Quote of the Day !

Few minds wear out; more rust out.
-- Christian Bovée

Ways to Pump Your Mind for Ideas

Here are some effective ways to pump your mind for ideas.

1. Set an idea quote to get as many ideas out as fast as possible
2. Feed Your Head - get out and get inspired by something
3. Create A brainbank for storing good ideas or creative concepts you notice
4. Capture Your Thoughts - Yes this means right them down so you don't forget them
5. Think Right - Analyze your problem and survey solutions from all angles

Dumbest Facebook quizzes ever!

By Helen A.S. Popkin

msnbc.com

updated 7:57 a.m. CT, Fri., Nov . 13, 2009

Helen A.S. Popkin

Unlike the immersive social network games making all the news and money these days, you don’t need any special skills to build a one-off Facebook quiz. And it shows. America’s favorite social networking site is chock full of homemade quizzes with the kind of egregious spelling and grammatical errors that would make your fifth-grade language arts teacher positively apoplectic.

“They are all pointless and dumb,” observes one disgruntled Facebook member. “I’m sure most are created by semi-literate, bored teens.” It’s a speculation shared by many. In fairness to semi-literate, bored teens everywhere, however, Facebook’s rising age demographic means it’s more than teens who are taking the tests/quizzes.

No need to hide your shame! Most of these quizzes are themed on the one subject we all find irresistible: Ourselves. Are we cheese? Which Brady Bunch brat would we be? Which plastic army guy are we? These personality tests provide the categorizing we all so desperately desire, squishing us into cozy little boxes. And while the questions may be crazy, the quizzes all fit into at least one of five categories. And here they are ...

What fictional and/or famous person (or persons) are you?
Alas, quizzes within this category are as close as most of us will ever get to being Princess Jasmine or sharing an attic room with our “sister,” Marcia.

Academics, please note: Standards and accuracy are rarely paramount. Regarding “Which historical couple are you,” Facebook user Laura Courtney reports, “I think I got Jackie and John Kennedy or something but a friend got Ross and Rachel! Ross and Rachel are a famous historical couple?”

What’s more, the results can haunt you. “I guess I answered all the correct answers, because it told me I was lying and pretending to be Chuck Norris and he was going to come kick my arse,” says “Are you Chuck Norris?” quiz-taker Anthony Polakos. “I'm still watching the door four months later.”

What non-human entity are you?
Weaker quizzes, such as “Are you cheese?” or “Are you a potato?” leave an opening for positive results as to whether you’re a human or say, a spud. “What tire fire are you?” takes for granted that you are, in fact, a tire fire, and clears away any doubt by telling you your eco-unfriendly specifics: "The 1983 7 million tire burn in Winchester, Va., for nine months." Mark Kaufmann recently learned about himself, "You like nostalgia. You're pretty good at polluting rivers with lead and arsenic. You may take 19 years to clean up but ultimately you are giving back to the community."

Same with the “What kind of dog are you,” of which there seems to be more variations than all the breeds within the American Kennel Club. “Apparently I'm a Rottweiler,” Pete Shove says he learned. “The questions made no sense, but I guess it's possible I'm SOME type of dog — after the quiz, I went outside, ate some grass, and threw up in the yard.”

What do you like?
There are the G-rated versions of these tests that help you figure out what you should absolutely already know. You know, like “What is your favorite color?” (Blue! No, yellow!)

But more than a few are of an adult nature, such as “What is your favorite sexual position?” “Come on!” complains Shannon Oakes, cutting to the chase. “What does a dumba** Facebook quiz know something about your sex life that you haven't already figured out?”

Sometimes the answers can be perplexing. “I rarely take quizzes, but couldn't resist ‘What's your animal love style?’ ” claims Christine Kroeger Jeffson. “It called me a pig. While it was undoubtedly dumb, I did get a good laugh out of it.”

So there’s that …

Where do you belong?
Race, creed or color, you name one and someone’s built a questionable quiz to determine if, or how much, of that race, creed or color you happen to be. Note, however, that the answers may not match what you see in the mirror. Despite spending her entire life faltering under the belief that she was Asian, an msnbc.com editor received a shock when, after taking a Facebook “How Asian are you?” quiz, she learned that she is, in fact, not at all!

