11 Quick Fixes For Your Household Things

Dry Cutting Board

Revive your board by gently warming a bottle of pure mineral oil (available at drugstores) in a bowl of hot water, then wiping the oil onto the surface with a soft cloth. Wipe off the excess four to six hours later.

Stuck Sliding Windows

A little silicone spray lubricant (sold at hardware stores) will grease the skids. Spray it onto a rag, then wipe along the tracks, whether they’re metal, wood, or plastic.

Flattened Down Cushions

Put them outside in the sun for a few hours, flipping them halfway through. (Be careful―leaving them out too long may fade the fabric.) The sun will help evaporate the moisture that gets into the filling over time, and the cushions should plump up nicely.

Dirty Decanter

Fill the decanter halfway with hot water, a few drops of liquid dishwashing soap, two tablespoons of white vinegar, and a cup of uncooked rice. Swirl the rice around for a few minutes to remove the residue, rinse with hot water, and air-dry.

Tangled Extension Cords

Cowgirls and sailors alike know the benefits of storing ropes neatly coiled. Follow their lead and keep extension cords tangle-free and contained inside a large plastic bucket when they’re not in use.

Peeling Wallpaper

With a knife, smear wallpaper paste onto a piece of writing paper. Rub the paper against the underside of the peeling section. Press the wallpaper against the wall. Slide the writing paper out and smooth away bubbles with a clean cloth.

Worn Caning

A little sagging over time is natural but reversible. To tighten caning back up, use a sponge to wet the underside with warm water. Let dry slowly overnight. Repeat if necessary.

Dusty Chandelier

Allow the fixture to cool. Wear a pair of white cotton gloves―one dry, one dampened with glass cleaner. (For crystal, use one part rubbing alcohol to three parts distilled water.) Wipe each prism with the damp glove, then the dry one.

Hard-to-Remove Decals

Spray the decals and the surrounding areas with WD-40, lifting the edges to get underneath, if possible. Let sit, then gently scrape away the decal with the edge of a credit card. Degrease the tub with liquid dishwashing soap.

Hard-to-Remove Light Bulb

Press the center of a foot-long strip of duct tape onto the middle of the bulb. Fold each loose end in half so it sticks onto itself. Gripping each end between your thumb and index finger, give a counterclockwise twist to loosen the bulb.

Stained Tub

Combine equal amounts of cream of tartar and baking soda with enough lemon juice to make a paste. Rub the mixture into the stain with your fingers or a soft cloth. Let sit for a half hour, then rinse well with water.

(Source: http://shopping.yahoo.com/articles/yshoppingarticles/825/12-quick-fixes-for-your-household-things/)

What Makes Them Beautiful?

One Direction at the Brit Awards 2012.

X Factor boyband One Direction's debut single 'What Makes You Beautiful' has been named Best British Single at the 2012 BRIT Awards.

The reality TV five-piece, who came third in the 2010 series of the ITV show rose to massive success following their stint on the talent show, causing mass hysteria among their young, mostly female fans wherever they travelled, who they dedicated the award to. The single reached No.1 in September 2011.

One Direction are a British-Irish boy band consisting of members Niall Horan , Zayn Malik , Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson. They finished third on the seventh series of The X Factor. Following The X Factor, the group signed a record contract with Sony Music subsidiary Syco Records.Their second single, "Gotta Be You", was released on 13 November 2011, which peaked at number three.

Source: http://www.brits.co.uk

Sent off With Style.

For the Ga tribe in coastal Ghana, funerals are a time of mourning, but also of celebration. The Ga people believe that when their loved ones die, they move on into another life -- and the Ga make sure they do so in style. They honor their dead with brightly colored coffins that celebrate the way they lived.

The coffins are designed to represent an aspect of the dead person's life -- such as a car if they were a driver, a fish if their livelihood was the sea -- or a sewing machine for a seamstress. They might also symbolize a vice -- such as a bottle of beer or a cigarette.

Ablade Glover, an artist who works with the carpenters, says the coffin acts as a home in the afterlife, so it must be beautiful. But he laments that after putting so much time into creating the coffin, it gets hidden underground. 

"By the end of the day, they are going to bury this thing, which has taken so much time, so much energy?" he says.

A cigarette-shaped coffin is carried in a funeral procession in the Ghanaian capital, Accra. Relatives wanted to honor the dead man's love of smoking and his cigarette business 

Shoe Coffin: Prizes for an imaginative coffin vary between five and six million Cedis (about 500 to 600 US dollars). 

Pineapple coffin : sweet death? 

Fish Coffin: Young carpenters carry a coffin shaped in the form of a fish over the main road in Teshie. 

Coca Cola Coffin: Young carpenters open a coffin shaped in the form of a Coca Cola bottle in Teshie, a suburb of Accra January 22, 2004 

Many other patterns that are available.

Benz Coffin: Affordable when dead: For about 30 years Ghana has earned a special reputation for the world's most colorful and imaginative coffins for their dead. 

Beer Bottle Coffin. 

Bid farewell with style!

Nature's Spectacular Phenomena

It is stated that "during the early 19th century, some of the best scientific minds of the period believed that the aurora was caused by the reflection of sunlight from tiny ice crystals suspended high in the atmosphere." It has only been in fairly recent years that these phenomena have been satisfactorily explained and applied to the aurora.

Colorful Aurora Borealis in Finland

Auroras are actually caused by solar flares and they look like beautiful curtains of shimmering light. They are called Northern Lights if they are near the North Pole. They are called Southern lights if they are near the South Pole. 

