Mindconnection eNL, 2004-04-04

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In this issue:

Product Highlights
Brainpower tip
Time tip
Daylight Wasting Time

Finance tip
Security tips
Health tip/Fitness tip
Thought for the day

Free bonus:$125 shopping spree. (Some folks might really like it).

1. Product Highlights

Practical Math

Why is math so hard for so many people? Mostly it's because they were taught it the wrong way. Math is easy, once you understand how it works and how to apply it.

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The methods used in this course were also used to teach children who were struggling with two-digit addition. After one summer with these methods, the children were able to perform algebraic and trigonometric operations without paper or calculator.

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2. Brainpower tip

Try to separate your feelings from your observations. Too often, we infer things that aren't really there. In so doing, we arrive at wrong conclusions. For example, your boss comments that you messed up on an assignment. Many of us immediately get defensive about this, inferring that the boss was saying we are incompetent--when all the boss really said was "You messed up on this assignment."

Real brainpower comes into play when you can set aside feelings of defensiveness and look for where you can improve. Acknowledge the input, then ask for an explanation and suggestions. Make it clear you want to improve.

If you are defensive, you give the message "I don't want to improve." And that's the message that jostles in the boss' brain at review time.

But if you go the other route, your boss feels justified and you learn something. If the boss is clearly wrong, first seek out your boss' input. Then, explain why you disagree. But, don't argue. If your boss can't see your viewpoint, just say you'll deliver what the boss wants but you don't agree with it. Do so in a pleasant manner, and document the discussion.

Most of the time, you will discover that taking the approach described here makes you look--and become--smarter.

3. Time tip

Even with today's "Do Not Call" lists, we are still getting calls from telemarketers. Sure, it's not the 47 calls per day we used to get. But, it's still annoying. These people will eventually leave you alone if you make it not worth their while to call. Below are some methods various people have told me they use. You may not want to actually do some of these, but I guess it's the thought that counts.

You might waste some time reading these, but then again, just one of these could save you hours of telemarketer harassment each year....

Simply hang up.
Pretend you are hard of hearing. Ask them to repeat everything, then mangle what they tell you. If, for example, they say they are with the Sheriff's Association, say, "I don't know any Sheri across the ocean. Who is this, anyhow?"
Say, "Very funny, Ben. I know that's you. Hey, this gag is getting old." No matter what they say, insist you think this is a prank. They will eventually hang up.
Keep saying, "I love it when you talk dirty to me" every time they ask you a question.
Say, "Can I take your name and number and call you back?"
Repeatedly shout, "Did I win? Did I win? Oh my God, I can't believe I've won! I listen to your show all the time!"
Make fart noises into the phone, then cough.
Make fart noises into the phone, then say, "Uh-oh. That was a wet one."
Set the phone down about a foot away from you. Holler at it, and tell the caller to speak up. Keep doing this, and they'll be shouting at their end, too. This will disrupt all the other telemarketers in their office.
Put them on hold and don't come back.
Say, "Oh, thank God this is a telemarketer. I'm having an affair and my neighbor is supposed to call me when my (husband/wife) pulls in the driveway. Things were just getting interesting, here. Call me back in 10 minutes, would you?"
If you have a cordless, walk to the nearest toilet, hold the phone next to it, and flush it.
If you have a dog that barks shrilly, get the dog to bark into the phone.
Say, "My parrot wants to tell you hi." Then, screech into the phone as loudly as you can.
When they come on the line and completely mangle your name, say nothing. If they don't get the hint, calmly say, "Sir. You have reached a funeral home. I believe you have the wrong number."
When they come on the line and completely mangle your name, say you're being held prisoner and you don't know where you are.
When they come on the line and completely mangle your name, say, "I was sleeping. I have to perform a transplant operation later tonight when the donor organs arrive. Now due to a lack of rest, I might screw it up and cause the patient to die. I hope you feel good about calling me and waking me up." Then, hang up.
When they come on the line and completely mangle your name, pretend you are "mentally challenged." Say things like, "Do you like the color blue? I like the color blue." And do it over and over again until they hang up.
When they come on the line and completely mangle your name, say, "Look, I'm trying to rob this place. Can you call back later?"
When they come on the line and completely mangle your name, tell them you are just the babysitter.
When they come on the line and completely mangle your name, ask them to repeat it. Keep doing this, even if they get it right. When they sound completely frazzled, say something like, "This is the Joe Brown residence. You must have the wrong number."
When they come on the line and completely mangle your name, tell them you are in room 201 of the Motel 6, and ask how they reached you at your room.
When they come on the line and completely mangle your name, say, "What size pizza did you want?" Pretend you are a pizza joint and tell them to quit making prank calls.
Interrupt them in their opening spiel and tell them you have only 3 months to live.
Interrupt them in their opening spiel and tell them the IRS has assigned you enormous taxes you can't possibly pay, and they won't explain why.
Interrupt them in their opening spiel and tell them, "You don't know who you're talking to. I may already be a winner in the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes." Then hang up.
Interrupt them in their opening spiel and say, "Excuse me. I really want to talk to you. I need to get rid of my mother on the other line. She's whining about her cancer again." Then, press some buttons on your phone just to annoy the caller, hit the switchhook, wait, then hit the switchhook again. Come back to the phone and say, "OK, where where we?" As soon as they start talking, interrupt and say, "Let me get rid of this other caller." Come back and say, "It was a telemarketer." As their spiel progresses, do this another time or two. When they ask you for money, start talking about how wonderful their cause is. Then, say, "Hold just a second." Come back and say, "That was my father. My mother just died. Now, where were we again?" If they ask for any money, scream at them for being heartless SOBs!
Tell them you are a medium and you see dark clouds hanging over them. "I think you must have made somebody very angry. I see three people holding you down. Wait. There's a fourth person. He has a baseball bat. Do you know someone who wears has a small tattoo on his wrist?" Then shout, "He's swinging the bat I can't watch! The pain must be horrendous!"
Ask for the person's name and social security number. Keep arguing that it's a requirement for anyone to talk to you on the phone. If they're stupid enough to give it to you, tell them you are reporting them to the FBI. Otherwise, keep arguing until they hang up.
Tell them you're the local mob boss and "I'm going to find out how you got this number. Then, I'm going to find you. Then, you're going to wish you'd never called me." Then, say nothing. If they keep talking, wait a couple of minutes and say, "That's all I needed to trace the call. Have a good last meal with your family tonight." Be careful not to make a direct threat, though--use phrases with double meanings so you can deny everything.
Cough and sneeze into the phone repeatedly.
Hack like you're trying to create the world's largest goober.
Start coughing, then pretend you are throwing up.
Start coughing, then pretend you are having a cardiac arrest.
Start coughing, then say, "Oh, no. I completely lost control of my bowels. Just keep talking while I clean this up."
Scream as loud as you can, and say, "He's got a knife! Oh my God, I'm bleeding! Call 911! Help me! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

