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Sunday, December 22, 2013

Christmas symbolism: Mistletoe

If you really sit and think about some of the traditions we have then you will realize how random some of them seem.  Christmas is one of those traditional things that most people do not question because we often times get free stuff. This short series of articles will explain a few of the major traditions revolving around Christmas and why they are the way they are.

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Why do we kiss under the mistletoe?
The word mistletoe essentially means “poop on a stick” by some translations, but more accurately, I believe it to mean “magic stick”.  Mistletoe spreads like many other plants by sticking to birds, and it is pollinated by insects.  None of this gives much insight to kissing underneath it during Christmas. We will need to go back in time to find out more.
Like many of the traditions involving Christmas mistletoe traces its holiday significance to ancient Rome.  The story starts even further back and, oddly enough, in Norse mythology.  I'm not going to get into the details, but essentially Loki(Yes, the bad guy from The Avengers) tricked another god to use mistletoe to kill the god that made all nature.  After he died the dead gods mother cursed mistletoe to not be able to grow by itself and that is why it is parasitic.(S)
Mistletoe was viewed in ancient times as an aphrodisiac.  This does not mean that going outside and chewing on the twig will solve your ED issues.  Mistletoe in various regions is poisonous and can kill humans. In Europe some herbalist can brew a specific type into a tea and claim it has healing and arousal properties.
Its ability to remain green as the host tree lost its leaves mystified ancients.  There is another story that says a man was told to use mistletoe to travel to the afterlife to accomplish a task.  The original story could have been to warn people that this plant will kill you thus sending you to the afterlife. Instead it was revered.  It made its way into Saturnalia being a mystical plant with mystical properties.
In Saturnalia fertility and abundance were important. People were most likely farmers; farmers want an abundant harvest. Farmers also prefer to have large families to help tend the farm thus making fertility important. In true Roman decadence they would celebrate fertility with much more than kissing underneath the magical mistletoe. Mistletoe is also most noticeable in the winter making it fit with its significance the date of Christmas.


More on Christmas :
Date
Carols
Poinsetta
Nativity 


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Thursday, December 19, 2013

Christmas symbolism: The Date

If you really sit and think about some of the traditions we have then you will realize how random some of them seem.  Christmas is one of those traditional things that most people do not question because we often times get free stuff. This short series of articles will explain a few of the major traditions revolving around Christmas and why they are the way they are.





Why December for Christmas?
No one claims that December was the month Jesus was born. But the 25th is surprisingly close to the winter solstice which is the 21st. The date coincides with the Roman festival Saturnalia.  It typically started on the 17th and lasted seven days.  Much of how we celebrate Christmas comes from Saturnalia.
Saturn was the god of agriculture.  In ancient Rome agriculture gave an empire the ability to be wealthy. If they had a surplus of food it was not costly and people could pursue other skills that would be useful to a growing empire.  A decadent display in typical Roman carnality was required to have a good harvest.
Saturnalia was a celebrated event after Rome removed it from their calendar.  And many European pagan religions had some connection to the winter solstice.  The celebrations ranged from gift giving to "fertility celebrations" under the mistletoe. Once Catholicism came into power in Europe they needed a replacement for all of these splintered pagan celebrations.  The Catholic church in order to satisfy people's need for a big year end celebration established Christmas. The church incorporated many of the traditions of pagan religions, and everyone was happy. In those days, religion was more of a control measure than a belief.  Countries would change religions depending on who ruled them.  Few people had a choice as to what god they believed in because for them it was literally not worth losing your head over.


How long is Christmas?

Catholics have an entire list of Christmas dates. The Vatican needed to include all the pagan religions in their festivities around their true religion sun worship. They range from New Years to February 2nd. Christmas was intended to be a feast that lasted many days. The first set of days is The Christmas Octave. It is the octave because it lasts for 8 days ending on January 1.
The next religious even after Christmas is Epiphany. Epiphany has changed its meaning over the years, but in general represents the major revelation moments in the life of Jesus. These events range from the three wisemen to the Nativity Feast(which originally was on Jan. 6th).
The last date is Candlemas it has a few other long descriptive names, but it essentially deals with the ending of the 40 days of Christmas which is common in the ancient Babylon religion sun worship that is Catholicism.


More on Christmas :
Mistletoe
Carols
Poinsettia
Nativity


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Monday, October 28, 2013

Lifestyle: Insurance tips



Insurance is expensive; especially when you have cars, a house, relocation expenses from a new job and other toys.  The more you have the higher your annual insurance bill becomes.  Each year insurance companies change their rates based on the market and state/federal regulations.  Taking some time to shop around will help you save hundreds of dollars annually.


The Process
To begin you should identify the major insurance companies available.  Examples of major insurance companies are Farmers Insurance, Allstate Insurance, Geico Insurance, Progressive Insurance, USAA Insurance (for those who serve/served in the military and their families), etc.  Once you have identified insurance companies you would like to obtain quotes from, gather your current insurance coverage documents to help you compare what the insurance companies are offering.


