Presidential Coincidence?

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.
Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.
Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln.
Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners.

Both successors were named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.

Booth ran from the theater and was caught in a warehouse.
Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theater.
Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

And here's the kicker...
A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was in Marilyn Monroe

6 lessons for handling stress #2

NO. 2
STRESS ALTERS YOUR BLOOD CHEMISTRY

FOR YEARS PSYCHOLOGISTS HAVE concentrated on the behavioral symptoms of burnout:
lost energy, lost enthusiasm and lost confidence. Now, thanks to new brain scans
and more sophisticated blood tests, scientists can directly measure some of the
effects of stress on mind and body--often with surprising results. You are probably familiar with the signs of an adrenaline surge (racing pulse, hairs on the neck standing on end), which evolved to help us fight or flee predators and other immediate dangers. And you may have heard of cortisol, another stress hormone, which is produced more slowly than adrenaline and lingers in the bloodstream longer. But did you know that too little cortisol in your bloodstream can be just as bad as too much? Or that tucking into comfort foods, while soothing in the short term, can sabotage your long-term stress response by increasing the number of inflammatory proteins in your body? What's emerging is a complex picture of the body's response to stress that involves several interrelated pathways. Scientists know the most bout cortisol because until now that has been the easiest part to measure. "But hen one thing changes, all the others change to some degree," says Bruce McEwen, a anologist at Rockefeller University who has spent decades studying the biology of stress, primarily in animals. So just because you see an imbalance in one area doesn't mean you understand why it is happening. "We're learning that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), burnout, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia are all related in some ways," McEwen says. The next step is to figure out if there are any genetic predispositions that tip the response to stress toward one set of symptoms or another.

NO. 3
YOU CAN'T AVOID STRESS

EVEN GETTING OUT OF BED CAN BE TOUGH ON THE BODY. SEVERAL hours before you wake
each morning, a tiny region at the base of your cerebrum called the hypothalamus
sends a signal that ultimately alerts your adrenal glands, which sit on top of
your kidneys, to start pumping out cortisol, which acts as a wake-up signal. cortisol levels continue to rise after you become conscious in what is sometimes
referred to as the "Oh, s___! It's another day" response. This may help explain
why so many heart attacks and strokes occur between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m.

Because cortisol is a long-acting hormone, you can dally under the covers a bit
without losing any steam. But your brain is already taking steps to protect you
from the shock of starting a new day. Rising cortisol levels signal the hypothalamus to stop sounding the alarm. Other parts of the brain chime in, and eventually the adrenal glands ratchet down their cortisol production. In other words, the brain's stress response contains its own off switch.

Most people's cortisol, as measured by a saliva test, peaks a few hours after waking. Levels then gradually decline during the course of the day--with a few
blips scattered here and there. That pattern typically changes, however, in people who are severely depressed. Their cortisol level still rises early in the morning, but it stays high all day long. It's almost as if their hypothalamus has forgotten how to turn off the stress response. (Intriguingly, people who are sleep deprived also exhibit a high, flat cortisol level.)

Researchers figured something similar had to be happening in burnout victims. But rather than finding a prominent cortisol peak, investigators discovered a shallow bump in the morning followed by a low, flattened level throughout the day. Intriguingly, such blunted cortisol responses are also common among Holocaust survivors, rape victims and soldiers suffering from PTSD. The difference seems to be that people with PTSD are much more sensitive to cortisol at even these low levels than those with burnout. "We used to blame everything on high cortisol," says Rachel Yehuda, a neurochemist and PTSD expert at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. "Now we can blame things on low cortisol as well."

Still continue....

Salute the Generals

Said the officer to the soldier, "Private, why did you salute that refrigerator?"
The soldier replied, "Because it was General Electric."

"And that jeep?" the officer asked.

Replied the soldier, "Because it was General Motors"

Arnold and Clinton

Arnold Schwarzenegger is in some trouble. Today, the Los Angeles Times broke a story that quoted six women who claimed that Arnold Schwarzenegger sexually harassed them. When asked about it, President Clinton said, “Six? That's not enough experience to be governor!"