In addition to providing great entertainment, use of these tactics will get you off the lists of telemarketers. However, their use could get you onto other lists that are worse.

4. Daylight Wasting Time

How are you feeling, today? If you are feeling a bit groggy or jet-lagged after moving your clock an hour forward, you are just like the millions of other Americans who will endure higher rates of industrial accidents and car accidents over the next three weeks. You have to wonder what kinds of drugs our Congress is on to put us through this semi-annual exercise in stupidity. But, wait--not all 50 states punish their residents with this. Arizona, for example, takes the high road.

Today, I got up at the same time but had an extra hour before being able to enjoy daylight. And we call this loss of daylight a "savings." I suppose it's also a "savings" for the millions of people who live on the western edges of their time zones and are kept up an hour later by sunlight well past bedtime.

If anything, we should set the clocks the other direction. OK, enough of my rant.

If you enjoy this twice a year torture, great. But, if you don't enjoy it or the additional deaths it causes, contact your state legislators and ask them why they intentionally inflict jet lag and economic damage on their constituents and why they aren't fixing the problem. If enough of these people hear from enough of us, they will see that people really don't want to keep going through this and they will follow the lead of states like Arizona.

5. Finance tip

We all know the Internal Revenue Code is an unmitigated disaster. The last four IRS Commissioners have said so publicly. This particular piece of insanity is 11,000 pages long.

What many people don't realize is that the #1 cause of job exportation from the USA (sorry, our non-USA readers will just have to bear with me, here) is excess federal regulation. Consider, for example, that the index alone for the Code of Federal Regulations is, at 10,000+ pages, nearly as large as the Internal Revenue Code. If you don't think that is driving businesses to locate outside the USA, then consider this:

You can look stand in Port Huron, MI, and look across the Belle River into Sarnia, Ontario and look at Dow Chemical plants as far as the eye can see. Those plants have jobs. Canadians work in those plants. Why are they in Canada? Because the US EPA couldn't settle for "good" but got so overbearing the companies just moved less than a mile to get away from them.
You can stand in El Paso, TX, and look across the Rio Grande River at the brown cloud of smog wafting your way from Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. Why is that factory there, spewing out pollution into the air of the USA? Because the EPA had its head up its butt.

Similarly, the overly tight policies of the horrendous Clinton years actually increased pollution in the USA and world-wide.

