1. Learn how to cook/bake at home- That $50 meal could have bought your groceries for a few days. I’m sure your cooking isn’t that bad.
2. Get off your high horse- This is for all of you who enjoy “the finer things in life.” There off-brands for a reason. Maybe you could afford the expensive, “superior” brands at one time, but if you can’t anymore, stop kidding yourself.
3. Plan ahead- Grab some paper and a pen. Now, before you go out on your day of errands, write out exactly what you need and where you need to go. Once that’s done, think about the locations of everything. Plan where you’ll go in accordance to that.
4. Find the scissors- This goes along with the high horse. If you need to use coupons, use them. That’s why they’re there. There’s nothing wrong with it and if done right, it can save you lots of money.

5. Buy used- I’ll agree, there are some things that you don’t want to buy used. Still, that leaves lots of other things that you can buy used, like furniture, clothing, purses and electronics. Check out thrift stores, Goodwill and Craigslist.
6. Invest in necessities- We all have our vices. For many Americans, coffee is something we cannot live without on a daily basis. You can find affordable coffee makers and everything you need to make your morning coffee, at home, for much cheaper than what you’re paying now. You’ll be surprised at how much you’ll save.
7. Share with friends- It’s nice to have good friends, it’s even nicer to have friends who like to share. Everyone has something to share, whether it be a talent, money or some product. If your friend knows how to cook and you don’t, ask her to teach you. In exchange, you can let her borrow a few of your books or tools or something. It can be just like the good ole days with bartering.
8. Find other hobbies- You might think that your hobby is going to Home Depot and spending $200 on tools, or you might think that your hobby is getting a manicure for $75. I’m sure you enjoy those things immensely, but there are better, more cost efficient ways to spend your time.
9. Have a garage sale- Everyone has extra stuff around the house that is never used. There’s really no reason to keep it. (Unless it has some sentimental value, if so then it’s excused.) It’s not as difficult as you think to just gather it up, put a sign in your yard and let people buy it from you. It won’t be as painful as you think either… especially after you begin to reap the reward ($$$).
10. Teach your children- It can be hard to tell your precious little child “No,” but sometimes you have to. It’s even more difficult when they’re used to getting what they want most of the time. Now’s the time to start some new habits of teaching your children to work for their money and teaching you to tell them “No.”

It’s true that immunizations like this one have saved thousands of lives since the very first mass inoculations just after World War II, but a growing concern regarding the possible side effects of new vaccines like hepatitis B has mounted in recent years. Many parents are convinced that there may be a link between thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative found in some vaccines, and autism. This has led to a nationwide rise in unvaccinated children.

Though the federal government and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have denied any scientific correlation between vaccines and autism, Dr. Mady Hornig, from the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, and other critics point to evidence that suggests otherwise. One such statistic, and probably the biggest motivating factor in why many new parents are reconsidering immunizing their children, is that autism cases have increased substantially in past few decades. One in 10,000 children developed autism in the 1970s, whereas today, as many as one in 150 children develop the disorder, according to a Web site provided by Vaccine Awareness of North Florida.

Hornig’s research involved injecting a group of mice with tissues similar to those found in children with mercury-laden vaccines equivalent to the doses children received in the 1990s. The mice developed serious brain problems.

“I’ve decided not to have my child vaccinated for anything yet. I just keep hearing about this risk and that risk…it’s scary. I just don’t know enough about them,” said Holly Baker, mother to a 4 and half-month-old baby girl.

Thirty years ago, this was barely a concern for parents.

“When I was pregnant with my first child, I had never even heard of autism. We were mostly concerned with major birth defects…things like that,” said Sue Murphy, mother of four children born in the ‘70s.

According to the CDC, thimerosal has been used in many vaccines since the 1930s and no convincing scientific evidence of harm caused by the low doses of this mercury-containing compound has ever been documented. However, in July 1999, the Public Health Service agencies, the American Academy of Pediatrics and vaccine manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should be reduced or eliminated in vaccines as a precautionary measure.

Parents have the option to choose vaccines that do not contain thimerosal, but they have to know about the option before they can ask for it.

“My pediatrician has a poster on the wall in the waiting room that lists the vaccines that contain mercury and the ones that don’t,” Baker said. “The pediatrician I had for my first child didn’t do this. There’s no way I would have known otherwise.”

Choosing not to have children vaccinated, however, isn’t easy. All public schools require proof of immunizations for admittance, though parents can apply for an exemption. Depending on the state, exemptions can include medical, religious, and philosophical objections. The majority of these fall into the religious category. Since many states do not require parents to expand on the specific religious practice that clashes with the vaccination, some parents may use this exemption to simply circumvent the system.

International travel also presents an issue. Children and adults alike are required to have proof of immunizations in order to obtain a passport and travel to foreign countries. Very few, if any, exemptions apply here.

