:The Flash Advancer

We all know that volunteer work is a great way to help build stronger communities as well as helping those in need. Yet, scheduling this is often tricky, and before you know it you don’t have half as long at your disposal to actually do some good. Obviously, when you volunteer as part of a team effort with friends from work, it will be far more fun.

Accordingly, a number of socially-conscious companies are creating organizing points helping their employees to work for the community through volunteer activities. One of the more significant examples is Adaptive Marketing LLC of Connecticut who also offer financial and shopping benefits programs like Shopping Essentials (MVQ*SHOPESSNTLS). Company based charitable works like these used to be annual, minor occasions — in today’s world, so much more can be accomplished. Looking at a specific company, Adaptive Marketing has offered staff members a chance to help with anything from athletic shoe recycling campaigns to tree replanting weekends. For these events, the times, locations and dates of the events were posted, making sure that employees knew what to expect, and how much time it might take precisely. Naturally, it’s important to let volunteers choose activities that fit their hobbies. Companies who provide this kind of service to their community like Adaptive Marketing, the developers of the membership program Shopping Essentials (MVQ*SHOPESSNTLS), present their staffers with a diverse list of local drives. You’ll find so much to be done; working with children, lending a hand to environmental programs, or supporting local artists among others. Adaptive Marketing’s members of staff will be sure to choose something they enjoy to volunteer for, making their time fun as well as effective.

Commonly a company-supported charity project — fundraising with a local school, for example, or helping out at a homeless shelter — is either for a one-off event or on a regular schedule to accomplish a bigger goal. Staff members may well say they don’t have any free time, but usually even they can often free up the hours to lend a hand with one instalment of a long term project. It has always been a fairly common practice for firms to help to support the community which they serve. Community goodwill comes from the activities of Adaptive Marketing’s staffers over the course of company supported programs like the ones outlined above. Helping around your home town makes you feel like a better person — which is just the sort of feeling to motivate staffers in both their daily work and their volunteer activities. Organizing a drive to help employees to volunteer is its own reward.

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Cancer of the mesothelium is a scarce cancer of the tissue that lines the person’s internal organs. Around two thousand new occurrences are recognized every year in the whole US. Of this group, aroundthree fourths of cases concern the sac around the lungs, named the pleura. This type of cancer is called pleural mesothelioma. In around ten to 20 percent of instances, mesothelioma may affect the tissue that envelopes abdomen organs, named the peritoneal membrane, causing what is then referred to as peritoneal mesothelioma.

Exposure to asbestos is absolutely the largest cause for this uncommon cancer. After exposure to asbestos, the time period to development of the mesothelioma disease could be two to four decades. As a result of work exposure, mesothelioma is about three times more routine in males, than in women. Due to the number of occurrences goes up with age, there are about 10 times more occurrences in the males over age 64 than in the males in their midlife.

Getting Malignant mesothelioma is a weighty sickness, which, at the moment, has a incredibly poor rate of continuing continuance. Although, if it is diagnosed quickly, care are then at hand that will notably extend the patient’s life. Cutting edge therapies continue to be and are being developed through the use of clinical trials.

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The aftermath of Katrina has affected more that just New Orleans and the surrounding gulf coast. There are huge financial implications associated with the catastrophe, from the initial humanitarian aid to the rebuilding and repairing needed to get the local area back on its feet. Eight oil refineries shut down as a result of Katrina could take many months to restart. The Gulf Coast is a prime supplier of oil, through pipelines now shut due to lack of power and ocean-going barges unable to load from ports eradicated by the storm.

From a global perspective, the loss of oil production in the area is sending shockwaves through the world’s financial institutions and economies. Even before hurricane Katrina’s damage to oil production the price of fuel has increased to a major degree. The following data compares price increases from September 2004 to August 2005 in the United States of America and the United Kingdom.