Northern Lights in Alaska 

So, what is so special about the northern lights that people go out of their way to plan specific aurora borealis vacations? Imagine looking up to the sky and seeing the multi-colored ribbons of light dance across the sky. It would be like being in a fantasy land. No wonder people even take 'aurora borealis vacations' to witness these miracles of nature. 

Northern Lights in Canada 

10 of the most best places to see these Aurora Borealis are:

1. Alaska: View Northern Lights in the U.S.
2. Denmark: Visit Remote Norwegian Sea Islands
3. Scotland: Watch the Sky for a Weather Break
4. Canada: Go North of the Border for Great Views
5. Greenland: Experience Great Auroras All Over
6. Finland: Listen for Your Aurora Alarm
7. Iceland: Explore Beyond Reyjavik's City Lights
8. Norway: Observe Polar Night and Polar Lights
9. Russia: Brave the Arctic Cold for Arctic Lights
10. Sweden: Learn about Beautiful Blue Holes

Northern Lights in Iceland 

Every traveler's life list should include viewing the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis since they are one of the most beautiful things nature has made. 

Beautiful Aurora Borealis

by Lei Wah Mon

Sources : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
             : http://www.destination360.com/

Model of Communication

Communication, like anything else, can be studied in order to find out exactly how it works. This can be done is real life or it can be done in a more 'academic' level. On one hand, you would think that we all understand what communication is well enough to talk about it meaningfully, since we all do it from a very young age. On the other hand, personal experiences show that people get very easily confused about the communication that occurs in the real world.

A very well-known model of communication developed by Shannon and Weaver (1949) will be the prototypical example of a transmissive model of communication; a model which reduces communication to the process of 'transmitting information'. Shannon and Weaver's model is one which is, in John Fiske's words, 'widely accepted as one of the main seeds out of which Communication Studies has grown'. 

Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver were not social scientists but engineers, who developed a model of communication which was intended to assist in developing a mathematical theory of communication. Shannon and Weaver's work proved valuable for communication engineers in dealing with such issues as the capacity of various communication channels in 'bits per second'. However, these directions are not our concern here. The problem is that some commentators have claimed that Shannon and Weaver's model has a much wider application to human communication than a purely technical one.

A Standard Communication Model

Shannon and Weaver's original model consisted of five elements:

1. An information source, which produces a message.
2. A transmitter, which encodes the message into signals.
3. A channel, to which signals are adapted for transmission.
4. A receiver, which 'decodes' (reconstructs) the message from the signal.
5. A destination, where the message arrives.

Shannon and Weaver argued that there were three levels of problems of communication:

• A The technical problem: how accurately can the message be transmitted?
• B The semantic problem: how precisely is the meaning 'conveyed'?
• C The effectiveness problem: how effectively does the received meaning affect behaviour?

Shannon and Weaver somewhat naively assumed that sorting out Level A problems would lead to improvements at the other levels.

Communication can be modelled as a set of connections along which messages flow from a sender to a receiver on some medium. A given interaction may require several such connections to model; even a simple web request requires two connections (one from the person requesting the page, one to return the page to that person). We observe that only humans communicate. 

We also note that we either must accept this as true, or give up any hope of having a rational system of ethics that can actually claim something is ethical or unethical.

Mankind's Food Chain May Become A Loop.

Mankind has come up with all sorts of ideas for new meat sources from cloned animals to chowing down on insects, but this idea may be the most outlandish yet.

The Tokyo Sewage service in Japan serves over 13 million people over approximately a 2,200 square kilometer area. It approached Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, with an unusual problem -- it had too much "sewer mud" (also known as human excrement).

It turns out human excrement is a breeding ground for scores of bacteria. So Mr. Ikeda cooked up an unusual solution -- make food out of the feces.

Professor Mitsuyuki Ikeda inspects his feces "meat"

 The first step is to cook the bacteria, killing them, and to extract their proteins via separation techniques according to Yahoo News . Soy protein is added to enhance the flavor. The meat mixture travels to a "reaction enhancer" (likely a chemical reactor of some sort) where it turns into a textured "meat" and is then extrude through an "exploder".

The delicious "steak" is even finished with red food color to give it a comforting hue. Mr. Ikeda claims that in initial testing people found the feces steak to taste somewhat like beef.

Mr. Ikeda is afraid the main obstacle to deploying excrement meat to the masses is the "psychological barrier." He states, "I admit that few people would be keen to eat it knowing its made of human excrement."

Indeed, the concept of "fake" meat alone is hard for some to swallow. Taco Bell was recently sued when diners discovered that its beef mixed "fake meat" filers with real meat.

Fresh "steak" shoots out the exploder

 How much would the "meat" cost? Mr. Ikeda comments, "As far as the cost is concerned, because at the moment it includes the cost of research our artificial meat is 10 to 20 times more expensive than normal meat.  But once the research is complete and it's put on the market, we'll probably be able to price it at roughly the same level as normal meat."

The new "meat" is also healthier than traditional meat as it’s an ideal mix of 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids and 9% minerals. The small fat content, in particular makes the feces steaks healthier than their animal counterpart.

The new meat would also cut down on the greenhouse gas emissions, which traditional livestock produce. In that regard it could even earn "carbon credits" helping its price to be cheaper than animal-derived meat.

The idea may sound crazy, but consider that Japan is no stranger to fine meat products. Its Kobe region beef is renowned by connoisseurs worldwide for it's delicious flavor.

And as the band Pink Floyd famously sang, "If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?!

The researchers say the meat is delicious and tastes like beef. It is colored with red food coloring to give it a pleasing tone

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