Category: Conversation Starters

Ernest Hemingway prized sleep for good reason. Not one to dwell on rest and recuperation, the novelist saw snoozing as a form of damage limitation. “I love sleep,” he once said. “My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake.”

The author’s observation might be truer than he imagined. In a new study, scientists found that broken DNA builds up in brain cells in the daytime, and that repair work only reverses the damage during sleep.

“I think this is one of the key reasons we need to sleep,” said Lior Appelbaum from Bar-Ilan University in Israel. “An offline period gives us time to clean everything up for the next day, to give us a fresh start before we are busy with wakefulness again.”

For an act so universal, sleep has enormous benefits. Found in organisms from flies and worms to jellyfish and humans, it restores the body and helps learning and memory. But despite intensive research, the purpose of sleep is still mysterious.

Appelbaum and his student, David Zada, reasoned that if sleep had evolved in all organisms with a nervous system, from the simplest to the most complex, then it might be working at the level of individual neurons.

‘Your father’s not your father’: when DNA tests reveal more than you bargained for

To find out, they genetically engineered small, transparent zebrafish so that the chromosomes in their neurons carried colourful chemical tags. The researchers then used a powerful, specialised microscope to watch how the chromosomes moved in the neurons, and how often DNA was broken, when the fish were awake and asleep.

When the fish were awake, the chromosomes did not move much and broken strands of DNA built up in the neurons, as part of the normal wear and tear of life. If the fish were sleep-deprived, by tapping on their tank for example, some of the neurons accumulated so much genetic damage they were in danger of dying off.

But, when the fish fell asleep, the picture changed. The scientists noticed that the chromosomes changed shape far more often in sleeping fish, and that DNA damage in their neurons plummeted. The same happened when the researchers added a sleep-inducing drug to the fish tank water, causing the fish to fall asleep in the daytime.

Appelbaum said that chromosomes are constantly changing shape to allow the cells’ natural repair mechanisms to mend DNA damage at different points. When awake, the repair work cannot keep up with the rate at which damage builds up, but in the calm hours of sleep, the repair mechanisms have a chance to get on top of the job.

The best thing you can do for your health: sleep well

“It’s surprising, because the brain goes into a rest state, but the chromosomes move about twice as much during sleep,” said Appelbaum. “There is repair going on in the day, but sleep allows you to catch up,” he said. The process is akin to local councils patching up potholes at night when the traffic has eased.

“I propose that, when we are very tired, neurons accumulate so much damage that they signal the whole brain that we have to go to sleep to fix the damage and avoid going into an unsafe zone,” he added. The study is published in Nature Communications.

Having spotted the effect in zebrafish, the researchers now want to study mice to see if chromosome movement and DNA repair matches brain activity linked to different phases of sleep in mammals.

The work follows a January study by Siu-Wai Choi at Hong Kong University who used blood samples to show that sleep deprivation led to more DNA damage in doctors. She said Appelbaum’s work revealed how DNA breakages accumulate in waking hours and decrease during sleep, only to build up again the next day.

“It is clear from this study that chromosome dynamics during sleep has an essential role to play in repairing damaged DNA,” she said. “Though these results were obtained in an animal model, together with other studies conducted in humans, it does give us food for thought with regard to our lifestyle choices, shift working patterns and long-term health.”

Happiness is not something you postpone for the future;
it is something you design into the present.

Happy people do a lot of things.  They spend time expressing gratitude, cultivating optimism, practicing kindness, nurturing loving relationships, committing to meaningful goals, savoring life’s little pleasures, and so on and so forth.

But they NEVER…

1.  Mind other people’s business.

Forget about what others are doing.  Stop looking at where they are and what they have.  Nobody is doing better than you because nobody can do better than you.  YOU are walking your own path.  Sometimes the reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes circumstances with everyone else’s public highlight reel.  We listen to the noise of the world, instead of ourselves.  So stop the comparisons!  Ignore the distractions.  Listen to your own inner voice.  Mind your own business.

Keep your best wishes and your biggest goals close to your heart and dedicate time to them every day.  Don’t be scared to walk alone, and don’t be scared to enjoy it.  Don’t let anyone’s ignorance, drama, or negativity stop you from being the best you can be.  Keep doing what you know in your heart is right, for YOU.  Because when you are focused on meaningful work and at peace within yourself, almost nothing can shake you.  (Angel and I discuss this in more detail in the “Passion and Growth” chapter of 1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.)

