Do Croc Shoes let People Down on Escalators?

Sometimes, if you're the designer of a product and you can't think of a way to make something particularly stylish, you decide to go the opposite way - you try to make something that's clunky and homely-looking, but that kind of flaunts its unattractiveness. If you're lucky, like the Croc shoes you see everywhere these days on kids’ feet, you get a runaway hit. Croc shoes are about protecting your feet - about footwear that are friendly, cheap and safe. Well, that's not what the professional medical magazine injury prevention feels about these lurid looking foam clogs anymore.

Apparently, Croc shoes and escalators don't mix. Crocs are designed with a special nonslip construction; and apparently, this safety feature is what is causing a great many accidents involving children and escalators. In dozens of cases, children wearing crocs often find their shoes getting caught on an escalator step. There are so many of these accidents happening these days to children wearing Croc shoes, there is an entire blog dedicated to it called CrocsAccidents.

Of course, the makers of Cshoes feel that the problem is not with their product but with escalators. They feel escalators have for quite a while now been implicated in injuring children. They feel that the children who've had those accidents would have half them even without Croc shoes. It's just that the shoes are so popular, that any time anything happens that involves them, people like to drag them into the picture. There are tens of millions of crocs worn around the world. There seems no reason to believe that escalators, that have always been involved in accidents that come out of design flaws, should have a special thing for croc shoes. People have been getting their shoelaces caught in escalators forever.

Estimates place it at 25,000 American children under 18: that's how many are injured on escalators every 10 years or so. And that's not including accidents involving strollers. The only way to prevent footwear related injuries on escalators would be for parents to always keep a close eye on their children. Of all the accidents that occur on escalators every year, about 20% are from things like children's clothing and shoelaces getting caught between a step in the wall of the escalator. And these are usually far more dangerous than merely slipping and rolling down an escalator. Whenever you take a child on an escalator, make sure that you keep the child at the center of the escalator and not leaning over one side. You need to keep your child away from the dangerous parts of the machine.

Time for That Internet Explorer Nine Download. Because Your 9 Will Really Shine

Internet Explorer, the world's most popular browser (okay, the most widely used if not particularly popular) has been on version 8 for two years now. The latest, version 9 is finally here. Should the new Internet Explorer 9 download be a part of your plans for the future? What will you gain by it? How different could it be from the one you have already? Let's get down to it.

To begin with, if your operating system is anything other than Windows 7 or Windows Vista, you are pretty much out of luck as far as an Internet Explorer 9 download goes. It only works with the two most recent versions of Windows. One does wonder what Microsoft was thinking. Every other major browser supports multiple operating systems - right from Windows XP to Mac OS. Even Apple's Safari does this. Still, if you have a relatively new computer, you have an option in version 9.

The first thing you are likely notice about version 9 is how quickly it starts up, and then opens web pages. Even pages full of JavaScript with lots of interactivity features built in (like Facebook) will open right away (assuming of course that your computer and your Internet connection are up to it). It's just a big airy interface that version 9 has. Kind of like what Chrome has. No more do you have to worry about how all those toolbars take up an inch of space at the top of your screen. Come to think of it, they seem to have cut down even more space wastage than Chrome manages. Version 9 works well with HTML 5. When you go on websites like YouTube that offer an HTML 5 option to Flash, your 9 will really shine.

And then, perhaps the best reason to go forward with the Internet explorer 9 download is that it is safer. Version 9 comes with an ActiveX disabling switch. ActiveX is a standard that isn't really needed today. On almost any site, you can usually make do without it. You just need to turn it on when ActiveX is needed (like on YouTube).

So is everything rosy with version 9? Should you be an instant convert? There are problems, of course. To begin with, it doesn't support all of HTML 5; every virus-designing creep around the world will be gunning for the latest version of Internet Explorer; and of course, there is the uncomfortable feeling that Internet Explorer 9 is only playing catch-up with Chrome.

Is Local Food only Good for the Environment? Or could it be better for People Too?

If you get right down to the root of it, that movement that tries to promote the use of local food has always been about trying to help the environment and small-holding farmers. Buy from the supermarket chains, and you usually buy from major agricultural corporations that farm vast tracts of land intensively with genetically-modified seeds, massive quantities of pesticides and petroleum-based fertilizer. And that's not even including the way the farming corporations need to truck produce all over the country expending fuel and polluting the air. Buy local food, and you hand business to local farmers who have small farms that they are able to take care of with personal attention. They don't need to depend on pesticides and fertilizer all that much.

But is local food only good for the planet? What if it were to be better for your health as well? Certainly, that would convince a whole new constituency of the benefits of organic and local food. A grant has been made to a research team at the University of North Carolina; the goal given to them is finding out more information about what impact it has on public health for a community to abandon produce from large-scale farming and to move towards local food that's been grown no more than 100 miles away from anyone's home.

