Jumat, 30 November 2018

Pronouns and Antecedents

 

Pronouns and Their Antecedents 

Today we’re going to talk about pronouns that don't clearly match up with the nouns they are supposed to replace. Readers become unhappy when they have to guess what noun a writer is talking about, or readers may even chuckle if a pronoun seems to match up with the wrong noun. Later, you’ll see some sentences that are funny all because of little pronouns.

Quick Pronoun Review 

If you're a regular reader, you'll remember about subject and object pronouns. Pronouns take the place of nouns. For example, “I” and “we” are pronouns that appear in the subject position, as in “We wrote a hit song.” Think of pronouns as stuntmen or women filling in for nouns when the going gets tough—or nouns just get tired.

The pronouns “me,” “him,” “her,” “us,” “them,” and “it” must be in the object position, as in “The batter hit the ball to me.”

Other pronouns you might encounter are possessive pronouns such as “mine” and “hers” and indefinite pronouns such as “anyone” and “somebody.” There are even more kinds of pronouns. The world is full of them.  

What Is an Antecedent? 

Sometimes, a pronoun can stand on its own and the meaning is clear. When I say “I am visiting Aardvark later,” I don’t need to say my name first. “I” stands alone. And when I say, “Somebody left cookies in the lunchroom,” we don’t know who that somebody is, so we couldn’t use a noun even if we wanted to. 

But other times, for your meaning to be clear, you need your pronoun to be referring to someone or something you’ve already mentioned. And when you set it up that way, the noun that the pronoun refers to is called an antecedent.

That’s spelled with an  “a-n-t-e,” not an “a-n-t-i.” "Anti-" is a prefix meaning “against,” as in “antisocial.” “Ante” is a prefix for things that go before other things; for example, an antecedent goes before the pronoun, and “ante mortem” means “before death.”
 
In the sentence “The driver totaled his car,” the word “his” refers back to “driver,” so “driver” is the antecedent of the pronoun “his.” It would sound silly to repeat the...

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"Ado" Versus "Adieu"

Michael D. from San Francisco wants to know why he keeps seeing people write “without further adieu” instead of “without further ado.”

"Is it sheer ignorance or hypercorrection?” he asks.

The proper form is “without further ado”; an ado is a hubbub, a bustle, a flurry, or a fuss. Another common phrase, from the title of a Shakespeare play, is “much ado about nothing.”

“Adieu” is the French word for “goodbye.” English just borrowed it directly from  French.

‘Ado’ Originally Meant ‘To Do’

“Ado” was originally a contraction of the words “at do,” which was another way of saying “to do” because some of the languages spoken by the Norse invaders in northern England used the word “at” the way we use the word “to.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it looks like “ado” is still used to mean “to do” in Scottish English and maybe in northern England. Here’s an example sentence from a Scottish Dictionary published in the 1970s. 

I'll hae plenty adee atween this and Whitsunday.

That is a really fun sentence, so I’m going to take a minute aside with it. 

First, “adee” seems to be a Scottish dialect form of “ado,” so that’s why the sentence is listed as an example of “ado,” but actually uses “adee.” 

Second, what the heck is “Whitsunday”?

What Is Whitsunday?

Well, it turns out that Whitsunday is one of four Scottish quarter days. Whitsunday is in May, and then Lammas is in August, Martinmas is in November, and Candelmas is in February. These are somewhat similar to British and Irish quarter days, which are Lady Day, Midsummer Day, Michaelmas, and Christmas, although those fall on different calendar days from the Scottish days. 

All of these quarter days are days for quarterly activities which the OED suggests could be holding quarterly meetings, hiring people, paying rent, or starting a tenancy. I’m not sure why those last few would happen quarterly, but it’s still an interesting little tidbit. 

And now, back to “ado.”

‘Without Further Adieu’ Could Be an Eggcorn

I can't be certain why people get it wrong, but the substitution of the French "adieu" for the "ado" is what linguists call an eggcorn—when people confuse two words that sound...

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How to Stop Feeling Overly Responsible

Being a responsible person is usually a good thing—it means you’re committed, dependable, accountable, and care about others. It’s the opposite of shirking responsibility by pointing fingers or making excuses. 

But it’s easy to go too far. Do you take on everyone’s tasks? If someone you love is grumpy, do you assume it’s something you did? Do you apologize when someone bumps into you?

Owning what’s yours—mistakes and blunders included—is a sign of maturity, but owning everybody else’s mistakes and blunders, not to mention tasks, duties, and emotions, is a sign of over-responsibility.

But here’s the twist: being overly responsible isn’t just the realm of control freaks or earnest Eagle Scouts. Over-responsibility can work for you, building trust and even currying favor.

For example, a fascinating joint study out of Harvard Business School and Wharton examined what happens when we apologize in the absence of culpability—that is, when we take responsibility for something that’s clearly not our fault.

Specifically, on a rainy day, the researchers hired an actor to approach travelers in a busy train station and ask to use their cell phones. Half the time, the actor led by taking responsibility for the weather: "I’m so sorry about the rain! Can I borrow your cell phone?" The other half of the time, he simply asked "Can I borrow your cell phone?" 

When he took responsibility for the weather, 47% of the travelers offered their phone. But when he simply asked, only 9% of the travelers acquiesced.

The findings lined up with previous research showing that people who express guilt or regret are better liked than those who don’t. Why? Taking responsibility is a show of empathy. The apology isn’t necessarily remorseful; instead, it’s recognition of and concern for someone else’s experience.

But at a certain point, over-responsibility stops working and starts getting in the way. Looking through a completely different lens, over-responsibility is often a core symptom of OCD. For example, one of my clients felt overly responsible for potentially harming others as he drove—every bump in the road, in his mind, was a pedestrian or cyclist he had thoughtlessly run over. Another client was 100% convinced she was responsible when a tree fell on her car during a massive thunderstorm—she insisted, “I shouldn’t have parked it there—I should have known.”

But what if there’s no OCD in the picture? Where...

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Kamis, 29 November 2018

The History of the Rise of Labor Unions in America

In 1979, a young Vermont politician named Bernie Sanders made a short documentary film about Eugene Debs. He noted Debs’s accomplishments, he lamented the fact that Debs was largely a forgotten figure in history, and he reproduced excerpts from the speeches of a man he obviously very much admired. During his political career, Sanders has embraced many of Debs’s ideas. He even adopted Debs’s passionate, finger-pointing speaking style.

So who was Eugene Debs, and what was his role in the unions of that era, and why does his career seem so relevant today? Some remember him as the country’s first great socialist. Debs founded the Socialist Party in the 1890s and ran for president five times under that party’s banner. The last time he ran, in 1920, he was confined to a federal prison for speaking against the government—and he still got almost a million votes.

Debs helped make socialist ideas palatable to Americans. He’s the godfather of the democratic socialists who are jumping into today’s politics. Actually, many of his proposals, like publicly sponsored old-age pensions and subsidized medical care, were eventually enacted into law.

Debs saw labor and capital as equal partners who could work in harmony.

But before he was a socialist, Debs was an important nineteenth-century labor leader. When he was growing up in Terre Haute, Indiana, during the Civil War era, he loved trains. As a teenager, he found work shoveling coal into locomotive boilers. That led him to become an official in a fraternal organization for firemen, as they were called. Like many early craft unions, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen did not take aggressive steps to fight for members’ pay and working conditions. Instead, they promoted camaraderie and worked with the railroads to assure that those hired had the necessary skills.

But the exploitation of workers in Gilded Age America, especially on the railroads, became more and more severe. During the 1880s, Debs rethought the whole question of labor. Low pay was an issue. Danger on the job was a particular concern for those who worked on locomotives. Brakemen had to leap from the top of one car to another in order to turn brake wheels—try that at night or in a sleet storm. An astonishing 230,000 railroad...