2.  Seek validation of self-worth from others.

When you are content to simply be yourself, without comparing and competing to impress others, everyone worthwhile will respect you.  And even more importantly, you will respect yourself.

How are you letting others define you?  What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?

Truth be told, no one has the right to judge you.  People may have heard your stories, and they may think they know you, but they can’t feel what you are going through; they aren’t living YOUR life.  So forget what they think and say about you.  Focus on how you feel about yourself, and keep walking the path that feels best under your feet.

Those who accept you are your friends.  Those who don’t are your teachers.  If someone calls you something and it’s true, it’s not your problem because it’s true.  If someone calls you something and it’s not true, it’s not your problem because it’s not true.  Either way, whatever they call you is not your problem.  What other people call you is their problem…

What you call yourself, and who you decide to become, is your problem.

3.  Rely on other people and external events for happiness.

Unhappiness lies in that gap between what we have now and what we think we need.  But the truth is, we don’t need to acquire anything more to be content with what we already have.  We don’t need anyone else’s permission to be happy.  Your life is magnificent not because someone says it is, or because you have acquired something new, but because you choose to see it as such.  Don’t let your happiness be held hostage.  It is always yours to choose, to live and experience.

As soon as you stop making everyone and everything else responsible for your happiness, the happier you’ll be.  If you’re unhappy now, it’s not someone else’s fault.  Take full responsibility for your own unhappiness, and you will instantly gain the ability to be happier.  Stop seeking in vain to arrange conditions that will make you happy.  Simply choose to appreciate the greatness that is yours in this moment, and the right conditions will start to line up around the contentment you seek.

The greater part of your happiness or unhappiness depends upon your outlook, and not upon our situation.  Even if things aren’t perfect right now, think of all the beauty still left around you.  A good reason to smile is always one thought away; choose to tap into it any time you like.  (Read The Gifts of Imperfection.)

4.  Hold on to resentment.

Let today be the day you stop being haunted by the ghosts from your past.  What happened in the past is just one chapter in your story; don’t close the book, just turn the page.

We’ve all been hurt by our own decisions and by others, and while the pain of these experiences is normal, sometimes it lingers for too long.  Feelings of resentment urge us to relive the same pain over and over, and we have a hard time letting go.

Forgiveness is the remedy.  It allows you to focus on the future without combating the past.  To understand the infinite potential of everything going forward is to forgive everything already behind you.  Without forgiveness, wounds can never be healed and personal growth can never be achieved.  It doesn’t mean you’re erasing the past, or forgetting what happened.  It means you’re letting go of the resentment and pain, and instead choosing to learn from the incident and move on with your life.

5.  Spend prolonged periods of time in negative environments.

You can’t make positive choices for the rest of your life without an environment that makes those choices easy, natural, and enjoyable.  So protect your spirit and potential from contamination by limiting your time with negative people and the environments they inhabit.

When other people invite you to act like victims, when they whine and moan about the unfairness of life, for example, and ask you to agree, to offer condolences, and to participate in their grievances, WALK AWAY.  When you join in that game of negativity you always lose.

Even when you’re alone, create a positive mental space for yourself.  Make it a point to give up all the thoughts that make you feel bad, or even just a few of them that have been troubling you, and see how doing that changes your life.  You don’t need negative thoughts.  They are all lies.  They solve nothing.  All they have ever given you is a false self that suffers for no reason.  (Read Buddha’s Brain.)

6.  Resist the truth.

It is a certain deathtrap when we spend our lives learning how to lie, because eventually these lies grow so strong in our minds that we become bad at seeing, telling and living our own truth.  Lives come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.  If you resist the truth, you will live a lie every day as the truth haunts your thoughts every night.  You simply can’t get away from your truth by moving dishonestly from one place to the next.

So don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to hide the truth with deception; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion of what’s popular.  It is better to offer no explanation or excuse than a false one.  It takes courage and strength to admit the truth, but it is the only way to truly live.  Accept what is, embrace it fully, and live for the possibilities that lie ahead.

Your turn…

What would you add to the list?  What’s something you should NOT do if you want to be happy?  Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a report Tuesday, March 5, providing an updated assessment about a recall of toxic cosmetic products containing asbestos sold by Claire’s and Justice retailers in late 2017.

FDA officials became aware of the problem when Justice Stores, LLC recalled eight cosmetic products in Sept. 2017, and when Claire’s Stores Inc. withdrew eight of their cosmetic products from shelves in Dec. 2017, according to the report’s update on the FDA’s 2017 findings.