Imagine Janine Boe's surprise upon learning the results from another quiz claiming to divine which of these United States she belongs. “It kept putting me in South Dakota, when I specifically noted in the answers that I loved the ocean,” Boe pointed out. “Oh wait! Maybe they are taking global warming into consideration!”

What does the future hold?
It is here that Facebook quizzes most resemble the notebook paper fortune tellers (aka “cootie catchers”) of our youth. There is certainly no shortage of quizzes that foretell the first initial of the person you’ll marry (including “Who from ‘Twilight’ will you marry?”), when you’ll have babies, how many babies you’ll have (umm … do vampires have babies?), and what clique your daughter will join (probably the one with the vampires).

 Then there are the quizzes that already know something about your miserable future and only need you to punch in a few multiple-choice responses to let you in on the rest. Why, the two-dimensional morbidity of “How” or “When will you die?”  and even “Are you dead?” pale in comparison to “How will you die from McDonalds?” or, for that matter, “Why will you be banned from Wal-Mart?”

(Note: “If you worked at Wal-Mart, what job would you have?” is not a prerequisite for taking the latter, but it can’t hurt!)

Friend Helen A.S. Popkin on Facebook, where a quiz claims she's “Disney Princess Mulan,” which is hooey! Everyone knows she's Tinkerbell! Follow her magic pixie dust on Twitter.

History of IQ Testing

 

History of Intelligence Testing

Among the first to investigate individual differences in mental ability was a British scientist, Sir Frances Galton, who compared people based on their awards and accomplishments. This research convinced him that intelligence was inherited and led to further studies which involved evaluating individual differences in reaction time and range and specificity of the senses, which have since been shown to correlate with academic success.

A French psychologist, Alfred Binet, developed a test to accurately predict academic success when the French government asked him to help them determine which children in the public schools would have difficulty with formal education. He, and his colleague, Theodore Simon, found that tests of practical knowledge, memory, reasoning, vocabulary, and problem solving were better predictors of school success than the sensory tests used by Galton. Subjects were asked to perform simple commands and gestures, repeat spoken numbers, name objects in pictures, define common words, tell how two objects are different, and define abstract terms. Similar items are used in today�s intelligence tests.
Assuming that children all follow the same pattern of development but develop at different rates, Binet and Simon created the concept of mental age, whereby, for example, a child of any age who scored as well as an average twelve-year-old was said to have a mental age of twelve.
Binet’s test was not widely used in France, but Henry Goddard, director of a school for mentally challenged students, brought it to the United States, translated it into English, and used it to test people for mental retardation. Lewis Terman, another American psychologist, adapted the test for use with adults, established new standards for average ability at each age, and called it the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, because of his affiliation with Stanford University.

Instead of giving a person’s performance on the Stanford-Binet as a mental age, Terman converted performance into a single score, which he called the intelligence quotient, or IQ. A quotient is the number that results from dividing one number by another. The idea of an intelligence quotient was first suggested by German psychologist, William Stern, in 1912.  To compute IQ, Stern divided mental age by the actual, chronological age of the person taking the test and then multiplied by 100 to get rid of the decimal point. So, a child who was eight years old and answered the test questions as well as a twelve-year-old scored an intelligence quotient of 12/8 x 100, or 150. A twelve-year-old who answered the test questions as well as an average eight-year-old would have an IQ of 8/12 x 100, or 66.
This formula works well for comparing children, but since intelligence levels off in adulthood, it is not appropriate for adults. A thirty-year-old who answers questions as well as an average twenty-year-old would have an IQ of only 20/30 x 100, or 66.

So intelligence tests today no longer use the IQ formula. Instead, the score on a modern intelligence test compares a person's performance with others his/her own age, while arbitrarily defining the average score as 100. By convention, most people still use the term IQ to refer to a score on an intelligence test.