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Rabu, 28 November 2018

3 Variations for a More Effective Push-Up

In a recent post called Want a Bigger Chest? 3 Key Tips and a Workout, I explained how, despite the fact that the pectoral muscle is technically broken up into only two parts (major and minor), it is actually best to train your chest by thinking of it in three pieces—upper, middle and lower chest. This makes it easier to plan your workouts and to target the portion of your chest that you want to build. 

Sure, you could hit the weight bench and do some incline flyes, neutral dumbbell presses, and a few decline cable presses, and activate the majority of your chest just by those exercises. But given that push-ups are such an amazing full body exercise, one that doesn't require any equipment or even much space, how can we apply this same approach of targeting specific parts of our pectoral muscles to push-ups? By changing a few variables:

  1. The angle of our body
  2. The distance between our hands
  3. The position of our hands

Let's look at each of these in more detail. 

1. The Angle of our Body

Get down into a push-up position and then look at the height of your head relative to your feet. If your head is higher than your feet, you are in a decline position. If your feet are higher than your head, this is the equivalent of being in an inclined position on a weight bench. That means, if you put your feet up on a bench, chair, stair, ball, or whatever, you can do push-ups that are targeting your upper chest. If you reverse that and instead put your hands on that raised surface, you can do push-ups that target your lower chest muscles. Thanks to good old gravity, a foot-elevated push-up also puts more stress on your upper body and less on your legs. 

Thanks to good old gravity, a foot-elevated push-up also puts more stress on your upper body and less on your legs.

To make this version even more difficult, do your feet-elevated push-ups on your fists, rather than your flat hands. Using your fists will create a smaller surface area that is in contact with the ground, increasing the balance that is required from many of your smaller arm muscles.

When your hands are higher than the rest of your body during the push-up, you will work more of your lower chest and abs. Also, if you use an unstable surface (like a yoga or stability ball) as the elevated surface, you can really...

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3 Ways to Combat Writer's Block

A blank paper can be one of the most intimidating things a student faces—the seemingly endless possibilities, the pressure to create something meaningful, and the inevitable time crunch that you face. But academic writing doesn’t have to be a struggle. Writing, like any other activity, requires strategy and practice. There are many strategies to tackle writer’s block, such as utilizing brainstorming techniques and creating a designated writing time. Keep reading to learn more about these strategies.

1. Complete a free-writing exercise

Rarely will your first draft be perfect. Instead of placing pressure on yourself to succeed on your first draft, free-write any and all things that come to mind that are related to your topic. Free-writing allows you to lay out all of your ideas and thoughts on paper. This can be done in whatever format is most comfortable for you, such as a list of brainstormed ideas or a visual map of your thoughts. Seeing your ideas visually can help you expand on them in your draft. Even if you don’t end up using most of the free-writing content, this exercise can give you good practice and help you explore your topic in a relaxed environment.

Just like athletes, becoming a better writer requires practice.

2. Establish a set writing time

Just like athletes, becoming a better writer requires practice. One strategy to beat your writer’s block and to improve your skills is to set aside specific time for writing. You can be as strict or flexible with this chunk of time as you choose, such as setting a timer for 10, 20, or 30 minutes at a time. The important thing is to have structured time to brainstorm and compose. Often, students focus better during short segments of time, as this decreases the risk of procrastination. You can conduct your writing time in any location that’s most comfortable, such as your home, a local coffee shop, or the library. Find an environment where you’ll be likely to focus and produce content. Also consider encouraging your friends to join this endeavor so you can hold each other accountable for this writing time.

3. Engage with additional texts, mediums, and resources

When dealing with writer’s block, it can be helpful to pull inspiration from the world around you. Examine your topic and how it relates to your everyday life. In addition, reading any and all materials you can find can help combat writer’s block—including books, magazines, newspapers, and online articles. Note how the authors utilize words and imagery to deliver their message, and examine how you can incorporate such strategies into your own writing. 

...

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6 Ways the New Tax Rules Affect Your Retirement

While you may not like to hear that the cost of living in the U.S. continues to go up every year, there’s an upside for your retirement savings. Every fall, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) evaluates whether to increase retirement plan contributions and benefits to keep up with those cost-of-living increases.

The IRS recently announced that next year you can save more in different types of tax-advantaged retirement plans. In this post, I’ll review six ways the new tax rules affect your retirement in 2019 so you can build a bigger nest egg.

6 Ways New Tax Rules Affect Your Retirement in 2019

  1. You can contribute more to a workplace retirement plan. 
  2. Your employer can contribute more retirement matching funds. 
  3. You can contribute more to an individual retirement plan. 
  4. You’re eligible for more tax deductions with higher income. 
  5. You’re eligible for a Roth IRA with higher income. 
  6. You can contribute more to a retirement plan if you’re self-employed.

Here’s the detail on each updated retirement benefit that you should take advantage of starting next year. 

1. You can contribute more to a workplace retirement plan.

Using a retirement plan offered by an employer is the most popular way Americans save for retirement. Depending on where you work, you might have the option to participate in a 401(k), a 403(b), a 457, or a thrift savings plan (TSP).

As an employee, your base contribution limit will increase $500, from $18,500 to $19,000. And if you’ve reached age 50, you can save more by taking advantage of “catch-up” contributions.

The catch-up limits haven’t changed and remain $6,000. In other words, if you’re age 50 or older you can save up to $25,000 per year in most types of employer-sponsored retirement plans.

2. Your employer can contribute more retirement matching funds.

If your employer offers a retirement plan and additional matching funds, you’d be nuts not to max out that benefit! It’s free money for any worker who participates.

However, depending on the details of your retirement plan, matching funds may come with a vesting schedule. While your contributions are always fully vested, leaving the company...

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Selasa, 27 November 2018

What's It Like to Work on an Almond Grove?

Almonds are the most popular nut in America; Americans consume an average of two pounds of almonds per person each year. Although all nuts are nutritious, almonds are particularly good sources of fiber, vitamin E, calcium, and monounsaturated fats.  

The health benefits of almonds have been well-documented in clinical trials. Frequent almond consumption has been shown to lower cholesterol, reduce inflammation, help control blood sugar, and support weight loss—and the most effective way to deploy them is as an alternative to other less nutritious snacks.

A recent study found that replacing between-meal snacks with almonds improved overall diet quality, reduced empty calories, and increased total nutrient intake. And just a few years ago, almond lovers got another piece of good news: it turns out that they are about 25% lower in calories than previously thought. For decades, we believed that an ounce of almonds contained about 170 calories. More accurate methods reveal that an ounce—or small handful—of almonds contains just 130 calories.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been talking to professional farmers about their lives and work. We’ve heard from people who grow fruit and vegetables, run dairy farms, and raise cattle. Some of what you’ve heard may have changed your mental picture of farms or cattle ranches. But do you even have a mental picture of an almond grove?

Although North America is now the world’s largest producer of almonds, most of us have never seen an almond tree in bloom or heavy with nuts. This week, we’re going to take a virtual visit to an almond grove in California with almond grower Brian Wahlbrink. The following is a lightly edited transcript of our talk together. 

A Conversation with Almond Grower Brian Wahlbrink

Nutrition Diva: Welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast, Brian!

Brian Wahlbrink: Thank you, thanks for having me.

ND: Tell us what’s going on in the almond groves right now. What’s your day today going to look like after we finish taping this interview?

BW: Well we're coming off a very strong and busy harvest, which really dominates most of August and September. Now we're getting the trees ready to go to sleep, as we call it, or to...

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14 Lateral Movements to Improve Your Workout

Side-to-side (or lateral) movement is very often missing from most of our training and exercise programs. We see plenty of front to back, and up and down, motions like lunges, squats, push-ups and pull-ups, but oddly we don't see many lateral movements.