There are also concerns for those who choose not to have children vaccinated.

According to pediatrician Dr. Karena Neri, unimmunized children are more likely to get vaccine-preventable diseases if there is an outbreak than those who have been immunized. If an unimmunized child gets a vaccine-preventable disease, he or she is likely to spread that disease to another unimmunized child.

Reported cases of the measles, a disease that has been almost completely eradicated since the vaccine was first administered in the 1960s, have more than doubled in 2008.

“Vaccines like the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) are good because they help prevent dangerous diseases. If someone were to contract the measles, the chance for brain damage alone is 50 percent,” Neri said.

Other vaccines, such as those for chicken pox, might not be such a good idea, as Neri pointed out. When a child contracts chicken pox, his or her body builds immunities to the virus that will provide protection for life. If a child is vaccinated for chicken pox, he or she must come back every 10 years for a booster shot. If the booster is forgotten, the person runs the risk of contracting the disease and health risks associated with the
chicken pox for adults are much greater than for children.

“The benefits for getting children immunized far, far outweigh the potential risks,” Neri said. “As a general rule, parents should have their children vaccinated.”

Change has followed the passing of recent years, and with it, the idea of immunizing children.

“When women my age were having children, the grandmothers would describe the symptoms and the deaths of children who weren’t vaccinated,” Murphy said. “We all immunized our children. Today, it’s just different.”

With as much controversy and attention that the turning on of the LHC received, it’s a wonder how almost a full year later most people don’t even know what happened to it. So what did happen to the LHC? It obviously didn’t rip the world in half, kill a large percentage of the population via cosmic rays, or serve Earth a similar fate to that of Vulcan in the latest Star Trek film by creating a black hole that would suck us all into a place only theory can imagine.

Before we delve into the latest information, I think it might be best to freshen up our knowledge on this most important scientific device, potentially the most important ever created.

The LHC is the largest and most powerful particle accelerator on the planet. It is made up of a 16.7-mile ring of superconducting magnets that along with a few other particle accelerating structures, will propel protons to collide with one another at 30 million times per second. Each collision will spew thousands of particles at nearly the speed of light.

The LHC was designed to recreate conditions that occurred after the supposed Big Bang. The main idea is that the experiment could possibly unlock some of the biggest keys to the universe, such as what it’s made up of, what makes it expand and what may lie ahead for the cosmos in the future.

The biggest concerns surrounding the LHC regarded the possible formation of tiny black holes and the creation of hazardous cosmic rays.

Black holes, of course, are formed naturally when certain stars collapse, concentrating a massive amount of matter in a very small space. If you’ve seen any space movies that feature one of these mega monsters of space and matter, you’re familiar with the disastrous affects one can yield. They’re like the biggest vacuums in existence, for lack of a better comparison.

Backed by the properties of gravity established by Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, some scientists believe that it would be impossible for the LHC to form any sort of black holes. Others cite the fact that no one really knows for sure what will happen when the LHC turns on, that the high velocity these particles will be traveling at could cause a lot more than just the formation of black holes.

The other worry is about cosmic rays, or forms of ultra-high radiation. It’s true that particle accelerators recreate the natural phenomenon of cosmic rays. It’s also true that when these rays are created, they are under controlled laboratory conditions.

In an article from the U.K.’s Telegraph online, Stephen Hawking, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge said, “The world will not come to an end when the LHC turns on. The LHC is absolutely safe.”

Is this true? Should we trust arguably one of the most intelligent people on the planet with a question of indefinable science on the fate of the globe?

Before you decide for yourself, let’s take a look at some more pros to the LHC.

Not only could turning this thing on provide some of the most important answers to some of the most allusive questions ever thought, but it could prolong the existence of the human race on earth. According to Dr. Hawking, turning on the LHC is “vital if the human race is not to stultify and eventually die out.”

Probably the most controversial aspect of the LHC is the idea that it may help us identify what is known as the Higgs boson particle, or God particle. It is theorized that this particle can create matter. Its discovery would help solidify the Big Bang theory and help us understand more about the origin of the universe.

So what’s happened to the LHC? The LHC was actually turned on as scheduled. Unfortunately, an unanticipated liquid helium leak occurred that has extended the new start date to some time this summer or early fall as repairs continue.

So now that you have both sides of this most controversial and important global event (really), you can decide for yourself as to how you feel about it, not that it will make much of a difference considering that the machine will be turned on at some point.

Something I want to make sure that you keep in mind, however, when considering this is that in all the research I’ve done on this topic and all the people I’ve talked to, not one was certain about what would happen when the LHC is turned on. The fact of the matter is that there is such limited knowledge on the facts and figures of our universe and what happens when particles collide at astronomical speeds that we cannot know for sure if it will mean the end of life on earth as we know it, or whether it will send all of our current technology thousands of years in the future in an instant. We can only wonder and wait to find out.