To
Bloom
n How To Foster A
Brainstorm
n What Are The Odds?
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Legend
has it that Alfred Hitchcock telephoned Simenon with a project proposal. When
the novelist’s wife answered, she informed the famed director that her husband
was writing and couldn’t be disturbed.
Hitchcock
replied, “Let him finish his book. I’ll hang on.”
I wonder how much I could accomplish with such fanatical focus!
Ronald
Ephard
A Wise Motto
A queen called her advisors
together and asked them to come up with a motto for the nation that would help
her people in times of distress.
“It must be short enough to
be engraved on a ring. It must be as useful in prosperity as in adversity. It
must be wise and true and endlessly enduring, words by which men and women
could be guided all their lives.”
The motto they chose: “This,
too, shall pass.”
Why St. Patrick’s Day?
Monday, March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day. So what? Why do we bother to
celebrate St. Patrick’s Day around the world? Obviously, you might say, the day
is to honor Ireland's patron saint, who introduced Catholicism to the Irish and
rid their land of snakes.
But that's not really what
we're celebrating, is it? We're really using it as an excuse to wear green and
throw a big party. Everyone knows the Irish love a good party.
Our methods of celebrating might differ around
the world, but the idea is the same. When you think about it, St. Patrick's Day
is just smart marketing.
Irish bars exist in every major
city, Gaelic football and hurling teams are now all over the world. There are
Irish people in every nook and cranny on this planet. When it comes to St.
Patrick’s Day they are all ready-made brand ambassadors. They will celebrate
wherever they are, highlighting just how much fun the Irish are and make more
people aware of St. Patrick’s Day.
Of course, not all Irish
people can be bothered to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Even so, to some extent
all Irish people everywhere enjoy the fruits of the holiday, which bring a
positive spin to all things Irish.
Make Rainy Day Fund
Top Priority
Experts advise people to set aside enough cash to cover three to six
months of living expenses in case something bad happens. Here’s how to get your
“rainy-day fund” going:
·
Save a little
every week, even if up to your eyeballs in bills.
·
Pay your
rainy-day fund before paying into your retirement.
·
Pay the minimums
on your credit card for a few months and put the remainder into your fund until
you've built it up.
·
Go on a spending
diet until your fund is built up.
·
Sell things you
don't need to bolster your fund.
Prevent Lap Top Death
Heat is the “cause of death”
for most laptops. The heat not only causes all components to expand and
contract a little (as you turn it on and off), but will also reach dangerously
high levels and make your laptop crash or shut down if the fan(s) and the heatsink(s)
are clogged with dust.
All computers work a little
bit like vacuum cleaners – sucking air from one side and blowing it out from
the other. Unfortunately they don’t come with filter bags to catch all the dust
and debris. After just a few months the fans and heatsinks are well coated with
dust. If not cleaned, their effectiveness quickly drops and eventually goes
down to zero when the heatsinks get fully clogged. Here are a few of the
unintended consequences:
·
An overheated processor slows down and operates
less efficiently.
·
The efficiency and output of electrical current
through hot copper wires gets reduced.
·
Increased heat causes increased chemical
reaction in batteries that reduces the battery life and amount of time they
stay charged. With prolonged exposure to high heat, the battery may even become
unusable.
To clean your laptop
regularly, get a can of compressed air and blow the dust off the fan and
heatsink. This has to be done every couple of months. The compressed air is
quite handy for the keyboard too, blowing away all the debris from between the
keys.
However if the heatsink has
already been clogged, this won’t help. The compressed air will not be enough to
unclog it. If you have never cleaned the heatsink and you had used your laptop
for over a year, chances are that both the fan and the heatsink are clogged
with dust and debris. The solution in this case is to remove the heatsink,
clean it and install it back. This is best done in a laptop repair shop, as it
takes quite a lot of experience and dexterity. One slip of the screwdriver may
kill the laptop.
Defeat Might Lead To Junk Food
Researchers studying fans of U.S. football and French soccer
found that many sports addicts turn to junk food to curb their disappointment
when their favorite teams lose. The scientists looked at data from a nutrition
study and found that the day after their teams lost, fans consumed 10 percent
more calories and 16 percent more saturated fat than usual. But when their
teams triumphed, they ate somewhat less junk food than normal. And study
participants who lived in communities without pro teams didn’t report any
fluctuations in their eating habits the day after most football games are
played. You may want to stock up on fruits and vegetables for the day after. Just
in case.
Why Do We Say “White Elephant” Gift?
