April 4, 2009
FW: Peeling Potatoes
For all those who make potato salad, check this out. (Thanks, Maryann)
Archive for the ‘News’ Category.
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March 24, 2009
FW: 90# on your telephone
Comments by Patrick Crispen of urbanlegends.about.com: As shocking as this [the below forwarded email] may sound, the “nine-zero-pound” story is true … sort of.
What the warning letter floating around the Net doesn’t say is that this scam only works on telephones where you have to dial 9 to get an outside line. Unless you have to dial 9 to get an outside line at home, this scam does not affect residential telephone users. Dialing “nine-zero-pound” on a residential phone will only give you a busy signal. That’s it.
I dialed ’0′ and asked the operator to confirm if this was correct, so please pass it on.
I received a telephone call last evening from an individual identifying himself as a Telus Serviceman, who was conducting a test on the telephone-lines. He stated that to complete the test I should touch nine (9) and then zero (0), followed by the pound sign (#), and then to hang up.
Luckily, I was suspicious, and I refused.
Upon contacting the telephone company, I was informed that by pushing 90#, you are giving the requesting individual full access to your telephone line, which enables them to place long distance calls billed to your home phone number. I was further informed that this scam has been originating from many of B.C’s local Jails and Prisons.
DO NOT press 90# for ANYONE !
The GTE Security Department requested that I share this information with EVERYONE I KNOW. After checking with Telus, they said it was true, so do not dial 90# for anyone!
Vivian Thompson,
Crime & Fraud Prevention Coordinator,
District 5
South Surrey RCMP,
British Columbia.
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March 21, 2009
FW: Advice from Snopes
VALUABLE INFORMATION:
Advice from Snopes
Here is a nice little tidbit of information that came my way this morning. So if any of you are wondering why I didn’t return something to you that said something like ‘if I don’t get this back I’ll….or, ‘See how many flowers you can get back’, or ‘ Forward this to 10 people in the next 5 mins. or something bad will happen to you‘, etc.
The following is why I don’t send them back.
Advice from Snopes.com
Read the full story here: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/internet.asp
1) Any time you see an E-Mail that says forward this on to ’10′ of your friends, or sign this petition, or you’ll get bad luck, good luck, or whatever, it almost always has an E-Mail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and E-Mails of those folks you forward to.
The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of ‘active’ E-Mails to use in SPAM E-Mails, or sell to other spammers.
2) Almost all E-Mails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards.
All it was, and all any of this type of E-Mail is, is a way to get names and ‘cookie ‘ tracking information for telemarketers and spammers – - to validate active E-Mail accounts for their own profitable purposes.
You can do your friends and family members a GREAT favor (PLEASE) by sending this information to them; you will be providing a service to your friends, and will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam E-Mails in the future!
If you have been sending out (FORWARDING) the above kinds of E-Mail, now you know why you get so much SPAM!
Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name(s) to those types of listings regardless how inviting they might sound! You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT in the long run. Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later! Plus, we are helping the spammers get rich! Let’s don’t make it easy for them!
Also: E-Mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other organization. To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed signature and full address of the person signing the petition.
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February 3, 2009
FW: National Do Not Call List
FYi: FEF checked into this announcement with the National Do Not Call Registry and this is their advice:
Your registration will not expire. Telephone numbers placed on the National Do Not Call Registry will remain on it permanently due to the Do-Not-Call Improvement Act of 2007, which became law in February 2008. Read more about it at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2008/04/dncfyi.shtm.
So, if you’re already signed up and you haven’t changed your telephone number, there is no need to re-register.
Heres the FW: email…
REMEMBER: Cell Phone Numbers Go Public next month.
REMINDER…. all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sale calls. YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS.
To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone: 888-382-1222.
It is the National DO NOT CALL list. It will only take a minute of your time. It blocks your number for five (5) years PERMANENTLY. (see updated info in FYI above).
You must call from the cell phone number you want to have blocked.
You cannot call from a different phone number.
HELP OTHERS BY PASSING THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS.
It takes about 20 seconds.
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December 29, 2008
FW: Uncle Jay recaps 2008
Here is a cute little “you tube” presentation that someone spent way too much time on…..
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December 19, 2007
FW: When Science is Just Wasting Time!
Will Your Tongue Really Stick to a Frozen Flagpole?
December 19, 2007
The next time someone triple-dog dares you to stick your tongue to a frozen metal pole — don’t. Your tongue will be joined to the pole, and you’ll have plenty of time to ponder the thermal conductivity of metal while you await the rescue squad.
Your tongue is covered with moisture, which beings to freeze if its temperature drops below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Your body counteracts the freezing by pumping warm blood to your tongue.
Heat from your blood warms the moisture through a process called conduction. Heat energy from the blood excites atoms in your tongue. The atoms absorb energy and vibrate. The more they vibrate, the more their temperatures increase. This incites vibrations in neighboring atoms, which take the energy and pass it up the line like a hot potato and eventually warms the surface moisture.
So why is the Fire Department on its way?