Cosmetics are sold daily across the U.S. and are often used on some of the skin’s most sensitive areas. They are routinely monitored by the FDA to keep unsafe cosmetics away from consumers, according to the report, but under the current regulatory framework, there is no legal requirement for cosmetic manufacturers in the U.S. to test their products.

“Because the 2017 testing was done by third-party laboratories, the agency believed it was important to scientifically confirm that these reports are accurate,” said the FDA’s report.

The agency’s report confirmed the presence of asbestos in product samples collected from both Claire’s and Justice retailers. All possibly toxic Justice products were recalled by the company in 2017, but the FDA was forced to issue a safety alert warning about three asbestos-containing products from Claire’s that could possibly still be in the hands of consumers: eye shadow, compact powder, and contour.  “Claire’s has informed us that it does not believe that affected products are still available for sale,” said the FDA’s safety alert

Claire’s has refused to comply with the FDA’s request to recall these products and the agency does not have authority to mandate them to comply, according to the report.  “The FDA is, therefore, warning consumers not to use these products and will continue to communicate our safety concerns,” said the report.

These findings from the FDA serve as a reminder about the limited authority they have over ensuring the safety of cosmetic products coming onto the market. Ultimately, the FDA is dependent on manufacturers to take the necessary action to ensure the safety of their products.

Claire’s could not be immediately reached for comment.

The news out of Nigeria is getting progressively worse as it is being reported that more than 300 people were killed in at least seven predominantly Christian villages across Nigeria in February and March this year, according to multiple sources that monitor persecution of Christians.

“Since February 10, there have been at least 270 people killed in Kaduna State alone,” International Christian Concern confirms. “It has been reported that at least 70 Christians have been killed during a 10-week span at the beginning of 2019 across the other Middle Belt states.”

In one early morning attack on the village of Karamai on Feb. 14, sources said 41 people died after 300 gunmen swarmed the village shouting “Allahu Akbar!” as they fired their weapons and ransacked people’s homes, according to Barnabas Fund. It was reported almost all of those killed were women and children along with a few senior residents who were unable to run away.

Witnesses reported most of the men of the village fled when the attack began.

Fulani Terrorists

Another 71 people were killed and 28 injured in an attack on the Dogon Noma village by an Islamic group known as the Fulani militia on March 11. The 2018 Global Terrorism Index compiled by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) lists the Fulani among the top terrorist groups in the world. “In Nigeria in 2018, there has been a dramatic increase in violence involving Fulani extremists,” the report states. Those attacks are clearly not letting up in 2019.

In the recent attack on the Dogon Noma village, the terrorists were “torching houses, shooting and hacking down anything that moved,” according to eyewitnesses. Some estimated that 100 homes were destroyed in the early morning raid.

Another nine people were reportedly killed and 30 houses destroyed in the village of Nandu Gbok on March 16.

Church leaders in Nigeria have repeatedly called on President Buhari, who is a Fulani Muslim, to take action against the Fulani herdsmen who have been repeatedly attacking Christian farming villages.

Divine Intervention

The Fulani militia isn’t the only Islamic group terrorizing Christians in Nigeria. Barnabas Fund reports that Boko Haram terrorists recently captured 76 Muslim-background believers who had turned to Christ.

But a story of tragedy reportedly turned into a supernatural rescue for 72 of those Nigerian Christians who were facing a Boko Haram firing squad.

Four leaders of the Christians were told to renounce their faith in Jesus and revert to Islam. When the men refused, they were executed in front of their families.

Then the wives of the four men were told to renounce their faith or their children would be executed. That’s when something remarkable happened.

The children in the group said the Lord Jesus appeared to them that night and told them “All would be well,” according to sources with the Barnabas Fund. They were told not to fear, that He would protect them, and that they should not renounce Him but stay strong knowing that “He is the way, the truth, and the life.”

The next morning, the terrorists lined the children against a wall and told the four mothers they could save their kids if they would only renounce Jesus Christ and return to Islam. The mothers refused.

As the soldiers prepared to fire, something happened. They dropped their rifles and started to grab at their heads, screaming and shouting “Snakes! Snakes!” Some of the soldiers ran off, and others dropped dead where they stood, according to the Barnabas Fund.

After one soldier had dropped his weapon in fear, one captive attempted to pick up the rifle in order to fire at the fleeing terrorists. He stopped when a four-year-old child told him about angels who were protecting them. “You don’t need to do that. Can you not see the men in white fighting for us?”

The lives of all 72 Christians were spared and they were relocated to a safer region of Nigeria. When the Barnabas Fund’s contact asked the group’s pastor why he thought Jesus appeared to them and not to others, he gave this answer: “He does not need to. You have over 200 versions of Scripture and many people able to explain the Bible to you… These people do not.”