If you want to improve the planet and reduce the massive migration of jobs from the USA, write to your CONgressman and senators to back off on all these regulations. When the regulatory overhead in the USA is 15 times what it is in, say, India, what do you think employers are going to do?

What is amazing to me is that the "pro-labor" regulations the Democrats have passed are the primary reason for job loss among the unions that support that party, but the unions continue to support them anyhow! And today, we have the Republicans with the unconstitutional Homeland Security making us take our shoes off at airports--and that's just the tip of that particular iceberg.

While we don't need laissez-faire, we do need more common sense applied to regulation.

The number two cause of job loss is the way celebrity CEOs are pillaging our corporations. In 2002, Lou Gerstner personally took 1/3 of IBM's profits. Did you notice IBM had lots of layoffs that year and the next? And they are now outsourcing to India?

Let's get our legislators to stop making it so expensive to hire us. And let's get them to hold corporate board members personally accountable for the outright theft that is going on.

As your income has so much to do with your financial health, this particular issue is vital for you to act upon if you care about your finances. The more Congress bans jobs in the USA, the less bright your future is. Ditto as Congress ignores the rampant theft going on at so many corporations.

If we don't prevail upon them to stop in, nobody will.

Identify your Congressional rep: http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Identify your Senators:
http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html

Senator (name)
Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

6. Security tip

So, you have an alarm system from ADT or some other company. Do you feel secure with that? Let's look at what happens:

Scenario one. Burglar walks up to your phone box outside and snips the wires. No more alarm.

Scenario two: Burglar walks up to your phone box outside, sees your phone wires are inside metal wireway, and curses you for making it impossible to cut the wires.

Scenario three: Burglar doesn't check for an alarm, enters house. Alarm goes off. Burglar realizes s/he has only 15 minutes until the police arrive from the doughnut shop. Burglar realizes the homeowner is now also awake, so makes a pre-emptive strike. The 911 operator hears you scream your last words. Your kids are in the next room, and their door slowly opens....

Scenario four: Burglar doesn't check for an alarm, enters house. Alarm goes off. Burglar realizes s/he has only 15 minutes until the police arrive from the doughnut shop. Burglar realizes the homeowner is now also awake, so attempts a pre-emptive strike--but you are armed. The 911 operator hears you tell burglar to put down the knife and get on the floor. Your kids are in the next room, and their door slowly opens. You tell them it's alright and to stay in their room.

7. Health tip/Fitness tips

Alfalfa Complex

With spring here, flowers are the only thing in bloom. Allergies are also blossoming! I discovered a little secret about 20 years ago to helping me deal with my severe allergies. It's Shaklee's Alfalfa Complex. What you get is a concentrated dose of the nutrients your body needs from dark green leafy vegetables.

Alfalfa roots burrow deep into the earth to reach minerals that are inaccessible to most other plants. Shaklee Alfalfa contains trace amounts of a wide range of vitamins and minerals.

No longer offered.

Don't be fooled into thinking those cheap alfalfa tablets at your local K-Mart are the same thing. Shaklee has very strict requirements for their growers, and they use only premium quality alfalfa, grown in California with no fungicides, bacteriosides, synthetic hormones, growth regulators, or chemicals. In other words, Shaklee doesn't use the cheap crap that is no better for you than what comes out a horse's hind end. They use the good stuff that helps you stay healthy.

Besides reducing allergy problems, what is alfalfa good for?

Good source of calcium. Essential for strong bones, proper nerve function, weight control, and sleep.
Excellent source "green." Aids greatly in abating allergies, aids in digestion, cleanses colon, provides essential macronutrients, improves breath.
Good source of fiber. Provides additional colon cleansing, improves regularity, reduces cancer risk.
Low in calories.

Racehorses eat alfalfa. Their bodies are lean and strong. You can draw your own conclusions.

8. Thought for the Day

Do you think politicians will eventually fix the system, with no input from you? Hmm. Then, you'll have to explain how the got so far off base to begin with. If you want a better world, you will have to speak up. See Item 5 above.

Wishing you the best,

Mark Lamendola
Mindconnection

Authorship

The views expressed in this e-newsletter are generally not shared by criminals, zombies, or brainwashed individuals.

Except where noted, this e-newsletter is entirely the work of Mark Lamendola. Anything presented as fact can be independently verified. Often, sources are given; but where not given, they are readily available to anyone who makes the effort.

Mark provides information from either research or his own areas of established expertise. Sometimes, what appears to be a personal opinion is the only possibility when applying sound logic--reason it out before judging! (That said, some personal opinions do appear on occasion).

The purpose of this publication is to inform and empower its readers (and save you money!).

Personal note from Mark: I value each and every one of you, and I hope that shows in the diligent effort I put into writing this e-newsletter. Thank you for being a faithful reader.

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