Miami Int'l Film Festival

The 26th Annual Miami International Film Festival has begun and runs through the 15th. Screenings and parties will take place at various venues throughout Miami; you can peruse the program guide for details.

A different kind of candy

Or maybe that should be a different kind of candy nomenclature. Craque Candy is the creation of NYC resident Frieda Orange. It's packaged in small plastic bags, and there's also different flavors you have to see to believe.

Public displays of hygiene

Grooming in public... yuck! It's usually unnecessary and most of the time, gross.

I've witnessed coworkers clipping their nails, swabbing their ears, using a cordless shaver, cleaning their face with astringent, and flossing their teeth - all in offices or studios.

I'd have to say the flossing in public is the worst. Nothing like particles of food that were stuck in someone's teeth being dislodged into my atmosphere!

There also seems to be a growing need for some people to clip their nails outside of their home.

Here's another:


Etiquette Rule #13: Practice Nail Hygiene at Home
Going on a Pleasure ClipFellow riders, we have a bone (actually a small, keratinized piece of hardened protein) to pick with you: as we refrain from singing, and instead focus on the sights and sounds of our transit ride, we're irritated when the clang, clang, clang of the trolley is interrupted by the snap, snap, snap of your nails. We understand the need to be adequately equipped as you claw your way to the top, but we're manicurious about the need to subject others to your nail clippings. With 14% of the population suffering from nail fungus, why should we have to deflect your high-velocity shrapnel of dead tissue? Etiquette states that the occasional filing of painful or dangerously sharp nails is acceptable, but clipping your nails on mass transit is not. So, be a hygiene hero and fight foul fingernail form as you ride. You'll not only steer clear of irritating passengers, but also avoid exposing them to fungi, bacteria, and viruses - a strategy that has these Muni Ladies waking up on the right side of the cuticle bed.

Muni Manner: Clip nails at home to curb personal grooming on mass transit. It's the safe and courteous thing to do.

Addicted to technology

While all this technology we have at our fingertips is great, there are some pitfalls:

Blackberry thumb! But seriously, many people are using sites like Facebook or Classmates and reconnecting with first, or lost loves and wreaking havoc in their lives. Back in December, a Pembroke Pines Charter High school student was suspended for talkin' smack about her teacher online. More recently, a British teen was fired for an online posting where she described her job as "boring".

Now, people are leaving online goodbyes when they leave a job. Sometimes your departure is on the side of hasty, so you aren't able to express your feelings, good or bad. Well, not anymore! You can post whatever you'd like, but beware, once you post your feelings, it's there forever.

There's a great article about cleaning up your Facebook page to make sure it doesn't end up embarrassing you, or getting you fired.

In the past 24 hours, both CBS4 and NBC6 have aired segments about the dangers of social networking sites. There's also a worm invading various sites; it's a new variant of the "koobface" worm that attacked the sites last year.

One author has written a book about the rise of nastiness online; in Snark: It's Mean, It's Personal, and It's Ruining Our Conversation, author David Denby laments the bullying that's become rampant, especially on the Internet.

If you've ever run out of printer ink at an inopportune time, or dropped your cell phone in the commode, try these low-tech fixes.

Most miserable cities

Forbes magazine, always coming up with the strangest of stats. Forbes is responsible for the annual list of Top Earning Dead Celebrities, and also, the annual list of Top Ten Most Miserable Cities in the United States. This year, Stockton, California gets the top spot; Forbes uses nine factors to determine what makes a city miserable. Miami made the top ten, coming in at number nine, and here's why:

No. 9 Miami, Fla.
Miami has been crushed by the housing collapse. Moody's Economy.com estimates that 26% of mortgages in Miami are delinquent or are likely to be written off as bad debt that can not be collected. Violent crime and corruption are also off the charts.

