About 3 people are born every second, and about 1 1/3 people die every second. The result is about 2 2/3 net increase of people every second. Almost 10 people more live on the Earth now than before you finished reading this.

The first computer was ENACT - (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) first introduced in 1946.

The total combined weight of the world's ant population is heavier than the weight of the human population.

Forty-one percent of English women have punched or kicked their partners.

Abe Lincoln bought 50 cents worth of cocaine in 1860.

The largest living thing on the face of the Earth is a mushroom underground in Oregon. It measures three and a half miles in diameter.

Men with a certain rare medical condition can breastfeed babies.

Two years, four months and three days before the successful flights of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, a birdlike monoplane took off at dawn on August 14, 1901, near Bridgeport, Connecticut. Gustavo Whitehead, designer and builder, flew the plane about a half mile. This might have been the first flight in the sky by a machine-powered aircraft - but there is no concrete evidence.

A pig is mentioned only twice in the Bible but is rated as the fourth most intelligent animal. Sheep are mentioned 45 times, goats 88 times, dogs 14 times and lions 89 times but domestic cats are not mentioned.

An ostrich can run up to 70 km/h - (43 mph).



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1. You and I are not interested in playing the Comedy Room.

2. However - discovering how to improvise our selling story is a closing-skill.

3. So what? We need to learn to organize a funny joke because it helps influence, convince, and persuade folks to accept our business or professional proposals. Not by being a comedian, but because it has the same three elements.

Secret of a Successful Joke

The framework: First, the Set-Up, Second, the plot, and Third, the Punchline.

The Set-Up is a logical beginning where we show agreement with the listener's long-term beliefs and expectations.

Set-Up: A 12 year old comes to his father for help with his homework in using five specific words in five different sentences. Makes sense, right?

The Plot: The Pop seriously creates these five-sentences, but they are obviously wrong, and even jerky. Raises our curiosity - why did he do it?

The Punchline: The kid dopes out he has been scammed by his old man, and gets mad. The Pop explains why he scammed the kid with wrong answers. Problem/Solution.

A Punchline offers a conclusion, payoff, and moral of the story (joke). It is an exaggerated point that makes us laugh at Pop's Switcherzoo. We (listeners) are IN on the joke. We GET it without thinking, analyzing or going to a dictionary.

My Aha! Experience

"Pop, can you help me with my homework? I got these five last words I can't figure out how to use each one in a sentence. "

"Sonny, you come to the right window. Gimme your problem. It is just as important to know where to find the right answer, as learning itself."

"Here, five easy words, but I have to use each one in a separate sentence.

First is Tsunami, that's one I never saw before. Two, is Tutor. Number Three is Denial, used as a legal term. Four is Defeat, used in a specific battle. Number Five is Cataracts, which I don't know at all."

"Gimme that list. Are you ready? I'm not going to repeat it twice, so pay attention.

1. Tsunami, it comes from Latin meaning Salt. I fried the Tsunami and eggs, and added mustard on Italian bread for flavor.

2. Tutor, from the Latin for Horn. In the Bible, Joshua blew down the walls of Jericho because he was a Tutor. Harry James played a mean trumpet, and he was a hot Tutor. See, two for one.

3. Denial runs 4,184 miles in Africa and feeds into the Mediterranean Sea. Oh yeah, Denial separates into the White and Blue, and they collect in Egypt.

4. Defeat. George Washington had 2,300 Patriots at the Battle of Trenton, against the Hessians on December 26, 1776 (day after Xmas). The Americans could not afford boots for their soldiers, who had to wrap Defeat with rags for the seven-mile march to Trenton, New Jersey.

5. Last, is Cataract. The word is taken from the name of a Native-American chief and has come to mean luxury. General Motors owns the Trade Mark for the name Cataract, since August 18, 1902."

I sat there stunned, just 12 years old, but I knew Pop had scammed me.

"I will never ask you anything again. Thanks for nothing."

"Wait - you don't trust me and my answers?"

"No, I don't trust you or anybody else after this."

"Pay attention - this is an important moment in your life. It is called an Aha! Experience. You don't trust your own father, and nobody else, right? You have to trust and depend only on yourself, right?"

"Yeah, right, so what?"

"Sonny, tomorrow I am going to sign you up at the New York Law School. You have learned your first critical lesson about independent research."

"That's was my Pop. Yeah, I went to New York Law School graduated, and passed the Bar (not Kelly's) on the first crack."

