It's enough trouble to figure out what color to paint a room and make sure it'll look nice, but if that's all you do you may fail to end up with the results you hoped for. The finish of a paint has quite an impact on how your room will ultimately look, as the folks over at Yahoo! suggest.
    
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We're human, so we mess up from time to time. Apologies can set things back on the right course, but only if they're well-communicated. Psychologist and author Guy Winch breaks down the most important ingredients of a good apology so you can make sure you make an effective one.
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Even though I run a coupon website that I started 12+ years ago, I've never stacked coupons before. This is mainly because I had no idea which retailers actually let you stack coupons. Some coupon nerd I am, huh?
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When you need to make punch at any holiday party, you can wow everyone by never needing a recipe and making do with whatever ingredients are available. All you need to know is one magical ratio, courtesy Food52's Assistant Editor Kenzi Wilbur. Yup, ratios are the best way to free yourself from recipes.
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Android: Believe it or not, one of the best ways to find great deals on Ebay is with auctions that have misspelled words. So a "Xbox Connect" instead of an "Xbox Kinect" might just go for a lot lesser since fewer people search for that. Eaby makes it easy to find such items on Android.
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An organized desk leads to an organized mind, so get yours in order by just inverting a broom head to store most of the junk on your tabletop, like pens and office stationery, and even create a cool charger dock for your smartphone.
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The invention of the Internet has created some jobs, rendered others obsolete, and changed all of our lives. It has also made things possible that we couldn’t imagine before an interconnected world. Like the little girl who lost her stuffed lion, but found him again…thanks to Twitter.
Back in the Dark Ages, someone who found a well-loved stuffed critter would have only one option: drop it off in the lost and found. That’s what the woman who found this stuffed lion was going to do after finding it abandoned in King’s Cross station in London. That would give it the best chance of being reunited with its owner. Wouldn’t it?
Maybe there was another way. She tweeted a photo of the critter (which she thought at first was a bear) and posted it to Twitter. The image propagated across the Interweb, spread by thousands of people who remember what it would have been like to lose a stuffed toy as beloved as this little lion looked.
In the meantime, the lion had a nice vacation.
#lostbear's journey back to London. Lost property awaits. http://t.co/pvcudP9u8C—
Lauren Bishop Vranch (@laurenannbishop) December 14, 2013
Within only a few days, the picture came across the screen of the owner’s father. The mystery “bear” was really Roar the lion, and he even had photos of the now-famous lost lion with his daughter.
What did we learn? Social media is powerful, and the world is very small now. People, though–we don’t really change. We all remember the heartbreak of losing a favorite toy.
Twitter reunites cute bear with owner after passenger finds it on King’s Cross train [Metro] (via Business Insider)
Attention hibiscus fans: we’re very sorry to inform you that you missed this sale within Target’s reality vortex that ended on Saturday. You know, in case you needed to stock up on sugar/salt scrub at 0% off.
(eric731)
All it took for a stranger to plunk down $20,000 at a Florida Walmart was overhearing a customer saying she’d have to cancel her layaway purchases. The so-called “layaway angel” was at the store buying bikes for a charity event and decided right then to extend his generosity.
Instead of about 80 customers having to pay down their own layaway balances, the man donated $20,000 toward taking some of the sting out of those purchases.
From what the Orlando Sentinel says, it sounds like it was an emotional, albeit somewhat confusing scene, with one woman asking if the man was actually Ashton Kutcher because she felt like she was on Punk’d.
There were “tears rolling down all of our eyes,” said an assistant manager at the store. “A lot of these people were going to have to cancel their layaways. All week long we’ve been running across people [saying] ‘I really wanted to give this to my kids, but I can’t afford it.’ “
The man paid off the entire accounts of about six customers, and paid half the balances for anyone with accounts of $200 or more.
“My wife and I don’t want for a bunch of things and we know a lot of people do. I have a lot of people who work for me who are single moms,” the man explained. “It just hit me the right way at the right time. It was just a special thing to be able to do it.”
While we’ve heard of layaway angels in the past, a donation of this amount isn’t even close to the usual amount.
“It’s extremely rare” to get such a hefty amount, a Walmart spokeswoman said.
‘Layaway angel’ pays $20,000 worth of bills at Villages Walmart [Orlando Sentinel]
We’re guessing that there was more to this feud than just the Employee of the Month contest. However, a sheriff’s department spokesperson told the local CBS affiliate that the feud started with bad feelings after the victim won the honor.
The alleged shooter argued with the Employee of the Month about their current workload shortly after the award was announced. According to the sheriff’s office, surveillance cameras caught someone rolling down a rear car window and firing a gun into the victim’s car in the store parking lot. The victim was not in the vehicle at the time.
The alleged shooter is no longer eligible for the Employee of the Month honor at that Walmart, since he no longer works at the store. “I think we see why he wasn’t chosen as employee of the month,” observed the sheriff’s spokesperson.
Investigators know about the argument that took place hours before the shooting, but aren’t sure why the dispute escalated to violence against an innocent car.
CBS4 Exclusive: Wal-Mart Employee Arrested For Shooting Co-Worker’s Car Over Award [CBS Chicago]
(cjw333)
The Food and Drug Administration has been under pressure for some time now to take a closer look at antibacterial soap to see whether we should actually be slathering the stuff all of over our hands and bodies every day. And now it’s proposing a one-year period for manufacturers to prove that yes, the soap is safe for everyday use and in the long-term.