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A few weeks ago, we were shocked to hear that a man survived for five days stranded in the snow by eating nothing but Taco Bell hot sauce packets (resulting in his getting Taco Bell free for a year). This started us on the path to thinking that Taco Bell hot sauce was magical. And now, in light of another hot-sauce life-saving measure, we think we may be on to something.

In—happy Monday, everyone—Florida, a man was sitting down at a Taco Bell in Winter Haven when he decided to get up from his seat to procure more hot sauce. Mere seconds later, an elderly man crashed through the front of that Taco Bell with his car, hitting the table where the hot-sauce-retrieving customer had been sitting just moments before.

“Police said a customer who was in the restaurant where the car crashed into the building had just left that area to get hot sauce.” The driver of the SUV was a 77-year-old man who thought the vehicle was in reverse when he hit the accelerator and was in drive instead.

Although the building has significant damage, police say that no one was hurt, and we all know who (or what) to thank for that, don’t we?

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Dairy Queen is giving away free ice cream cones for their fourth-annual “Free Cone Day” on March 20 to celebrate the first day of spring.

Despite what they try to tell you, there’s really nothing cool about the world of high fashion. Look beneath the superficial facade of glitz and glamor and you will find plenty of snobberies, coke addiction and people desperately trying to “fake it til you make it, darling.”

We all know this, but it’s nice to get a little confirmation sometimes. YouTubers Zac and Jay decided to test out their high fashion credentials recently, by dressing up a random mate in some ridiculous outfits from a budget clothing store.

They then headed to the 2019 London Fashion Week, where model Max, described as a “confident, unfashionable, blank canvas of a man,” managed to capture the attention of hordes of photographers, convinced he was the real deal.

Old mate Max Fosh, who also has a YouTube channel was suddenly transformed into a red-hot male model “Maximillian Bucharest.” With dainty pink rubber gloves and his “emotional baggage” lending him the Avant-Garde vibe that high fashion prides itself on, he quickly grabbed the attention of many on the streets of London.

It just goes to show, that with a little imagination and some basic materials, you too could be a famous designer! Although to be fair, Max does have just the kind of features you might expect from a male model. It wouldn’t work with just anyone!

The Zac and Jay show has over 185k subscribers, the young British duo is well-known for their positive humor, love of the absurd and hilarious pranks. According to their website, they met while “studying an entrepreneurship degree at university where they quickly discovered a shared love for creating. After 5 years of working separately, they finally set up The Zac and Jay Show and started working together full time.”

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An Ohio high school student is speaking out after she received a suspension for posting Bible verses on walls and lockers in response to a collection of LGBT “pride” flags that decorated the hallways. In a video posted to Facebook last Friday, Gabby Helsinger claims that she is being punished for allegedly “targeting” the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club.

“So on Thursday when I got to school, I see that there were pride flags, posters around my school,” Gabby says in the video, which her mother, Tina Helsinger shared to Facebook. “And I felt the need to write down some Bible verses so I could put them around my school. And I wrote them down and I put them around the lockers, the walls.”

“I was coming back from lunch … and I [saw] the teachers taking them down, and the next day, I got called to the office and there is a letter that says that I have an ISS, which is an in-school suspension, and the reason why I have it is because ‘abuse of others, disrespect, rudeness’ because I put Bible verses up ‘targeting the GSA organization,’” she explained. “I did not know what the GSA organization was or meant.”

Gabby believes the real reason she received the suspension is that her school favors LGBT ideology over Christian beliefs.

“Seeing that there [were] people in my school that needed help … ,” she continued. “They don’t need to be living in the confusion of wondering if they should be gay, bi, lesbian, trans — anything like that. And I know that God is the only way that they can be healed by that, and that’s why I did it. I was not targeting any kind of organization … .”

Gabby explained that when she was sent to the principal’s office last Friday, she was asked why she posted the Bible verses.

“And I said, ‘Because I wanted to spread the word of God,’” she said. “And [the principal] goes, ‘Well did you have permission?’ And I said, ‘No.’ I didn’t know you had to have permission because people do it a lot — putting Post-It notes on people’s lockers, so I just did it.”

Gabby then asked the principal why any material that mentions God or Jesus, it gets removed “straight away,” while “gay pride stuff” can be put up all over the school and openly discussed with no repercussions at all.

In a Facebook post, Tina Helsinger explained why she believes her daughter is being unfairly punished for sharing her beliefs.

