It’s called parsing. It means that you cannot think of anyone or anything over 140 characters long. Each letter, number, punctuation point and space counts as a character. Twitter rules as well as destroys.

As you probably have heard around the coffee shop, Twitter is now being blamed for causing America to go mindless. Buy hey, come on, how can Twitter be responsible for the pre-Twitter status quo?

Blame is easy because Twitter is a newbie on the street corner of interactive Web 2.0 sites. One simply logs onto Twitter and it’s free expression as long as it’s 140 characters or less.

Now realistically it is not fair, though admittedly very convenient, to blame America’s total lack of attention and focus on Twitter. It’s not Twitter’s fault this is an election year.

Twitter is simply software that just sits there until one enters their 140 characters or less, regardless of who is running for President.

But it’s all worth it in the end because the Twitter community has a steady stream of new members; many of whom just might become your Followers. Followers are a type of fan and you are the Followed. So to speak or rather twitter.

The truth is, like many Web 2.0 unwritten “givens” if one Follows you, you should respectfully Follow them back.

Whether you actually do Follow or not is not really the point, it’s Web 2.0 courtesy to respond in kind. Be nice or leave.

Of course one should morally Follow back out of courtesy so that more folks don’t jump off the Golden Gate Bridge; imagine the trauma of Twitter rejection.

But just because one Follows, doesn’t actually mean one follows, in Twitter terms of course.

There’s no getting around it. How truly embarrassing when one goes back over the archives!

Some poor soul thinks they are carrying on some sort of dialogue with you and it’s clear you are taking off wherever you wish totally ignoring them and everything else: my gosh, what must they all be thinking? Or rather, twittering?

Are they somehow subliminally twittering with me? One eventually starts to wonder: what is really going down here?

But whatever you do, don’t lose control because you committed a downright ugly Twitter indiscretion. You know, something you are afraid might pop up on you-know-who’s Google search.

But if you do sin, one of the Twitter strategies for covering up your indiscretion is simply moving on. Or in other words, bury it in the archives.

Twittering away with goofy and silly nonsense does wonders for burying the Twitter where you called your boss an infected scab. And worse.

But no worries, in the end Twitter is all so stylishly superficial anyway. If there is any Twitter style that has emerged, it is the cutesy superficial style.

That is probably because every California valley girl twitters night and day but of course that’s how they talk as well as Twitter.

If you like Search, Twitter has a good search function but with billions of Twitters it’s like getting 10,000 hits on a search.

And since so many Twitters are twatter, it’s sort of like ‘what’s the point?’ One can only assume some sort of alternative self therapy involved with these Twitter search freaks…

Which seems strange since the original idea was for your friends to know what you are thinking and doing every minute of the day.

It seems even stranger if you are married, but remember you too were once young and for some reason were once interested in those sorts of things.

Besides, how important can your thoughts while doing laundry really be?

The answer is not really important at all and that best describes the real strength of Twitter; it’s artificial and not very important at all.

It’s contrived except for those that already think in Twitter. So for those folks relatively speaking, they are twittering but really not in Twitter terms of course.

If it sounds too complex it’s really not. Twittering requires only superficial usage of scattered parts of the brain and very quickly you will notice numerous Twitterers that do not express any sort of thought whatsoever.

They have a hope that someday a miracle will happen.

It’s sort of like “hi, I’m here trying to think, not much yet in terms of results but will keep on trying and keep you posted or rather twittered should I actually think something.”

That’s because recent research showed some 87% of we Twitterers have less than a two second attention span.

Call it parsing or call it scatterbrained but the reality is a society hooked on Twitter and Sudoku is a society with way too much free time on its hands. And that spells big trouble.

But on the upside, even though we really aren’t important, we can impress other unimportant people that we are in fact important because we Twitter.

In global terms, we should be thankful. Twitter is showing us a very important and revealing aspect of our humanity: a mind is not necessary for self expression. Or, as we say out here in California, “No es necessario!”

