Duncan Ville

Archive for February, 2010

Our homes are one of the best places in the world, it provides us the comfort and security all of us need, as the saying goes, there’s no place like home.  This is the primary reason we take the time and effort, and even spend on buying Home Accessories that can even make our homes more comfortable and convenient.

There are so many Home Furnishings and Decor available in the market, they also come in various styles and designs to suit any homeowner’s needs and preferences. If there is one special room in our home that needs extra attention, that would be our bedrooms.  We spend the most time in our bedrooms than any other room in our house, and this is the one place in the house we can get that restful sleep we deserve.  With the right accessories we can make our bedrooms the most comfortable place in the world.  With the right Bed Linens and Bedding, Bed Pillows, Comforters and special Therapeutic Pillows, getting that good night’s sleep will be a piece of cake, no more tossing and turning. And for the right amount of light, that’s neither too bright nor too dark, there Lamps we can purchase, and for the light perfect for reading and studying, Desk Lamps are the perfect choice, these also come in great and fun designs.  Making our home the perfect home-sweet-home is easy with right home accessories , furnishings and decor.

Another downside of our silence about money is that we become even more likely to make financial decisions based on emotion rather than on logic or research. In Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes (Simon & Schuster, 1999), a terrific book that I recommend to all my friends and clients, journalist Gary Belsky and psychologist Thomas Gilovich summarize a new branch of economic research, called behavioral economics, that examines many of the most common traps that lead us to make poor money decisions.
Let me give you just a few examples. If you tend to treat your hard-earned income differently from the way you treat other money—say a tax refund or a lottery winning—you’re guilty of what behavioral economists call mental accounting. This concept, developed by Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago, describes our tendency to categorize and value our money according to its source or how we spend it. Mental accounting can be dangerous, because in reality one dollar is worth just as much as the next. One hundred dollars that you get from a windfall will buy you just as much as one hundred dollars you’ve saved. Likewise, if you feel much freer spending money when you use a credit card than when you pay in hard cash, you are likely practicing a form of mental accounting.
There’s also what the behaviorists call the “sunk-cost fallacy.” If you’re the type who continues to pour money into an old rattletrap, you should train and discipline yourself to think hard before you throw any more good money after bad. If you wouldn’t want to buy the car today, knowing that it needs repairs, why would you want to waste money fixing it up just because you already own it?

What does money represent to you and your loved ones? For some of you it means success. For others it may signify independence, freedom, security, or something else entirely. To find out Dr. James Cottfurch, principal of Psychology of Money Consultants, a Los Angeles—based company, suggests in his workshops that you try and think of a single symbol that encapsulates how you feel about money. It could be anything from a soft, warm, furry bunny to a runaway train. One of my friends sees money as the sun, because of its ability to make
things grow. Actually, the sun s not a bad metaphor, as it can also burn you if not treated with a certain amount of respect and restraint.) This friend even surrounds herself with sun images, from a decorative tile in her kitchen to a copper and brass sculpture on her desk, to remind her of the positive role that money plays in her life. It’s her way of staying focused on what she’s trying to achieve and of keeping some of her more negative and self-defeating money attitudes at bay.
What you adopt as your money symbol may surprise you and may reveal attitudes about money that you didn’t even know you had. Or not. Either way, comparing notes with those close to you, or even brainstorming about financial symbols together, might prove to be very insightful.

It is not only dogs and dolphins who have shown their reverence and devotion to human life by going to enormous lengths to save it. The animal kingdom, it turns out, is fill of remarkable samaritans.
In 1975, a desperate shipwreck victim off the coast of Manila was stupefied to see a giant sea turtle swimming towards her, seemingly offering its aid. The floundering woman climbed aboard the turtle, which then did something turtles supposedly “never do.” Sea turtles spend most of their time underwater, but this one must have somehow known the poor woman needed constant support to survive, and must also have wanted very much to take care of her. It proceeded to stay at the surface for two full days, going without food itself, so it could continue to carry her and keep her alive. When human rescuers finally appeared: “Eyewitnesses thought the woman was floating on an oil drum until she was safely on board—whereupon the ‘oil drum’ circled the area twice and disappeared.”
To be taken for an oil drum might not have surprised the turtle all that much. You see, for many years, turtles were not legally recognized as animals in the U.S. One of the earliest crusaders for animal protection, Henry Bergh, found this out when he tried to stop the torments visited upon green turtles. These great animals, which have been known to live for hundreds of years, and grow to 600 pounds or more, are sought after as a status source of soup and steak for the wealthy, with the children being eaten when they weigh only about 50 pounds. Bergh found that the turtles were transported by ships from the tropics to the Fulton Fish Market in New York. En route, the turtles did not exactly travel first class. They lay on their backs for several weeks, out of the water, with nothing to eat or drink, like so much upside-down luggage. They were held in place by ropes strung through holes punched in their flippers.’6
Bergh did everything he could to halt this activity, but when he brought the perpetrators to court, the judge acquitted them on the grounds that a turtle was “not an animal within the meaning of the law.”” Accordingly, ruled the judge, even the barest minimum of protection against cruelty that was afforded animals by the law at that time could not be applied to turtles.”
Most of us, like that judge, are conditioned by a culture that thinks of animals as mere machinery, and could never imagine that a sea turtle would be capable of saving a human life. Nor would that same type of thinking allow us to believe that a canary, however sweet its song and pretty its feathers, could be much more than a decorative and bright adornment to a house. But the residents of Hermitage, Tennessee, know better.
In 1950, an elderly woman lived in Hermitage, who was known to everyone around simply as Aunt Tess. The old lady lived alone with only her cat and a canary named Bibs. Aunt Tess’s niece and her husband lived a few hundred yards away from her house, and they were concerned lest something happen to the aging woman without anyone knowing.
One night they were awakened by what seemed like a tapping on the window. It wasn’t loud, and they tried to ignore it, but the tapping continued.
Finally, the niece got out of bed and went to the window to investigate. She drew back the curtains, and there, to her amazement, beating frantically against the window pane, was Aunt Tess’s canary, Bibs. The little bird had never before been outside the aunt’s house, but she had somehow managed not oniy to get out, but then to find her way several hundred yards to the niece’s window. The task took all the little bird had, however. Before the niece’s eyes, Bibs literally dropped dead from exhaustion on the windowsill. The niece and her husband immediately rushed over to Aunt Tess’s house and there found the old lady lying unconscious and bleeding on the floor. She had.sufl’ered a bad fall, and may well have died had not help arrived when it did. The canary had given its own life to save that of Aunt Tess.’9
The more I have learned about animals, the more I have realized how conditioned I have been in my attitudes towards them. I never would have imagined a bird capable of this kind .of thing. Nor would I have thought a pig likely to be a lifesaver. But I would have been wrong.
A couple of years ago United Press International carried a photograph and story that was picked up and printed in many of the country’s major newspapers. The photo was of Carol Burk, her 11-year-old son Anthony Melton, and a pig. What made the story newsworthy was that mother and son had gone swimming in a Houston lake. The boy inadvertently strayed too far from shore, panicked, and began to sink. The boy’s pet pig, Priscilla, evidently felt his distress because she rushed into the water and began to swim towards him. While Anthony’s anguished mother watched helplessly, the boy managed to stay afloat until the pig reached him. Then he caught hold of her leash. Anthony’s mother watched awe-struck as Priscilla the pig proceeded to tow her son safely to shore.