Think back to your last full-body workout. When you did that, you were probably mostly either moving forward or standing in place, right? Maybe some reverse lunges snuck in but even those were few and far between (unless you happen to be a serious runner). But if you have ever watched high-level competitive athletes, you know that most of their lower body injuries occur during lateral movement, twists, abrupt changes of direction, or even collisions. Think of a football player zig-zagging down the field, a skier carving up a slope, a hockey player slamming on the breaks and suddenly reversing direction, or a soccer player diving dramatically to the ground clutching his knee.

Okay, maybe not that last one but you get my drift. Ultimately, not training properly for these lateral moves can often result in injuries, low performance, and yes, also a less aesthetically pleasing appearance.

Not training properly for these lateral moves can result in injuries and low performance.

Thinking back to the fit folks that I have coached, I would say that 80 percent of them moved poorly on their lateral plane. And yes, I count myself in that number at certain times in my athletic life.

In the book Science and Practice of Strength Training, the authors state “it is especially important to strengthen joint structures in lateral movements (abduction-adduction) and in rotation relative to the longitudinal axis of a body segment.” The authors continue by writing “if the muscles and joint structures that resist lateral movement are not strengthened, the injury risk is very high ... Lateral movements, however, are not trained; unfortunately, it is exactly these muscles and structures that should be the training target.”

Why Lateral Movement Matters

Our environments are much more controlled and easy to traverse than they used to be (sitting at a computer, sitting in a car, home delivery, binging shows on the couch) which means we don’t get the amount or variety of movement that our bodies have evolved to expect and rely on. Our ancestors were certainly moving around in many more directions, levels, and planes than we do now. And this is a big deal! Let me tell you why.

Forward movements like running and biking use the same dominant muscles, stressing your hamstrings, calves, and quads. If you stress the dominant muscle groups, causing them to become increasingly stronger as your smaller muscles shrink or stay the same, you...

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Shoot the Messenger: How Chat Apps Are Security Hellholes

This episode was supposed to be a simple round-up of chat apps. It became a nightmare of unspeakable evil, as you’ll soon learn. We’ll still highlight chat apps, but rather than discussing features, we’ll learn what you might want to be concerned about when choosing them. 

Voice Communication Gave Us Protection

Only 15 years ago, we talked by phone. We expected privacy and security. Wire-tapping was expensive and required a warrant. Recording without notice was illegal. Laws protected us from the gross misuse of our communications.

Our modern tools are chat apps. They do what phones couldn’t: they break all those expectations, while promoting misunderstanding at unprecedented levels. We call this "progress."

With that in mind, let’s chat about chat apps.

Know Which Apps Your Contacts Use

Chat may still be the most popular use of the internet. But there are dozens of chat apps, and different people use different apps.

When you meet someone, record how they like to communicate in their address book entry. When you want to communicate with them, just look at their address book and go.

Pretty much all chat apps let you send long text messages, pictures, video clips, stickers (which are really just pictures), and audio clips. Most also allow group chats. Any chat app that doesn’t do those things is pathetic and not worthy of mention. But each one has its own special features, and many have sinister shadow sides.

An Incomplete List of Chat Apps (and Their Dark Sides)

  1. Text Messages (“SMS”)
  2. Apple Messages
  3. Skype
  4. WhatsApp
  5. Signal
  6. Facebook Messenger
  7. Google Chat and Hangouts
  8. SnapChat
  9. Confide
  10. Kik
  11. WeChat

Let's explore each in more detail.

1. Text Messages (“SMS”)

The most basic chat app is your cell company’s text messaging, called SMS for Short Messaging Service. Android and iOS smartphones let you send long messages. You can also send multimedia messages including pictures, audio, and group chats. All this travels over the phone network. It’s not particularly secure, messages aren’t encrypted, and your phone company may keep copies of everything....

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4 Tips to Understand the Importance of NASA's InSight Landing

“Touchdown confirmed!” After this simple transmission was broadcast live over NASA TV, the control room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory erupted in applause, hugs, and scientists fist bumping. On Monday, November 26th, 2018, NASA’s Insight Lander successfully landed on Mars with the mission of exploring the planet’s interior.

A few hours after landing, scientists still didn’t know the full state of the vehicle, but the lander sent its first communications back to Earth in a so-far best case scenario that its instruments are in working order. InSight has even already posted its first photo on Twitter. So why is the successful landing of InSight so interesting and what will we learn from the mission?

1. The InSight landing was an incredible accomplishment.

We’ve landed complicated (and expensive) spacecraft on Mars several times now so the successful arrival of InSight at the red planet may seem like old hat by now but I assure you, it is a very big deal.

For starters, InSight traveled 301 million miles after being launched 205 days ago from the west coast of the United States on the Atlas V rocket. The spacecraft approached Mars at a speed of roughly 13,000 miles per hour before having to decelerate on its approach to the red planet to 1,000 miles per hour (a change in 12Gs in 2 minutes). In the process, the heat shield reached temperatures higher than 2700 degrees F, hot enough to melt steel.

The spacecraft also had to enter the Martian atmosphere at just the right angle of 12 degrees. Too much steeper and temperatures would have been too hot for the spacecraft’s survival. Too much shallower and the spacecraft would have bounced off the atmosphere and headed back out to space.

On approach all of the landing gear had to work and work together. The parachute had to deploy, little explosions blew off the heat shield, and the craft’s legs had to pop out once the spacecraft’s radar detected the ground was 1 kilometer away. Finally, retroboosters came to life to slow the lander to 5 miles per hour before it plunked down onto the surface of the planet. Twelve engines worked to keep the lander going at a constant velocity as it approached the ground in hopes that none of the equipment was too badly bruised in the final jolt at touchdown.

Of 43 missions to Mars, only 18 have made it. NASA crashed a craft into the Martian south pole in 1999, only a year after the Mars Climate...

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Senin, 26 November 2018

5 Answers to Questions in Your Last Trimester of Pregnancy

Pregnancy is such a special and miraculous time in a woman’s life. As exciting as it can be when you are pregnant, especially for the first time, due to the rapid changes in your growing body, you probably have dozens of questions weighing on your mind.

In my recent episode, Five Important Questions Related to Early Pregnancy, we discussed five questions pertaining to the early part of pregnancy—questions that might’ve been a little uncomfortable to dive in and ask your practitioner.

Although I’m a seven-time veteran to the delivery room, my oldest daughter is expecting her first baby shortly, and has been overwhelmed with questions about all the changes taking place in her body, including her emotional state. With her delivery just weeks away, today we tackle five pressing questions related to the last trimester of pregnancy.

In Episode #507, the following questions were addressed:

  1. What Early Pregnancy Symptoms Are a Concern?
  2. Prenatal Vitamins—What if I Forget to Take Them?
  3. Pregnancy Emotions—Pre-Post-Partum Blues—Are They for Real?
  4. Pregnancy and Digestion—and Gas—What the Heck?
  5. What’s Up with These Constant Leg Cramps at Night?

We’ll now delve into the last trimester and discuss five more common pregnancy questions.

  1. Why am I Swelling, and Not Just in My Belly?
  2. I’m Embarrassed to Have Sex While Pregnant—Why?
  3. Am I a Failure if I Contemplate an Epidural?
  4. How Do I Know When It’s Showtime?
  5. What If I Don’t Bond With My Baby Right Away?

Let’s explore these questions more closely.

1. Why am I Swelling, and Not Just in My Belly?

For many pregnant women, including myself, once I discovered I was pregnant I became enamored with my belly. Although I found out when I was just weeks along, I was certain my stomach had already started to expand!

Eventually, it certainly did enlarge to the size of a super-large basketball (which I absolutely loved!) but that didn’t happen right away. Other parts of my body, however, did grow and swell right along with my stomach, which is a part of pregnancy I hadn’t expected.