So go ahead, feel free to exercise your mindless self expression. Go ahead, Twitter me, I dare ya!

Jack Deal twitters under the avatar jackddeal as well as own JD Deal Local Search Marketing, Salinas and Santa Cruz, California 831-457-8806. Related articles, twitters, quotes, ideas, strategies, tactics and tips can be found at .

If you’ve wished for a healthy, fast-food breakfast at home, quick breads might be for you. Because they are leavened without yeast, you don’t have to wait around for them to rise. Because you can add fruit, nuts, whole grains and other good stuff to the many available recipes, quick breads are much healthier than commercially baked breads. According to a recipe I found on line, I could have fresh blueberry pecan muffins in less than thirty minutes. Yes, they are quick to fix; but there doesn’t seem to be a quick fix for laziness.

Laziness isn’t a word you’d associate with the 2008 Olympic swimming trials in Omaha, Nebraska; but controversy is. The controversy started at the 2000 Olympics when Australia’s Ian Thorpe won three gold medals and two silver medals wearing a full-body swimsuit. Now Speedo, having tested sixty fabrics in order to lower skin friction drag, has developed its full-body swimsuit – the LZR Racer. Thirty-eight world records have been broken by competitors wearing the LZR Racer since it was released in February. Non-wearers, who can’t keep up with swimsuit technology, are upset. One competitor is so upset he became involved with a different kind of suit – an anti-trust suit.

For people who have been wishing for an inexpensive, non-gas-guzzling car, there’s the Zap Xebra. It’s a converted motorcycle rickshaw that was developed in the U.S. and modified in China. This $12,000, all-electric vehicle goes 40 mph, gets 25 miles per charge and costs only $10-$12 per month to drive. That’s the good news. The bad news is this four-seated vehicle has a weight capacity of 303 lbs. That’s about 75 lbs. per passenger. If the Xebra is what you have wished for, maybe you should wish for light-hearted passengers too.

The Nielson Company estimates how many people – lighthearted or not – are watching television and advertisers pay for airtime based on those estimates. That’s the way it’s been since the 1940′s. Now, however, viewers have a choice of more than three hundred channels. Now there must be a better way. There is – the cable box. The cable box knows what every cable viewer is watching. When you combine that information with the information the supermarket computer knows when we use our club card, you get what advertisers want to know – payoff on return of investment. While Nielson is monitoring twelve thousand people, Big Brother will be monitoring us.

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To lose weight requires motivation and that can be harder to find than diet books or exercise machines. Experts suggest setting goals and rewarding yourself when you reach those goals. Other suggestions include going to exercise classes, working out with a partner and keeping an exercise log. Although one exercise guru suggested putting a before picture on the refrigerator, I think this quote from Margaret Thatcher would be more effective. “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it”. That’s how England’s prime minister dealt with the weight on her shoulders and it should work just as well for other parts of the body.

Sixty-four percent of American bodies are overweight and the other thirty-four percent think they know what to do about it. One blogger suggested overweight people should pay more for gas because extra pounds require more gas to move them. It seems the blogger didn’t understand that requiring more gas requires more to be purchased and thus overweight people already pay more for gas. It seems many solutions for weight problems come from lightweights.

Another solution may be grapefruit. According to a recent study, eating grapefruit before each meal will make it easier to lose weight. In the study ninety-one obese patients added grapefruit to their regular diets. This resulted in an average loss of four pounds in twelve weeks. The researchers attributed this to grapefruit having compounds that improve insulin resistance and that facilitate fat loss. When eight ounces of unsweetened grapefruit juice were substituted for the fruit, the average loss was three pounds in twelve weeks. If gin were added to the before-dinner grapefruit juice – making a greyhound cocktail – the loss would undoubtedly be less; but would we care as much?