Group Intelligence Tests

Before World War I, all intelligence tests were administered on a one to one basis. During the war, a group of psychologists, led by Robert M.Yerkes, developed two tests, one for English speakers, and one for non-English speakers or illiterates, which could be administered to groups of recruits to help the army determine the most effective placement of individuals. Highest scoring recruits were considered for officer training, and lowest scoring recruits were rejected from service.
Following the war, group tests were more popular. The National Intelligence Test, developed by Terman and Yerkes, was first used around 1920 to test school children. The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) was introduced in 1926 to help colleges and universities screen prospective students.
Today individual and group intelligence tests are widely used in education, the military, and business.

The Meaning of IQ

An Intelligence Quotient indicates a person's mental abilities relative to others of approximately the same age. Everyone has hundreds of specific mental abilities--some can be measured accurately and are reliable predictors of academic and financial success.

What is an IQ Score?

Originally, IQ, or Intelligence Quotient, was used to detect persons of lower intelligence, and to detect children of lower intelligence in order to place them in special education programs. The first IQ tests were designed to compare a child's intelligence to what his or her intelligence "should be" as compared to the child's age. If the child was significantly "smarter" than a "normal" child of his or her age, the child was given a higher score, and if the child scored lower than expected for a child of his or her age, the child was given a lower IQ score.

Today IQ testing is used not primarily for children, but for adults. Today we attempt to write tests that will determine an adult's true mental potential, unbiased by culture, and compare scores to the scores of other adults who have taken the same test. So today we compare an adult's objective results to the objective results of other adults, and determine how intelligent each test taker is compared to all other test takers, instead of comparing test takers to an arbitrary age related standard.

Standard Deviation:

The first step to understanding IQ testing is to understand standard deviation.
Standard deviation is kind of the "avg of the avg," and often can help you find the story behind the data. To understand this concept, it can help to learn about what statisticians call normal distribution of data.

A normal distribution of data means that most of the examples in a set of data are close to the "average," while relatively few examples tend to one extreme or the other.

Let's say you are writing a story about nutrition. You need to look at people's typical daily calorie consumption. Like most data, the numbers for people's typical consumption probably will turn out to be normally distributed. That is, for most people, their consumption will be close to the mean, while fewer people eat a lot more or a lot less than the mean.

When you think about it, that's just common sense. Not that many people are getting by on a single serving of kelp and rice. Or on eight meals of steak and milkshakes. Most people lie somewhere in between.

If you looked at normally distributed data on a graph, it would look something like this:

The x-axis (the horizontal one) is the value in question... calories consumed, dollars earned or crimes committed, for example. And the y-axis (the vertical one) is the number of datapoints for each value on the x-axis... in other words, the number of people who eat x calories, the number of households that earn x dollars, or the number of cities with x crimes committed.

Now, not all sets of data will have graphs that look this perfect. Some will have relatively flat curves, others will be pretty steep. Sometimes the mean will lean a little bit to one side or the other. But all normally distributed data will have something like this same "bell curve" shape.

The standard deviation is a statistic that tells you how tightly all the various examples are clustered around the mean in a set of data. When the examples are pretty tightly bunched together and the bell-shaped curve is steep, the standard deviation is small. When the examples are spread apart and the bell curve is relatively flat, that tells you you have a relatively large standard deviation.
Computing the value of a standard deviation is complicated. But let me show you graphically what a standard deviation represents...

(Niles Online)
One standard deviation away from the mean in either direction on the horizontal axis (the red area on the above graph) accounts for somewhere around 68 percent of the people in this group. Two standard deviations away from the mean (the red and green areas) account for roughly 95 percent of the people. And three standard deviations (the red, green and blue areas) account for about 99 percent of the people.

If this curve were flatter and more spread out, the standard deviation would have to be larger in order to account for those 68 percent or so of the people. So that's why the standard deviation can tell you how spread out the examples in a set are from the mean.

Why is this useful? Here's an example: If you are comparing test scores for different schools, the standard deviation will tell you how diverse the test scores are for each school.

Let's say Springfield Elementary has a higher mean test score than Shelbyville Elementary. Your first reaction might be to say that the kids at Springfield are smarter.

But a bigger standard deviation for one school tells you that there are relatively more kids at that school scoring toward one extreme or the other. By asking a few follow-up questions you might find that, say, Springfield's mean was skewed up because the school district sends all of the gifted kids to Springfield. Or that Shelbyville's scores were dragged down because students who recently have been "mainstreamed" from special education classes have all been sent to Shelbyville.
In this way, looking at the standard deviation can help point you in the right direction when asking why data is the way it is.

