Everyone, at some point in their life, has to do a little bit of public speaking. The worst feeling in the world is when someone asks a question that you don’t know the answer to. Well, luckily I have stumbled upon a guide that explains how to answer (read: deal with) tough questions from an audience

.

The techniques I have for you in terms of constructively handling ’stumper’ questions involve four key actions:

* Rephrasing the question
* Redirecting the question to the audience/class
* Admitting your ignorance
* Finding a solution

[Link here]

Did you know that 80% of all trips less than a mile in length are made by car? Now you do. I was just reading a post on one of my new favorite blogs, Get Rich Slowly, entitled: “How to Walk for Fun and Profit.” This article discusses all of the various benefits you get from walking a mile instead of driving it.

I know a man who drives to work, even though he lives half a mile from his office. Why does he drive? Because he may need the car for some errand during the day. How many errands did he run during the workday last week? None. The week before? None.

I have a family member who will spend time circling a parking lot, looking for the perfect space. In the time it takes her to find these utopic spots, she could usually have parked farther from the entrance and burned some calories by walking a few hundred feet to the store.

Another friend lives just over a mile from her brother. She never walks to see him, but always drives. Why? Because walking would take too long. (The drive takes five minutes because of the road layout; walking takes less than twenty minutes.)

I just stumbled across a very interesting website, called Saving Electricity by Michael Bluejay. The page itself looks like one of those get rich quick pages, but fortunately Mr. Bluejay is not trying to sell me anything, so I trust him.

The most interesting thing I saw right off the bat was how much money you can save for little upfront cost (assuming you pay all of your utilities). He says you can save a ton of money per year by doing the following:

1. Using space heaters instead of central heating (Save $1152)
2. Using ceiling fans instead of AC ($610)
3. Using a clothesline instead of a dryer ($156)
4. Use cold or warm water in the wash instead of hot ($145 / $73)
5. Use a spin dryer to dry your clothes ($97)
6. Replace regular lightbulbs with Compact Florescents ($90)
7. Stop watching TV ($82)
8. Use the sleep mode on your computer when you’re not using it ($59)
9. Replace an old refrigerator with a new model ($45)
10. Replace a CRT monitor with an LCD monitor ($41)

Obviously some of these are a little out of the question for a lot of people. But using cold water, replacing regular bulbs with CFLs, and using sleep mode on your computer are very easy ways to save energy - thus saving you money and helping protect the environment. Win-win! Anyways, I definitely recommend checking out Saving Electricity by Michael Bluejay.

If you haven’t noticed, the stock market has been doing quite a bit of falling lately. A lot of people are freaking out, but you really shouldn’t worry too much. The market will eventually turn back upward. The key is just being patient. Yes, it sucks that currently you may have suffered some losses, but you’ll make the money back over time.

There are three approaches to dealing with a market downturn that I endorse:

1. Predict it perfectly and sell everything beforehand. Buy back in right when the market starts going up again. Risk: High(cause it’s really hard to do!) Reward: High
2. Sell a little bit (NOT EVERYTHING YOU OWN) at the beginning of the market downturn if you feel that it will keep going down, then buy back in after the market starts recovering. Risk: Medium Reward: Medium
• The danger is that you could get out of the market too late and get in too early and lose money versus strategy #3
3. Hang in the market the entire time, and just wait for the market to start moving back up. Also BUY WHILE THE MARKET IS LOW! It’s a great buying opportunity! Risk: Low Reward: Low
• You’re not going to dramatically beat the market with this strategy unless you can really pick stocks, but you’ll at least not get eaten alive by transaction costs.

For those of you who know me, you know that in the past I have had a lot of trouble sleeping. In the past three months or so, I have conquered those problems, but I know there are many people out there who are having trouble sleeping. For those of you interested, I stumbled across a very interesting page entitled: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sleep. This is both a good guide for how to get to sleep, and a good lesson on all of the interesting facets of sleep.

Some interesting facts include:

• Humans used to have very different sleep patterns than we consider “normal” today
• All humans tend to sleep more during the winter than during the summer
• Our body temperature is lowest an hour or two before waking and highest an hour or two before sleeping. (now I know why I feel really cold when I have to wake up early!)
• Taking melatonin pills can be tricky because you can trick your body into thinking it is winter and have a “fake” seasonal affective disorder and feel depressed (weird!)

The following suggestions are given to make it easier to sleep at a “socially acceptable” time: