5 Ways to Avoid a Speeding Ticket

My uncle has been a cop for over 20 years. He has given my family and me many pieces of advice when it comes to avoiding those speeding tickets we all hate. I thought you may find it helpful if I share his advice with you guys too! Obviously these tips won’t guarantee that won’t be pulled over but every little piece of advice helps… right?

          

1) Keep your car well maintained. It’s important to know that your car says a lot about you.  If it looks like it’s in horrible condition then a cop is more likely to give you a ticket rather than just a warning. Also don’t have bumper stickers that are anti-police or pro-violence.
2) Never admit you were speeding. If you do get pulled over and the cop asks you: “do you know how fast you were going?” Never say: “I know I was going 80 mph in a 50 mph zone.” The correct thing to say is something along the lines of: “I was not aware of my speed.”
3) If you do get a ticket plead not guilty, and defer your court date. The reason is because officers write several tickets a day. Several months later by the time you court date comes there’s a good chance the office won’t remember you, especially if you quietly took the ticket and parted.
4) Wave at a hidden police car. Sound dumb? Well if you wave at them they will think that you are acknowledging the fact that you were speeding, and you are letting him know you’re slowing down. Also he may think that since you waved he might know you which lower your chances for getting a ticket.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          5) Be smart with the technology we have today. If you have a GPS system in your car you can download additional Points-of-Interest software onto your GPS that will tell you when you’re approaching stoplights that have traffic cameras. Way cool!

You’re Wasting Your Money

According to the Readers Digest Magazine there are 6 major things you shouldn’t be wasting your money on. These include:

1. Unlimited cell phone minutes- There’s a good chance that you do not need an unlimited cell phone minutes plan anymore. It is now recommended that you have a 700 minute per month plan versus the unlimited. Since texting is the new way for cellular communication, it would be more beneficial for you to have an unlimited texting plan.
2. Lottery Tickets- Let’s get real your odds of actually winning is well over 100 million to one. Winning a great amount of money would be nice but it isn’t practical.
3. Credit card payment insurance- Many credit card companies will offer consumers a monthly fee for them to provide you with their insurance. Financial advisors claim that this may not provide you with the help you actually want. It comes with many rules and restrictions.
4. Premium gas- Many go with this option because they think they are helping their car run better. However, this isn’t the case. A recent study claims that you are actually just filling your car with high-octane gas that won’t help your cars actual performance.
5. Automobile service warranty- It has been found that nearly $3 million in repairs aren’t actually covered.
6. Bottled water- Do you know where bottled water actually comes from? It comes straight from tap water. You’re better off buying a water filter which will save you money in the long run.

Too Much Homework Is a Bad Thing

There is a new study being done by neuroscientist to warn teachers that too much homework can actually be a bad thing. It is being said that an extra hour of homework doesn’t really help children learn better. If a child already has around five hours of homework every night, adding one more hour won’t be beneficial at all.

The New York Times stated that several top ranked private schools are now cutting back on the amount of homework given to each child. One school even went as far as having a homework free holiday. This gave their students a week without doing homework after school. However, some feel that a heavy work load is just preparing their kids for the future. To them this is training them for the stressful workforce, or for college.

There’s an even more interesting study that states that high school students who work for more than two hours a night on their homework had significantly lower test results than those who had a moderate study load. The main reason is because lack of sleep. Children who get more sleep at night tend to do better on tests. Moral of the story, don’t stress your children out too much or they might actually do worse.

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter

Twitter is the five-year-old site that lets users to communicate how they are feeling in 140 character posts. When Twitter was first created, it didn’t catch a whole lot of attention. But now it seems like everyone is finding something to tweet about.

 Did you ever think that Twitter could help scientist? Well today Twitter is making scientists job with studying human behavior and social networks a whole lot easier. Are you not a morning person? Or do you absolutely hate Monday mornings? By the use of Twitter scientist found that people are more cheerful in the morning, and get gloomier as the day goes on. Also the general public is happier from December to late June, when the days are longer.