If people were to focus their entire diets on local food, they would, by requirement, need to give up processed foods. That itself would be a very healthy development. Not to mention, if you have to eat nothing but local food, you'll look out for variety as much as you can - and in that quest, you will have nowhere to turn but to new kinds of fruits and vegetables that you wouldn't ever have chosen before. By that measure, the local food movement has to be better for the public health. But what they're looking for in this study is more direct evidence.

The study’s going to take until the year 2013 to really come to any provable conclusions; whatever they find in the end, we will have a better understanding of what happens when we transition to farming practices that are healthier for the environment, that use less toxic material, and that produce fresher produce. The way America eats has a lot to say about our problem with a poor environment and our health problems. Half of all Americans live with at least one chronic disease like high blood pressure or diabetes. This didn't used to be the case before. A study to understand the way America treats its food could have a lot to contribute in helping America overcome its problems with obesity and malnutrition.

Putting a Recovery System in your Car for Lower Automobile Insurance Rates

How many cars do you think are stolen every year? The number has been falling of late; but on average, there were two cars stolen every minute. That amounts to a million cars every year. You need to be happy about that number, because it used to be much, much higher. Before you jump to the conclusion that this makes for some very good news, you probably want to know about another figure that's taken a serious hit - the number of cars recovered from thieves. Today, it's only about one in two stolen cars that is recovered by the police after a complaint by some unhappy owner. It's just a never-ending catch-me-if-you-can game. The manufacturers design some sophisticated antitheft system and advertise that your automobile insurance rates are going to improve dramatically once you install the system; and they do for a short time; until the car thieves figure out a way to defeat said high-tech system.

There happens to be something you can do to help your automobile insurance rates other than to install a theft prevention system. You could install a car recovery system. You could either go with something like OnStar that uses a cell phone connection and GPS among other things to help you locate a car after it's stolen, or you could go with something like LoJack.

This is a system that dispenses with the expensive cell phone connection and GPS. Instead, it uses simple shortwave radio. Any police unit near the car can pick up the signal. Once a police officer receives the message and receives a full stolen car report for more information on what the car looks like, he can locate the car with a visual check in the neighborhood. LoJack signals can be read by any police car within a 5-mile radius. OnStar actually has a pretty cool feature: once it realizes that the car is being stolen, it begins to slow the car down, helping it stopped gently. Once the car stops OnStar turns the car off and makes it impossible to start again. So which one should you buy - the simple shortwave radio based LoJack or the high-tech OnStar?

OnStar will work as long as it gets a cellular signal and a GPS signal and as long as it's actually being driven and not towed. The thief who is tows the car he steals can simply disconnect the battery and completely disable OnStar. LoJack does not depend on the car's battery. It has its own. And the device can be hidden in any number of places in the car. Better still, a shortwave signal gets to a lot of places that a GPS signal or cellular signal never could. Perhaps the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

LoJack boasts a spectacular success rate with nine out of ten stolen cars always found. OnStar has a slightly less impressive success rate of eight out of ten cars. Going with one of these two recovery systems will certainly help your automobile insurance rates. If you're really interested in not having your car stolen in the first place, you should probably be more careful than the owners of lots of stolen cars. Never leave your car keys in your car. Make sure that you park your car in some place that's in plain sight of everyone. And make sure that you use simple means such as a Ravelco kit.

Wrestling Rankings Don't Always Tell the Whole Story

A few years ago, I attended a wrestling tournament that would likely pit the top two wrestlers in the state in a particular weight class against each other. As it turned out, I did not get to see them go at it, because neither one of them reached the finals.

That was when I first realized that wrestling rankings don't always tell the whole story. While some of the wrestlers who were ranked lower certainly deserved their rankings, some of them also deserved to be higher.

I saw one kid out of El Paso that was supposed to be one of the top two wrestlers in the state. All I had heard about all season was how he was going to be there in the end, wrestling for a state championship.

As it turned out, the kid was smoked by another wrestler from Dallas who was sixth in the state in the wrestling rankings. I could not believe that it was such a one-sided match, so I decided to investigate a little.

What I soon discovered was that the kid from El Paso had a very impressive season record, but had only faced a few truly difficult opponents. Of those tougher opponents, he had lost to two of them.

The wrestler from Dallas had lost five times that season, but they were to other top-ranked wrestlers, and some of them were from a private school that produces some of the better wrestlers in the country.

The wrestling rankings were accurate in some regards, as the youngsters who took third and fourth place at the meet were probably the third- and fourth-best wrestlers in the state, but one of the young men who wrestled for the tournament championship came into the competition ranked seventh overall in the state, and in some blog posts I read, nobody really gave him much of a chance.

His story was that he also played football for a school that had a very long run in the playoffs, so he did not have as many matches as some of the other wrestlers, and I guess his standing suffered because of that.

I did get to see a very good match in the championship, just not the one that I was expecting. It is kind of funny how things seem to turn out that way a lot.

I do believe that wrestling rankings serve a purpose in that they provide a frame of reference for the average wrestling fan to follow and provide some type of idea about who people can expect to see at the state tournament. They also provide records of those wrestlers and key match-ups, typically, but just like with most things in life, I really believe that they are to be taken with a grain of salt.

