Amazing Graffiti on Buildings

In some cities when you drive down or walk in the downtown area, you'll be amazed at the graffiti art on some buildings. The talent is outstanding and the resulting artwork simply incredible.

Enjoy below photos of graffiti art depicted on some buildings.




Disclaimer: FundooGeek does NOT own the copyright to any of the above pictures.




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Laughter and Humor - the 2 Recipes for Healthy Living

Source: Homewood:

The person who first said, "Laughter is the best medicine", wasn't joking. The diaphragm, thorax, abdomen, heart, lungs and even the liver are given a massage during a hearty laugh. With the high cost of prescription drugs these days, we can all benefit from some good medicine that's free.

Over the years, many physical benefits to laughter have been reported by doctors and health care professionals. Here are just a few ...

  • Decrease in stress hormone levels
  • Strengthening of the immune system
  • Muscle relaxation
  • Pain reduction
  • Lowering of blood pressure
  • Cardiovascular conditioning
  • Natural anti-depressant

Research has shown that the health benefits of laughter are far-ranging. While more studies need to be done, studies so far have shown that laughter can help relieve pain, bring greater happiness, and even increase immunity.

Laughing is infectious. The sound of roaring laughter is far more contagious than any cough, sniffle, or sneeze. We like laughing because it feels good, but it also triggers healthy physical changes in the body. Humor and laughter strengthen the immune system, boost our energy, diminish pain, and can protect us from the damaging effects of stress. In addition to the positive effects it has on our physical health, when laughter is shared, it binds us together and increases happiness and intimacy. With so much power to heal and renew, the ability to laugh easily and frequently is a tremendous resource. It’s no wonder that more and more people are turning to laughter as a form of therapy to help them overcome personal challenges, enhance their relationships, and support their physical and mental health.

A good laugh makes our bodies and minds feel good, but do we actually know why? Laughing increases blood flow, can lead to reductions in stress hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline and when laughing, the brain releases endorphins that can relieve some physical pain. Additionally, laughter also boosts the number of antibody producing cells and enhances the effectiveness of our T-cells — leading to a stronger immune system. Laughing also facilitates:
  • A good workout: Laughing exercises the diaphragm, contracts abdominal muscles and even works out the shoulders, leaving muscles more relaxed afterward. It also provides a good workout for the heart. Laughing 100 times is the equivalent to ten minutes on the rowing machine or 15 minutes on an exercise bike!
  • A change in your perspective: Researchers at the University of California have found that our response to stressful events can be altered depending on whether we view something as a threat or a challenge. Humor can give us a more light-hearted perspective and help us view stressful events as challenges, thereby making them less threatening and more positive.
  • A positive impact on others: Laughter is contagious, so if you bring more laughter into your life, you can most likely help others around you laugh more. By elevating the mood of others, you can diminish their stress levels, and possibly improve the quality of your social interaction with them.
  • A longer life: According to recent research published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, elderly optimistic people are less likely to die prematurely than pessimists are. In fact, among the 65-85 year-old study participants, those who were most optimistic were 55 percent less likely to die from all causes than those who were most pessimistic.

Humor Therapy

Humor and laughter are part of everyday life, but recently they are receiving increased attention as a form of therapy. Humor therapy involves the use of humor and laughter for the relief of physical or emotional pain and stress. It is used as a complementary method to promote health and cope with illness.

Although, available scientific evidence does not support claims that laughter can cure cancer or any other disease, as mentioned above, it can reduce stress and enhance a person’s quality of life. Many hospitals and treatment centers have set up special rooms with humorous materials in order to make people laugh. These materials include movies, audio recordings, books, games, and puzzles. Many hospitals use volunteers who visit patients solely to make them laugh, and some cancer treatment centers offer humor therapy in addition to standard treatments.

That’s because we’re just not laughing as much as we used to. Recent research shows that pre-school-aged children laugh up to 400 times a day, but by the time we reach adulthood, we laugh a mere 17 times per day on average! Simply put, we need to laugh more. Below are some strategies to help you raise your laughter level:
  • Smile. Smiling is the beginning of laughing. Like laughing, it’s contagious. Pioneers in ‘humor therapy’ find it’s possible to laugh without even experiencing a funny event. The same holds true for smiling. When you look at someone or see something even slightly pleasing, practice smiling.
  • Look on the bright side. Make a list of the positives in your life. This simple act will help you focus less on negative thoughts that are a barrier to humor and laughter.
  • Move towards the laughter. Sometimes laughter occurs in a shared joke amongst a small group, but usually not. More often, people are very happy to share something funny with you because it gives them an opportunity to laugh again and feed off the humor you find in it. When you hear laughter, seek it out and ask, “What’s funny?”
  • Hang around the funny ones. These people laugh easily — both at themselves and at life’s absurdities. They routinely find the humor in everyday events. Their playful point of view is contagious. Spending more time with them will help lighten your mood.


Laughter Yoga - CNN Report



Laughter Yoga on Discovery Channel



Benefits of Laughter Yoga with John Cleese



Here's something to make you laugh today:


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Master Blaster's New Milestone - A Century of Centuries

CONGRATULATIONS!! to Sachin Tendulkar on making history by becoming the first human to score 100 centuries in international cricket.



Tendulkar became the first batsman in the world to make a 100 international centuries, getting to the milestone against Bangladesh at the Shere Bangla stadium in Mirpur at 5:05pm local time on March 16, 2012. The historic journey to his 100th international century on Friday took longer than expected, as he was stranded from the unprecedented mark for just over a year. The best batsman of the modern era scored his last century (111) against South Africa at Nagpur during the World Cup on March 12, 2011.



Tendulkar got to his 49th One Day International century and his first against Bangladesh with a clipped single to square leg but did not celebrate much despite the mounting pressure of expectations from billion plus cricket lovers around the world. By scoring his first ODI hundred against Bangladesh, Sachin completed his set of centuries against every Full Member country in both Tests and ODIs.



"I can't think of anything at this stage, it has been a tough phase for me," Tendulkar told Neo Cricket channel after his innings. "I started off the season well but was luckless. It does not matter how many hundreds you score, you still have to grind it out."





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Disable Tracking and Erase Your YouTube History Forever

Source: Ghacks:

Do you want to prevent YouTube from keeping a record of the videos you watch?
Do you want to erase the history of videos that you have watched until today?
If the answer to any of the above is Yes! read on ...

When you're logged into Google or YouTube, a record of all the videos you searched for and watch is logged in your account. You can clear those logs, but up until now you couldn't disable the logging altogether. Here, finally, is how to keep YouTube from recording your video searches and the videos you watch. To disable My Search History, go to this settings page on YouTube to get to the new options. The page lists all the videos that you watched on the site in the past. Note that you need to be logged in to your Google account that you normally use while accessing the YouTube videos.

There are actually two settings to change:

  • First, click on "Pause search history" which will disable the video search logging.
  • Then, in the menu on the left, click "History" and then the button at the top, "Pause viewing history" to disable the recording of the videos you view on YouTube.


If ever you want to go back to having a log of the videos you've watched or searched for on YouTube back, you can click the resume buttons.



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Chaos

Controlled chaos ...





Humor



Disclaimer: Don't know the origin or who owns the copyright ... but hey! good for a smile!!!

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Some Interesting Facts About the Daylight Saving Time

Daylight Saving Time (DST), also referred as Summer Time in several countries is the practice of advancing clocks so that evenings have more daylight and mornings have less.

Typically clocks are adjusted forward one hour near the start of spring and are adjusted backward in autumn. It is a change in the standard time of each time zone. The main purpose, of course, is to make better use of daylight. We change our clocks during the summer months to move an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening. It is a system established to reduce electricity usage by extending daylight hours.

Check below for some interesting facts on DST ...

