Category: In the News

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to win fair maiden’s heart…. it starts with a laugh!

He Makes Me LaughIn “Who framed Roger Rabbit?”, the lovely Jessica Rabbit is asked why she loves Roger. Jessica sighs demurely, ” he makes me laugh!”

Young men always amuse me as they desperately trade witty ‘pick-up’ lines and completely miss the obvious. Women enjoy men who make them laugh, and men — not surprisingly — find women extra attractive if they laugh at the man’s jokes or remarks. Does this really surprise anyone?

Humor isn’t just joke telling, which can be rather boring and contrived. There are funny things happening around us all the time… sometimes all it takes is to notice it and point it out.

Some recent studies into this phenomenon have uncovered just what we expected with one or two subtle differences. First, men don’t really seem to care if their date is witty as long as she laughs at his jokes. Here is a warning for you serious types, women rated humorless men as less honest and less trustworthy and a bit more socially inept. They also rated these men as ‘rough’ (not in a desirable context).
Make her laugh... and it may be the start of something wonderful

Read the linked studies for yourself, but my take is women are attracted to men who are humorous in a variety of social circumstances. Think about it. In some small way, a little humor can lift that little gray cloud that sometimes finds itself over every woman’s head from time to time. It’s like keeping sun in the house and fresh flowers, it’s very hard to be sad… unless you work really hard at it. The man who can master this has gained a great insight and , maybe, the beginning of a great relationship.

Roger Freberg

 

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Your baby is hungry? Feed them anywhere and anytime!

a happy and a healthy baby
I am always surprised that breast-feeding is ever an issue anymore?

Although many men and women feel somewhat emancipated from the stereotypical gender expectations of prior decades. it appears that a holdover from our mother’s/ or grandmother’s time still hangs on. It all has to do with breast-feeding. Should a mother breastfeed and where and when? Ask anyone and they will give you their — often stern — opinion on the subject. I have heard all kinds of half truths and truths. Some women claim not to breast-feed because they are ‘busy’ or because it will hurt their figure or because it’s old fashioned. None of these ‘reasons’ really work for me. It should be all about what’s best for the baby…. or am I old fashioned? Continue reading “Your baby is hungry? Feed them anywhere and anytime!”

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Avast me Hardies! Thar be Buried Internet Treasure!

Our Home Library! 

There is a little known secret….

I am not really sure that I should even tell you about it… because it may make life and searching that much tougher for me. We’re friends now, so let me share some of my booty with you…. but first, let me tell you how I discovered it.

Have you been to a library lately? If you haven’t then you’d be shocked. Many libraries today are not filled with reference books, in fact, the Dewey Decimal system really isn’t used too much. Libraries are filled today with newspapers, romance novels, sometimes movies , video games and the requisite homeless guy. Not too much is left of what we called a library a decade or two ago. It doesn’t even smell the same

Why is this?

Some folks blame the failure of the library system to the disinterest of the ignorant American Public. However, I don’t think we are any more ignorant than we have ever been; in fact, I am always impressed with how smart we all are becoming. Afterall, we continue in California  to vote down those stupid tax increases … so we’re figuring it out.

I would credit our increased intelligence to the Internet which first gained wide acceptance by late 1991 … There are ‘no more secrets’ out there and anyone can sit down and check out what’s happening around the world or research almost anything. The internet has replaced libraries as the ‘source’ for data acquisition. Young people today can view ‘original sources’ on-line, grab pictures and write their entire papers and reports for class without ever going nto the ‘stacks’ ( in olden times, that’s the place in the library where we would look up what takes us seconds to do on-line). Continue reading “Avast me Hardies! Thar be Buried Internet Treasure!”

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Before you date…. ask to see his hands!

Look at his Hands before you date him

It seems like eons ago, but there was a time when people believed that you could tell everything about someone by just looking at them. Judgments were made based on what were believed to be influencing factors. Although some may call this prejudice , stereotyping or worse, there is some truth to the fact that biology does influence who we are in ways we may never have realized…. and sometimes with little regard to our environment. This wasn’t unknown to the ancient Greeks.

Hippocrates wrote:  “You will find, as a general rule, that the constitutions and the habits of a people follow the nature of the land where they live.”

The father of medicine, Hippocrates, was stating a simple truth from his time. Basically, what and who we are today is the result of long periods of exposure and interaction with our environment. For example, today, many of the people in Scandinavia and Europe – to a lesser degree- carry with them a resistance to the Black Death. Over time, a gene(s) for resistance to the plague gained a greater foothold in the population.

We may all be ‘equal’ in the eyes of our lord, but we all don’t have the same abilities, levels of intelligence, skills, aptitude or potential. Populations differ as do individual people. After all, we live in a diverse world.

Today, it is recognized that certain hereditary factors can have a profound influence on a person’s outlook, health and behavior. Correlations within families regarding suseptability towards types of diseases and some mental illnesses are becoming better understood.

Some researchers have pointed to  the presence of high ‘testosterone’ in men as a precursor for aggressive and violent behavior. They were in error, the truth is a bit more complex. High levels of testosterone in adult men have little correlation to violent behavior, per se. What has a some correlation is “prenatal testosterone.”

A high level of prenatal testosterone during pregnancy has some very interesting correlations.

For example, when a man’s index finger is significantly shorter than his ring finger there is a correlation with ‘physically aggressive behavior’. Does this mean every man with a shorter index finger displays ‘physically agressive behavior’… of course not. What it does mean is that ‘statistically’, it IS significant.

With three daughters, I may now ask their dates…. “Show me your hands!”

Roger Freberg

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Soccer: Give them 1 point for effort… but it’s not enough to keep me awake!

 Soccer only requires a ball

Americans have just never caught soccer fever or ‘World Cup” mania. This has lead some advocates to believe that this failure is due to some shortcoming in the American psyche rather than soccer’s lower sex appeal. Many cried over the failure of women’s professional soccer, but it’s demise wasn’t totally unexpected. Even today, there is a certain amount of drum beating to try to develop support for reintroducing U.S. professional women’s soccer, but unless they compete in the nude, it’s not likely to fare much better.

Soccer has a tough road to hoe in a country that invented or popularized many of the great sports in the world. My impression is that baseball addressed the shortcomings of cricket and American football and rugby evolved from socccer by reshaping the sport to better engage the spectators and participants.

Soccer marketeers are working hard to capture American’s imaginations. Articles about the world’s greatest athletes are soccer players or the fittest athletes are soccer players just don’t ring true to fans who watch Reggie Bush and Justin Gatlin. It doesn’t seem likely unless the criteria include running around for 90 minutes or so and not do anything interesting. The world’s best athletes are in sports that captivate the fans and pay their players like gods.

What do average Americans know about the last World Cup? They know some French guy head butted some Italian guy. It seems rather ironic that two countries that can’t win any wars would be competing for any kind of World Championship.

Soccer is not the ‘safe’ sport for kids that it is marketed. Statistics reveal that head injuries are one of the most common forms of injuries and they occur in about the same frequency in soccer as in American Football. In case you were dozing off… the quote was “In soccer, concussions make up 2-3% of all injuries. This is the same rate as for American football!” All that contact, and soccer still can’t keep me awake.

It is also not hard to understand why in many less economically developed parts of the world, locals have embraced a contest that requires only a ball. Ask any Division I AD about which sports cost the most and the least.
Continue reading “Soccer: Give them 1 point for effort… but it’s not enough to keep me awake!”