Experts at the University of South Carolina say we should care about walking. They say walking an easy three miles per hour – which is twenty minutes per mile – for thirty minutes five times a week provides enough exercise to protect us cardiovascularly, as well as to increase our longevity. For those of us who don’t think we have an extra thirty minutes in our day, there’s plan B. The same results can be achieved by splitting the time into smaller segments – as long as each segment is at least ten minutes. Not being able to find three, ten-minute segments in our day would itself be a weighty problem.

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When I think environment, I think Smokey Bear. Smokey was created in 1944 by the Ad Council and has been part of the longest running public service campaign in U.S. history. In 1952, however, song writers Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins tried to change Smokey’s name. When they wrote their hit “Smokey The Bear”, they gave Smokey “The” for a middle name to improve the rhythm of their song. Obviously, they couldn’t deal with the bear facts.

Americans can’t deal with plastic bags. Plastic bags are everywhere – blowing in the wind, stuck in bushes, clogging roadside drains and filling bellies of sea turtles. Because these bags are cheap, sturdy and easy to store, they have taken over 80% of the grocery and convenience store market since being introduced in the 1970′s. Between 500 billion and a trillion bags are used worldwide every year. The bags that make it to landfills take hundreds of years to decompose; and as they decompose, toxins seep into the soils, lakes, rivers and oceans. Countries like Australia, South Africa and Ireland have taxed these bags. In fact, the tax in Ireland has caused a 95% reduction in the use of plastic bags. Is it just me or does a tax make good cents?

Plastic bottles are everywhere too – in parks, along roadsides and filling landfills – but that isn’t the worst part. Ninety percent of environmental damage from plastic water bottles occurs before they are opened. This is because those bottles leave a carbon footprint big enough to trip over. Twenty-nine billion plastic water bottles are used yearly in the U.S. Making those bottles requires nearly 900,000 tons of plastic, which is the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of crude oil. Pumping, processing, transporting and refrigerating the water increase the amount of oil used to 50 million barrels. That’s enough to run 3 million cars for a year. While we’re drinking water for our health, we’re killing the environment by ignoring facts that hold water.

Unfortunately, other environmental threats aren’t as obvious as plastic pollution. Nitrogen trifluoride is used to make flat screen televisions and microchips. Scientists say this gas has 17,000 times the global warming effect as carbon dioxide. Nitrogen trifluoride isn’t measured in the atmosphere and it isn’t regulated by international treaty. Nitrogen trifluoride is one of the unseen threats to our environment. What we need to see is change.

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You’ve just lived through your worst nightmare. Your home has been damaged by a fire. Now you have to begin the process of restoring your home to its previous condition. There are several steps to be taken to reach this goal. These actions must be implemented as quickly as possible because fire damage can become more serious in a very short time and the process of fire damage restoration is most effective if started as soon as possible.

Immediately contact your home owner’s insurance company and have an insurance adjuster assess the damage to your house and get clearance from your fire marshal to re-enter your home. You should then call a professional fire damage restoration company to come out and go over all the parts of the needed restoration with you. Keep in mind that there are many chemical reactions that occur from the fire damage to the different surfaces in your home and the resulting smoke and soot. Using the wrong solutions to clean these surfaces can lead to more chemical reactions which can harm the surfaces in your house. This is why it is wise to hire fire damage restoration professionals who are trained in the proper method of bringing your home back to its previous condition.

The first step in fire damage restoration is to board up any holes in the roof or walls of the dwelling to prevent further damage from occurring. The fire damage restoration specialists will then open windows and doors to get air circulating through-out the house. Since there is likely to be water damage as well, fans and other equipment will be brought in to dry-out your house as quickly as possible.

Next, the fire damage restoration specialists remove any of your belongings and household goods that are salvageable. In some cases, the fire damage restoration specialists have a restoration center where these things can be sanitized and deodorized. This saves you a lot of time and trouble.

