Friday, September 30, 2011

Explanation on the US debt ceiling.



Let's say you have a credit card with a $2000 limit. Your credit card has almost hit its limit and you can't pay it off. You need to buy some food and pay the bills for this month and you have no choice but to pay it using your credit card. After you pay for these things, the credit card will be maxed out.

The debt ceiling is like a credit card. The US has maxed out the credit card on August 2nd.

You will be getting your check soon and you have to pay the rent. But the rent is $1000 and your check is only $800. So you know you'll be short by $200 ahead of time and the only option you have left is to contact the credit card company and ask them to increase your limit.

The debt ceiling legislation is trying to raise the credit limit.

Most of the time you can do this without an issue but politicians decided to say that borrowing money will not work out in the long term. So they are trying to lower the spending cost or raise the income before they can raise the debt ceiling.

Democrats want to raise the income by raising taxes but the Republicans want to lower the spending cost. They want to do something that will make everyone happy but they haven't found it yet.

So if the Democrats and the Republicans can't meet in the middle, and the US doesn't raise the debt ceiling, then they won't have money to pay all the bills. So they will have to figure out which bills to pay first with the money that they do have. Such as military bills or pay back the countries that they owe money to.

Just like if you don't have enough money, do you pay to fix the car? Or pay your medical bills first?

Now you're probably wondering what happens if the US doesn't pay? No one knows yet. Maybe other countries will lose trust in the US and will not let them borrow money anymore.

How to bet on football spreads.



Here's an example of a football spread:

Sunday 1pm EST. Pats @ Colts +3.5

The spread(+3.5) always applies to the first team listed(Pats). In the example above, you bet on whether the Pats will beat the Colts by 3.5 or more points. If you bet on the Pats winning, you only win money if the Pats win the game by 3.5 points or more. If the score is 21-20 Pats, you still lose even if though the Pats won because they didn't win by 3.5 or more.

If you bet on the Colts, you will win the bet if the Colts win, lose by 1, lose by 2, or lose by 3. So if the score is 21-20 Pats and you bet on the Colts, you still win the bet because the Colts didn't lose by more than 3.5 points.

Example of a negative spread:

Sunday 1pm EST. Jets @ Ravens -15.5

The spread always applies to the first team. In this case, if you bet on the Jets, you are betting if the Jets will win or will lose by 15.5 points or more points. So if you bet on the Ravens, they have to win by 15.5 points or more for you to win the bet. If you bet on the Jets, you win the bet if the Jets win the game, or lose by 15.5 or more. If the score is 10-7 Ravens, you lose your bet because the Jets only lost by 3.

Example of a whole number spread:

Sunday 1pm EST. Saints @ Raiders +4

You are betting if the Saints win by more than 4. If the Saints win by 4, most of the time you get your money back. It is basically a draw.

If you plan to do some sports betting, then I recommend betting on football/soccer and using this product will show you how to win 90% of your bets. You don't even need any knowledge on football/soccer or sports betting.

How WWII helped the US get out of the Great Depression.



Before WWII, millions of people had no jobs because of the great depression. But when the US joined WWII, millions of people were hired and fought in the war. All types of people were hired such as women and teenagers which caused unemployment to be almost extinct. Wages increased from all the competition which closed the gap between the higher class, the middle class, and the lower class. During the war, allied countries bought many war supplies from the US.

When the war was over, Europe had to rebuild. Which meant they had to buy products from the US which allowed more products to be made. Some European countries owed the US millions of dollars in debt. WWII wasn't the only thing that caused the US to get out of the great depression but it played a huge role.

If you want to read a great biography about a man's adventure during World War II, I highly recommend this book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.


This is a book that grips you, draws you in and leaves you feeling a slightly better person for having read it. 


Movies such as Saving Private Ryan really bring a feel of what happened during WWII and what the soldiers really had to go through.

How fire works.


The 2 types of chemical reactions to make a fire is fire that requires heat and fire that give out heat as they work. The wood reacts to the air around it when you set wood on fire. This type of chemical reactions gives off a lot of heat that makes the gasses in the air glow. The glowing gasses is the flame you see. The things that make a flame look the way it does depends on how much air is there to burn, what is being burnt, and heat.