National Grammar Day

Today, March 4th, is National Grammar Day. Are you a grammar snob? I'm right there with you! Well, maybe not to the point of snobbery, but it does drive me a bit nuts when I see certain errors, e.g., 12 a.m. when it should be 12 p.m. or loose when it should be lose. Oh man, I am a grammar snob!


If you are, too, you'll find this poem Jeff Martin sent to me a bit more than painful!

There's a great book titled, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Ah, what a difference a comma can make!

There's even a grammar gang, if you will; the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, or SPOGG, has a book of their own titled, Things That Make Us [Sic].

You can peruse the Top 10 Grammar Tips and have a grammatical day! Here are ten more ways to improve your grammar. There is some controversy about using the word 'hopefully' to begin a sentence. What do you think?

Green doggie waste bags

Regular plastic bags take hundreds of years to decompose, but how else do you get Fido's doo to the trash? Introducing Green Doggie Bags, an eco-friendly way to scoop. The bags are 100% biodegradable and 100% compostable. The founders of Green Doggie Bag are from Miami and North Lauderdale; they are working with local cities to provide free bags in dog parks!
There are other "green" dog bags on the market, so you have many choices other than plastic!

Weston Int'l Woman's Day

While March is National Women's History Month, March 8th is International Women's Day; it was established by the United Nations in 1975 to recognize and honor women for their contributions to their communities. It is celebrated every year all over the world. This Saturday (7th), the Weston Chapter of the American Association of University Women will host an Int'l Woman's Day honoring women making a difference in our community.



The Weston International Woman's Day will happen from 2p - 4p, in the Cleveland Clinic's KRUPA Education Center, 2950 Cleveland Clinic Blvd in Weston. It's free and open to you!

What would you do?

Parade magazine recently asked their readers to answer a series of questions as insight into the readers' morals. The results, in some instances, were surprising - I can't believe 67% of those who took the survey would not lie about their age and 66% would tell a friend his or her spouse is cheating - I think they got the yays & nays backwards!!!



Some more involved and potentially controversial ethical dilemmas here - what would you do?



You can also take the Harvard Moral Sense Test if you'd like.

Nat'l Women's History Month

We are women, hear us roar! It's National Women's History Month - a time to celebrate the wide range of contributions and achievements made by women that have been overlooked in many U.S. history classes.



The National Women's History Project, founded in 1980, is an educational nonprofit organization. Their mission is to recognize and celebrate the diverse and historic accomplishments of women by providing information and educational materials and programs.



You can help give the National Women's History Museum a permanent home; and, let us not forget about TITLE IX which is also known as the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, named for the late Congresswoman who wrote the law. She did so an outgrowth of adversities she faced in obtaining her college degrees at the University of Hawaii, University of Nebraska and University of Chicago.



If you've ever used a windshield wiper, cordless phone, dishwasher, Liquid Paper, automatic drip coffee maker, sports bra, Spanx, disposable diapers, electric hot water heater, scotchguard, circular saw, or a Roomba, you can thank a woman for inventing it!



Author Ethlie Ann Vare has written two books on the subject: Patently Female and Mothers of Invention: From the Bra to the Bomb: Forgotten Women and Their Unforgettable Ideas.



Ms. Vare is working with Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry on an interactive exhibit on women inventors and it could happen this year!





Why are so many women mystery Inventors?


We'll probably never know how many women inventors there were. That's because in the early years of the United States, a woman could not get a patent in her own name. A patent is considered a kind of property, and until the late 1800s laws forbade women in most states from owning property or entering into legal agreements in their own names. Instead, a woman's property would be in the name of her father or husband.
For example, many people believe that Sybilla Masters was the first American woman inventor. In 1712 she developed a new corn mill, but was denied a patent because she was a woman. Three years later the patent was filed successfully in her husband's name.

Buy NYC tap water

Willing to spend $1.50 a bottle for New York City tap water? You can buy Tap'd NY by the case - now if I could somehow get a John's Pizza to arrive fully intact...