The third step in the fire damage restoration process is the removal of soot particles from the structure and surfaces of your home. This is done by a combination of vacuuming, using dry cleaning sponges on latex painted ceilings and walls, and the use of appropriate cleaning detergents on counters, porcelain, and fixtures. This is an important step toward removing unhealthy particles from the air as well.

After removing the soot the fire damage restoration specialists apply sealants to the remaining framing and house structure to seal in the smoke odor. This helps to remove lingering odor from smoke damage. The vents and ducts of the furnace and air-conditioner are often treated with sealants as well because they are difficult to access with other cleaning methods.

The last step in the fire damage restoration process is to sanitize and remove any lingering odor or particles from the air. This is done with an odor counteractant such as a thermal fogger or ozone generator. After this step is finished your house should be restored to a livable condition.

Richard Barthallo’s life experiences has made him a legend with Orlando Water Damage Restorations. He has assisted and advised on many Orlando Water damagesituations.

American inventor La Marcus Adna Thompson was born in 1848 in a small town in Ohio. In spite of designing and building a butter churn at 12 and being a master carpenter at 17, he made his fortune manufacturing women’s hosiery. After a mental breakdown in the 1880′s, La Marcus sold his hosiery business and went back to his first love – inventing. What does a man who’s recovering from the ups and downs of mental illness invent? The roller coaster.

Another American ride is the car. A recent survey showed that Americans spend more time researching car purchases than home loans. This could be because we spend an average of $7,000 every year on car purchases and maintenance. If life gives you a lemon, you’re meant to turn it into lemonade. With the Lemon Law you can turn your car into the dealer or manufacturer. In 2005 62% of new lemons and 61% of used ones were replaced or repurchased – which proves the American Lemon Law is fruitful.

Mother’s Day is another American invention. It was invented by Anna Jarvis, a West Virginia woman, who was inspired by her community activist mother and wanted to create a memorial for all mothers. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson approved a resolution to make the second Sunday in May a national holiday, but the holiday didn’t turn out the way Anna wanted. She wanted children to express gratitude to their mothers in letters and to give their mothers white carnations as a symbol of the purity of a mother’s love. When children started giving their mothers commercial greeting cards instead, Anna started a petition to rescind Mother’s Day. She also protested at a Mother’s Day celebration in New York and was arrested for disturbing the peace. Anna never married and never had children. Being the mother of Mother’s Day might have been too mom – entous for her.

Although fireworks aren’t an American invention, that might change. Fireworks were originally invented by the Chinese in the 12th century and were used to scare away evil spirits. Although China is the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter of fireworks, it might not be able to export 120.000 tons to the U.S. next year. Fireworks that use compressed air instead of gun powder – and thus have less fumes and more accuracy – have been patented by the Walt Disney Company. You can’t get more American than that.

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In 1906 a 21-year-old inventor from Nova Scotia went to work in the basement of his sister’s home in New England. That’s where Alfred Fuller intended to make “the best products of their kind in the world” and that’s how he started the Fuller Brush Company. Since then the company has grown from the contents of one man’s sample case to more than 2,000 products for home, business and personal care. Fuller had 3 rules for his products: make them work, make them last and guarantee them no matter what. With rules like that I wish Alfred Fuller had taken a brush at cleaning up politics.

Alfred Fuller wasn’t the only basement inventor in the early 1900′s. In 1912 Leon Leonwood Bean set up shop in his brother’s basement in Freeport Maine. That’s where he invented his famous, waterproof, hunting boot. He sold that boot through a 4-page, mail-order catalog. Today L. L. Bean sends out more than 150 million catalogs and those catalogs sell a wide range of sporting equipment and clothes. In 2006 the company had revenue of $1.78 billion. That’s not bad for someone who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps.

