Police near Cincinnati, Ohio arrested and charged an 89-year-old woman after she refused to return a neighbor’s football that ended up in her yard.
I’m not claiming this is literally good news, but I wanted to get your thoughts on the story. (I can’t post videos in the Forum yet, otherwise I would have put it there for discussion!)
Once shunned as a brain-rotting activity, video games are now winning over many teachers of teenage students as a way to inspire kids to learn: Games are a way to develop 21st century skills, such as collaborative problem solving, multitasking, and networking.
The Urban Arts Academy started four years ago as a Saturday program to give young people in the notorious Benning Park community opportunities to express themselves creatively through hip-hop. Now it is a full-time program that has become a catalyst to change lives. (Full report in the WashingtonPost.com)
The close encounter between an Italian airline pilot and a flying object is one of many reported UFO sightings among 19 files that Britain’s National Archives posted Monday to the Web.
While the 1,500-page batch of documents debunks a host of UFO sightings filed between 1986 to 1992, some of them, like the near-miss with Air Alitalia remain unexplained.
More files can be viewed at the National Archives here: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos.
(READ the story in the Chicago Tribune)
Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered an efficient way to produce hydrogen power using biowaste like municipal sewage. The innovative process uses 75% less energy than the traditional method of producing hydrogen, and can be done at a much lower cost.
The new approach could utilize several types of biowaste, including manure, wood waste, or sewage, to produce hydrogen at a much lower cost than the traditional “electrolysis” technology, making it attractive for use in hydrogen fuel cells that could power the non-polluting automobiles of the future.
Your pocketbook, your bank account, even your job and home may be caught up in the sweeping panic, but that doesn’t mean you have to be swept along as well.
In order to survive the fast changing, complex and worrying world of finance, you need to realize that there are sound principles to follow on both the financial side and emotional side that will likely allow you to do much better than those who give in to fear and panic or make rash moves with their retirement accounts.
Here are some tips for navigating the the new financial reality.
On the Finance side:
On the Emotional side:
You have probably heard advice against trying to be a market timer. What is “market timing?” Market timers are people who hope they can sell at the absolute highs and buy at the absolute lows. A financial advisor once suggested to me that for the average individual investor, trading your own account and trying to predict market moves is a bit like putting the average person on the street inside Yankee Stadium and asking them to hit a major league fast ball out of the park. Most would be lucky just to hit the ball at all!
On the practical side, if your 401 (k) has been slammed like just about everyone else’s, about the worst thing you could do would be to panic and withdraw those funds. Why? Most people who are withdrawing their retirement funds are putting them in cash, or other “safe” places, not unlike the mattress. The problem is that you have to sell the underlying securities or mutual funds in order to move to cash. Clearly, those securities and mutual funds are selling at depressed prices right how.
If your plan is to buy back later, when things are better, you certainly will be able to do so. However, let’s say you originally bought into your mutual fund at $100 per unit. It is now down roughly 35%, so you sell for $65, guaranteeing a loss of $35. Now you park it in cash somewhere, maybe earning 3-4%, and you wait for the market to turn.
By the time you buy back in, you may wind up paying, say, $85 for that same share you sold for $65. So, now you have lost the original $35, and you also missed the $20 upside move. That means you missed out on $55 of value!
Here’s a related scenario: let’s say you are someone who contributes monthly to your 401 (k), adding a little bit each month. You may be tempted to stop contributing, because you want your money to be “safe.”
Why is this a bad idea? Well, if you are contributing each pay period right now, you are buying those mutual funds at “nicely” depressed prices. So what happens when they rebound? Those shares you bought at lower prices move up and become worth more – much more than you are going to make in a 3-4% cash return scenario.
If you can be patient, and follow the second piece of advice which follows, you will probably do much better than those who panic and make rash moves with their retirement accounts.
The press is full of stories with lead lines about crashes, recessions, depressions, meltdowns, bubbles bursting, and panic. While there is no question that we are going through a period of big swings and those swings are likely to be with us for a while, you don’t have to get caught up in the emotion of it and wind up becoming volatile yourself.
In fact, if you do let your emotions swing with the rise and fall of the markets, you may become part of the problem you are trying so hard to avoid. How is that?
The more you tell yourself that something is scary, the more some part of you listens and starts to produce scary feelings to go along with what you are telling yourself. Last week, I wrote about this with the notion that energy follows thought. The primary problem with negative feelings is that, well, you feel them. Right there in your stomach, or wherever your fear feelings show up.