A New Engine to Revolutionize the World With

As far as the planet-conscious car buyer is concerned, there is almost no more sacred a choice in the car market than the hybrid. The problem with that view of things is that the hybrid, while it makes very clever use of a battery-driven motor so as to not have to use the engine at very low and inefficient speeds, does absolutely have to switch to the regular engine past 15mph. And that engine is a truly inefficient device – a century-old contraption that wastes 85% of the gas it consumes. All of that is about to change. Regular gas engines are about to go completely out of fashion. Welcome the new wave disk engine, a product of the automotive department at Michigan State.

The thing about the wave disk engine is that it isn't just a replacement for the engine of the regular car, which it of course, it is. It's that it's a replacement for the entire transmission of the car as well. A car powered by a wave disk engine would have no transmission, no pistons, and no cooling systems - nothing. This is the essential engine – a pure powertrain that is four times more efficient than regular gas engines. And what about emissions? Well, let's just leave it at saying that emissions from a wave disk engine would be 10% of what they are today coming from regular hybrid cars with regular gas engines.

So how does an engine combust gas without chambers and pistons? The new wave disk engine has a rotor that has a wavelike scroll that traps fuel in its peaks and troughs to burn. When the trapped fuel ignites, it transmits energy through shock waves. Such a vehicle would have an additional advantage in fuel savings over a regular car. It would be hundreds of pounds lighter than a conventional car - because it would have very few of the heavy space-hogging parts that a regular car does. Just imagine - to power a regular-sized car, you would need a wave disk engine that was no larger than a regular pressure cooker.

The basic technology in a wave disk system is actually more than a half-century old. The new design from Michigan State builds on the original and makes it a lot more efficient. One way in which it is more efficient is that it doesn't just a waste hot compressed air out the exhaust. It recycles it to use over and over again. The venture has netted a government grant of about $2.5 million. And they aim to produce a working model of car by the end of the year. These are exciting times then for the green movement.

Liposuction for Men

I have been overweight for most of my life, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that there's nothing good about this situation. I suffer from low self-esteem, have been the target of bullying, and have never had much of a social life outside the Internet. I've tried every kind of diet and exercise program imaginable, and have had numerous consultations with doctors. Nothing has ever worked. But I'm tired of being embarrassed about my weight and wasting my life by not engaging with other people. That's one of the reasons I'm currently researching liposuction for men.

Some people might think that only women would be interested in this type of procedure, but liposuction for men is becoming increasingly common. There's no longer a stigma attached to this surgery because we now know about the many major medical problems that could stem from being overweight. Liposuction for men isn't about being vain or taking shortcuts to weight loss. It's about getting a chance to start over and live a healthier life.

From the little bit I've read about liposuction for men, it sounds as though the procedure has become safer, cheaper, and more effective than it was just a few short years ago. Now there are far more specialists around that can perform the procedure, so I will have more of a choice when looking for a doctor. In addition, some types of liposuction for men might be covered by insurance. Most of the time, this would be considered a cosmetic or unnecessary surgery, but in some instances and under some policies, it might be covered. Obviously I'll need to check with my provider for specific details, but I think I'm going to move forward with the procedure either way.

I know that this will lead to drastic changes in my life, so I need to be prepared to deal with some of the issues that might surface. I recently read through some posts on a forum about liposuction for men, and was interested in the stories of guys that had had the surgery. Most of the stories were positive, but some folks experienced a bit of negative backlash because of the drastic changes in their bodies and lifestyles. They talked about friends or significant others leaving them, and about other unexpected problems. Frankly, I think if my few friends did that, they probably weren't true friends to begin with, but I will definitely prepare myself for the possibility of this kind of reaction.

Anyway, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that I need to move forward with my plan. I will keep reading about liposuction for men until I have a better understanding of what both the procedure and immediate aftermath entail, and then I'll consult with a doctor. I can't wait for the new me to emerge!

Did You Realize That Vacation Rentals Could Blow the Best Hotels Away?

One reason why Starbucks happens to be so popular is that people psychologically equate with luxury, being served something they would normally have to make for themselves. This is the reason too why people place so much value on a night spent dining out or time spent at a hotel. These kinds of experiences, while they don't cost that much, help people feel like they're millionaires. But then, there are people who find that saving a few hundred dollars here and there can make them feel like millionaires too; and taking this route actually leaves them with lots of money to spare. To people like these, vacation rentals can be a great alternative to the traditional hotel on a vacation.

For the most part, vacation rentals, a home or condo or anything else, can be terrific value. You get a whole house with a living room, a dining room, a kitchen and even a laundry service. At a time when eating out can end up costing even more than room rent at a traditional hotel, vacation rentals can be a great deal in the way they allow you to save money cooking in the provided kitchen. And of course, there isn't the hassle of taking small children out to eat and constantly being on the alert for bad behavior. Most rentals are homes that local people live in. Choosing vacation rentals over hotels can be a great opportunity to get to know the people of the place you are traveling to - be it in this country or another. Here are a few the best places you can turn to for great options in vacation rentals.