It's completely normal to have a moderate amount of swelling in your ankles and feet during pregnancy, as well as some mild swelling in your hands, legs, and face. This is known as...

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Jumat, 23 November 2018

6 Ways to Deal with Nosy Questions

“Are you guys thinking about having kids?”

“How much did your new house cost?”

“Why aren’t you drinking?”

“Haven’t you found a job yet?”

Nosy questions are everywhere—your co-worker asks how big your raise was, the stranger in the elevator asks when the baby is due, or your mom tries to bond by asking about your sex life. Even the long-form U.S. census is nosy! How many cars do you have, what’s your income, were you laid off from your last job? It’s enough to make you wonder if Aunt Mildred is consulting for the government.

With all the family gatherings, nosy questions go into hyperdrive during the holiday season. Therefore, this week, let’s talk about how to perform some verbal jiu-jitsu when Aunt Mildred asks why you’re still single.

But first, some empathy. Why do people ask nosy questions in the first place? 

4 Reasons People Ask Nosy Questions

Reason #1: They misinterpret your level of intimacy.

A misreading of boundaries often happens with older relatives who remember you as a kid. Especially if they once wiped your butt, tucked you in, or monitored your vegetable intake, they may be used to a level of intimacy that’s much more personal. Years later, their brain may still picture you at the kids’ table and may not have upgraded their appraisal of you to an adult with boundaries to be respected.

Reason #2: They let it all hang out.

Some people wear not just their heart, but their entire life on their sleeve. Your new sister-in-law may be super-open about everything from her digestive process to her sex life and simply assume you are, too. 

Furthermore, since relationships are a reciprocal give-and-take, over-sharers may feel that because they revealed so much about their life, it’s okay to ask about yours. It may not occur to them that others prefer to play it close to the vest.

Reason #3: They’re trying, however clumsily, to connect.

It’s possible that nosy questions are a clumsy way to connect with you. Your cousin Fiona may be asking if you’re single because she would love to set you up. Uncle Max may be asking how much you make because he wants to commiserate about taxes.   

Likewise, sometimes people ask questions because they think it’s what they’re supposed to do. Communication experts exhort us to, “Ask questions! People love to talk about themselves!” But cousin Mel, fresh off of reading How to Make Friends and Influence People might not realize that there are...

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Kamis, 22 November 2018

Does Your Language Influence How You Think?

 

Last November, I ran an episode on the myth that the Inuit language has a surprisingly large number of words for “snow.” I talked about how this myth is one example of a widely debunked idea called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, named after the linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. This hypothesis claims that the language you speak determines the way you think, or at least influences it. This hypothesis is also sometimes called linguistic relativity. Here’s one of the arguments against the idea of linguistic relativity that I summarized in that episode.

[M]ultiple languages have just one word that covers both the color blue and the color green. Researchers sometimes call these “grue” languages, “grue” being a portmanteau of “green” and “blue,” but people who speak these grue languages can still distinguish between blue and green. They recognize that they’re different colors even though they are covered by one word, in the same way that we recognize that light blue and dark blue are different colors even though we’d sometimes call them both just “blue.” There are some subtle differences—people who speak languages that distinguish between green and blue find it easier to accurately pick a bluish-green color they’ve seen earlier out of a group of swatches because it’s easier to remember something you have a distinct name for—but it’s not that they are better at recognizing or conceiving the difference between blue and green (1).

However, I recently read an article in “Smithsonian” magazine that seemed to challenge this view. It was about a court ruling in Germany saying it is unconstitutional for government institutions to assume that every person is either male or female. Any government form that people fill out now must have either a third gender to allow for people who identify as neither male nor female, or no gender question at all. The author of the article, Madhvi Ramani, argued that this ruling would be particularly troublesome for Germans, because German is a strongly gendered language (2). For example, you don’t just say you are a teacher. You are either a male teacher (der Lehrer) or a female teacher (die Lehrerin), and the author argued that this leads the German people to be especially partial to the idea of...

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The Sleeping Car King: Who Was George Pullman?

The Pullman car is one of those things we’ve heard about, but we’re maybe not quite clear about what it was. In fact, it was a railroad car invented back in the 1860s, that allowed a passenger to get a good night’s sleep.

It was named for George M. Pullman, a highly successful Chicago businessman. In the 1890s, he was known as the Sleeping Car King. That’s a quaint term today—hard to imagine that a man could make a fortune in sleeping cars. But in America after the Civil War, the railroads really were the roads to riches for many.

In those days, almost everyone who traveled any distance, traveled by train. If you look at maps of the railroads of the day, they look plates of spaghetti—trunk lines spanned the country, local lines connected cities, towns, tiny hamlets, even individual farms, which shipped their milk and produce to town by rail.

But rail travel, although it was faster than a journey by stagecoach or horse and buggy, was still no pleasure. Trains were hot in summer, cold in winter, and sooty all the time. They were noisy. The seats were uncomfortable and a trip that lasted several days was a real ordeal.

The name Pullman became synonymous with the height of fashion.

In the 1860s, just as the first transcontinental railroad was being born, George Pullman had a brainstorm. He imagined that making train travel comfortable could make a man big money.

The classic Pullman car is largely forgotten now, although you’ll sometimes see them in old movies. In its most common form, it was a convertible car. During the day it looked like an ordinary coach car with seats. At night, it could be transformed into a two-tiered dormitory, with clean, comfortable upper and lower berths for passengers to stretch out in.


Pullman named his business the Pullman Palace Car Company and the cars really were rolling palaces. Their degree of luxury and comfort set them apart. Double glazing and improved ventilation made them far more pleasant than the typical passenger car. Carved wood and brocade seats and chandeliers added the kind of luxury that Victorians loved.

...

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Rabu, 21 November 2018

30 Ways to Be Grateful for Family and Friends

The concept of gratitude is such a beautiful way to embrace life every day. By taking the time to mindfully appreciate the many gifts that surround us on a regular basis, we can elevate the joy we feel regardless of our external circumstances.

In UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Magazine, researcher Jeff Huffman says, “Gratitude can be an incredibly powerful and invigorating experience. There is growing evidence that being grateful may not only bring good feelings. It could lead to better health.”

Although Thanksgiving is upon us, any day is a great opportunity to count your blessings and relish the many simple but amazing things that grace our families every week. Here are 30 unique things to give thanks for.

  1. Hugging your partner or your child.
  2. The sound of loved ones laughing.
  3. Savoring your favorite comfort dish.
  4. A washer and dryer in your own home.
  5. Checking out your community library.
  6. The unconditional love of your pet.
  7. Meeting new mom friends via your child's school.
  8. A dentist that makes your child feel comfortable.
  9. Your best friend’s voice on the phone.
  10. Listening to holiday music with your family on a snowy December Eve.
  11. Enjoying bedtime stories with your kids.
  12. Eating a freshly baked cookie.
  13. Rejoicing when your child learns to tie his shoes.
  14. Having a date night with your spouse.
  15. Preparing a new dish for dinner that your family absolutely loves.
  16. Finding another family to carpool with.
  17. Hearing your pediatrician say your child has had another healthy check-up.
  18. Receiving mail from a faraway friend or relative.
  19. Admiring your son/daughter dressed for prom.
  20. Grandparents that love to babysit.
  21. Listening to your children giggling and not fighting.
  22. Roasting marshmallows at a BBQ with your kids.
  23. Matching all the socks in your load of laundry.
  24. Listening to your child learn to read.
  25. Snuggling with your newborn baby.
  26. A freshly vacuumed car.
  27. Seeing your college freshman for the first time since she’s left for school.
  28. Your first cup of morning coffee before the family awakes.
  29. Hearing your kids say "Please" and "Thank You" without being prompted.
  30. The gift of a brand new day and 24 hours to make it your own.