—Conan O'Brien

6 lessons for handling stress

Take a deep breath. Now exhale slowly. You're probably not aware of it, but your
heart has just slowed down a bit. Not to worry; it will speed up again when you inhale. This regular-irregular beat is a sign of a healthy interaction between heart and head. Each time you exhale, your brain sends a signal down the vagus nerve to slow the cardiac muscle. With each inhale, the signal gets weaker and your heart revs up. Inhale, beat faster. Exhale, beat slower. It's an ancient rhythm that helps your heart last a lifetime. And it leads to lesson No. 1 in how to manage stress and avoid burnout.

NO. 1
REMEMBER TO BREATHE

EVOLUTION HAS BEQUEATHED TO OUR BRAINS A variety of mechanisms for handling the
ups and downs of life--from built-in chemical circuit breakers that shut off the stress hormones to entire networks of nerves whose only job is to calm you down. The problem, in the context of our always wired, always on-call world, is that they all require that you take regular breaks from your normal routine--and not just an occasional weekend trip. You can try to ignore the biological need to periodically disengage, but there's growing evidence that it will eventually catch up with you. Insurance claims for stress, depression and job burnout are now the U.S.'s fastest-growing disability category.

Making matters worse, Americans tend to cope with stress in all the wrong ways.
A November survey by the advocacy group Mental Health America found that we frequently deal with chronic stress by watching television, skipping exercise and forgoing healthy foods. The problem with these coping mechanisms is that they keep you from doing things that help buffer your stress load--like exercising or relaxing with friends or family--or add greater stress to your body. Indeed, using many of our most cherished time-saving gadgets can backfire. Cell phones and mobile e-mail devices--to give just two examples--make it harder to get away from the office to decompress. Working from home may, in some cases, exacerbate the situation because it isolates employees while simultaneously blurring the line between work and leisure.

We also have a lot of misconceptions about who gets stressed out and why. Twenty
years ago, psychologists almost exclusively blamed job stress on high workloads or lack of control on the job. More recent studies, says Christina Maslach, a pioneer in burnout research at the University of California, Berkeley, show that unfairness and a mismatch in values between employees and their companies play an increasing role in triggering stress. "Probably one of the strongest predictors is when there's a vacuum of information--silence about why decisions were made the way they were," Maslach says. "Another is having to operate in conflict with your values. Do you need to shade the truth to get authorization from the insurance company? Are you selling things that you know people don't really need?"


Still continue....

STOP ARGUING, START TALKING

Above title was a title of Susan Quilliam's book, which the
content's similar with the title. Encourage everyone , especially
husband/wife, parents/children to `talking instead of arguing'. I
think enough sample we can find in our daily life where actually at
the beginning we just want to `talking', speaking but unfortunately
it will end up with `arguing' that will not produce any good
solution for the issue. In some case it will make more serious the
issue and hurting our opponent.

Some people will say ` arguing is better actually, right?' it is but
what I mean with arguing here is not just only give our
argumentation but mostly to the fight using the words. Longman
Dictionary of contemporary English explaining some definition
of `argue' for the positive in first meaning is :'to provide reasons
for or against (something), especially clearly and in proper order.'
Meanwhile for negative meaning is for who's fight using words is in
5th position for the meaning `to disagree in words; fight with
words; quarrel. Second word `Talking' means to talk something with
language media. This conversation is really neutral and without
involving the emotion that can direct the conversation to the fight.

Beside above negative meaning `arguing' mostly looking for reason
for ourselves causing our opponent feeling disappoint, desperate and
ask to surrender in conversation. Meanwhile `talking' is opposite,
trying deeply to understand what's in our opponent's mind so we can
understand clearly during the conversation.

So when we want to talk something please be carefully not to easily
directing to the `arguing.' Once again, stop arguing and start
talking is more important.

good morning and have a nice day to all of you!