  • Though mentioned by Benjamin Franklin in 1784, modern DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson and it was first implemented during the First World War.
  • Starting on 30 April 1916, Germany and its World War I allies were the first to use DST (German: Sommerzeit) as a way to conserve coal during wartime. Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit. Russia and a few other countries waited until the next year and the United States adopted it in 1918.
  • A move to "permanent daylight saving time" (staying on summer hours all year with no time shifts) is sometimes advocated, and has in fact been implemented in some jurisdictions such as Iceland, Russia, and Belarus.
  • Many jurisdictions such as Argentina, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Senegal, Sudan, Turkmenistan, and Tokelau can be considered to use a form of de facto permanent daylight saving time because they use time zones located to the east of the time zones they are geographically located in. Thus their local times are later than the time they would theoretically occur under a "pure" system, such as the nautical time system, giving the same effect as year-round DST.
  • DST is now implemented in over seventy countries worldwide and affects over a billion people each year.
  • Daylight Saving Time "makes" the sun "set" one hour later and therefore reduces the period between sunset and bedtime by one hour. This means that less electricity would be used for lighting and appliances late in the day. We may use a bit more electricity in the morning because it is darker when we rise, but that is usually offset by the energy savings in the evening.
  • In the US, contrary to popular belief, DST is not a do-it-or-die federal mandate. If states don't want to participate they can pass a law opting out. It wasn't always that way. In the mid-1960s, 100 million Americans observed daylight saving time according to their local customs and laws, a real patchwork quilt of dysfunction. DST is NOT observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and by most of Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona)
  • The U.S. now has observed daylight saving time consistently for nearly 50 years. Briefly in the early 1970s, during the energy crisis President Richard Nixon put the country on year-round DST but that was rescinded after too many school-bus accidents on dark mornings. There are still detractors, however, who think DST is a waste of time.
  • DST still has its controversies. In Russia in June 2011, President Dmitry Medvedev abolished DST. After doing without DST for several months, however, many Russians missed it. Vladimir Putin, Medvedev's successor, who won in a landslide victory recently, has announced that the return to a seasonal time switch was possible if public discussion confirmed a need for it.
  • Most of the United States begins Daylight Saving Time at 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday in March and reverts to standard time on the first Sunday in November. In the U.S., each time zone switches at a different time.
  • In the European Union, Summer Time begins and ends at 1:00 a.m. Universal Time (Greenwich Mean Time). It begins the last Sunday in March and ends the last Sunday in October. In the EU, all time zones change at the same moment.
  • Following the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, the US Congress put most of the nation on extended Daylight Saving Time for two years in hopes of saving additional energy.
  • In the US, DST was changed slightly in 1986 when President Reagan signed Public Law 99-359. It changed Daylight Saving Time from the last Sunday in April to the first Sunday in April. No change was made to the ending date of the last Sunday in October.
  • In the US, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was passed by Congress and then signed into law by President George W. Bush on August 8, 2005. Under the new law, DST begins three weeks earlier than previously, on the second Sunday in March. DST is extended by one week to the first Sunday in November. The new start and stop period began in March 2007.
  • Studies conducted in the US have found that DST saves lives and prevents traffic injuries. It allowed more people to travel home from work and school in daylight, which is much safer than darkness.
  • Because people get home from work and school and complete more errands and chores in daylight, Daylight Saving Time also seems to reduce people's exposure to various crimes
  • While twins born at 11:55 p.m. and 12:05 a.m. may have different birthdays, Daylight Saving Time can change birth order -- on paper, anyway. During the time change in the fall, one baby could be born at 1:55 a.m. and the sibling born ten minutes later, at 1:05 a.m. In the spring, there is a gap when no babies are born at all: from 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m.


History of DST in the US:

  • 1784 - Benjamin Franklin is thought to have come up with the idea for daylight-saving time. In a whimsical letter to a French journal, he said that Parisians could save thousands of francs a years by waking up earlier during the summer because it would prevent them from having to buy so many candles to light the evening hours.
  • 1918 - The U.S. first adopts daylight-saving time, in the same act that created standard time zones, in an effort to save energy during World War I. It didn't prove popular, and, as a result, it was repealed the following year.
  • 1942 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted "war-time," a year-round daylight-saving time to save energy during World War II. After the year-round shift ended in 1945, many states adopted their own summer time changes.
  • 1966 - Congress established a national pattern for summer time changes with the Uniform Time Act. The act came in response from the transportation industry, which demanded consistency across time zones. The U.S. Department of Transportation now oversees time changes in the United States.
  • 1973 - An oil embargo by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries led Congress to enact a test period of year-round daylight-saving time in 1974 and 1975. The test period was controversial; it ended after complaints that the dark winter mornings endangered children traveling to school. The U.S. returned to summer daylight-saving time in 1975.
  • 1986 - The Federal law is amended to start daylight-saving time on the first Sunday in April, beginning in 1987. The ending date of daylight-saving time was never changed, and remained the last Sunday in October through 2006.
  • 2005 - On August 8, President Bush signs the Energy Policy Act of 2005 into law. Part of the act will extend daylight-saving time starting in 2007, from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November.
  • 2007 - Daylight-saving time begins on Sunday, March 11 and ends on Sunday, November 4.



Safety Reminder:


The National Fire Protection Association and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recommend that consumers change the battery in smoke and carbon monoxide detectors when we change the clocks for Daylight Saving Time.

A working smoke detector more than doubles a person's chances of surviving a home fire. More than 90 percent of homes in the United States have smoke detectors, but one-third are estimated to have dead or missing batteries.



Remember to adjust your clocks & watches tomorrow. :)
Spring Ahead! Fall Back!!




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