Our daily lives move quickly, but when we take a step back and focus on some of the simpler pleasures that we get to experience, we tend not to take them for granted and can then begin looking for even more ways to embrace the beautiful...

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8 Ways to Make the Holidays Less Expensive and More Memorable

It seems like we start thinking and talking about the holidays a little earlier every year. It begins well before the Halloween candy and costumes appear and ends with a hangover on New Year’s Day.

The holidays are supposed to be filled with happiness and joy—but they can also wreck your finances if you’re not careful. It’s the most expensive time of year for most Americans, who racked up more than $1,000 in debt on average last year.

Besides overspending on gifts for family and friends, there are other financial pitfalls that can sneak up on us. I know what it’s like to get caught up in too much shopping and consumerism during the holidays.

To make the season brighter, less expensive, and more memorable, consider these eight tips.

8 Ways to Make the Holidays Less Expensive and More Memorable

  1. Create a holiday giving plan.  
  2. Remember your values. 
  3. Shop strategically. 
  4. Avoid new retail cards. 
  5. Don’t shop for yourself. 
  6. Be creative. 
  7. Maintain savings. 
  8. Practice gratitude.

Here are the details on a variety of ways to financially survive and thrive during the holidays.

1. Create a holiday giving plan.

As early in the season as possible, start thinking about every gift you plan to give. Jot down family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, teachers, and service professionals you’d like to remember. Estimate a gift amount for one, even if you have no idea what to give him or her yet.

Add up your total estimated gift amount and see if it fits into your budget. If you still haven’t paid off last year’s holiday expenses, you definitely overspent—so be sure not to repeat that mistake again this year.

Also consider additional expenses such as travel, throwing a party, wrapping paper, cards, postage, decorations, or new party clothes. If the total is more than you can afford or want to pay, you might reduce the estimated gift amounts or shorten...

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What's It Like to Run a Strawberry Farm?

This week I have the third installment of my special Faces of Farming series, a series of podcasts in which I’m talking with some of the people who have made it their life’s work to feed the rest of us.

Perhaps you have a small backyard garden or work alongside neighbors in a community garden. If you do, you know the joys of growing food. Nothing is more satisfying than turning a patch of dirt and some seeds or seedlings into something you can actually serve your family and friends. And nothing tastes better than a green bean or strawberry that you grew yourself.

But of course, as every gardener knows, there’s always the possibility of heartbreak. A rogue storm wipes out a bed of tender seedlings, insects infest a field, or after waiting an entire season to enjoy the fruits of your labors, squirrels or birds plunder your crop before you can harvest it.

Now, magnify those risks and rewards by a few orders of magnitude and maybe you can begin to imagine what it’s like to run a commercial farming operation, and the enormous task and responsibility professional farmers take on. Although I’ve certainly endured my share of personal gardening disasters, losing a crop never meant that there would be no food on the table.

A hundred years ago, 1 in every 4 Americans was employed in agriculture. Today, it’s just 1 in 50. Most of us really have no idea how the food we eat every day gets to us. So this month, I’m taking the opportunity to introduce you to some of these folks, to learn what their lives and jobs are like and what they put into feeding the rest of us.

Today, I’m talking with Greg France. Greg and his wife are strawberry growers in California. Strawberries, of course, are one of the most popular fruit. And one of the most nutritious as well. They are particularly high in vitamin C—a serving of strawberries has more vitamin C than an orange! And like most berries, strawberries are a good source of polyphenols, antioxidants that protect the heart, brain, and cells throughout the body.  

Their perfect balance of sweet and tart also make them surprisingly versatile. Frozen strawberries are terrific in smoothies, as a topping for yogurt or frozen yogurt. And strawberries also make a great addition to green salads. But I can tell you from personal experience, they are not necessarily easy to grow. Fortunately, Greg France has dedicated his life to the care and feeding of this sometimes temperamental little fruit.

A Conversation with Strawberry Farmer Greg France

Nutrition Diva: Greg, tell us about your fields. What's going on in the strawberry fields at this time of year?

GF: Well, we're actually pretty busy. We're in California, in Santa Maria, and...

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Selasa, 20 November 2018

Why 'Penultimate' Doesn't Mean 'Best'

 

It’s not uncommon to see people misuse the word “penultimate” to describe something as better than the best, even more ultimate than ultimate, but it actually means “the next to last.”

'Penultimate' comes from a Latin word that means 'almost ultimate.'

“Penultimate” comes from a Latin word that means “almost ultimate,” so the next to last book in a series, the next to last day of a vacation, and the next to last game in a player’s career are all penultimate items or events.

“Penultimate” is not the best of the bunch or the last of something; it is the second-best of the bunch or second-to-the-last of something. 

  • Squiggly won the penultimate prize in the raffle. (That would be the second to last prize in the raffle.)
  • Aardvark’s team is preparing for the penultimate game of the season. (That would be the team’s second to last game of the season.)

From the television version of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”:

Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, there is nothing penultimate about this one. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the proverbial it. After this, there is void... emptiness... oblivion... absolute nothing. 

Origin of ‘Penultimate’

“Penultimate” was actually a noun before it became an adjective. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, “penultimate” referred to the “next to the last syllable of a word or verse.” For example, I found an old dictionary from the 1800s that instructed people to “accent the penultimate” when explaining how to pronounce Greek and Latin proper names.

The Latin prefix “paene-” (shortened here to “pen-”) means “almost” or “nearly.” It’s not very common anymore. Most words that use it now are obscure or rare (for example, “peneseismic” means regions where earthquakes occur only rarely or only of small magnitude, so it means something like “nearly seismic”), but one word still in common use is “peninsula,” which means “almost island.” A peninsula is a piece of land that is almost surrounded by...

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'Manner Born' or 'Manor Born'?

 

Shakespeare coined the phrase “the manner born” (as in “mind your manners” and “table manners”) to describe someone born into a high position or who was accustomed to privilege from birth. Hamlet first uttered the line as he disdains the king’s loud and drunken partying:

Though I am native here

And to the manner born, it is a custom

More honored in the breach than the observance.

In other words, even though I am from this land, and I know it’s the custom to party, I wish we wouldn’t honor that custom. 

Some people mistakenly describe the rich as “manor born,” and a BBC TV show played on words to come up with the title “To the Manor Born,” which likely contributed to the confusion.

They did get the phrasing right though. Although our tendency today might be to say someone is “manner born,” it nearly always appears as “to the manner born,” as Shakespeare wrote it.

For example, here’s a line from a biography of a woman named Miss Florence Searing published in 1897:

She was so pretty and so evidently to the manner born that society people were pleased to have her appear as an ornamental adjunct to their entertainments.

American Women: Fifteen Hundred Biographies

If you use this phrase, which seemed to be more popular in the late 1800s, think of Shakespeare’s rude and rowdy king with his bad manners to remind yourself of the proper spelling.

Examples

Most television viewers probably believe that courtly Mr. Welch is a proper Bostonian, to the manner born. Actually he is the perfect example of how the legal profession in the U.S. has served as a ladder for the children of humble families.

Life, May 17, 1954

Mary Ann Tighe will gladly tell you that she wasn’t to the manner born. “I’m a girl from the Bronx,” says the powerhouse New York commercial real-estate broker, who recently built a country manor dubbed Hollyhock…

...

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Want a Bigger Chest? 3 Key Tips and a Workout

Before I dig into the details of how to get a strong and defined chest, I want to address a common fear that exercising like this will make women look like men and men look like balloon animals. To allay this fear, I am going to turn to biology.