What happens in a stock exchange.



Imagine you're at the food court in the mall. There are all these stores that are selling you stuff at different prices and everyone is buying. There is a pizza store, a smoothie store, and a burger store. Everyone is trying to buy and sell stuff so people are yelling all over the place. So there are signals and colours to identify each person.

You want 2 slices of pizza so you send the pizza store a signal. Then you send another signal to the smoothie guy for 1 smoothie. And another to the burger store but you will only buy it if it is a certain price.

Everyone is trying to buy and sell all at the same time and it gets very confusing. There are signals that are used so they can communicate with the other people. Everything is saved in the computers. Most deals are done by computer.


Thursday, September 29, 2011

Where does the fat go?



Your mommy brings you to a playground to play. It is a nice sunny day and you are sweating a lot because you've been running around for 30 minutes. The running used a lot of your energy so you drink a bottle of milk and now you feel better.

Your body finds a source to use as power to power your running. Whenever you move around, energy is leaving the system. Energy can be stored as fat, muscle, and many other ways. When you use that energy it is no longer in the system of your body. You can't choose where your body takes the energy from, that's why you can't spot reduce fat. The energy exits your body in multiple ways such as sweating and when you breathe out.

Lose weight in 28 days with The Spark: The 28-Day Breakthrough Plan for Losing Weight, Getting Fit, and Transforming Your Life. Now you might be thinking what makes this book different? This book is more about losing weight and fitness. It focuses on YOU as a person and inspires you into creating a better lifestyle for yourself.

Why different people like different music.



The music you like is affected by your familarity with it. If your parents always played hip-hop music in the car when you were a child, you become familiar with it and that causes you to enjoy it.

Pretend that as a kid you had a chocolate bar that you really loved. You ate it and said you wanted to eat it everyday forever because it was so delicious. But last week you refused to eat the same chocolate bar at all because the chocolate was a little melted.

Now you ate it even if the chocolate is a little melted and you loved it. That same day right after you ate it you went outside with your friends and had the most fun you ever had and bought ice cream from the ice cream truck that plays music. Now everytime you eat that chocolate bar, you will remember the fun you had, and it's a happy memory, so it makes you like the chocolate bar even more because of the memories.

Some people like hip-hop so they might buy a hip-hop album such as J. Cole's new one.



Or you may like something more slow and peaceful to listen to such as Adele.

Difference between FBI and CIA.






Let's say you're playing baseball on the streets with your friends and one of your friends hits a baseball through your neighbours window and breaks it. Your neighbour comes out and asks all your friends questions to find out who did so they can be punished. Your neighbour is the FBI.

Your sister claims that your brother stole one of her barbie toys. Your brother denies it but your sister still thinks he did it. So when your brother is taking a shower, your sister goes in his room and snoops around to see if your brother actually stole it. Your sister is the CIA.

Here's a little quote to help understand better:

"Darling, the FBI are like police. If they come to the door, don't let them in the house. The CIA are spies. If they want in, they are already in the house."


Explanation on Money Laundering. Using bubble gum.



Imagine you went to the store with your friends and stole a bunch of bubble gum. If your parents find out that you have been stealing they will be very mad because they taught you that stealing is bad. You want to eat all your bubble gum but you don't want your parents to ask questions about where they came from.

So you start telling your friends joke and tell them that if they give you bubble gum then you will tell them a joke . Then when your parents ask you where you got the bubble gum from, you can just say you told your friends a joke and they gave you it. Your parents don't know how many jokes you told that day at school. So you could of told 3 jokes, but came home with 10 bubble gum, they wouldn't know you stole the other 7 pieces of gum.

For a more deep explanation on money laundering check out Money Laundering: A Guide for Criminal Investigators, Second Edition.

Why your old technology work better than your new ones.



Your old Super Nintendo didnt have any of the things that break on your Playstation or Xbox.