US Fuel Price Increases

September 2004

Unleaded: £0.28 ($0.48) per Litre

Diesel: £0.29 ($0.51) per Litre

August 2005

Unleaded: £0.38 ($0.67) per Litre

Diesel: £0.39 ($0.68) per Litre

UK Fuel Price Increases

September 2004

Unleaded: £0.87 ($1.59) per Litre

Diesel: £0.83 ($1.52) per Litre

August 2005

Unleaded: £0.96 ($1.76) per Litre

Diesel: £0.94 ($1.73) per Litre

In the United Kingdom, motorists are burdening more fuel increases with the price of 1 litre soon to exceed £1 ($1.84). About 65% of the price UK motorists pay goes to the government in tax so the additional revenues generated are unlikely to direct the government to rebalance tax levels on fuel unless the wider economy comes under threat.

“…If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break

And the water gonna come in, have no place to stay…”

When The Levee Breaks
Memphis Minnie
recording of 1929 written after the devastating Mississippi flood of 1927

My next visit to fill up my car is once again bound to force a whimper from my wallet especially when the litre dial spins at the same rate as the total cost dial. But as my day to day problems range from the extra few pounds I have to pay on the weekly fuel to what colour to paint my children’s bedrooms, I consider myself very lucky and certainly very selfish… shame on me!

About the Author

Gordon doesn’t usually like to talk politics unless it involves money, he writes articles for the personal finance articles website www.search-4-loans.co.uk. He also maintains content on www.loansense.co.uk and www.the-loanshop.co.uk.

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On the Day After Thanksgiving Kohls, KMart, Caribou Coffee and other American retailers will open their doors at 5AM for the holiest of all shopping days in America.

Buy Nothing Day: November 25, 2005

There are more circulars and advertising inserts incenting purchases for this specific day than any other day of the year, according to Media Week. Countering these massive energies is the grassroots declaration of Buy Nothing Day, a resistance fortified by AdBusters.

What is this all about? AdBusters’ Brian Highley explains, “We ask people to go 24 hours without buying anything. Some find that they can’t and we encourage them to ask themselves, ‘Why not?’”

Buy Nothing Day will be celebrated in a record 65 countries this year. Fueled in part by a growing anti-American sentiment, more folks in more countries will be hanging posters and discussing global consumerism. AdBusters.org has downloadable posters and paraphernalia to spread the word of Buy Nothing Day.

In America, it is unlikely that Buy Nothing Day will reach your attention unless you read Adbusters. Wired and The Christian Science Monitor ran articles this week covering Buy Nothing Day, but the vast majority of the rest of the coverage will only come if participants make a big enough spectacle of themselves to become newsworthy.

Why so little coverage? The efforts of AdBusters are well-meaning but poorly orchestrated. There is no press release, a basic tool of a communication society.

AdBusters has few facts to readily give out on Buy Nothing Day, like the full name of “Ted Dave” who started Buy Nothing Day, the year of its inception: 1992, but that’s about it.

In years past, AdBusters was thwarted from buying spot TV time to run a thirty-second commercial questioning the consumption of American and Canadian citizens while promoting Buy Nothing Day. Thwarted? AdBusters called stations directly. If their goal was truly to run their ad they could have had their ad run with the help of a Spot TV Buying service. Instead, it appears that their goal was to get rejected so they could play the martyr card and generate sympathy.

Martyrdom is a questionable tactic, with limited repeatability. Questioning shopping on the biggest American shopping day will no doubt prove ineffectual in America. Asking consumers to restrain their shopping habit in the face of the most media advertising for the best sales of the year taking place over the longest shopping day of the year is like asking a smoker to quit and taking them to Vegas. Not a prescription for abstinence. To provide day-long distraction, residents of San Jose, CA have organized a bike ride and folks in Washington County, Wisconsin are organizing an all day film festival.

Reaching mass Americans is only likely if local participants make themselves newsworthy. In Fairbanks, AK Buy Nothing Day activists are planning a demonstration around WalMart. In Northern California, folks calling themselves the People’s Revolutionary Organization is staging a full day of direct action throughout their county in support of Buy Nothing Day, staging events at 7 different shopping centers in the area from 9am-5pm.

Granted, AdBusters has gotten better at promoting Buy Nothing Day. To begin with, they stopped selling calendars and Tshirts to promote themselves. However, their efforts continue to communicate “Look at this fabulous idea of AdBusters” instead of giving helpful tactics towards increased effectiveness.