The standard deviation can also help you evaluate the worth of all those so-called "studies" that seem to be released to the press everyday. A large standard deviation in a study that claims to show a relationship between eating Twinkies and killing politicians, for example, might tip you off that the study's claims aren't all that trustworthy.

Here is one formula for computing the standard deviation.
A warning, this is for math geeks only! Writers and others seeking only a basic understanding of stats don't need to read any further. Remember, a decent calculator and stats program will calculate this for you...

Terms you'll need to know
x = one value in your set of data
(x) = the mean (average) of all values x in your set of data
n = the number of values x in your set of data

For each value x, subtract (x) from x, then multiply that value by itself (otherwise known as determining the square of that value). Sum up all those squared values. Then multiply that value by this value... 1/(n-1). Then take the square root of the resulting value. That's the standard deviation of your set of data.

Defining Intelligence

Most people have an intuitive notion of what intelligence is, and many words in the English language distinguish between different levels of intellectual skill: bright, dull, smart, stupid, clever, slow, and so on. Yet no universally accepted definition of intelligence exists, and people continue to debate what, exactly, it is. Fundamental questions remain: Is intelligence one general ability or several independent systems of abilities? Is intelligence a property of the brain, a characteristic of behavior, or a set of knowledge and skills?
The simplest definition proposed is that intelligence is whatever intelligence tests measure. But this definition does not characterize the ability well, and it has several problems. First, it is circular: The tests are assumed to verify the existence of intelligence, which in turn is measurable by the tests. Second, many different intelligence tests exist, and they do not all measure the same thing. In fact, the makers of the first intelligence tests did not begin with a precise idea of what they wanted to measure. Finally, the definition says very little about the specific nature of intelligence.

Whenever scientists are asked to define intelligence in terms of what causes it or what it actually is, almost every scientist comes up with a different definition. For example, in 1921 an academic journal asked 14 prominent psychologists and educators to define intelligence. The journal received 14 different definitions, although many experts emphasized the ability to learn from experience and the ability to adapt to one's environment. In 1986 researchers repeated the experiment by asking 25 experts for their definition of intelligence. The researchers received many different definitions: general adaptability to new problems in life; ability to engage in abstract thinking; adjustment to the environment; capacity for knowledge and knowledge possessed; general capacity for independence, originality, and productiveness in thinking; capacity to acquire capacity; apprehension of relevant relationships; ability to judge, to understand, and to reason; deduction of relationships; and innate, general cognitive ability.

People in the general population have somewhat different conceptions of intelligence than do most experts. Laypersons and the popular press tend to emphasize cleverness, common sense, practical problem solving ability, verbal ability, and interest in learning. In addition, many people think social competence is an important component of intelligence.
Most intelligence researchers define intelligence as what is measured by intelligence tests, but some scholars argue that this definition is inadequate and that intelligence is whatever abilities are valued by one's culture. According to this perspective, conceptions of intelligence vary from culture to culture. For example, North Americans often associate verbal and mathematical skills with intelligence, but some seafaring cultures in the islands of the South Pacific view spatial memory and navigational skills as markers of intelligence. Those who believe intelligence is culturally relative dispute the idea that any one test could fairly measure intelligence across different cultures. Others, however, view intelligence as a basic cognitive ability independent of culture.

In recent years, a number of theorists have argued that standard intelligence tests measure only a portion of the human abilities that could be considered aspects of intelligence. Other scholars believe that such tests accurately measure intelligence and that the lack of agreement on a definition of intelligence does not invalidate its measurement. In their view, intelligence is much like many scientific concepts that are accurately measured well before scientists understand what the measurement actually means. Gravity, temperature, and radiation are all examples of concepts that were measured before they were understood.

"Intelligence," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2003
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Hey Einsteins?

The Missing Square

This is a famous problem that has perplexed the minds of many for years.

Try this Einsteins....

In the second triangle, where does the extra square come from?


ANSWER:
The extra square results from the assumption that the hypotenuses of the two smaller triangles are in an exact straight line. The discrepancy amounts to about three percent of the large triangle's area.