1953 gave us the TV Dinner. It also gave Swanson & Sons a way to use its 270 tons of unsold, Thanksgiving turkey. Turkey, cornbread stuffing, peas and sweet potatoes were put in a compartmentalized, aluminum tray; and that tray was put in a cardboard box that looked like a TV. That dinner sold for 98 cents and had a first-year production estimate of 5,000. Swanson, however, sold more than 10 million in that time. Although Swanson stopped calling its invention TV Dinners in 1963, turkey remains its best seller – and Swanson is still talking turkey.

In 1975 Gary Dahl, a California advertising executive, was talking pets with some drinking buddies. Gary complained that cats and dogs were too expensive and too much work. He kiddingly suggested that a rock would be a perfect pet because it would be both cheap and easy to take care of. Gary Dahl sold over 5 million rocks at $3.95 each and became a multi-millionaire in 6 months. I helped Gary achieve that success. I was young, impressionable and trying to get over a fear of commitment. My Pet Rock stayed on my dresser for months. In fact, stay was the only command my Pet Rock ever understood.

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For years we have seen the lollipop lady as a figure head in traffic calming but is she really such a strong force, what will happen if you ignore her, perhaps a fate worst than death is in hand, are we perhaps all scared that she will jump in the air and throw each side of her shinny yellow coat to the side to unveil a large collection of uzzis then run after your car shooting repeatedly at you. Or perhaps not, well many have said that it is an offence to even ignore a lollipop lady.

But what kind of offence I ask, what is the punishment for doing this bad deed, many of them are paid by the government, so they must have been given some kind of power, some hired by the schools they claim to be helping, well who knows, the lollipop ladies seem to take pride in the fact that they can chalk down the number plates of the offending motorists on their lollipops, but isn’t that just the same as a waiter with a notepad or even a member of a “neighbourhood watch”.

But as the average amount of motorists increase, the traffic jams increase and the tension level amongst drivers hits new heights the lollipop lady keeps her cool and in-fact has recently been given the power to help anyone they so please across the road, thus the change from her lollipop saying “CHILDREN” to it now saying “STOP”.

But would a respectable middle aged man or indeed woman be happy to wait for the lollipop lady to stop traffic then perhaps skip in a childlike manner across the road as the elderly woman dressed like a traffic cone guides them to “safety”.

As if that wasn’t annoying enough they are now being given lollipops that have a camera inside of them so that they can take a picture of your car and send it to the police if you are an offender of “the law of the lollipop lady”, so next time an elderly lady dressed in yellow plastic clothing flashes you you better hope she is not a lollipop lady.

But is she really that bad? Am i making too much of this? Well really it is entirely up to you what kind of opinion you hold of the lollipop lady perhaps you are one yourself, does she really deserve the abuse that I as well as many people have thrown her or even his way (yes that’s right men can do that job to) some of us are happy to pull over to let he lollipop lady/man do the job that they were assigned to.

I know many of us see her proudly waving that stick an marching across the road and simply see an easy target, but is it really anger at her that leads us to have that little feeling of “lets go faster” but is it really caused by that little devil standing on our shoulders whispering rude words in our ear? or is it perhaps that we are all secretly in-fact jealous that she can just walk out into the middle of the road and stop traffic, I bet if you ever tried that it wouldn’t go down to well.

Or is it perhaps deeper, is it because of a deep childhood memory of not having one when you went to primary school or that the one at your primary school would always bee half way across the road by the time you appeared, or maybe she just annoys the crap out of you.

But is it so much of an inconvenience to you if you stop for a few moments to let her take the school children or indeed random people across the road, would you in-fact let them past anyway if she wasn’t their to stop you, is she/he really that bad?

I hope that this article has helped to push your opinion on lollipop ladies in the correct direction, and perhaps given you something to really think about today, as i clearly spent some time thinking about the subject myself.

So next time you’re pulled over by a person franticly waving a large yellow stick at you, stop and ponder for a moment on what you have just read, think about who their helping, think about what they can do if you don’t stop for them, then slam your foot down hard on the accelerator and hope to god that she hasn’t got a camera in that stick of hers.

Thanks for reading.