If you've never planned a hotel booking without a dozen TripAdvisor windows open at the same time, you're probably thinking about what service exists out there for vacation rentals. FlipKey is what you're looking for. FlipKey (you know, you flip your front door key to someone else when you happen to not be using your home) happens to be a TripAdvisor venture too, and they give you a choice of a hundred thousand homes across the world. Each home comes with all the ratings and reviews that you're used to on TripAdvisor.

HomeAway, another website that specializes in vacation rentals has twice as many homes across the world on its listings. If you're wondering about how difficult it must be to search among them, their search engine makes short work of the job, with every kind of filter you could imagine. They even offer you a kind of insurance policy for about $40. If the home you take out isn't as good as the description tells you it is, you get your money back.

Snoring Treatment that Works (with a Gym Membership)

Husbands and wives who can't get each other to stop snoring need to worry about a lot more than the mere nuisance value there is in all that snarling in the middle of the night. Three out of four people who snore, regularly suffer from sleep apnea - which is a condition where we stop breathing when we sleep. Not breathing is a dangerous thing, of course - we could die of a stroke or heart disease. No smoking treatment option actually works for most people. People who go so far as to get operated on for snoring, only find the solution isn't as promising as it seems starting out.

There is a regular piece of advice that snorers get about their sleeping position. Conventional wisdom says that if you sleep on your side and not on your back, you won't have a flaccid tongue sliding back to block most of your air passage. A relatively open air passage of the kind you get when you sleep on your side, they say, gets you snoring less. As these go in general, this snoring treatment does work for some people. But it's hardly some kind of universal cure.

The trouble is, snorers come in two kinds (not that it should make any difference to the other person in bed, because both kinds are loud). One kind of snorer snores no matter how he sleeps; the other snores only on his back. Only about 2% of all snorers find that the position they sleep in has anything to do with the rattling at the back of their throats.

Weight seems to have a lot to do with it. Only people who are really skinny benefit from positional sleeping advice. Heavier people are usually non-positional - it doesn't matter how they sleep, they always snore. So the whole positional sleeping idea does make some sense. Except that it doesn't do so directly. The logic that you need to adhere to then is that if you lose weight, you become a positional sleeper. And if you do become a positional sleeper, sleeping on your side is the best snoring treatment you could ask for. And that's the view seconded by the National Sleep Foundation. Not only does losing weight help you find a comfortable non-snoring position, but also in many cases, it drives away sleep apnea.

So there you have it - you'll need to lose weight to stop snoring. Weight-loss seems to just be the gift that keeps on giving.

Can you Tell the Difference between a Genuine Healthy Smile and a Fake One?

Do "smiling faces sometimes pretend to be your friend" as that old tune tells us? We have always known that, of course; but now, there's science that proves it. The said science comes from the Bangor University in the UK. The study took up something like three dozen subjects and they set them on the task of playing a strange kind of game. Each one of the subjects had to challenge opponents in a game that offered them a chance of winning money. The people they won the money from would offer them a healthy smile or a full but not entirely sincere smile. The researchers who designed the whole scene made it so that people were given a full healthy smile when they won very little money and an insincere smile when they won a lot. These study subjects needed to pick partners from among the people they won money from for the next stage of the game.

The researchers found that study subjects always unconsciously picked people to call their partners, who had offered them a proper healthy smile. They didn't seem to think much of how they had won a lot of money with people who had offered them an insincere smile. It didn't seem to matter to them that those who offered them an insincere smile happened to be more profitable people to play with.

So how do people tell when a smile isn't completely sincere? And more to the point, how do they get it right every time? Scientists seem to feel that laugh lines are where all the clues lie. These light wrinkles that appear around the corners of the eyes when we smile, usually only come into action when we're in the process of putting a healthy smile that is genuine. The muscles that surround the eyes that produce those wrinkles don't naturally spring into action for staged smiles.

That isn't the only clue that you unconsciously take in. The bit of skin above your eyelids, if you would notice them in a person with a genuine smile, tend to go down a bit. In a social smile, they don't. There are very few people who can actually pull off a smile that can manipulate those parts of the eyelids. You have to be an Oscar-winner to do that.

If you happen to be someone who has a party smile that's just for the benefit of the people around you, just remember - while those aren't as good as a genuine smile or genuine laughter, even these can be better for you than sullenness. While other people may be able to tell the difference between a genuine smile and a fake one, your heart can't. As far as your heart is concerned, a fake smile and fake laughter are happiness too. Happiness that can make it healthy.

Is a No Sugar Diet really in all of our Futures?

Sugar: The Bitter Truth - that's the name of the video that's turned into a viral hit on YouTube; it's been on for a year and a half now, and it's gained about 1 million views so far. This isn't "Charlie bit me" or anything entertaining like that. It's a lecture by a professor that goes on for a full hour and a half about the intricacies of the chemistry of sugar and the human body. A million views is pretty respectable if you think about it. The scientist who speaks on the video, is a medical expert on childhood obesity and he has a rather startling idea to promote - it's that sugar is a kind of slow poison - kind of like alcohol or tobacco. And a no sugar diet is to be preferred for a life free of diabetes or obesity.