All of us have a gene called GDF-8, and that gene is in charge of a substance called myostatin. Myostatin is in charge of controlling the amount of muscle we have on our body and how big our muscles develop naturally. The base levels of myostatin and muscle in the majority of us make it impossible for us to naturally build bulky muscles no matter how heavy a weight we lift. The majority of us simply do not have the genes to build bulky muscles via any form of exercise.

Sure there are a few people out there who can become bulky because they have the “bulky genes.” But they are few and far between and no matter how much most of us engage in resistance training, we will never cross that threshold that gives “bulking up” a bad name.

OK, with that out of the way, let’s talk about the chest muscles.

What Are Chest Muscles?

The main area of our chest is made up of two muscles we refer to as the pecs. These muscles work together to do the activities I described earlier. The muscles are:

  1. Pectoralis major
  2. Pectoralis minor

The pectoralis minor is located directly underneath the pectoralis major. Both of these chest muscles start at the clavicle (collarbone) and insert at the sternum (breastbone) and the humerus (armpit). The pectorals are mostly used to control arm movement. Contracting the pectoralis major results in pulling on the humerus to create lateral, vertical, and rotational motion of the arm. The pecs also play a role in breathing, specifically inhalation, by pulling the ribcage open to make room for the lungs to expand.

Even though the pec is divided into two parts, there are actually six separate sets of muscle fibers within the pectoralis muscle. This is important because these sets of fibers allow portions of the muscle to be moved independently by the nervous system.

Why Would You Want a Stronger Chest?

Getting a stronger and more defined chest goes beyond simply looking good at the swimming pool or in a tight shirt. Every day we use the pectoral muscles to do things like pushing a heavy door open, heaving a heavy load of laundry over your head, washing your hair, or simply getting up off the ground or the bed.

Getting a stronger and more defined chest goes beyond simply looking good at the swimming pool or in a tight shirt.

Even though they're not exerting the primary force, your pecs are...

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Senin, 19 November 2018

5 Powerful Tips for Productive Meetings

Business meetings are easy targets for ire and indignation. When they're bad, they're really bad. They can be unproductive, time-wasting, ambiguous, soul-sucking, inefficient, unclear, vague, chatty, and redundant. But they don't have to be.

In episode 6, Meeting Madness 1, we learned how to make meetings better by understanding the kind of meeting you’re running. In episode 14, we learned to speed up meetings by assigning roles. And in how to lead a meeting when you’re not the facilitator, we learned to make sure everything was under control. Your control.

If I facilitated every meeting, it would be different. People who have been in meetings with me start by cowering in fear at my impressively productive approach. But they come around, and before long, every meeting becomes a model of perfectly productive process. Or else.

While it’s impossible for me (or, “glorious me,” as I like to think of myself) to run every meeting for you, here are the top five things you can do in your next meeting to make things run smoothly. And because you are glorious you, devoted to all that is good in the world, I'm going to give you 20% more things than any other top-five list you've ever encountered. So hold on to your hats, because it's going to be a wild ride!

1. Have the Right People in the Room

When you’re calling a meeting, make sure you know who will attend and why. Meetings cost money. Someone is paying salaries for people to sit in a meeting. A one-hour meeting with six $80,000 salaried engineers costs around $240. 

If you’re going to pay, at least make it count. Run through your proposed attendee list and ask yourself what each person will get out of the meeting. You’re inviting Sasha? Why?

Sometimes they need to be there for Reasons of Substance. Sasha needs information that will be shared. It’s a complicated issue. So sharing in person is best, as it lets Sasha ask questions and get clarification.

Or maybe decisions will be made. Sasha needs to be there to give input into the decision. Or perhaps Sasha will be in charge of carrying out the decision, and needs to understand the reasoning behind it.

These are Reasons of...

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Do Women and Left-Handed People Have Better Memories?

As many families and friend groups across the globe gather to celebrate the holidays and to reminisce about the past, there is a recurring argument that is likely to come up. Who remembers that past more accurately? Your older brother swears he would never have left you alone as a kid to go hang out with his friends, but you remember it differently. So, who is right? And what about your mother: will she ever forget the time she caught you sneaking out of the house? Will she ever remember that lasagna isn’t actually your favorite, its your cousin’s?

We are always looking for ways to improve our memory—vitamins? crossword puzzles? more sleep?—and that desire is reflected in the large number of scientific studies looking for links between characteristics like age or gender and memory performance. Researchers have even looked at brain size, body weight, and hair color to ask, who has the better memory? Let’s take a look at some of the answers to that question that are on the firmest scientific footing.

Do left-handed people have better memories?

You’ve probably heard the conventional wisdom that people are either left brained (driven by logic and reasoning) or right brained (driven by creativity and intuition) depending on which side of their brain is dominant. Although the evidence-based research suggests that people don’t necessarily fit so rigidly into one box, or brain hemisphere, the two sides of the brain are found to be more strongly linked in left-handed people. This greater communication can help with certain types of memory.

In a 2001 study, two scientists asked 62 people to watch as 55 different words flashed on a screen and then, after a delay of a few minutes, to write down what words they could remember.  Now, they did not have enough left-handed people in their study to compare how your dominant hand affects your memory. (Left-handed people make up about 10-15% of the population.) So instead they compared participants who had left-handed relatives against those only related to right-handed people. The scientists found that, whether the participant was left-handed or not, as long as they had left-handed relatives, they on average outscored those from purely right-handed families by a significant...

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6 Small Lessons for Big MBA Success

If you are young and ambitious—if you want to reach a c-suite position by your mid-thirties—you need an MBA. There is no better way to gain management knowledge and skill fast and formally than participating in an MBA program; plus, hiring managers will drool over your advanced credentials.

However, you shouldn’t assume that it will be easy to earn your MBA. There are more than 250,000 students enrolled in U.S. MBA programs, but only about 100,000 MBA degrees are awarded every year. That means a sizeable chunk of MBA-seekers quit, take a break, or otherwise neglect to complete their studies. “MBA dropout” is not a credential you want to list on your resume, so if you are committed to earning your MBA, you should do everything in your power to see your program through.

MBA benefits are undeniable—access to better positions, higher pay, and prestigious perks—but you won’t earn them unless you graduate with your degree and useful contacts. Here are a few tips to ensure you make it through your MBA program alive and thriving.

1. Don’t Compare Yourself to Anyone in Your Program

Competition is fierce in any graduate program, but it is especially cutthroat in business school, where everyone is hoping to become the next Fortune 500 CEO. However, you should resist the urge to compare your performance against your classmates’. All of you got into the program, which means the school thinks you are all equally capable of learning the material and succeeding after graduation.

Instead of focusing on your peers’ performance, pay attention to your own. When you start your MBA, set a baseline for yourself and compare your progress against it as you complete assignments and gain skills. Then you won’t be wasting energy on other people; you’ll only be bettering yourself.

2. Seek Progress in Your Knowledge and Skill, Not Perfection

Often, high-performing professionals have perfectionism problems. On one hand, your desire to do everything perfectly helps you excel; on the other hand, it can drive you sick with anxiety and fear. During your MBA—and afterwards, for that matter—you should use “Progress, not perfection” as your mantra. Any time you are tempted to pull an all-nighter proofreading the group project you’ve already rewritten twice—any time you want to quibble with your professor over half a point on an exam you already got an A on—chant “progress, not perfection.” As long as you are learning and improving your business skill, you are succeeding in your MBA program.

3. Learn as Much as You Can From Industry Insiders

Something you can do to...

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5 Tips to Protect Your Smart Home From Hackers

These days, most people have at least some smart home gadgets in their house. Some professionals are also starting to fill up their offices with internet-connected devices. While these products can offer us lots of time and stress savings, not to mention be fun to use, they do have some potential risks we need to be aware of.

For example, with hackers noting how many millions of people now have smart home gear in their property, more and more are taking to targeting these devices to break into systems and homes. To protect yourself from this, it’s important to take steps to stay safe. Read on for some simple yet effective ways you can keep hackers at bay today.