 Researchers at the University of Vermont created a timeline to track the last year in tweets, ending in early September 2011, showing the world’s average happiness slid from last October. Twitter also can answer when America was the most depressed. The death of Osama bin Laden was the apparent low point, followed closely by the earthquake in Japan, the London riots in August, the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and the death of Amy Winehouse.

 Twitter also tracked when we were the happiest.  This was on Christmas and New Year holidays, followed by Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving and Easter. The wedding of Britain’s Prince William to Kate Middleton was a bright spot, comparable to Easter and Father’s Day.

 I find it pretty interesting that scientist can now just turn to Twitter to find out whether the public prefers Cheerios or Frosted Flakes, or bacon over sausage.

How Women Bully Other Women

Picture from Nadia Goodman

How do women bully other women? Yes, they do and it’s called body snarking. It’s pretty sad when there is actually a word now dedicated to the fact that women torment other women. Denise Martz professor of psychology at Appalachian State University states: “We think body snarking is the most common form of body talk.” However, we are all guilty of it. We have all said: “she should not be wearing that,” or “she looks fat in that.” This is just a part of what women do.

Media is also guilty of body snarking. This can be seen in the Who Wore It Better section, Best Beach Body, and also celebrities without makeup! Many times in magazines they highlight celebrity’s cellulite with posting their pictures and huge circles around their butts or thighs. They are only human, get over it! And who cares if they want to go to McDonalds without wearing any make up.

Body snarking is not only being done in person, but it is also being done on the internet. An example of this is when someone leaves a negative comment under a picture, or a YouTube video.  Since the comment isn’t being said directly to the person we lose the interpersonal accountability that would happen in face-to-face conversations.

So here’s a challenge for each girl out there, next time you see a girl and she looks great give her a complement!

What to be for Halloween this year!

With less than 20 days until Halloween people all over are trying to come up with the best costume. Halloween parties have always been my favorite. I love dressing up and I love seeing everyone else dressed up. Through the years I’m sure we’ve all had our funny, scary, and cute costumes. The best costume I can remember as a child was when my mom dressed me as Baby Bop from Barney!

However today you don’t see kids dressed as Barney or Teletubbies anymore. The top costumes for kids this year include: Disney Princesses, Spider-Man, Witches, Pirate, Superheroes, ghost, pumpkin, vampire, Star Wars, and Buzz Lightyear.

It looks like Charlie Sheen is actually winning something for once. He clocks in at being the most popular controversial adult costume this year! Following behind is Casey Anthony, Amanda Knox, Osama Bin Laden, and Chaz bono.  The top searched celebrity costume goes to Lady Gaga. Following Gaga is Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Snooki, Dog the Bounty Hunter, and Taylor Swift.

Show up to your Halloween party dressed as one of these people and you know you’ll be turning heads! Halloween is really the only time we can dress up funny without people making too much fun of you!

Happy Halloween!

It’s T-shirt time!

Picture from Laura Barnett

 

A few months ago J. C Penny had controversy over a t-shirt that was available online. The t-shirt had “I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me printed on the front of it.” This item was pulled off their website after numerous customers filed complaints.

However if you thought that would be the end of these negative t-shirts, you were sadly mistaken. Topman, a British men’s clothing company is now under fire. Topman posted new t-shirts to their website that offended many. One shirt starts by saying: “I’m so sorry but…” and is followed by a checklist of the following options: “You provoked me, I was drunk, I was having a bad day, I hate you, I didn’t mean it, and I couldn’t help it.” People were alarmed because these are all reasons you would physically abuse or hurt someone.

But that’s not all; there was another shirt that said: “nice new girlfriend, what breed is she?” both of these nugatory t-shirts caught the public attention right away!

A spokeswoman said in a statement: “We have received some negative feedback regarding two of our printed T-shirts. While we would like to stress that these T-shirts were meant to be lighthearted and carried no serious meaning, we have made the decision to remove these from the stores and on-line as soon as possible. We would like to apologize to those who may have been offended by these designs. This is horrible. I would never wear anything that had that written on it. Personally I think they should keep their lame jokes off t-shirts.