Not so smart afterall....

This Day In History - Back To The Future

FLUX Capicitator

1955: A clock, a slippery toilet seat and a severe concussion lead to the invention of time travel.

Dr. Emmett Lathrop Brown is known for being a member (unverified) of the Manhattan Project, a physics professor at Hill Valley University, and a talented entrepreneur and handyman. But it’s his contribution to the field of temporal physics for which he is best remembered.

According to archival footage, Brown was standing on his toilet seat on the evening of Nov. 5, 1955, attempting to hang a clock in his bathroom, when he slipped and slammed his head on the side of the sink. Upon regaining consciousness Brown reported having “a revelation, a picture, a picture in my head.” A picture which he crudely scrawled down on a piece of paper and subsequently spent 30 years of his life and family fortune to build.

That picture, of course, was the flux capacitor. And as every high school physics student knows, it’s the device that makes time travel possible.

The main hurdle Brown faced with the flux capacitor was delivering enough power to make it function. The capacitor required a staggering 1.21 gigawatts of electricity to generate a time-displacement field. Brown first surmised that meeting the capacitor’s power needs could be accomplished in two ways: either by channeling a nuclear reaction or harnessing a bolt of lightning. Lightning as it turned out, was pretty much out of the question, because it’s impossible to determine when and where a bolt will strike.

Brown decided to go for the nuclear option. He hypothesized that within 30 years, material like plutonium would be easily obtainable — probably available in corner drugstores. It turned out he was dead wrong.

By 1985 Brown had squandered his family fortune and allegedly committed several acts of insurance fraud to finance his time machine. Built from a Delorean DMC-12 (whose stainless steel body had a direct and influential effect on flux dispersal), it was fitted with a working flux capacitor that was powered by a nuclear reactor. Desparate for fuel, Brown duped a group of Libyan terrorists into providing him with weapons-grade plutonium.

At 1:21 a.m Oct. 25, 1985, Brown (with the help of his protege, Martin McFly) was able to successfully — and safely — send his dog forward and then McFly back in time. After a series of setbacks resulting from the first temporal displacement, Brown and McFly would travel to the years 1955, 2015 and 1885.

Unfortunately, because of a railroad accident near Hill Valley’s Eastwood Ravine a day later, Brown’s DeLorean along with its flux capacitor was destroyed. Despite repeated requests from the media and scientific communities, Brown has declined interviews and refuses to share or replicate the flux capacitor’s technology.

The incidents leading up to the time machine demise also served as the basis for the award-winning documentary, Back to the Future.

Source: Fictional

Ernest O. Lawrence, Emmett L. Brown and J. Robert Oppenheimer peer at the controls of the 184-inch cyclotron, which was being converted in early 1946 from its wartime use to its original purpose as a cyclotron.
Photo illustration: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Everyday Creativity

We need to nurture our inner innovator and break out of the day to day doldrums and start living creatively. You can build up your innovative abilities in many ways—by doing things. Sure you say but what is Everyday Creativity? Everyday creativity is defined by originality and meaningfulness.

The first step to increasing your creativity quotient is believing you can. Even if no one has ever assigned the adjective "original" to anything you have ever done, you must acknowledge that you have inventive powers. Don't think about making something from nothing or exposing your deepest feelings—just acknowledge that you can solve problems better if you approach them with a different mind-set.

The real question isn't "How creative are you?" but rather "How are you creative?" Innovation is rarely a one-step deal; the trick is figuring out how you solve problems. That way, you can build on your strengths and team up with people who compensate for your weaknesses, says educational psychologist Donald Treffinger.

Brainstorming often launches the process, as does framing the dilemma at hand. We've all heard that there are no such things as bad ideas during initial brainstorming sessions. But during office meetings, barely- formed suggestions are often immediately shot down.

If you want to come up with truly original schemes, it's essential to separate idea generation from idea evaluation. Otherwise, you'll be too quick to dismiss seemingly implausible yet brilliant notions.