Reading data from the Super Mario cartridge requires no moving parts, only electrical signals. When your Xbox or Playstation reads a CD and is writing to a hard drive, there are MANY tiny moving parts that can break a lot.

The Xbox and Playstation also have hundreds of more computer "brains" and wires, and more complicated programs. It has more things that can break.

These new technologies generate a lot of heat and it is stuffed as tightly as possible. Overheating is bad for the components, and so it leads to breakage.

The Troy Davis case.



A cop was shot and killed. Troy Davis was charged and convicted with the murder of the cop. There was a pair of shorts that was taken from his house without a warrant so it was not allowed in court. There was no murder weapon, but the bullet casings found at the scene of the crime was the same as the casings of another shooting Davis was charged of, but not convicted with. So basically it all relied on eyewitness testimony. There were 9 non-police witnesses and he was found guilty. This was 20 years ago.

7 of the 9 witnesses have changed their testimony. Some of them said it was another guy, and some of them were saying the cops forced them into accusing Troy.

Much of the evidence that they relied upon has either been wrong, or have been questionable.

There was another guy name Sylvester "Redd" Coles who owned a gun matching the one that killed the officer. He also is the person who went to the cops and 'turned in' Davis.

Why you faint when you get hit hard.



If you ever watch boxing, MMA, or any other physical sport. You will see sometimes people will get knocked out from a hard hit to the head or jaw.

Basically it's when your head gets rattled so hard that your brain hits your skull and that's when you faint. The reason your body does this is because when you're standing gravity pulls your blood down. When you faint, your body goes limp and the blood gets to your head more easily when you're laying down.

If you want to learn MMA and learn how to have that 1 punch knock out, this training program created by UFC veteran Jeff Joslin will get you on your way. It is a beginner training program with over 100 videos that will teach you how to be a MMA fighter.

Explanation on volts and watts.



If I had a bowling ball and dropped it from 5 feet and then dropped it from 10 feet, which will do more damage on impact? 10 feet because it will create more flow. The height I dropped the bowling ball at is the voltage, the speed of it is the current, and the impact of the ball is the watts.

Voltage is potential, current is flow, and watts is power.
Voltage + current = power.

Let's say I dropped the bowling ball from 10 feet into a pool of water that is 1 feet deep. It drops into the water and hits the bottom with less impact. The water is resisting the flow. It's dropped from the same height but there is more resistance, which means less flow, which means less impact, which means less power.

Resistors(water) in the path of the flow resist the flow, making less power.



Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Mac vs PC.



Let's pretend that Windows OS and Mac OS are video game consoles.

The windows console is very easy to put together and it's cheap. It comes with all the cords and controllers that you need. It's very popular and a lot of people have it. Because of it's popularity, all the games you buy for it will work right out of the box. You just put it in the disc tray and play. Every video game is made to work with the windows console. But you can't change the main part inside the windows console. It is made at the windows factory and you can't open the console up. The quality is okay but it does mostly everything you want.

The mac console looks really nice and is fun to play. It is made with it's own special parts and controllers. It doesn't play all the video games, but the video games it does play are very good. It's kind of popular, so a lot of the video game makers will put special mac logos on their discs. You can't change the main part inside as well as a lot of other things. All the mac console accessories work together without any extra work.

Just a reminder that this article is talking about the operating system(OS), not the hardware.

The OS is the software such as or .

Why your computer gets slow overtime.



Imagine that your computer is a brand new car. Now if there is no traffic on the road, the car will get to its destination faster. As time goes by, there is more traffic each day and each day it takes longer to get to the destination.

Same with with your computer. The car is your computer and the traffic is all of the software and compenents that you have installed over the years. Some software can make changes to the windows system files and registry which can cause your PC to slow down.

Sometimes your computer gets viruses or spyware that slows down or can delete everything on your computer. To prevent that from happening you need a protection software such as Kaspersky Pure 3-User. This program protects your computer from any harm.

Why x^0 = 1.