“It’s because of the high thermal conductivity of the pole,” explains Frank J. DiSalvo, director of the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future and co-director of the Cornell Fuel Cell Institute. “The metal is a much better conductor than your tongue (up to 400 times more powerful). The metal takes heat faster than your body can replenish it.”
The atoms in solid metals are packed tightly and transfer thermal energy more readily. They also have free electrons that boost conductivity. Free electrons are free to move from atom to atom. The electrons absorb heat energy and move through the flagpole, stirring up other atoms.
As your tongue touches the flagpole, the moisture on your tongue is robbed of heat. The temperature of the moisture drops. Water freezes inside tiny pores and surface irregularities on your tongue and the pole. You’re stuck.
So now your thinking, “Maybe if I just pull hard it will come off.” Yes, it will — a piece of your tongue, that is.
Kent Sperry is a 911 dispatcher at a place where people know about cold and snow — Boulder, Colorado. He offers a less painful alternative, assuming you happen to have the necessary remedy at hand: “Pour warm water on the area where the tongue meets the pole, and the tongue should come free.”
http://www.livescience.com/mysteries/071218-tongue-flagpole.html
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December 14, 2007
FW: Man Selling Soul On E-Bay
Man Selling Soul On EBay For £500k
By Alex Watts Updated:13:54, Friday December 14, 2007
An American man is selling his soul on the internet for £500,000 – to raise money for Christmas.
He says the winning eBay bidder will receive his spirit in a glass jar as well as a contract “relinquishing ownership”.
He told buyers: “I’ve got no money for the Christmas holidays, and all I’ve got left to sell is my soul.
“I’m not really using it lately – and selling it on eBay is better than letting the Devil have it.”w
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October 17, 2007
I want a @%&^#$$#@ raise
Swearing at work boosts team spirt, morale: research
Oct 17 08:58 AM US/Eastern
Regular swearing at work can help boost team spirit among staff, allowing them to express better their feelings as well as develop social relationships, according to a study by researchers.
Yehuda Baruch, a professor of management at the University of East Anglia, and graduate Stuart Jenkins studied the use of profanity in the workplace and assessed its implications for managers.
They assessed that swearing would become more common as traditional taboos are broken down, but the key appeared to be knowing when such language was appropriate and when to turn to blind eye.
The pair said swearing in front of senior staff or customers should be seriously discouraged or banned, but in other circumstances it helped foster solidarity among employees and express frustration, stress or other feelings.
“Employees use swearing on a continuous basis, but not necessarily in a negative, abusive manner,” said Baruch, who works in the university’s business school in Norwich.
Banning swear words and reprimanding staff might represent strong leadership, but could remove key links between staff and impact on morale and motivation, he said.
“We hope that this study will serve not only to acknowledge the part that swearing plays in our work and our lives, but also to indicate that leaders sometimes need to ‘think differently’ and be open to intriguing ideas.
“Managers need to understand how their staff feel about swearing. The challenge is to master the ‘art’ of knowing when to turn a blind eye to communication that does not meet their own standards.”
The study, “Swearing at work and permissive leadership culture: when anti-social becomes social and incivility is acceptable”, is published in the latest issue of the Leadership and Organisational Development Journal.
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July 29, 2007
FW: The first fake toe!
Fake Toe on Mummy: Oldest Prosthesis?
AFP, AFP
type size: [A] [A] [A]
July 27, 2007 — An artificial big toe attached to the foot of an Egyptian mummy could be the world’s oldest prosthetic body part, British researchers said Friday.
The fake toe, which is made of wood and leather and is currently on display at the Cairo Museum in Egypt, dates from between 1000 and 600 B.C.
Researchers at Manchester University in north-west England hope to prove it was used to help someone who had lost their original big toe to walk.
If they do, it could mean that prosthetic body parts were in use up to 700 years earlier than was previously thought.
The oldest known prosthesis is a bronze Roman leg dating from about 300 B.C. which was kept at the Royal College of Surgeons in London but was destroyed during a German bombing raid in the Second World War.
A second false big toe, which is on display at the British Museum, will also be tested by scientists in Manchester.
“If either one is functional, it may be interesting to manufacture it with modern materials and trial it for use on people with missing toes,” said Jacky Finch, a researcher working on the study.
She added that the Cairo toe is the most likely to have been a prosthesis, because it shows signs of wear and is attached to a “well-healed” amputation site.
The London toe, by contrast, does not bend and is therefore more likely to have been cosmetic, she said.
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July 7, 2007
This is why I go Vegetarian.
Dinner guest finds host’s wife, son in freezer
Sat Jul 7, 2007 10:28 PM ET
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A Belgian man appeared in court on Friday after a woman at his dinner party found the bodies of his wife and stepson in the freezer as she put away the leftovers, prosecutors said.
The woman went to the police after discovering the 46-year-old woman and her 11-year-old son and officers arrested the man in the town of Verviers, near Liege in east Belgium, on Wednesday.
“She went to the freezer and that is what she saw. She then alerted the police,” said Georges Lahaye of the local public prosecutors’ office. Prosecutors want the suspect, aged 43, to be remanded in custody to allow more time for an investigation into the deaths.
Lahaye said the suspect had not made a confession. He added that the couple argued a lot.