Stumped? Get out the eraser board: Visual thinking can yield more initial ideas than written lists, says Markman. "It's often easier to sketch relationships between concepts than to describe them. You can use arrows and boxes to say things that would be difficult to put into words." And since many different areas of the brain are involved in vision, sketching essentially calls in more brainpower to fuel your abstract-thinking abilities.

Treffinger and colleagues at the Center for Creative Learning provide an online test to help their clients in the nonprofit world figure out their personal problem-solving styles. "Explorers," in their framework, are great at coming up with completely novel ideas but not as good as "Developers" at executing and making them work. "Developers may have gotten the idea that they are not creative," Treffinger says—think engineers—"but both groups are equally creative."

Another style point turns on whether you are "Internal"—meaning you like to gather and think about information quietly, by yourself—or "External," drawing energy from talking and sharing ideas with others. The final dimension to Treffinger's test gets at what you emphasize when making creative decisions—harmony among people or the demands of a task . Those who conform to the "Person" style seek decisions that all involved can comfortably buy into, whereas "Task"-oriented people base their decisions on facts and what makes logical sense. Work groups made up exclusively of developers (detail-oriented craftsmen with no architect to give a big-picture plan) or explorers (a film director and set designer without a producer to tell them what's possible and within budget) would both be at risk for total dysfunction, which is why a balance of styles yields the best collaborations.

III: Start Innovating

Even if your heart is fully in it, you still need to get into the habit of creating. Creativity coach Maisel believes that your waking hours are best since they enable you to apply your "sleep thinking" to glitches in your haiku-writing, furniture-designing, or quilting. (Studies confirm that "sleeping on it" indeed allows for stellar solutions to make their way to the forefront of your mind.) Furthermore, Maisel sees carving out morning time for a creative pursuit as a way to infuse the rest of your day with existential meaning. The boost you get from your 7 a.m. compositional breakthrough could propel you through a rote desk job.

If you take up a creative project you may soon fall prey to what Maisel calls unfriendly self-talk: "I'm not talented," or "Why should I bother with this—there is too much competition out there." First, listen to what you're saying to yourself, then dispute the utterances that don't serve you. Lastly, substitute more affirmative statements and get back to work.

The most important thing anyone can do to improve creativity is to find unsolved dilemmas to address, says Robert Root-Bernstein. He suggests starting today at work: Why not force yourself to come up with 10 ways for your office manager to save money, or take what your team is good at and think of 10 new ways to turn those skills into a new service you could sell.

We spend so much mental energy either avoiding or unproductively mulling over problems that the idea of chasing and embracing them seems strange, and yet it is a hallmark of the creative orientation to life. Seelig warms up her students by telling them to solve a problem they have with an object already in their homes.

Get Ahead: Start tackling big projects now. Procrastination does not fuel creativity, despite what procrastinators tell themselves.

Hit a Blue Note: Decorate your cubicle or home office in blue, since a study showed that blue surroundings boost creativity.

Be an Aficionado: Creative people often have hobbies, and those who play musical instruments are better at associative thinking. So dust off your old guitar or stamp collection.

Sleep on It: Think about a thorny problem before you go to bed. REM enhances creative problem-solving and may even deliver the answer to you at dawn.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE @: Psychology Today

Other Creative Resources:

CreativityRulz

Showcasing creativity and innovation in all its forms, shapes, and sizes.

by Tina Seelig

Imagine That!

Annals of Ordinary and Extraordinary Genius

by Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog

RealTalk

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach - "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day."

We should all be ashamed of ourselves

Solve the Rubiks Cube & Impress Your Friends

Follow this instructional video and melt your friends faces with your newly acquired jawdropping genius.

Brainbooster of the day

Douglas Horton - "The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity."

Go ahead and ponder....it's ok.

Mnemonic Devices

Alex Osborn was the first to formally use the following nine principles of creative thinking which were later arranged by Bob Eberle as a checklist for elaborating on your ideas. Ready Here Goes....

S=Substitute
C=Combine
A=Adapt
M=Magnify/Modify
P=Put to other uses
E=Eliminate
R= Rearrange or Reverse

SCAMPER is based on the belief that everything new is some addition or variation of something that already exists. You take a subject and change it into something else.

Stay tuned as we take a closer look at how to use each of the nine principles in more detail.

