The MEGACONVERTER!

Warning: The link I'm about to give you is addictive!

Taken from a weekly supplement provided to subscribers of Copyediting newsletter:

Last week, as I was preparing the resources page for the document that will be sent as a supplement for the November 13 audio conference on math errors, I was double-checking entries on metric units and conversions in The Associated Press Stylebook. I spotted something I'd somehow missed.

I've been using Google lately for conversions; you can type 5 pounds in kilos in the search field and find out instantly that it's 2.26796185 kilos. But if you're thinking about buying your ancestral farm in Ireland and want to know how many U.S. acres are in an Irish acre, you can't type 5 Irish acres in U.S. acres and get the conversion. You get links to things like the Irish Acres Antiques Store.

No, for that kind of conversion, you need the MEGACONVERTER 2!

I'm not joking. The Associated Press Stylebook has a quiet little mention of this amazing tool under its metric system entry, and boy, can it do things! One Irish acre is 1.61983 U.S. acres, in case you were wondering. There are, as of last week, 45 conversion categories, from Angles to Wire Resistance. I'm sure they'll find something that starts with a Z to measure soon. Our proofreader, Danny Marcus, noted that the category "Length, Ancient" doesn't have cubits listed. I agree with him that this is a serious oversight, especially for editors of construction manuals.

The Megaconverter 2: http://www.blogger.com/www.megaconverter.com/mega2.

Danny also shared two more sites for conversions that even the whopping Megaconverter doesn't have:

The first is for the Consumer Price Index. Find out how much more you could have bought in 1969 with the money you now spend on a latte: http://woodrow.mpls.frb.fed.us/research/data/us/calc/.

As if that weren't depressing enough, you can also find out how many milliliters your $3.29 would buy you in England right now by entering that amount in the Universal Currency Converter at XE.com: http://www.xe.com/ucc/.

HAVE AN AVERAGE DAY

Here's an article that I found to be very powerful. I hope you enjoy it too....

Have an Average Day, by Michael Neill

Excerpted from Catalyst (Sept. 2007), an independent journal of healthy living

I once was talking to my friend and mentor Steve Chandler when he said to me, "Have an average day!" Taken aback, I asked him what he meant. Isn’t the idea to have great days, even exceptional ones?

He told me a story about one of his mentors, Lyndon Duke, who studied the linguistics of suicide. After receiving doctorates from two universities, Duke began analyzing suicide notes for linguistic clues that could be used to predict and prevent suicidal behavior in teenagers.

Duke came to believe that the enemy of happiness is "the curse of exceptionality." When everyone is trying to be exceptional, nearly everyone fails because the exceptional becomes commonplace, and those few who do succeed feel isolated and estranged from their peers. We’re left with a world in which a few people feel envied, misunderstood, and alone, while thousands of others feel like failures for not being good, special, rich, or happy enough.

When I was in the thickest cloud of my own suicidal thoughts, I was at university and I remember wishing that I could run away from my scholarship, change my name to Bob, and take a job pumping gas at a full-service station somewhere in the Midwest. Only in my fantasy, people would start to notice something special about me. They would begin driving miles out of their way to have "Bob the service guy" fill up their cars and to exchange a few words with him, leaving the station oddly uplifted and with a renewed sense of optimism and purpose.
I was, to my way of thinking, doomed to succeed.

Delusions of grandeur? Quite possibly. Depressed and miserable? Absolutely.

One of Duke’s breakthroughs came when he was dealing with his own unhappiness and heard a neighbor singing while he was mowing his lawn. Duke realized what was missing from his life: the simple pleasures of an average day.

The very next weekend, he went to visit his son, who was struggling to excel in his first term at university. "I expect you to be a straight C student, young man," Duke said. "I want you to complete your unremarkable academic career, meet an ordinary young woman, and, if you choose to, get married and live a completely average life!"

His son, of course, thought Dad had finally flipped, but it did take the pressure off him to be quite so exceptional. A month later he phoned his father to apologize. He had gotten A’s on his exams, despite having done only an average amount of studying.

This is the paradoxical promise of an average-day philosophy: The cumulative effect of a series of average days is actually quite extraordinary.

If we put this together with another one of Duke’s discoveries—that the meaning of our lives comes from the differences we make with them, though these differences need not be huge to have a profound impact—we may well have the ultimate prescription for a happy, productive life:

Be an average, happy person making a small positive difference (and having a happy, average day). In doing this, you create a kind of exceptionality that everyone can share.

Michael Neill (www.geniuscatalyst.com) is a success coach, media commentator, and author. Copyright © 2007

BERNANKE EXPECTED TO CUT RATES AGAIN

In the face of what appears to be a worsening national economy, Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, is expected to cut interest rates again, the goal being "to get people to borrow and spend more."

Bernanke was quoted in the New York Times today as saying:

'“The outlook for real activity in 2008 has worsened. We stand ready to take substantive additional actions as needed to support growth and to provide adequate insurance against downside risks.”'

Until recently Bernanke has been reluctant to forecast the U.S. economy as anything but vague; yet "disappointing holiday sales figures," a rise in unemployment, and a troubling spike in foreclosures all give evidence to an downturn.

Bernanke still steers clear of the word "recession," however, and seems to remain confident in the Fed's ability to prevent one in the near future.

Fed Chief Signals Further Rate Cut, By Louis Uchitelle and Michael M. Grynbaum, the New York Times

IMPORTANT: INFORMATION ON STROKE IDENTIFICATION

STROKE: Remember The 1st Three Letters.... S.T.R.

My nurse friend sent this and encouraged me to post it and spread the word. If everyone can remember something this simple,we could save some folks. Seriously...

Please read:STROKE IDENTIFICATION:

During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and took a little fall, she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) .....she said she had just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes.

They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food. While she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening.

Ingrid's husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - (at 6:00 pm Ingrid passed away.) She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today. Some don't die, they end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.

It only takes a minute to read this...

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke... totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE

Thank God for the sense to remember the"3 " steps, STR . Read and Learn!

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.

Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

S * Ask the individual to SMILE.

T * Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) i.e. It is sunny out today)

R * Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.

If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks,call 999/911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

New Sign of a Stroke ------- Stick out Your Tongue

NOTE: Another 'sign' of a stroke is this: Ask the person to 'stick' out his tongue. If the tongue is 'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other, that is also an indication of a stroke.

A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this-mail sends it to 10 people; you can bet that
at least one life will be saved.

ATTENTION TRAVELERS! Lithium Batteries Restriction:

Passengers will no longer be able to pack loose lithium batteries in checked luggage on flights in the USA, effective from January 1st 2008. The new regulation is designed to reduce the risk of lithium battery fires and applies to all flights from, to and within the USA. Lithium batteries are considered hazardous materials because they can overheat and ignite in certain conditions. Lithium batteries in checked baggage are allowed if they are installed in electronic devices, or in carry-on baggage if stored in plastic bags (maximum of two extended-life batteries).

*US Department of Transportation*

For full article, see below:
http://www.photographyblog.com/index.php/weblog/comments/lithium_batteries_restricted_on_us_flights/