Call each insurance company to obtain quotes for your home (homeowners or renters insurance), auto and other insurance you may need (boat, motorcycle, even life insurance).  This process will take some time but will pay off in the end.  It is important to obtain quotes for each insurance type separately, plus the quote for insurance combined (as an example - obtain a quote for auto by itself, home by itself, then a combined quote for both together, which usually has a discount).


After you have obtained quotes from all of the companies, compare to your current coverage and what you are currently paying (be sure if you receive a lower quote that it still provides you with appropriate coverage).  Be careful to compare the combined quotes and individual quotes.  Just because you receive a discount for combining coverage, does not mean it will be the lowest priced coverage overall.  You may also notice it is much cheaper to have auto insurance with one company and home insurance with another (this is what happened in my case).


Until you reach a certain percentage of equity on your house, mortgage companies require an escrow balance to pay for insurance and property taxes.  The mortgage company takes a portion of each monthly mortgage payment and applies it to the escrow balance.  If you reduce the cost of your home insurance, you can call the mortgage company to have them recalculate the escrow balance, which will reduce your monthly mortgage payment.


Conclusion
I performed the steps above and was able to reduce my annual insurance cost by $900 (part of the savings helped to reduce my monthly mortgage payment by $50).  In addition, the companies I changed to actually provided more coverage than what I was previously receiving.  Your savings may be more or less depending on the value of what you own.  If you have not compared insurance rates in a few years, you may currently be overpaying.  


Take some time to save yourself some money. wii


-Jeff


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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Who is BBTV_AETN ?

I have seen a lot of YouTube videos being blocked in the US by an entity that is hard to track down with a simple Google search. The videos I have noticed are obviously copyrighted and have mainly been from the History Channel.

Simply typing the phrase gets you a completely false Yahoo Answers explanation that is kind of funny.  The Yahoo Answer said it was Arkansas Education Television Network and "They produce many shows and some are on the discovery channel or national geographic." This is not true.

The TRUE answer has two parts:
BBTV  is basically a watchdog that looks for copyrighted content and claims it for groups that hire them.  They are obviously not THAT good at their job.  For every blocked video you can find many more that are unblocked.

*AETN  is A&E Television Network.  So why is A&E worried about a History Channel video on YouTube?  A&E is a network of many channels one of which is the History Channel.

Most channels on cable fall under only a handful of networks or broadcasting companies. This is noticeable when cable or satellite providers have blackouts due to negotiations.  Back in August Time Warner dumped CBS, but it was not just the normal CBS channel.  CBS owns Showtime and a few other channels as well.  DirectTV had a similar dispute with Viacom, and AMC was dumped by Dish briefly.

A few of the major ones are:
*Viacom has BET, MTV and Comedy Central to name a few.
*FOX has its easily identified sports channels, SPEED and a few others.
*Turner has CNN, TBS, TNT and TruTV with many more.
and a few others(CBS, Discovery, etc...)

You will see that a majority of similar content is grouped under specific networks:
*Viacom = music
*Fox = sports
*Turner = "scripted reality"<--this just blows my mind...
and so on.

I hope this helped. If you have any questions be sure to leave it below. Be sure to check out the XcerptShow YouTube Channel and subscribe for original content that will never be "blocked in your country".  Look at other interesting articles on the site.  


Check out this random XS video.


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Sunday, October 13, 2013

Optical computing and the future



Light speed is really fast. Why doesn't someone make a computer driven by light? We have fiber optic cables to transfer data, and they make for cool Christmas trees too!  It would seem that the stuff in a computer is data. If you watch Star Trek their ships are entirely light based.  They are always working with  pieces of glass in engineering.  And Star Trek is a pretty good crystal ball for future devices(automatic sliding doors, talking to computers, tricorders, energy based weapons, touch screens, tablets, the iphone design, Halo weapon design, etc.). So, what is the hold up? Lets look at the benefits and problems of going optical and see what the future has in store.


Benefits
Higher bandwidth - You may hear of your local broadband internet provider saying that they upgraded to fiber rich connections.  They do that so they can increase their bandwidth. What is bandwidth? It allows you to download stuff faster. Need a further explanation? Leave a comment on the Facebook page or G+ .
Quantum Computing - Scientist have recently developed models of crystals capable of quantum computing.  The only problem is they have not built them. But they work in theory using light!  (S)
Power Consumption - Optical transmission has less of a thermal build up than electrical transmission. It means the energy put into creating the signal stays as the signal and does not get lost as heat.  Also, the energy required to transmit large amounts of data over long distances is greatly reduced by using an optical means.


Problems
Conversion - An issue for current electrical systems is that there would be a huge bottleneck converting the electrical signal back and forth to optical.  Think of it this way.  If each piece of data had to stop and pay a toll of .57 cents in exact change before transitioning from light to electron or electron to light, then that lane would move much more slowly than a normal highway.  A completely optical computer would be the smartest way to go about it.


Semiconductors - The tech world is in a debate whether optical or semiconductors would be a better fit for future applications. If you ask me, the decision has already been made. Watch Star Trek.  Those ships are all optical.  Semiconductors are amazing, but they need to be cooled.  


