A New Scam
One of the major orange juice manufacturer has been having a sale. The bottles of juice look just like the ones before the sale. I bought a bottle and as I placed it on the kitchen counter, it made a funny noise. I couldn't figure it out until I turned the bottle over and saw that the battle bottom had been pushed in (plastic of course) so that the new version of the juice product held a few ounces less than the original one. Clever scam! The bottle looks exactly the same until you turn it over. The noise that I heard was some kind of suction made by the concave bottom interacting with the flat surface.
I guess the manufacturer felt that taking the sales "hit" would be offset when people get used to using their product and not realize that they've been scammed. IMHO.
A Creator of Beauty
Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) wore lots of hats, but the one that affected everyone was his job of creating acres of beauty in American cities. Central Park in New York. Boston's "Emerald Necklace" which consists of over 1,000 acres of parkland. Baltimore's Druid Hill Park. New Bedford's Buttonwood Park. Once, he wrote:
"The enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system."
Now... get up off your dead ass and get out and enjoy our wonderful parks!
(This is me, enjoying Buttonwood Park in 1957)
The Uptick
I've mentioned this a lot. It continues to bother me. I don't know why. Whenever I hear it, I want to say something to the speaker. I guess it is my Toastmasters training. In that organization, one gets to criticize, in a nice way, of course, the speech patterns of fellow members. Ah's, Um's, Like's, You Know's, Repetitions, Bad Grammar, Usage, etc. So, when I hear women use the uptick (and some men, but mostly women), I want to point out to them that the "uptick" should only be used when you are asking a question.
When I hear a woman use an uptick as they speak, it sounds to me as though they are afraid that men will not take them seriously and will discount what they are saying. It's as though a scared little mouse is speaking. I notice the use of the uptick mostly by people on the West Coast.. California usually.
Of course, who am I to talk. These days, when I don't get a chance to speak in public so often as I used to, my speech tends to return to my Massachusetts twang. You know, just like the Tappet Brothers. So, I'd best shut up and live without being so critical of others.
Climb Those Stairs!
At one of my "Train Your Brain" classes, we discussed an article that gave tips for "decreasing you brain age." In other words, the author suggested that certain activity will make you think like a person a lot younger in age that you are. Let's see:
For each set of stairs that you climb, your old brain is decreased .0058% or half of one percent. And if you attend a class, a massive .0095% could be the decrease earned, almost one percent.
The author also says that 20% of our sleep should be "deep sleep." And one should get at least 1 1/2 to 2 hours of deep sleep each night. He suggests eating a banana before retiring, to take in tryptophan which can help you sleep.
(Like I told my Facebook friends:
Time flies like the wind;
Fruit flies like bananas.
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Bye for now!
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