10 Low Fat Breakfast Recipes

By Fiona Haynes, About.com

See More About:

• low fat breakfast recipes
• healthy breakfasts

Breakfast is probably the most important meal of the day. After all, you literally break a fast, fueling your body for the day ahead. Many people skip breakfast, especially if they're trying to lose weight, when in fact a more sensible strategy would be to skip dessert or late-night snacks. Others miss breakfast because they're 'just too busy.' Unfortunately, this sets us up to grab anything and everything when hunger pangs finally kick in. So begin your day right and spend a little time eating a healthy breakfast, even if it means a little planning ahead. Your body will thank you.

1. Whole Wheat Pancakes

Fiona Haynes

Why settle for store-bought pancake mixes when you can so easily make your own, more wholesome pancakes? These whole-wheat pancakes are light and delicious. Add some chopped berries if you like, and serve with warmed fruit compote or maple syrup.

2. French Toast

Fiona Haynes

French toast is one of my favorite weekend breakfast treats. If you're concerned about fat and cholesterol, use egg substitute or a combination of eggs and egg whites in place of whole eggs.

3. Morning Glory Muffins

Fiona Haynes

Filled with shredded carrot, crushed pineapple and raisins, these make a great breakfast muffin to be enjoyed with a banana and a glass of ice-cold nonfat milk, or warm cocoa. If you're one of those who doesn't have time for breakfast, then pack one to take to work. For an extra nutritional boost, replace half the flour with whole wheat flour.

4. Crepes

Fiona Haynes

Crêpes are thin pancakes which can be eaten in the same way as pancakes or rolled up with a filling of your choice. These are the kind of "pancakes" I used to flip on Shrove Tuesday when I grew up in England.

5. Pumpkin Oatmeal

Fiona Haynes

Dress up your oatmeal and add an extra nutritional boost with canned pumpkin puree. This makes a great dessert any time of the year, but especially in the fall.

6. Huevos Rancheros Wraps

Fiona Haynes

For a slightly different spin on breakfast, enjoy this burrito-style huevos rancheros, or Mexican-style eggs in a wrap. It might not be authentically Mexican, but it's certainly delicious. Serve with some fresh fruit on the side.

7. Herbed Egg White and Spinach Omelet

Fiona Haynes

If you're watching your cholesterol, you may need to limit your intake of dietary cholesterol, of which eggs are a notorious source. While you undoubtedly lose some flavor in ridding yourself of the yolks, you can add flavor and substance to an egg white omelet in many ways. This omelet is a great example.

8. Strawberry Mango Buttermilk Smoothie

Fiona Haynes

If you can't 'eat' in the morning, perhaps you can drink your breakfast. This is a wonderfully refreshing way to wake up in the morning. I keep a supply of peeled, ripe bananas in my freezer to use in this and other smoothies. Another option is to cut and freeze the mango ahead of time. If you don't have buttermilk on hand, use nonfat milk or low-fat yogurt instead.

9. Yogurt Granola Parfait

Fiona Haynes

This is less a recipe and more a way to prepare a nutritious, low fat, high-energy breakfast. I use strawberries and bananas with my yogurt and low fat granola, but you can use any fruit that takes your fancy, and embellish it with a tablespoon of heart-healthy sliced almonds or chooped walnuts, or a sprinkling of wheatgerm.

10. Applesauce Oatmeal Pancakes

Fiona Haynes

Profound Plutarch

Plutarch - "The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled."

Couldn't Agree More

William Osler - "We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life."

Improving Your Memory

Was on about.com the other day and found these helpful tips for boosting the noodle.

Before you study for your next exam, you might want to use a few strategies to boost your memory of important information. There are a number of tried and tested techniques for improving memory. These strategies have been established within cognitive psychology literature and offer a number of great ways to improve memory, enhance recall, and increase retention of information.

1. Focus your attention on the materials you are studying.

Attention is one of the major components of memory. In order for information to move from short-term memory into long-term memory, you need to actively attend to this information. Try to study in a place free of distractions such as television, music, and other diversions.

2. Avoid cramming by establishing regular study sessions.

According to Bjork (2001), studying materials over a number of session’s gives you the time you need to adequately process the information. Research has shown that students who study regularly remember the material far better that those did all of their studying in one marathon session.