The FDA’s proposal would require companies to show that their products are also more effective than plain soap and water in preventing illness and the spread of infection. Any company that can’t prove safety and effectiveness will have to either relabel the product or reformulate it.
Hand sanitizers, wipes or antibacterial products used by doctors and the like wouldn’t be affected by the rule, which is part of a larger effort to make sure soap ingredients are safe.
The FDA says there isn’t any evidence so far that proves that antibacterial soaps and body washes prevent illness any better than regular soap and water, and that some ingredients in the products like triclosan and triclocarban could pose health risks.
“Antibacterial soaps and body washes are used widely and frequently by consumers in everyday home, work, school, and public settings, where the risk of infection is relatively low,” said Janet Woodcock, M.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). “Due to consumers’ extensive exposure to the ingredients in antibacterial soaps, we believe there should be a clearly demonstrated benefit from using antibacterial soap to balance any potential risk.”
Soap companies will have to fork over data to the FDA on their products’ safety and effectiveness, including info from clinical studies that show they’re superior to regular soap in preventing illnesses and stopping infections from spreading.
FDA issues proposed rule to determine safety and effectiveness of antibacterial soaps [FDA.gov]
Think about it this way: What if you opened up your cupboards and saw only miles of garbanzo beans and pickled sardines? A good place to start, points out xoJane’s Deb Martinson, is to not give anything you wouldn’t want to eat yourself. Because there’s not a lot of choice at a food bank — you’re going to be handed a bag of food and you’ll have to figure out how to make that stuff into a meal.
So she suggests this idea: Give like a hungry person. What would you want to eat, using only non-perishable foods? Think up a day’s worth of food that you would totally chow down on and that’s what you should give to the donation bucket.
Some other great rules to go by:
• Nobody wants dumb stuff: A container of candied fruitcake fruit is the example here. Sure, if someone is hungry enough to eat the rejected white elephant gift you got at the holiday party, they will. But it’s kind of horrible to just dump that on someone else. Ditto with exotic things like escargot and caviar — the average person is probably going to turn green at the thought of canned snails for breakfast.
• Not everyone has a microwave or can opener: If you’re homeless, odds are you don’t have a microwave strapped to your back, so think about donating food that can be eaten on the go without cooking, like tuna, peanut butter, granola bars, crackers etc. Also consider that someone might not have a can opener, so shoot for those cans that have the pull-up top.
• Perishable items will perish: This might seem like a no-brainer but it’s always a good reminder — any food that will go bad sooner rather than later if it’s not refrigerated is likely going to get thrown out at a food bank, unless it’s the kind that also prepares meals to serve.
• Ask what you should give: On that note, there could be food banks that need specific items after perhaps receiving one too many cans of low-sodium tomato soup. Some might even ask you to give non-food items like toilet paper, soap, toiletries, diapers and pet food.
• Thoughtfulness goes a long way: Yes, you should be giving hearty, healthy food to sustain a hungry person. But sometimes a nice little treat like candy or cookies can bring happiness where someone might not expect. Toss some treats in the next time you’re assembling your donation.
Of course, any donation is going to be welcomed and we’re not telling anyone what to do. It’s a good idea, however, to step back and imagine you’re the person receiving that food. Give what you would want to get.
For more tips on donating in general, read How To Not Suck… At Charitable Giving check out the source link below.
HOW NOT TO BE A D… AT THE FOOD BANK [xoJane]
The science experiments from youth I remember usually involved a big piece of poster board outlining the steps of the scientific process and some kind of illustration showing how you tried to grow beans to see if music had any effect on them. But no neuroscientist ever said he wanted to repeat my experiment. Teens in Denmark claim Wi-Fi routers are no good if you want your plants to grow, and their experiment is getting lots of interest.
Natural News points out that there is already research being done to see whether or not the radiation generated by wireless routers is bad for humans. But what about plants?
A group of ninth graders in Denmark decided that when their school didn’t have the resources to support their experiment using cellphone radiation, they’d try it out with Wi-Fi routers, using plants as the subject.
The students placed six trays of a kind of garden cress seed in a room with no radiation, and another set in a room next to two Wi-Fi routers. After 12 days of measuring, observing, weighing and otherwise watching their plants, the results were in.
The students found that the seeds near routers either didn’t grow or were dead by the end of the 12-day period, while those in a room free of routers sprouted into healthy plants. The five female students earned top honors in their regional science competition, which is nothing to sneeze at.
But beyond that, as you might be saying “Okay, these are kids, their experiment doesn’t mean anything,” their teacher says a professor of neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden is totally into what these girls did, so much so that he wants to repeat it in a controlled scientific environment.
I just figure my plants die because I have bad luck with green things.
Plants won’t grow near Wi-Fi routers, experiment finds [Natural News]
Americans who already have coverage and aren't looking for any more government help are blaming the law for their rising premiums and deductibles.
The fired chief of staff for Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander was ordered to live with his parents in Maryland while he awaits prosecution on charges of possession and attempted distribution of child pornography. 
Its rating is based on road fatality rate, failure to obey citations, DUIs and speeding tickets.
A man was medevaced to a burn unit after authorities say he set himself on fire on Monday afternoon.
Peter O'Toole, the charismatic actor who achieved instant stardom as Lawrence of Arabia and was nominated eight times for an Academy Award, has died. He was 81.
The Smithsonian Institution is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the National Air and Space Museum's facility in northern Virginia with a holiday concert presented by the U.S. Air Force Band.