Sugar is poison? Isn't that being a little dramatic? The professor uses the word poison a dozen times in the video; no, he doesn't believe he's exaggerating. Now there's just one thing left to find out - is he really on to something? While there are critics who believe that the professor is sadly mistaken, the New York Times in an article published recently certainly does find his views convincing. Might doctors really recommend a no-sugar diet for the world one day the way they recommend a no-tobacco lifestyle?

The thing is, the most sugar we're supposed to safely include in our diets each day is what you would find in half a can of regular soda - which would be a teaspoon of sugar or some other source of sweetness like high fructose corn syrup. Americans actually eat 75 pounds of sugar every year. The problem with sugar the way we eat it is that it hits our liver really quickly in a way that sends the liver into a kind of emergency mode. When it's hit with such high levels of sweetness as sugar is capable of without warning, the liver responds by trying to metabolize the sugar to turn it into fat that it stores right there within the organ. This state new makes us insulin resistant. And that leads to diabetes. That's the theory.

To call sugar a poison doesn't really mean that it damages your body after a single dose. It does damage your body after a couple of years of consumption. And that's what other toxic habits we have are capable of too. Alcohol and tobacco won't destroy your system in a few days. Over a period of time though, they certainly are capable of doing that. Researchers need to do far more work on the subject before they can actually recommended a no sugar diet; at this time though, this research includes the possibility that sugar causes cancer as well. Experts have been wondering for quite a while now what it is about the Western lifestyle that could have made cancer such a prevalent disease. It never used to be this prevalent 150 years ago. If medical research succeeds in finding positive proof of how sugar actually causes all these diseases, that should cause quite a revolution in the way we come to see our food.

Checking Out Your Local Pet Kennels

If your pets feel like your children to you, you want to know that they have the very best. Though you would like to each and every moment of the day with them, there are going to be some times when you can not take them with you no matter how badly you wish it were otherwise. Some people are lucky in that they have friends and family to help, but that is not always the case. There are great pet kennels out there that can give your pet a temporary home while you are away or while you can not care for them. Just make sure you check things out first so you know your precious pet is happy and healthy.

Pet kennels have been around for a long time, and some of them can be problematic. You should never assume there are problems with an established business in your area, but you should also not assume that everything is as it should be. Animals can not talk and tell you if they were not happy, if something bad happened, or if they were lonely while you were gone. Instead, you have to find out about the quality of the pet kennels you are considering so you make the best match possible between the owners and your pet. This is very important for the well-being of your beloved.

Never send your cats or dogs to stay in any pet kennels without visiting first on your own. You should be shown all areas of the kennel so that you can be sure each is up to your standards. You should look for cleanliness and space so that your pets can move around. It stands to reason that they will have a crate or cage of their own for when they are sleeping, but they do need to have exercise. If you don't see any area for running and playing in pet kennels, ask about exercise. Some walk the dogs many times a day, which can make up for some loss of space for short stays.

You also want to see that all areas of the pet kennels are clean. There is always going to be some animal smell in any place like this, but it should not be overwhelming. You should not see any dog or cat feces laying around. You should also see a well lit and pleasant area for your pets, along with enough staff to handle the pets that they are currently housing and caring for. You should also find out about veterinarian care in the event of an emergency. Some will call your veterinarian and some have one they use. Find out before choosing among your pet kennels and care options.

Pet kennels don't have to be palaces, but they do have to be clean, fun, and safe. You can not go on a vacation and worry about your pet. You may worry a little, as that is quite normal, but you should not fear that they are not safe. The last thing you need is to worry that your pet is being neglected or abused in pet kennels while you are out or away. Think of choosing a kennel like choosing a preschool for your child. Never settle for anything that makes you feel uneasy or that seems wrong. If your gut tells you there is a problem, there usually is – so heed that warning and move on.

Finding Out what the Best Credit Card Deal Is

If the credit card companies, when they put out their best credit card deals, really do wish for people to take advantage of them, wouldn't they make them easier to understand and not as unnecessarily complicated as they usually are? That's just a hurdle they place in your way, apparently, to make the hunt a bit more interesting. The rewards and points that you get, in general, you're allowed to redeem for stuff you can buy shopping, booking hotel rooms or buying travel tickets. Still, the credit card companies have practically no agreement over what kinds of terms and restrictions they should impose on how you redeem those points. As far as the credit card companies are concerned, apparently, the nonstandard rules and restrictions make things more fun for you. For instance, if you have a credit card that's co-branded with an airline or hotel, they give you more bonus points. But for the privilege, you have to pay a large annual fee. Before you can rejoice over the kinds of rewards you stand to get with any card, you do have to calculate if you end up getting enough rewards that the annual fee should be worth it. Travel rewards cards like the Capital One Venture have fewer rewards and no annual fee. It's enough to make tear your hair out finding out which the best credit card deals are.