A "white elephant"
is a possession that you want to get rid of but can't, usually in the context
of Christmas and a sweater from your aunt. But why do we call that an elephant?
According to Oxford
Dictionaries, the term comes from actual white elephants that the kings of Siam
(now Thailand) would gift to annoying people in order to make life difficult
for them. Since white elephants were sacred in Siam, they couldn't be regifted
or put to work. But, they were still expensive to maintain, meaning that the
owners usually ended up being “elephanted” to ruin.
Peanut Butter & Alzheimer’s
The sense of smell may
be an important clue in a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers at the
University of Florida ran an experiment designed to test the ability of
Alzheimer’s patients to detect odors, based on the fact that impaired smell is
often one of the first effects of cognitive decline. The main ingredient in the
test: peanut butter.
Realism Vs. Art
When Picasso asked for an example, the traveler took out his
wallet and showed him a snapshot of his wife. “See? That’s exactly what she
looks like.”
Picasso held the photo in one hand. “She’s very small.”
Flowers Know When To Bloom
Scientists have known since the 1930s that plants sense the
length of the days and, somehow, use that information to decide when to flower.
Russian scientists back then speculated that a mysterious substance must be
transported from leaves to shoot tips, stimulating the formation of flower
buds. They called the mystery chemical “florigen.”
In 2005, a trio of new studies revealed how it works, including
why flowers spring forth in certain spots on a plant. The findings were
reported by the journal Science.
Separate research revealed how the messenger molecule works
to activate the “gene programs” that lead to the formation of floral buds. In
short, proteins are formed and they talk to other proteins that exist only at
the future locations of buds, and flowers are born at just the right time in a
preprogrammed location.
And why does all this matter to scientists?
Daffodils bloom in spring as the days get longer. Roses wait
until summer. Rice, on the other hand, flowers in the fall as the days shorten.
Nature does fine, of course, but humans sometimes want to fool her.
“It is interesting to speculate that this finding could be
used to make early flowering rice,” Nilsson said. “Since many of the high
yielding varieties are late flowering this could in certain parts of the world
allow the production of more than one harvest per year.”
How To Foster A Brainstorm
Brainstorming
sessions are common when teams are looking for new ideas. And although they’re
frequently useful, they can also actually inhibit creative thought unless
leaders and participants manage them carefully. Before you call that meeting,
be ready to guard against these common brainstorming pitfalls:
·
Fear of criticism. Even
though brainstorming meetings aren’t supposed to reject ideas no matter how
far-fetched they are, participants may censor themselves, knowingly or
unconsciously, for fear of embarrassment or criticism—especially if there’s a
boss in the room. Address this up front and encourage everyone to speak as
freely as possible. Maybe keep managers out of the session, at least in the
beginning, to promote a free flow of ideas.
·
Extroverts
taking over. People who are more assertive and talkative may dominate the
session with their ideas, even if they don’t mean to. Introverts may feel
intimidated, or they may simply need more time to present their ideas. Make an
effort to get everyone involved. Go around the room one by one, for example,
instead of letting everyone shout out their thoughts wildly.
·
Distrust
of novelty. Despite our best efforts, our minds generally drift toward the
tried and true. People may unintentionally shut down their imaginations in
search of “practical” ideas, or ignore off-the-wall concepts because of the
risk involved. Ask some questions that take the problem out of the realm of the
concrete—what color would a solution look like, for example? Or, what kind of
animal does this situation resemble?
·
Inadequate
incubation. Great ideas don’t always arrive in an instant. Springing a
problem on a team and expecting instant brilliance may lead to stale ideas in
new packaging. Give people time to consider the issue: Tell them ahead of time
what you’ll be discussing instead of making it a surprise, or hold a follow-up
session to generate more ideas that people didn’t think of the first time.
What Are The Odds?
There’s a story about a Russian professor of statistics who
lived in Moscow in WWII. During the many German air raids, he never took refuge
in the local shelters.
When asked why he remained home, risking his life, his reply
was always, “There are 7 million people in Moscow. Why should I expect the
Germans to hit me?”
One night, though, he joined his neighbors in the shelter as
the air raid sirens blared. Surprised to see him, a friend asked what had
changed his mind.
The professor replied, “There are 7 million people in Moscow
and one elephant. Last night the Germans hit the elephant.”
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This
newsletter is intended for entertainment purposes only. Credit is given to the authors of various
articles that are reprinted when the original author is known. Any omission of credit to an author is purely
unintentional and should not be construed as plagiarism or literary theft.
Copyright 2014 Ronald Ephard. This information is solely advisory, and
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