1. Buy Quality Brands When Shopping for Products

Firstly, you can work to protect yourself right at the time you initially buy your smart home products. When comparing options, it pays to look at trusted brands, as these typically have a bigger focus on security and can therefore be less hackable than products produced by other manufacturers.

Big names that have been around for many years tend to have more resources to put into security measures in the design and manufacturing phases, as well as more concern for their businesses if issues do occur, which increases their vigilance.

2. Change the ID Settings on Your Devices

Once you’ve bought your devices, you also need to update the ID settings, which come already set up on them. Most manufacturers ship out their products with default usernames and passwords and then provide guidelines for changing these details in their instruction manuals. However, many people don’t bother running these updates, a fact which hackers take advantage of.

Cybercriminals realize many people won’t take the time to change settings, and hackers can simply look up default credentials on forums or manufacturer websites or other public spaces. From there, they can conduct scans in your area and see the ID name of the manufacturer coming up on a list of nearby connected devices. When this happens, they’ll see you haven’t made any security updates and straight away know the password they need to input to gain access to the device. Avoid leaving yourself vulnerable to attacks like this by changing settings ASAP.

3. Protect Your Wi-Fi

Another protective step to take is stopping hackers from accessing your wireless internet. Since smart gadgets are connected to the internet all the time, cybercriminals realize they have a way of getting into devices through your Wi-Fi. Keep them at bay by password-protecting your connection, so no one in the area can simply...

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Minggu, 18 November 2018

5 Answers to Your Early Pregnancy Questions

I love surprises! That wasn’t always the case though, because back in my twenties and thirties I was a real planner and felt the need to be in total control of where my future was going.

Coincidentally (or not) it was in my late twenties that I struggled with infertility for over five years. Let’s just say that this pivotal time in my life afforded me the opportunity to find out, in the not-so-easiest of ways, that planning and scripting my life would not necessarily turn out the way I had intended.

My original plan after marriage was to spend a couple of years building my career, traveling, and creating our dream home. Then, we’d begin a family—probably three kids—and the rest would be history.

Well, that sure didn’t happen! Five years after trying to start a family, we finally became the blessed parents of a beautiful baby girl through the amazing gift of adoption. During that time without kids, we enhanced our careers, traveled quite frequently, and bought our dream home. I also spent that time obsessed with becoming pregnant and didn’t enjoy my existing circumstances as much as I should’ve because I longed so much for a baby.

That was the start of when I began to embrace life’s surprises! Shortly after our adoption I gave birth to seven more children, we moved from our dream house to my former childhood home so we could be closer to our families, I stepped away from my career, and after 25 years of a mostly good marriage, became divorced.

Because I was now getting good at going with life’s flow and not staying attached to any outcome I thought I had to have, I was able to truly live in the moment and appreciate what was happening in the “now”—not the past or future.

So, getting back to how I now love surprises, I was given quite an amazing surprise this past year for my birthday. My daughter and her husband announced they were expecting their first baby—my first grandchild—on Christmas Eve of this year! I was not only pleasantly surprised but so excited I could think of nothing else for weeks after the announcement!

My daughter was super thrilled as well, but she was full of questions that she needed answers to and a tiny bit embarrassed to ask her doctor, because she didn’t want to seem like she was a pesty patient.

Thankfully, she felt comfortable...

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Jumat, 16 November 2018

What's It Like to Work on a Dairy Farm?

This special bonus interview is brought to you by Undeniably Dairy. For more information, visit UndeniablyDairy.org.

These days, a lot of people are interested in learning more about where their food comes from. For example, so many of us drink milk or give it to our kids every single day, but most of us have never had an opportunity to visit a working dairy farm before. In fact, I was surprised to learn that most Americans live within 100 miles of a dairy farm. So no matter where you live, chances are you have a dairy farm as a neighbor.

Joining me today to give us a peek into a typical day on a typical dairy farm is Tara Vander Dussen, a fifth generation dairy farmer. She's also the president of United Dairy Women, an organization committed to childhood nutrition and supporting local area children's homes. She's played an instrumental role in that organization's fundraising efforts, helping to raise money for children's homes so they have daily access to milk. And in addition, she works as a trained environmental scientist on her own family dairy. She shares her story on her blog, NewMexicoMilkMaid.com.

What's It Like to Work on a Dairy Farm?

Nutrition Diva: Welcome to the podcast, Tara.

Tara Vander Dussen: Thank you for having me!

ND: So, it sounds like dairy farming runs in the family. I'm curious—did you ever consider doing something else or have you always known that you'd be a dairy farmer, too?

TVD: So it definitely does run in my family and it's just a part of our heritage. My husband is a fifth generation dairy farmer as well, but I did not know this is what I always wanted to do. When I went away to college, I knew I wanted to focus in environmental science. Part of me still wanted to consider going to law school and moving out of the rural America small town, and moving to the big city. I was eighteen, leaving for college and ready to explore the world. I ended up meeting my husband and we got married and I moved back to his family farm in the town that I grew up in.

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Freaked About Climate Change? 7 Ways to Cope

Podcast listener Trevor from British Columbia imagined the future of our planet. Buckle your seat belt, because it wasn’t pretty. Trevor reports, “I saw the great forests I grew up around all burned. I saw superstorms and heat-stroke deaths claiming hundreds of thousands every year. I saw food shortages turning people violent and mass migrations whipping up xenophobic fervor and fascist autocracies. All I can see is destruction on the scale of what happened to the indigenous communities in North America after 1492.” 

“How,” he concluded, “can I not despair?”

After I peeled myself off the floor, I looked into the research. Then I peeled myself off the floor again. The very first study I found, in the uber-prestigious journal Nature, linked increased global temperatures to suicide. My floor and I can’t take much more of this.

Climate change is a perfect storm (no pun intended) because it hits human nature square in the gut: when faced with dire threats, we humans tend to react in one of three ways. In the first option, we deny. When prospects seem dire and hopeless, some of us cope by sticking our heads in the sand. We protect ourselves from going numb and hopeless by whistling through the superstorm.

The second option? We despair. It’s hard to find hope or feel personally effective when the speed and scale of the crisis seem so overwhelming. Indeed, who can truly comprehend the disappearance of coastal cities and not feel helpless and insignificant?

Thankfully, human nature allows us a third option: we double down. With denial or despair, our flame is snuffed out. But sometimes tough situations act as an imperative—instead of burning out, our flame burns brighter. 

I won’t pretend to solve climate change in 15 minutes or less, but this week, let’s talk about seven ways to deal with your climate change despair. 

7 Ways to Cope with Climate Change

  1. It’s okay to feel horrible.
  2. But remember that worry isn’t an action.
  3. Don’t give up on small steps, but don’t rely on them, either.
  4. Keep a lid on the zealotry.
  5. Focus on what we’ll gain.
  6. Get to know your neighbors.
  7. Remember humanity is scrappy.

Here they are in more detail. 

Tip #1: It’s okay to feel horrible.

It’s absolutely understandable to feel whipsawed and powerless. Not only that, feeling awful is actually a necessary...

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Kamis, 15 November 2018

'Flier' or 'Flyer'?

A question I get a lot is how to spell “flyer” (or is that “flier”?), as in “I want to use my frequent flyer miles” and “We’re handing out flyers in the cafeteria today.”

In the past, style guides and dictionaries didn’t always agree about how it should be spelled, so it’s no surprise that people are confused.

The good news is that today, you’re safe using “flyer” for almost everything, maybe because the airline industry uses that spelling, and it’s hard to fight marketing.

Today, you’re safe using the “flyer” spelling for almost everything.

Here’s some background in case you’re interested in the history.