Unless you have special behaviors to do with how you buy your travel needs, there's really no difference between one travel card and the next for most users. These programs only make financial sense if you happen to be a real frequent flyer or if you shop a lot. If you fly often and on a specific airline all the time, for instance, getting an airline co-branded product would make a lot of sense. If you happen to shop a lot, you'll find that shopping rewards cards don't lock you into any one airline or hotel chain. You can redeem them for any kind of travel need, usually, with any kind of vendor. In general, whatever kind of rewards program you choose, you'll need to travel least on six flights every year for it to actually pay.

Let's say that you are a prolific traveler. Picking up a United Mileage Plus Visa card may make a lot of sense. They have rewards programs with hundreds of stores, pharmacies, and hotels in addition to traveling on United Airlines. American has a program like this too. Still, the best credit card deal, if you are interested in rewards, may come not from the airline co-branded products but from the hotel products. These cards usually don't carry a fee. And redeeming your rewards can be much easier. A hotel rewards card happens often to be far more rewarding.

Perhaps the best credit card deals are in the travel credit cards market. Products like to Chase Sapphire card allow you to migrate your points between categories or even get cash back. And when you try to get a free airline seat, the card company actually buys a seat for you. Getting a free seat this way is nothing like it is with redeeming airline miles. There are no special seats set aside for you. This can make life a whole lot easier. So what if you earn fewer points? You have a far better time redeeming them.

The Reputation Small Business Tax Returns Have

If there is one thing that politicians consider sacrosanct it is the narrative that small businesses are the engine of the economy. Actually, it is a very comforting image; hard-working businessmen, with just a few employees, struggle heroically against all odds and give the country the economic foundation it needs. Whether or not small business in America is the engine of its growth, there certainly is one area it leads everyone in – under-declaring revenues on tax returns. While there has been quite an uproar in the press over how GE hasn't paid a dollar in taxes for its billions in revenue through clever manipulation of the rules, it hasn't been accused of cheating. The IRS is very clear about what it thinks about the tax returns small businesses file though - there is a shortfall of about $400 billion through outright fraud. Is that really big considering how much the government collects in taxes? You better believe it - it's close to 20%.

Small businesses cheat on their taxes in one of three popular ways: to begin with, there are many who simply don't file their tax returns; some actually file, but fill their tax returns with untruths; and then there are those who file and declare everything truthfully, but just don't pay up. The most worrying of all these ways that small businesses use to shirk their responsibilities happens to be the one where they just file the returns but lie all through. That accounts for 90% of the tax fraud that comes out of small businesses.

So how does the IRS actually put a number on this statistic? They took up about 45,000 tax returns to audit at random. And were they ever surprised at how much they found they were being stiffed. Before you begin to wonder if the only reason all these businesses are lying on their tax returns is that they have been burned by the recession, the IRS takes its numbers from before the recession in the years 2001 and 2006.. In fact, if you are a small business owner and you try to claim a loss on your tax return to get out of having to pay taxes, you'll find that any tax consultant will advise you that you might as well walk about with a sandwich board that says “audit me”. The IRS has found that three out of four small businesses that claim to have run losses over the past financial year have been lying.

Small business owners know that they stand a good chance of getting away because theirs is usually a cash business; the IRS has no real way of knowing how cash businesses have been doing over the past year. And they only have so much money to spend on audits. The IRS depends a little bit on using third-party credit card transaction verification. But other than this, there is very little they can do. It's just a part of being a free economy.

Fundraising for Non Profit gets Creative in a Recession Year

Almost never have people involved in fundraising for non profit organizations seem a time like the one we live in today. For as long as anyone can remember, American businesses and private citizens have always been generous in the way they supported nonprofits for what they favored. Each year that fundraisers have tried to raise money so far has without exception been better than the year that came before. Fundraisers remember how in the mid-80s, nonprofits experienced some terrible years. They thought they had left all that behind them until the financial crisis of 2008 arrived. Donations actually dropped 3% that year. After a couple of years living on donations that have been smaller and less generous, nearly 10% of the country's nonprofits risk shutting down this year. Volunteers who give their time to help raise funds for nonprofits have been growing desperate. Clearly, they can't spread out and ask for people for their generosity; that has clearly proven to not work. Instead, they are turning to finding ways to persuade existing donors to be more generous. They are branching out internationally and trying new ways - such as micro-donations instead of large ones for fewer people. Facebook fundraising for nonprofit is the latest thing. Things are finally beginning to look up now for the nonprofits; but they still have a long way to go.

One of the newer areas that fundraisers are looking at these days to make up for lost income is telemarketing. They just hire telemarketing agencies to do their cold calling and soliciting for them. Which happens to be a real shame; because the telemarketers come at a real cost. They get to keep 60 cents for every dollar they raise for the nonprofit. Of course, the nonprofits can't really mention this in their literature - it would look really awful. So they just try to hide this on their balance sheets by calling it something unexpected - like calling it program costs.