How to Persuade, Influence, And Convince

You will almost never read the following in a textbook, hear it from a professor, or reach this conclusion by yourself. It is against the grain, contrarian, and counterintuitive. That is why it is important.

Thinking Bad, Knowing Good

Thinking is B-A-D if you want to persuade, convince or influence others to your ideas. You never want the client, a judge or jury, or a buyer to stop in the middle of your proposal to think, analyze or critically judge your proposal or defense argument.

Procrastination is another name for Think-ing. It delays and terminates the action response you require. You language should communicate simple, basic ideas Automatically - without recourse to complexity and complications. As easy-as-pie.

Problem/Solution

Consider me an Oversimplifier - that is a compliment because Oprah, Dr. Phil, and Jay Leno use Oversimplification - (generalizing) to thank for their superstar status.

We the public, from six-year olds to professionals, to Seniors with PhDs, H-A-T-E thinking, school, and education. It has to be said if you want to learn how to Manipulate - folks to your ideas and proposals.

Wait! Ma-nip-u-late - that word has a negative aura of twisting someone's arm to accept what you say. Yet everyone, every hour of the day is successfully or failing to manipulate their adversary (client) to accept our version of the facts.

Lawyers must manipulate clients to hire them instead of 42,000 other competent counselors. What about manipulating Judges and Juries? Manipulate means to persuade, convince, and influence. It also is a synonym for guide, direct and, negotiate. It is what Doers - do to succeed.

From intelligent folks to the other-kind, we all have problems - stuff that burns our fundament, and causes us pain. We do not want complex explanations. What do we all want? Solutions, cures, and answers, right? Problem/Solution is our universal life goal. Answers, not pleasant conversation.



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It's been an age-old belief that laughter makes sick people well. In fact, a lot of publications exploring the healing powers of humor have been released with scientific studies even confirming truth to these claims. Laughter is said to bring a lot of health benefits to people from increased immunity to decreased stress. It is even said that a simple smile will do although laughter still might be more effective in hastening an ill person's recovery. Definitely, this makes people automatically attracted to whatever tickles their funny bone, including funny t-shirts.

Aside from making people feel good, funny tees have also become a fashion phenomenon. Even celebrities have been spotted off cam wearing funny tees which surely helps in making them more popular. Besides, someone who wears a witty thought across his chest is generally viewed as cool. But beyond this physical appeal, we know there's always something more to the humor that is more mysterious and interesting. For example, did you know that laughter, genuine or not, sets off the same physiological reactions that produce the same healing effects in your body? This actually makes it healthy to laugh simply for health reasons which means a person who breaks into laughter without any apparent reason may not necessarily be a looney.

Did you also ever wonder why children tend to recover faster than adults even if they're generally more susceptible to diseases? This fact is being associated with kids' ability to find more reasons to laugh as compared to adults who tend to get too uptight with lessened capability to see humor in life as they age. This also means that it's always better for people to always try to see the brighter side of things no matter how gloomy they seem.

Somewhere out there, there's always a reason to be happy and growing a skill for spotting that reason is more likely to happen when humor becomes a way of life. It's not even always about laughing. Mere openness of the mind to receive humor is the most important part of all. Part of the healing wonders of laughter has something to do with the psychological dimension in a human being. Aside from the physiological benefits, laughter also works to improve one's disposition in life. And it is a guaranteed stress reliever which is probably one of its properties that gives it such tremendous power to heal. It is said that most of today's ailments are significantly linked to stress. Thus, it follows that controlling this stress through humor promotes healing.




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A sense of humour helps when you have a laparoscopic lap band inserted. The change in lifestyle can take some adjusting to. I don't mean in the immediate stage after the banding but long-term. Once the weight has really started to come off and you are getting your figure and 'social acceptance' back.

One of my funnier and more memorable moments came when I went out on my first date. I was feeling pretty good about myself and we went to this very nice, swish fish restaurant down by the wharf. I loved fish and I knew it was one of the foods that I had no trouble at this stage of my banding eating. This was about 5 months after I had it done.

The evening was progressing well. He was charming and attentive and the evening lulled into darkness with the lights shining across the water. It was a very romantic setting. We had to wait a little bit for our order to arrive because the restaurant was busy so we had a couple of drinks first, as one does in such an ambient atmosphere.

What I had forgotten to take into account was the drinks (2 glasses of white wine) were quite filling so that by the time my dinner arrived, I hadn't had the time lapse for the fluid to pass through the band. Oh, bad miscalculation. The other thing that gave me a problem was I had never been to that restaurant before so I had to ask where the bathroom facilities were.




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