Why doesn’t the human brain process negatives?

Image by EUSKALANATO via Flickr

I have been reading several blogs on a regular basis that discuss the Human Brain and how it can help shape you as a person and what you are likely to do with your life depending upon your mindset and what chemicals the brain is producing.

I learnt a lot from the blogs that I have read, apologies if I cannot remember any of them off hand at the time of writing this entry.

I’m sure you will let me know in the comments which blogs I might be referring to.

I came across a blog that said that in similar words “Your brain cannot process negatives” for example if you tell your self “I’m NOT going to be late” or “I’m NOT going to forget to buy that item”, your brain is likely to drop the word NOT from the process so you end up being late or you end up forgetting that item.

The forgetting item bit happened to me earlier this week because I used those exact words.

So what I would like to know is “Why the doesn’t the human brain process negatives?”.

Over to you in the comments.

UK interest rates have now been cut to 2 percent

This an update to my earlier post.

Just had a quick look at the BBC News site and it has been confirmed that interest rates have been cut from 3% to 2%, the lowest rate since 1951 according to the site.

It is great news for those with mortgages as the banks will be forced to pass the cut to their customers. However as usual this is bad news for savers.

If you have a few quid under the matress now I feel is the time to start looking at alternative investments. Check out my previous post about considering antiques as an alternative place to put your money into.

Capital One are at it again in the UK.

Are you getting a letter from Captial One stating that you are in arrears in your account?

This may come as a surprise to some of us because for one reason or another our accounts never actually reached the stage of becoming a full credit card account,which to me means that the account was never opened.

I had the same letter about 2 or 3 months ago, I phoned them up immediately and asked them what was going on? They told me that all of the people in this category had accidentally made their way on the main mailing list and told me to ignore the letter it was being sorted.

Well it seems that this isn’t the case, I’m not going to phone them this time, I am just going to ignore the letter as advised the first time I had received such a letter. If it does escalate any further then I will be calling them.

It has also got me thinking, if you’ve never opened your credit card account, why do they have an account number and still have your details on their systems? Is it some sort of mandatory regulation they have to comply with, let me know in the comments.

Has anyone else received such a letter? Again let me know in the comments.

UK Interest rates could be down to 2%

Just read on the Reuters news site that after todays MPC (Monetary Policy Committee) meeting we could see interest rates at their lowest level for over half a century. Some are predicting we could end up with interest rates close to zero and could remain there for sometime.

The BBC news site is reporting that business leaders and economists have called for the one percent cut to two percent.

It seems they’re looking back to Japan in 1990 when they cut their interest rates to zero to resuscitate their economy.

Lets see what 2009 brings.

The story of my working life

Okay I little less boring than the the title I was thinking about using.

As some of you on twitter will have seen my tweets saying that I’m currently looking for work.

This is partly a plea for a job and partly a chance for you all to see my CV and give you a chance to critique it in the comments. I have removed my name, address and telephone number from the CV.

I do not want heavy breathing phone calls at 2am in the morning or marketing calls, I’ll just ignore you and let the answer phone pick up if you did somehow get my number.

If you do have an opening for me, you can contact me on here on my blog and I will send you an unedited version of my CV.

So I lay myself open to you, please be honest or brutally honest as you see fit, for the first time ever if your comment is deemed not be constructive then it will not see the light of day along with any spam comments I receive.

my-cv

Hasbean – Steve Leighton

I’m going to start doing some more of these where I highlight a company/invidual on the internet that has inspired me in some way.

So this time around I’d like to highlight Steve Leighton who is the Owner/Head Roaster of a coffee company called “Hasbean”, which funnily enough is based not that far from where I live.

I would say this guy is like Gary Vaynerchuk in his enthusiasm for coffee.

I haven’t actually met Steve personally yet, however I plan to meet him sometime in 2009.

Again I love his enthusiasm for what he does.

So where did I discover Steve? I found him on twitter like every other great person out there is. We got chatting on twitter after I saw his profile and again a small world lives not far from me, so that’s another feather in his cap as far as I’m concerned.

I have to admit that my taste in coffee leaves a lot be desired, as I go to the supermarket and pick up a freeze dried jar of coffee, which I know will have lost all of its flavour with the process that it goes through.

Steve really knows what he is talking about and in such a short space of time has built up a solid reputation amongst his peers.

I really love his regular “In My Mug” video blogs, where he picks out a coffee to taste and review and a nice little touch he uses a different mug each time and gives a little history about the mug he is drinking from. Another nice promotional touch is the promotional code for money off the coffee he has reviewed at the end of the video, normally good for about 3 weeks from the date of video.

His website is packed full of tips for beginners and he has a history of why he setup “Hasbean”. I think you will find it’s a very interesting read when you get the time.

So what are you waiting for? Go to his website buy some decent coffee for a change.

www.hasbean.co.uk
www.inmymug.com

Keep up the good work Steve.

The last day of November

Can you believe it? It’s the last day of November already. Where has this month gone?

You can tell we are coming up to December, the cold and the frost is really starting to take hold and a few extra layers of clothes are added to brave the elements.

This has been another month of drudgery for me jobwise and financial wise, however lately I’ve been looking on the bright side of life, I still have my health and the ability to go out and look for jobs even if it doesn’t bear fruit.

Tell me what have you done in November?

Are antiques a good investment?

I saw an article online the other day about alternative investments that will give you a better ROI (Return On Investment) than a savings account with a bank or a pension.

This has me thinking about another kind of alternative investment and that is Antiques. Antiques mostly grow in value as they get older so I think their value isn’t affected by the current financial crisis, you just have pick the right time to sell to a dealer or to an auction house.

So over to you in the comments.

FullSignull Podcast Episode 5 Review

Not as good as my last review as I’m a little tired, more like my personal thoughts.

Another good episode from the guys over at FullSignull.

I definitely agree that Arnold Schwarzeneggers movies leave a lot to be desired, especially his latest ones before he became Governor of California.

Trevor do not take your life into your own hands when you say you are no longer interested in World Of Warcraft, there are some scary looking players out there

I remember Jeff Blazyncksi from the days of “Jazz Jack Rabbit” they used to turn out some great games in the 90s. When you guys confirmed that Microsoft worked with Epic, the link was confirmed in my mind.

Way too brief on the mention of World of Warcraft, cater to the masses that tune in guys

What is wrong with the British accent? We don’t drop our H’s and T’s you’ll find the cockneys do that.

When you mentioned Fable 2 it seemed to strike some similarities to World of Warcraft (trying to cram in as many WoW references as I can ).

The buying condoms bit really made me laugh.

The play out music was excellent.

Keep up the good work.

Looking forward to giving my thoughts on Episode 6 and 6.5

Why did I bookmark that site?

Image by via CrunchBase

As my twitter followers know, I have tweeted a few times about a boomark folder I have set up called “stuff to look at later”. It contains all of the interesting headlines of articles or interesting sites that I would like to take the time to look at, at a later date.

Have you ever gone back through your bookmarks a few days later and ask yourself “Why did I bookmark that site?” I think that when you are on twitter you tend to go into auto pilot and you end up bookmarking most of the links tweeted and then when you go back you cannot think of a valid reason why you’ve bookmarked a certain site.

No disrespect to those who have tweeted the link, they are of the opinion that the site they have linked could interest someone else. This past week I’ve started to learn to filter out what is of genuine interst to me.

So over to you in the comments have you ever asked yourself the question “Why did I bookmark that site?”