“Lebanon [High School] celebrates evil and punishes righteousness!!” she wrote.

“I appealed the punishment stating ‘Posting a Bible verse is not an abuse of others, disrespect/insolence/rudeness and in no way was it targeting GSA,’” Helsinger noted. “But the school principal, Scott Butler, says ‘Gabby was targeting the GSA organization… .’”

Faithwire reached out to Lebanon City School Superintendent Todd Yohey to clarify the school’s official policy regarding religious expression.

Though administrators are not permitted to discuss specific disciplinary actions against individual students, Yohey confirmed that the school’s Student Code of Conduct does not prohibit the sharing or posting of religious text or imagery on school grounds. He also confirmed that like the GSA, religious clubs are allowed to meet and advertise during school hours.

The question that remains, then, is why Gabby received the suspension, to begin with. If the student’s testimony stands, and she was not “targeting the GSA organization” as Principal Scott Butler allegedly claimed, then it appears her only offense was not receiving prior approval to post the verses, which is a far cry from the accusations of “abuse” toward other students.

As of now, Gabby will still have to report to her in-school suspension Wednesday.

The Bible contains plenty of passages that could be seen as offensive to LGBT groups. Indeed, the concept of same-sex “marriage” and transgenderism’s denial of God-given biological sex are in direct conflict with Scripture. But if a school claims to allow for these incompatible belief systems to coexist with equal protections, people are bound to get offended every now and then. That is the price of such freedom of expression.

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You can spot a nonconformist a mile away. Because they all look alike. Just ask mathematician Jonathan Touboul, an associate professor at Brandeis University.

Like the rest of us, Touboul has noticed that people who strive to look different usually end up looking the same. He’s even given it a name: “the hipster effect.” But Touboul has gone one step further, by coming up with a mathematical explanation for why it happens.
ouboul’s dense, bewildering paper on the hipster effect has made him a celebrity in the abstruse world of higher math. And the premise of his work was ironically confirmed when it was written upon MIT Technology Review, a website run by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A reader of the review article threatened to sue, claiming that his photo had been used without permission to illustrate the story. Only it wasn’t the reader’s photo, but a generic image of a plaid-shirted, bearded hipster purchased from a stock-photo agency.
Touboul specializes in using mathematics to understand the functioning of neurons, the cells that form the connections in our brains, and which can also be simulated by computers. He works with researchers studying Parkinson’s disease, hoping to find ways to relieve symptoms by synchronizing the functions of a patient’s neurons.

“I was looking for a way to explain it that people would relate to,” Touboul said, “so I came up with this idea of hipsters.”

He began working on the hipster effect as a side project in 2014, publishing his work on ArXiv, a website where scientists post papers that aren’t yet ready for traditional peer-reviewed journals. MIT Technology Review discovered Touboul’s work only recently, after he posted a major update, featuring more than 20 pages of math.
Touboul created a neural network where some of the neurons would behave like conformists, usually — but not always — doing what the majority does.

Others would act like hipsters, usually — but not always — making fashion choices that were the opposite of what the conformists would do.

The neurons are designed to behave with certain randomness because Touboul has found that this makes it more likely they’ll synchronize. He also added a time delay, so that it would take a while for the conformists and hipsters to recognize changes in fashions. This corresponds to real life — even the most fashion-forward hipster may not hear about some new trend for weeks or months.

When he ran the model, Touboul found that, after a while, he achieved the synchronization he was looking for. The conformist neurons would automatically approve of whatever fashions were favored by the majority. But in their effort to go their own way, the hipsters would also end up synchronizing around a variety of clothing or hairstyles that these neurons perceived as “different.” Over time, the hipster neurons would realize that their fashion choices were actually quite predictable. When this happened, they would abandon their now-unfashionable look and synchronize around something different.

For instance, Touboul wrote in his paper, “if a majority of individuals shave their beard, then most hipsters will want to grow a beard, and if this trend propagates to a majority of the population, it will lead to new, synchronized, switch to shaving” on the part of hipsters because beards have become the norm. In this way, wrote Touboul, they “actually create the trends they will soon try to escape.”
Like most of us, Lichfield doesn’t fully understand the math, but he buys Touboul’s hypothesis. “Intuitively what he’s saying makes sense,” he said. And if intuition wasn’t enough, there was that bizarre e-mail from the reader convinced that he saw himself in the photo of a stranger.

“Hipsters look so much alike,” Lichfield tweeted, “that they can’t even tell themselves apart from each other.”

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