Many activists question the efficacy of AdBusters. Why would they launch BlackSpot Sneakers when NoSweat was already making an eco-friendly shoe made by workers paid a decent wage? Why don’t they promote/review the best books? Why wouldn’t they put a link to the WalMart movie in their magazine? Does nobody else make a decent video or media literacy kit? Why is every piece of media they sell and promote branded AdBusters?

AdBusters, AdBusters, AdBusters. Me, me, me.

AdBusters recent removal of page numbers makes the magazine more of an art object than a tool for disseminating discussion fodder. If changing behavior is their goal, then they have an obligation to get better at disseminating what’s working that isn’t branded AdBusters. There is a huge opportunity for AdBusters to grow by better suiting the needs of its users and occasional users.

Employing the crass techniques of big business seems to go against the culture of AdBusters. There are no goals for Buy Nothing Day. There are no means of measuring success. It is time for AdBusters to get better, to get professionally organized, to use basic tools of planning and communication.

Howard Campbell,
Poker Without Cards

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In our never ending search for the illusive “Fountain of Youth,” nothing strikes a chord like the term “cellulite.” Interestingly, the term “cellulite” was first introduced to us by a fashion magazine. That fact is sufficient to generate speculation among opposing sides to this controversial subject.

Cellulite is a term that is used to describe fat deposits under the skin that outwardly give the skin a dimpled, or orange-peel like appearance. Cellulite is most often seen in women because the fat is arranged in large chambers separated by columns of collagen fibers.

There really is no substitute for good, old-fashioned, healthy nutrition and exercise. The tried and true methods do work:

1. Watch your diet.


2. Incorporate fresh and natural foods into your diet.


3. Drink plenty of water to avoid dehydration.


4. Limit the consumption of caffeine and alcohol.


5. Avoid high fat foods.


6. Get plenty of fiber.


7. Quit or cut down on smoking.


8. Avoid medications not necessary to health and well being.


9. Get plenty of exercise.

Following a regimen of good health, nutrition and exercise will rid your body of excess toxins and promote a general state of health that is optimum for pursuing any program for dealing with cellulite.

Lastly, think twice or three times before investing huge amounts of cash for so-called treatments or cures. You are now armed with the most important tool you need on your journey to Conquering Cellulite. That tool is knowledge! Use it wisely!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tony Newton publishes the popular health and wellness website - http://www.1st-for-health.com With lots of informative articles on low carb diets, hair loss, arthritis pain relief, acne and lots more.

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The Federal trade Commission has a rule, which says that each potential franchise buyer must receive a uniform franchise offering circular. There are various things in the UFOC one of which is a complete listing of the names, addresses and phone numbers of all the franchisees in the system. The FTC suggests on their website that potential buyers call on these franchisees and ask questions in order to make an informed decision, yet is the same agency which has set up the Do Not Call Registry. Many of current franchisees get calls from franchise buyers who have received a UFOC from the franchisor, which they are interested in buying from.

What about the current franchisees rights to privacy? Remember the FTC recommends buyers to call them? Many franchisee like 100 million other Americans are on the Federal Trade Commissions “Do Not Call List” yet the FTC is forcing franchisors to put their phone numbers on these document attachments and further recommending to call many of them on the list at random as part of the consumers due diligence?

Many of our Nation’s franchisees operate out of their homes. This is an invasion of privacy. Worse off what if an International Terrorist starts asking them lots of questions about how the a certain franchisee’s business equipment works, what you can use it for? What if they ask this of a company, which uses a spray rig in the business. How about a lawn care business, carpet cleaning company, mobile cleaning service? What if they ask; what can you spray with it, Gallons Per Minute, soap ratios, inline injection nozzles? We already know that someone tried to use an SBA loan to buy a crop duster aircraft to go into business in FL who was a member of Al Queda? How do you know they did not shop franchisors too? Gaining valuable information? Do you know how many ChemLawn type businesses and opportunities are available in Florida alone? Do we really need to have so much over disclosure in franchising from the FTC to protect the consumer? Any more disclosure we are liable to kill the consumers of America and the FTC will be yet another accomplice to the demise of our country.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

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