Patrick is an expert Research and Travel consultant. His current interest is in Birmingham Airport Parking, Birmingham Airparks.

Pets have therapeutic value. Although studies have shown that patting a dog or cat can lower blood pressure and reduce stress, dogs and cats aren’t allowed in most hospitals and nursing homes. Baby seals, however, are – if they’re robotic baby seals. A Japanese company has created Paro, a robotic seal to be used to comfort people with autism, dementia and other socially isolating problems. The six-pound robot is equipped with sensors that enable it to respond to light, sound and touch. Why doesn’t the robot look like a dog or cat? Because people have experience with those four-legged pets and have expectations a robot can’t meet. That’s why Paro got the seal of approval.

If dogs could give a seal of approval, they’d give it to Leona Helmsley for wanting her $8 billion fortune to be used for the care and welfare of canines. Because the real estate magnate’s wishes were presented in a mission statement for her estate, the estate’s trustees can use their discretion in distributing the money. In fact, the $12 million trust fund Ms. Helmsley left for her pet dog Trouble was reduced to $2 million by the discretion of a judge. What Trouble needs now is a legal beagle that would make a dogged attempt to retrieve the other $10 million.

Then there’s the story of Nuru, a stray, white terrier in Baghdad that became the pet of one of the American news bureaus. When the decision was made to have Nuru neutered, many of the Iraqi employees were horrified. In Iraq big families are considered a great achievement – this includes big canine families. For Iraqis an important part of having a dog is giving its puppies to family and friends. Instead of neutering Nuru, the veterinarian wanted to find the dog a mate. Even with American intervention, it seems that country is going to the dogs.

My son didn’t want a dog for a pet. He wanted two, male rats for a science fair project. His hypothesis was that the rat fed Coke and M&M’s would have higher cholesterol at the end of two months than the kibble-fed rat. The junk food rat did, as expected, have higher cholesterol – and considering how much Coke and M&M’s were used during the experiment, I’m sure my son did too. What surprised everyone, however, was that a high cholesterol diet caused a male rat to have babies.

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In my search for longevity I read The Blue Zones – Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest. According to this best seller, there are four areas of the world where lifestyles have enabled people to live to be over one hundred – Costa Rica, Okinawa, Sardinia and Loma Linda, California. The book’s author, Dan Buettner, attributes this longevity to things like diet, exercise, close relationships and personal mission statements. Although I’m sure he came to these conclusions after lengthy research, I attribute longevity to other things – like having a reliable babysitter.

Saturday night is my husband’s and my night out. It’s our night to remember why we got married in the first place. We enjoy seeing movies that are alphabetically more advanced than “G” and eating meals that are happy without being served with a toy. When a sitter cancels, are escape plan is canceled too. Not only are we disappointed, but so are the kids. They look forward to having the attention of someone who’s paid to pay attention to them. The solution to this parenting predicament is to cook the frozen pizza yourself, hand the TV remote to the kids and pay yourselves whatever you would have paid the sitter. This won’t change the stressful fact that you’re stuck at home, but it will change your perspective. You’ll get to profit from your experience.

Fear, another longevity-limiting stressor, is part of everyone’s experience; but who knew more people are afraid of thunderstorms than death? Who knew more people are afraid of vomit than cancer? According to other statistics, social situations frighten more people than flying, being in small places or being in high places. What most people are afraid of – most being 50% of women and 10 % of men – is spiders. Although this fear is called arachnophobia, we who have it think it should be called arachyesphobia.

Fear reduces longevity, but laughter promotes it. Laughter exercises muscles, stimulates the immune system and reduces stress. The bad news is that making people laugh doesn’t have these same life-extending benefits. After studying extensive sets of biographical data, researchers at Florida International University determined that people with the ability to generate laughter – such as clowns, comedians and joke writers – don’t live longer. In fact, entertainers in general don’t live as long as the average person. This must mean that making people laugh is not a laughing matter.

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