Fundraising for nonprofit can be kind of a science. While cold calling certainly is no science, a part of what fundraising volunteers do involves poring over databases to try to find out who the high net worth individuals are to approach. They buy these databases from firms that put them together based on who the high-rollers are. Anyone who owns a yacht, who owns a large parcel of real estate - these are the people usually feature on these databases. This practice does raise a few privacy issues too. But you have to understand that they do it for a good cause.

Other more regular methods of fundraising by nonprofit groups have recently come under criticism too. For instance, the good old box rattling method, where volunteers stand around traffic intersections asking motorists for a donation, while it can be very successful, can endanger the lives of overzealous volunteers when they venture out into traffic. In some places, methods as simple and as well-known as bake sales have come under criticism - for making kids fat.

Of course, there is no way to go about doing something as tough as funding a good cause, without doing anything controversial at all. Especially when times are as rough as they are today.

Have An Accident At Work?

Bad things happen in the workplace all the time. At times these are minor things that can be cleared up, but sometimes lives are changed forever. Whatever the case, no one is immune from an accident at work. No workplace is 100% safe. Some occupations are obviously more hazardous than others, but anyone could get hurt at work at any time. Do you know what to do if this were to happen to you? Some people don't know, and they blindly do what they are told afterward, which can mean you don't get the help or compensation that you deserve.

At the very least, you should be compensated for your lost wages and any medical bills you incur after an accident at work. This means you still get paid even though you can not work at that time, and if you have to see a doctor for your condition or injury, that should be covered by the company. Many workers are not aware that these basic things are due to them. You should be giving information when you start at any job. At the very least, if something happens and you go to a doctor, be sure to mention that it happened at work so there is no question later about any appointment.

A bad accident at work is not as common a as minor one, but they do happen. Hopefully you work for a company that will take care of you like they should, but this does not always happen. In fact, you never know what will happen if you get hurt. You should always keep a journal of what happened and what goes on each day, just in case you need it. Keep track of how you feel, your doctor's appointments, what is said to you by anyone in your company, and anything else that happens in regards to your accident.

One thing that should never happen after an accident at work is your dismissal. If you get fired because you got hurt at work and have to take doctor ordered time off, you have cause to find a lawyer right away. Though the rules on work place accidents may vary from state to state, you should have legal rights to keep your job until or if it is deemed that you can not work any longer for medical reasons. A lawyer may seem extreme, but if your life is changed, you have the right to be compensated for it. If the accident was due to negligence on their part, they may fire you to try to get rid of the problem. Don't let them get away with it.

Hopefully, you'll never have an accident at work, and if you do, hopefully your company will take care of you as they should. Just remember that it does not always happen that way. As long as you have made it clear from the start that this injury happened at work, and as long as you have kept track of events, you should have no trouble getting what is due you, even if you have to hire a lawyer to get it. Many will work for you with no fee until they recover money for you, so don't think you can't afford to call someone if you need assistance.

Buyer Beware: Does it Matter where you get your Credit Score?

For the most part, credit reports are completely free, while credit scores, those numbers that reflect all the goings-on on your credit reports, cost you about $15. Now most consumers aren't too happy paying this (note the popularity of the “free credit score” search on any search engine); but they still do. It gives them an important bit of insight into their financial future. If you've been one of those people who have always resented what you have to pay to get your credit score, you’ll be happy to know that you are not alone. There is a lawsuit that's been mounted that claims that people aren't getting their money's worth when they get a credit score.

Here's the thing: while there used to be just about four or five websites where you could get your credit score even a few years ago, today there are 25 (it would appear there are lots of businesses that have realized that getting people to pay $20 for practically no effort the business has to expend can be fun). Mention credit scores to any ordinary person they tend to think that it’s a single number - something you can't argue with. That isn't really true though; these 25 websites sell from a mix of seven different credit scores, each one calculated on a different formula of loan applications, credit applications and so on. The lawsuit mentioned before goes to how some companies try to sell you a credit score without telling you what exactly you’ll be getting.

The lawsuit (filed in California), is against Experian (or at least the credit score subsidiary of the credit reporting company) for how they allegedly try to deceive consumers. When you pay $15 to buy a PLUS score from them, they tell you that what you're getting is the credit score that lenders use to make up their minds whether you are worth their trust in the matter of a loan. And yet, if you put on your reading glasses (or at least magnify the font on your computer screen) and trace your finger through the interminable fine print, they claim that what they're selling you this score just for your own use; because they don't sell this for to lenders anymore. In short, here is Experian engaging in doubletalk for a few dollars.

The truth is, apparently, that lenders don't go by the credit score sold by any one (or two) companies. They go by hundreds of credit score calculating models that they have access to. And anyway, if you do want any one credit score to represent accurately (more or less) to you what the lenders try to look at, you'd be best off going by the FICO score (designed by the Fair Isaac Corporation).