Future
Nature and oddly enough butterflies have helped unlock a lot of today's visual tech.  A lot of the screens in your TV or phones were developed from studying characteristics of butterflies. There is even low power screen technology emerging that was developed from butterflies. Why am I talking about butterflies so much?
The common theme here is the butterfly wings ability to reflect light.  There has been yet another breakthrough from butterflies dealing with optical properties. This one goes beyond the screen and affects our main subject of optical computing and, more importantly, quantum optical computing on the nanite level.  It is fascinating stuff, butterflies with naturally occurring nanostructures on their wings!  (S)


The possibilities with optical computing are phenomenal. The quantum based nanite tech that is just now being discovered opens up some amazing possibilities.  More computing power will help solve problems in all sorts of fields.  I guess the question should be made when will someone make a home optical nanite quantum computer.
I hope you liked reading this article.  How do you envision the future of optical computing?


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Monday, October 7, 2013

Lifestyle: Job search tips in a digital world



Searching for a job can be a stressful time, but there are many ways to help enhance your search.  Utilizing the tools available on the internet and resources available in your local community will help with the process.  Below are a few ideas to help your search and many ideas of places to look.


Local Community
Many communities have opportunities to help with your job search.  A simple internet search of your local area may help to find these resources.  For example:
  • There may be career fairs held with local companies in attendance.  Search your city and “career fair”, “job fair”, “career expo”, or similar naming types.
  • Some churches or local organizations provide job search assistance and classes.  Reaching out to people you know or checking church, local organization and college websites may help you locate these services.
  • Many local governments have career centers available to help.  Check online to see if your city/county has a career center in your area.


LinkedIn ( www.linkedin.com )
LinkedIn can be a powerful tool to highlight your work experience, make connections with other people you know, and search for jobs.  Recruiters use LinkedIn to search for people to fill jobs, so having a great profile helps to draw attention to your experience.  Within LinkedIn you can:
  • Make connections with other people you know or professionals in your field
  • Add a high level summary of your skills and experiences
  • Add your previous jobs and key responsibilities, which should be the same as your resume
  • Add specific skills and expertise key words (these help people searching for your skill set)
  • Add your education background
  • Search for jobs!  
  • And more


Internet
There are a many websites out there where companies post jobs, or certain websites that search the internet for job postings and compile them.  The following are some websites available:


Company Websites
Many companies have a “Careers” section, where you can learn about careers available at the company.  Identify companies you would like to work for (in your area or where you would be willing to move), then search to find their website.  Depending on how the company is set-up, you may be able to search for available jobs on the company website.  Many large companies have a job search option, with a way to create a profile you can use to apply for jobs you find on their site.  


Recruiters
There are many recruiting companies out there who can also help with your job search.  The recruiters help find you a job, may help with pre-interviewing, may help with resume review, etc.  For reputable recruiters, there is no cost to you; the recruiter’s fees are paid by the hiring company.  The following are some recruiting companies:



Conclusion
There are many resources readily available to help you find a job in the field you know or a field you may want to begin working.  Leveraging the power of these resources will help you find what you need quicker.

-Jeff



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Monday, September 30, 2013

Lifestyle: 3 Reasons YOU should be taking a fish oil



School of Fish
Fish Oil or more specifically the Omega 3’s in fish oil, have a whole host of benefits.  What we know about fish oil is substantial.  What we do not know could be even better. Here are a few of the many reasons you should be taking a fish oil.  Check it out and do not forget to comment.


Diving In
Heart Health - From heart disease to cholesterol to blood pressure fish oil has many benefits for the heart.(S) Fish Oil helps reduce blockages and prevent new ones from happening. Heart health is not something you want to try and catch up on. It is best to regulate and control heart health to avoid falling over dead from a life of neglect. It is best to start fish oil while you are healthy.  


Joint Inflammation - Active people or people with joint pain and /or morning stiffness could benefit from the effects of fish oil.(S) Runners have been taking fish oil to treat low level joint inflammation for years. Runners put a lot of impact strain on their joints.  Be sure to check out Tech Times essential piece of running equipment.
Circulation - Fish Oil is reported to help circulation.  Fish oil contains DHA and EPA which are Omega 3’s.  These Omegas are antioxidants which improve the elasticity of the vessel walls.  Increased elasticity reduces hemorrhages in the vessel wall.  These hemorrhages are directly linked to heart attacks and strokes in the form of hemorrhagic strokes.


Reeling it in  
These are just a few of the more commonly accepted reasons.  There are a whole myriad of auxiliary benefits.  Studies have shown that fish oil can even be used to treat ADHD in children(S).  It may seem like a haughty claim, but it will only work in certain cases where the subject is lacking DHA, and is retarding the development of their brains.  We know there is rarely a single silver bullet that will cure anything.  A full spectrum approach is suggested to achieve a healthy lifestyle.  Such as, taking a multivitamin along with fish oil and various other supplements as needed can help you live a more healthy fulfilled life.


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