To get from x^4 to x^5. You have to multipy by x. To go down 1, you divide by x. You would go from x^5 to x^4.

x^1 is x. Now to go down 1 we have to do the same thing above, divide by x.

x divided by x is 1. x^1 is the same as x. That's why x^0 = 1.

How cell phones work.



Cell phones communicate through "radio waves". Radio waves are like the waves on water. Imagine you are standing on one side of the pool, and your friend is standing on the other side of the pool. If you drop a small rock in the pool, it will cause little waves to go out in all directions and to the other side of the pool.

Your cell phone sends a radio wave out just like you send a water wave out. The radio wave goes in all directions until it hits a cell tower. The cell tower will then send a radio wave to the person you want to call.

Different radio waves mean different things. When you drop a big rock in the pool, it will make a big wave. Now if you drop a small rock it will make a small wave. Imagine a big wave meaning one thing and a small wave meaning something else. Let's say the big wave represents 0 and the small wave represents 1. If you send out 10 waves it could look something like this: 0010010101. This is called binary. We could make up our own language and communicate by waves.

Your cell phone tells who you are, who you want to call, and what you want to say with these 1s and 0s and tells the cell tower, who then sends it to who you're calling. This goes back and forth until one of you hang up.

Radio wave are almost instant and move at the speed of light. So there is hardly any delay.

The cell tower uses computers to sort through calls. The cell tower will assign a new radio wave to computer to handle it and goes back to looking for new calls.

How stocks in the stock market work.



Let's say there is a video game store owned by Jared who has owned it for the last 10 years. Let's say we want to buy Jared's video game store so that everyone will buy the video games from us instead of Jared.

To find out how much the store is actually worth, we have to find out how much Jared is making. If the store is making $200 a day, that means it is making around $6000 a month. That is about $66,000 a year. So if the video game store makes that much for the next 10 years, it would be worth around $660,000.

This is simply to figure out how much money the store will make in a certain period of time. We don't have to do all this stuff, there are companies that do this for us. They just tell us how much the store is worth and we decide to buy it or not.

Let's say Jared's video game store is worth $660,000. If we want to buy it, we give him $660,000 and the store is ours. Now what if we don't have that much money? What if we only have half of that($330,000). We can give him that half to own 50% of the company. Which means we get 50% of the profits. So if Jared makes $200 a day. We would be getting $100 a day. We could also buy 10% for $66,000 and make $20 a day. Or 1% and so on.

Sometimes companies sell shares of stock. So if Jared wanted to sell 100 stocks then those stocks would be $6,600 at 1% each. If you own 1 stock that is worth 1%, that means if Jared's video game store makes $100, you would make $1. If you wanted to buy all 100 it would cost $660,000 and you would own 100%. Bigger companies that are worth millions and billions sell more stocks at lower prices. If they only sold 100 stocks it would be too expensive and no one would buy it. So they can sell 1000 stocks at $660 each or 10000 at $66 each. Some companies have millions of stocks.

People who buy stocks are called "investors" and the act of buying shares is called "investing". That means the investor thinks that the company will make a lot of money in the future and the investor can turn a profit.

When you buy shares in a company, you just don't get the money that they make. You also get to make decisions in the company. These are called "shareholder meetings". Everyone who owns a share will get to vote on what the company will do next. If you own more shares, your vote will count more.

Let's say there are 4 people voting. George, Sarah, Bill, and Daniel. Now George, Sarah, and Bill vote for option A. While Daniel votes for option B. George, Sarah, and Bill own 20% of the shares each, while Daniel owns 40%. The combined percentage for option A is 60% while the percentage of votes for option B is 40%. That means that option A is the winner. Even though Daniel has more shares than them seperately, he will still get out voted by all of them together.

Now if one person owns more than half the shares, then they have what is called "controlling interest" in the company. Which means they make all the decisions.

For a more detailed and in depth explanation on the stock market, I suggest you read The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing.

Why cooking bad meat is not edible.


There are little bugs on foods called "germs" or "bacteria" that could make us sick. They are everywhere, on food and even on your skin. The one on your skin are not bad for but the ones on food CAN be bad. That's why we cook our food so all the bugs die. The bugs die but the poop they leave behind are still left behind. The poop is too small to see but that is what makes you sick. Even if all the bugs are gone, the poop is still there.