Is ‘Flier’ American? Is ‘Flyer’ British?

Supposedly, “flier” was the American spelling, and “flyer” was the British spelling. That’s what the most recent edition of Garner’s Modern English Usage claims, and that claim used to be backed up by the fact that the Associated Press (an American organization) recommended “flier,” and “The Economist” (a British publication) recommended “flyer.”

On the other hand, Webster’s Third (an American dictionary) says that the handbill is usually spelled “flyer,” and the Oxford English Dictionary (a dictionary with British roots) says that “flyer” is used in the United States to mean handbill. The Chicago Manual of Style doesn’t directly address the question, but uses “flyer” in a couple of example sentences. A Google Books Ngram search shows that “flyer” is more common than “flier” in both British English and American English and that both spellings have coexisted since at least 1800.

The AP Stylebook Changes Its Recommendation

In 2017, The AP Stylebook updated its recommended spelling from “flier” to “flyer” in all cases except the phrase “to take a flier,” which means “to take a risk,” and that change makes it a lot easier for people to choose a spelling. 

What Should You Do?

Even though “flyer” seems to be the strongly emerging standard, if you follow a specific style guide, it’s still a good idea to check if it has a recommended spelling, since both spellings do still coexist in the wild.

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Pronoun Order

Lately, people have been asking a lot of questions about pronouns and what order to put them in relative to nouns and other pronouns, so that’s our topic for today.

Here’s an example of a question (changed slightly to protect the writer).

We were scheduling a meeting at work, and everyone wanted to have it on Monday, but I couldn’t make it, and I knew another co-worker would be out of town, so I said, “That won’t work for Maria and me,” but then I immediately wondered whether I should have said, “me and Maria.” Which is it? And does it even matter.”

First, the pronouns you use to refer to yourself, such as “me,” and “I,” are different from other pronouns. With those three, put them last in a list, meaning you got it right when you said, “That’s won’t work for Maria and me.” Think of it as a matter of politeness, as if you're opening a door and letting the other person walk through it first.

If you were using “I,” the subject pronoun, you’d also put yourself last—for example, if you were to say, “Maria and I can’t make it on Monday.”

It’s the same when you’re using two or more pronouns: “She and I can’t make it on Monday.”

You even put yourself last when you’re using the possessive pronoun: “Maria’s and my trip to New York is on Monday.” 

Note that when you’re mixing nouns and pronouns, they both have to be in the possessive form, unlike nouns which can share the possessive marker (the apostrophe) if the people share the thing, for example, in this case, if they’re going on the same trip: “Maria and Joe’s trip is on Monday.” (Read more about compound possession.)

And now let’s consider the other pronouns such as “you” and “her.” The AP Stylebook says the order doesn’t matter when you’re mixing these pronouns with nouns, but I tend to put the pronoun first. 

You and Maria can’t make it on Monday?

I was really hoping he and Maria could be there.

That’s your Quick and Dirty Tip: Always put the pronouns “me,” “my,” and “I” last in a list. For other pronouns, you can put them where they sound right to you, but if I’m mixing nouns and pronouns, I usually think it sounds better to put the pronoun first.

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9 Tricks to Cleaning Your Fridge (and Keeping It Clean)

November may be best known for Thanksgiving, but there’s another holiday this month you might not be as familiar and it can actually help you get ready to enjoy Turkey Day: National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day, celebrated on November 15th each year.

The good folks at Whirlpool can be thanked for initiating this fun (yes, fun!) cause back in 1999. Timing is everything, and the home economists at Whirlpool felt mid-November would be the perfect time to promote this holiday because it gives people the chance to clean and organize this most important appliance before the holidays arrive.

Before you head out to purchase a turkey and all the fixings, grab your favorite cleaning products and a dose of inspiration and embrace National Clean Out Your Fridge Day with these nine easy steps.

9 Tricks to Cleaning Your Fridge (and Keeping It Clean)

  1. Create a Working Space in Kitchen
  2. Ready, Set, Empty!
  3. Remove Trays and Bins
  4. Attack all Surfaces
  5. Vacuum Condenser Coils
  6. Reorganize Your Clean Space
  7. Stock Up With Fresh Food
  8. Plan a Special Dinner to Celebrate
  9. Maintain Your Efforts

Here's a closer look at each.

1. Create a Working Space in Kitchen

Cleaning out your refrigerator doesn’t have to be as daunting as you might think if you approach it with an open mind. Play some upbeat music before you get started—you’ll add some positive, funky energy to your project!

Before you start unloading, create a workspace on your kitchen island or clear some counter space so you’ll have a place to sort food, etc. Don’t forget your sink! Make sure your sink is empty so you can place bins and racks in it for proper cleansing. Last but not least, have your garbage bin close by—you’ll need it when it comes time to ditch spoiled food.

2. Ready, Set, Empty!

Now comes the fun part—emptying the entire contents of your fridge and freezer. (Be sure not to neglect the freezer.) Take advantage of your empty counter space and group things together such as salad dressings and condiments, cheese and cold cuts, butter and dairy products, etc. If you have a slimy bottle of ketchup, rinse it in warm...

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The Effects of Industrialization on American Democracy

We like to imagine that we live in the most innovative era in history. After all, we’ve experienced the digital revolution. We’ve seen the power of computers grow at warp speed. We can’t get enough of smartphones and robotics and online everything.

But it was our great-grandparents who really lived through the most astounding period of technological change in human history. It was known as the industrial revolution. It got off the ground in the early 1800s when water power was harnessed to run machinery in the textile mills. The next step was steam power, which revolutionized both industry and transportation. By the end of the century, electricity was bringing changes that had never been dreamed of.

One of the biggest transformations of the era was the shift in population from farms and rural areas to cities. Cities had been centers of commerce, now they became the home to vast  manufacturing enterprises and the exploding population of workers needed to man them. America became an urban society.

Industrialization transformed the production of goods. Machines performed tasks rapidly, precisely, and without rest. Advances in automation and metal working enhanced productivity.

One of the effects was to create what we call the consumer culture. Things people used to make at home or buy from craftsmen were suddenly available cheaply because of mass-production. No more homespun cloth or homemade soap. Now there were record players, typewriters, Kodak cameras, and machine-made furniture. The Sears Roebuck catalogue became the Amazon of its day.

Manufacturing output in the United States in the early 1900s was more than twenty times what it had been before the Civil War.

Transportation changed utterly. First, the steamboat. Then the locomotive. Electric streetcars meant that folks could suddenly commute to work. That gave birth to the first suburban sprawl.

Communication was transformed. It’s hard to appreciate the difference that the telegraph made, but it was the first real way to communicate at a distance. The stock ticker—you’ve probably heard about ticker tape parades—was a telegraphic device that...

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Introducing Time to Parent, a New Podcast from Julie Morgenstern

A few weeks ago, I had organizing expert and bestselling author Julie Morgenstern on Mighty Mommy to talk about the methods from her new book and podcast, Time to Parent.  I'm excited to be sharing an episode from her show with you this week!

In it, Julie talks with special guest Elizabetha parent who had struggled to find balance between her work and home life. I know many of my readers and listeners probably worry about that fundamental balance. Fear not: Julie's organizing tactics may help you too. Listen to the episode to hear more about:

  • Arranging your parenting life, including all the logistics behind running a household such as cooking, cleaning, and organizing physical space
  • Why avoiding can make the arranging you need to do even harder later
  • How organizational chaos impacts kids—from a licensed clinical psychologist
  • Why having systems can help reduce stress and support a family’s collective goals
  • How focusing on “hot spots” can help you get more organized
  • The value of consistency when it comes to a morning routine—and how anchors can help mark transition points

Listen to Time to Parent on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get podcasts, and then subscribe for future advice from Julie Morgenstern on how to bring out the best in your child and you. 

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