Once you feel them, they become very real. If you keep reminding yourself that you are in the midst of a meltdown, financial crisis, etc, the feelings may become so strong that you just have to do something. The growing sense of panic may lead to the decision to exit the market, park your money somewhere “safe” and you then wind up becoming victim to your own choices to behave like a market timer. And, even if you are on the sidelines, you may still wind up feeling scared! 
And now you have the double whammy of probably missing upside moves as well as still being scared.
You can find out more about Russell Bishop at www.lessonsinthekeyoflife.com.
The author of Lessons in the Key of Life, Russell is an Educational Psychologis, professional life coach and management consultant, based in Santa Barbara California. (A version of this article was originally posted on HuffingtonPost.com)
The European Professional Football Leagues joined the UN Food and Agriculture Organization this week to launch a campaign to raise funds and awareness for world hunger.
Professional Football Against Hunger brings together former Italian football star Roberto Baggio and other famous names in European football with the Ministers of Sport from Austria, Italy, Spain and representatives from seven Members of the European Professional Football Leagues (EPFL).
Make way for a new electronic newspaper, explains British engineer Dean Baker. There’s no paper – though it’s as light as a magazine. It is an electronic device coming to market next year that looks just like a large mouse pad. (BBC News w. video)
CPR can triple survival rates, but research has shown many people do chest compressions too slowly, or are reluctant to do it at all, because they are unsure about the proper rhythm. Now, doctors have found the Bee Gees 1977 disco classic “Stayin’ Alive” provides an ideal beat to follow. (Full report at Reuters News)
A range of new technologies is being installed at a pioneering carbon-neutral farm in the central region of Umbria as part of an experiment to cut its CO2 emissions to zero over the course of the next year. (BBC News) Thanks to Elizabeth for submitting the link.
At a white tie event in NYC last night, the two presidential candidates poked fun at themselves and each other at the Al Smith Foundation Charity Gala. To say it is sublime to see these tough opponents laughing and delivering hilarious commentary about the campaign with only two weeks left before an election is an understatement. Watch and be uplifted! (Full comedy roasts be each candidate below)
From the time I can remember, I believed in positive thinking bringing positive results. I knew there was something missing though, because just thinking about it wouldn’t necessarily make it happen. I already used visualization in sports — teamed with positive thinking — to become a very good 4-sport athlete. As I got older, I realized the missing ingredient to make the Law work for me was taking action.
Losing almost 200 pounds, overcoming type-2 diabetes and enjoying the best health of his life were the only reasons one man needed to continue on a raw-food diet that includes copious quantities of “green smoothies,” blended cocktails of raw leafy greens, fruit and water. His dramatic transformation has convinced 170 Rogue Valley residents that they, too, can benefit from a raw food diet during a six-week “challenge.” (Southern Oregon’s Mail Tribune)
The border city of Brownsville, where nearly all students come from low-income Hispanic families and where 4 in 10 are not native English speakers, has managed to make huge strides in closing achievement gaps, boosting SAT scores, as well as the number of students who take the college entrance exam. The school district this week received $1 million as the winner of the 2008 Broad Prize for Urban Education. The prize money is in the form of college scholarships for graduating seniors next spring.
The charitable arm of UPS this week announced five grants totaling more than $1 million to support a variety of environmental programs, including funds for planting trees, conservation, youth education and volunteerism. The grants reflect the establishment of environmental stewardship as a new focus area by The UPS Foundation.
Monkeys were able to overcome wrist paralysis with an experimental device that might lead to new treatments for patients with stroke and spinal cord injury. Remarkably, the research at the University of Washington found the monkeys regained use of paralyzed muscles by learning to control the activity of just a single brain cell. (Associated Press report via WTOP NEWS)
When most people think of farms, they think flat, endless fields of corn or wheat in the heartland of America. Former professional basketball player Will Allen thinks of community centers that opt to grow their own food to cut costs and, maybe later, farming skyscrapers. . . Such vision has earned Allen a $500,000 “genius grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to continue and expand his efforts.
Five zoos have been able to stave off likely extinction since 1998, but for a change, nature gave a bit of a break to one of the nation’s most endangered species — the Mississippi gopher frog.
The small number left in the wild — fewer than 100 adults — has swelled this year after 181 tadpoles survived, parasite and pond level, to join the others in the forest. (Associate Press story on Physorg.com)
How could you not cry watching this joyous reunion between a soldier and his dogs.
Instead of a recession, the artist and poet SARK wishes we would see ourselves as being on a “money recess!” Here is an essay she wrote in 1990 called, How To Relax About Money. Try calling her 24-hour inspirational phone-line if you need more wise words to create “succulent living”… (415) 546-3742.
Her new book, Juicy Pens Thirsty Paper, is for sale