Why there are nice dogs and mean dogs.


If you kind of look like your parents, it's because parents pass some of their features on to their children. The same thing happens to animals. Angry animals will most likely have angry babies and nice animals will likely have nice babies. For a long time, people only let the nice dogs live with them and make babies and made all the wild dogs go away. This is called domestication. Wild dogs are wild so they make more dogs who take in the "wild" feature of their parents. Nice dogs are easy to find because of domestication.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Why you're hungry, even if you're overweight.



Think of the fat in your body as the food you keep in your emergency kit. Your emergency kit is used to help you only when you're in danger. When you're hungry, your pantry(stomach) is empty so your body wants you to go the grocery food to buy more food(eat). You could always eat food from the emergency kit but your body doesn't think this is the best idea.

So if there is a snow storm and you can not go to the grocery store to buy more food. Then it is okay to eat from the emergency kit. But your body doesn't think this is the best idea since this food is used for emergencies only. Your body thinks its better to have food in the pantry AND have food in the emergency kit. So instead of using the food in emergency kit, your body will tell you to eat.

Why you have to turn off electronics on an airplane.



In an airplane, electronics and avionics in aircraft are shielded from outside signals. So the chance of some electronics interfering with the pilot's ability to listen to radio instructions are unlikely.

Most of these regulations are about making sure the passengers can exit the plane quickly in the event of an emergency. If anything goes wrong on an airplane, it is likely going to happen during landing or take-off. If anything goes wrong, you'll be able to hear the pilot or flight attendants for instructions.

Why do you have to turn off your electronics if you're not listening to anything? Well the flight attendants don't know you're not listening to anything. So it's just safer to tell everyone to turn off all their electronics.

What is wrong with Africa.





Picture Africa as a school playground, where a lot of different kids are living. There is one group by the swing set, another by the school, a third live by soccer field, and a fourth is by the bike racks. Sometimes the soccer field kids throw small pebbles at the bike rack kids, and sometimes the bike rack kids get hurt and fight back, but usually it ends without much damage done and they keep to themselves.

One day, a group of kids from a different school come inside. Most of the playground kids are wearing ripped clothing and using bags for sneakers, these kids from a different school have Nike runners on. They all have mountain bikes and guns.

The new kids go to the swing set kids and give them a bunch of candy, stuff they have never seen before. The new kids ask in return for the swing set kids to capture the kids by the school and bring them to the swing sets. The swing set kids capture all the kids by the school and are taken outside of the playground, and never seen again.

Then the new kids capture the bike rack kids and are forced to start working for the new kids, along with the swing set kids. They start building new stuff. Slides, jungle gyms, everything the new kids want, they have to do. All the swing set and bike rack kids are tied to ropes so they can't escape.

One day the new kids leave and have taken the playgrounds clothing and food with them. But they leave a lot of guns behind.

The soccer field kids believe they are better than the swing set and bike rack kids. They fight for power in this unruled and divided playground. They have forgotten to live peacefully after many years of being ruled by the new kids.

The new kids are Europe. The soccer field kids are Rwanda, and the other three are Congo, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and West Africans.

Why you aren't getting the internet speed you signed up for.






The internet speed that was advertised is measured in "Megabits" while on your computer the internet speed is measured in "Megabytes". 8 Megabits = 1 Megabyte. On paper it will say 8 Megabits but when you're downloading it will say 1 Megabyte and you're probably wondering why you aren't getting 8 Megabytes. Well this is why.

It's good marketing. I can give you a slice of pie, or I can cut that slice of pie into 8 pieces. Now if I asked you would you be more interested in 1 or 8? You choose 8 because it sounds like you get more right? But you don't recognize it's the same amount either way. The same thing with 1 Megabyte and 1 Megabit.

One of the things that could be affecting your internet speed is your wireless router. If you are using wireless internet, a good Wireless N Router will speed up your internet speed and you won't get any drops.