So basically, when you get your credit score with any company that tries to sell you anything other than a FICO score, it is a purely imaginary number. And it's not worth your money. The difference between these scores can be no more than 50 points give or take. But that's all it takes to lose out on a lender’s favor.

Do you really Own that PS3 and the other Cool Electronic Gadgets you Own?

Buy a car, and no matter how high-tech it is, no one asks you to treat the car's internal design as some kind of intellectual property that doesn't belong to you. You are completely free to take it apart and modify it as you will. Buy one of several kinds of cool electronic gadgets, a videogame console, a smartphone, and the most you are allowed to do with it legally, is to use it for the purpose intended. Earlier this year Sony took hardware hackers to court - people like George Hotz - who published tips and tricks on a website on how to jailbreak the PlayStation 3 and play unauthorized games on the device. And Sony won. And then, they took the entire Fail0verflow hacker collective to court, all hundred hackers, for retrieving and publishing security codes that would allow anyone to run any kind of software (not just games) on the PlayStation. At first, the hackers involved were confident that radically restricted personal freedoms such as what is this lawsuit asks for would never get anywhere, especially in America (and especially when the courts allowed this kind of thing with smartphones). The big surprise was that not only did Sony win against all of these people, they are now asking to be compensated for whatever money they lost in game sales when people read those tips and tricks and stopped buying titles for the PlayStation 3.

Why do manufacturers want to keep you out of the cool electronic gadgets you paid good money to own? And if it's such a terrible blow to a company to have hackers do with their machines as they will, why do some other companies welcome having their products jailbroken by tech savvy enthusiasts? For instance, the same Sony that wants to keep you out of its PS3 wants very badly to have the developer community take control of its Move game controller. And Microsoft has opened up its Kinect motion sensing gaming controller device to developers as well. Of course, this isn't about anyone hacking into these devices. These companies are just opening their products up for third-party development.

And there are all kinds of wonderful new ways in which these cool electronic gadgets are being repurposed by developers. Take what researchers at a certain British University did to the Kinect, when they were allowed to mess with new kinds of software for it. They turned it into a sensor for a robot that they intended to use in dangerous places for rescue work. Their old robot couldn't even sense the space it was in a 3-D. And its sensor cost thousands of dollars. The robot equipped with a Kinect as its eyes is remarkably cheaper.

So is it fair for the manufacturers of these cool lelectronic gadgets to sometimes keep you out of the device you paid money to buy? The thing is, you only technically own the gadgets you buy. You might own the physical hardware; but the software that makes it run - the firmware, the basic operating system and everything that you use to repurpose the device or to run new software on it - belongs to the company. And the company doesn't want anyone doing anything with its software that could cost it in profits. Technically, it's a sound argument, even if intuitively, it might make little sense. Sony claims that if they allow people to make their own changes to the firmware, games played on the PS3 could conceivably be compromised and allow certain people to win by default. Those kinds of piracy situations would make video games in general, less enjoyable, they say.

Your Health Concerns

Don't make a mistake that could cost you your life. Everyone hates to take time out of their lives to go to a doctor, but if you don't go when you feel something is wrong, you could be taking your life into your own hands. Leaving your health concerns up to chance, or even worse, up to bad advice found online can have serious ramifications. Always think of your body as the one thing that will always be yours, and something that deserve attention when something feels off. You know your own body, and you know when something feels wrong, so take action when you know you should.

Your health concerns are things that often have little to no meaning at first, but some things are very sudden and very obvious. If you are short of breath, have sharp pains that come out of no where, or if you are feeling like you are going to pass out, don't waste your time wondering what is going on or searching the Internet for advice. Call for emergency help at once. You could be unable to make that call within minutes. Never mess with serious health concerns. You may go in and nothing is wrong, but when it comes to your life, it is far better to be wrong than to be dead.

For other health concerns, you may notice that there are subtle changes that affect how your body works and how you feel each day. You can look online for ideas, but remember that no article online can diagnose or heal you. You can find out what may be going on, but the final say is with your doctor. The symptoms of conditions like diabetes, Fibromyalgia, gout, and other serious but manageable conditions can be found online, but use them as a guide when you have health concerns. Do not try to treat yourself or you could cause serious damage to your health.

The same can be said for health concerns you have about your children, your spouse, your friends, or your family members. If you see something going on, there is great information online that may point to a few different things. You can use this to see if you think a visit to the doctor is in order, but don't take any action based on what you have found. You can think about your health concerns, look up information, and then print it out to share with the person of concern so that they can then decide that they may need to go in to see someone. They won't always, of course, but at least you have tried.

There are a lot of medical conditions that start off with very subtle signs and then become serious. The sooner you get in to see your doctor the sooner you can begin to understand your health concerns and what you can do to get better. Early detection is often the key to stopping and even curing some terminal illnesses. For those that have no cure, early intervention means a chance to prolong life and even better the quality of life. Some things are not serious unless they are ignored for a long time. Bring your health concerns to those that can help so you can remain happy and healthy for as long as possible.