3. Structure and organize the information you are studying.

Researchers have found that information is organized in memory in related clusters. You can take advantage of this by structuring and organizing the materials you are studying. Try grouping similar concepts and terms together, or make an outline of your notes and textbook readings to help group related concepts.

4. Utilize mnemonic devices to remember information.

Mnemonic devices are a technique often used by students to aid in recall. A mnemonic is simply a way to remember information. For example, you might associate a term you need to remember with a common item that you are very familiar with. The best mnemonics are those that utilize positive imagery, humor, or novelty. You might come up with a rhyme, song, or joke to help remember a specific segment of information.

5. Elaborate and rehearse the information you are studying.

In order to recall information, you need to encode what you are studying into long-term memory. One of the most effective encoding techniques is known as elaborative rehearsal. An example of this technique would be to read the definition of a key term, study the definition of that term, and then read a more detailed description of what that term means. After repeating this process a few times, your recall of the information will be far better.

6. Relate new information to things you already know.

When you are studying unfamiliar material, take the time to think about how this information relates to things that you already know. By establishing relationships between new ideas and previously existing memories, you can dramatically increase the likelihood of recalling the recently learned information.

7. Visualize concepts to improve memory and recall.

Many people benefit greatly from visualizing the information they study. Pay attention to the photographs, charts, and other graphics in your textbooks. If you don’t have visual cues to help, try creating your own. Draw charts or figures in the margins of your notes or use highlighters or pens in different colors to group related ideas in your written study materials.

8. Teach new concepts to another person.

Research suggests that reading materials out loud significantly improves memory of the material. Educators and psychologists have also discovered that having students actually teach new concepts to others enhances understanding and recall. You can use this approach in your own study by teaching new concepts and information to a friend or study partner.

9. Pay extra attention to difficult information.

Have you ever noticed how it's sometimes easier to remember information at the beginning or end of a chapter? Researchers have found that the position of information can play a role in recall, which is known as the serial position effect. While recalling middle information can be difficult, you can overcome this problem by spending extra time rehearsing this information or try restructuring the information so it will be easier to remember. When you come across an especially difficult concept, devote some extra time to memorizing the information.

10. Vary your study routine.

Another great way to increase your recall is to occasionally change your study routine. If you are accustomed to studying in one specific location, try moving to a different spot to study. If you study in the evening, try to spend a few minutes each morning reviewing the information you studied the previous night. By adding an element of novelty to your study sessions, you can increase the effectiveness of your efforts and significantly improve your long-term recall.

11. Pay Attention, Dummy.

_{References:
Bjork, D. (2001, March). How to succeed in college: Learn how to learn. APS Observer, 14(3), 9.}

Can You Really Cheat Death?

Once upon a time there was a dad and 3 kids. When the kids were adults, the dad was old and Death came to take the dad. The first son, who became a lawyer, begged Death to let the dad live a few more years. Death agreed. When Death came back, the second son, who became a doctor begged Death to let his father live a few more days. Death agreed. When Death came back the third son, who became a priest begged Death to let the dad live till that candle wick burned out and he pointed to a candle. Death agreed. The third son knew Death wouldn't come back, and he didn't. Why not?





Answer:

The third son went over and blew out the candle after Death left because the son said "till the candle wick burns out", not "till the candle burns out".

Which Do You See?

Is it a duck.....rabbit? maybe both....

Ah! Simplicity is so Complex

Douglas Horton - "The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity."

Let that marinate...

Now it’s time to walk the talk!

I’m going to begin posting a lot of brain games and mental puzzles and challenges intended to challenge all the different levels of your mind.

For Our First Challenge:

Try to do a crossword puzzle. Any one. Just DO it.

Let us know how it goes.

The Mental Jim Is Now Open!

Welcome all to the opening of the Mental Jim. The mental Jim is one mans febel attempt to turn that gush between your ears into solid mass with tone and definition. For you newbies this means getting your brain in shape with mental workouts. I'm not gonna lie and say that it's going to be easy because it's not, but for those of you out there with the highest mental capacity this is your mentaljim. Enjoy