4-Wheel-Drive and All-Wheel-Drive Vehicles

With the snow storm hitting many parts of the U.S., many folks are talking about four-wheel and all-wheel drive cars.  Here's some info...

Four-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive systems are becoming popular options not only for SUVs, but cars as well. All SUVs and pickup trucks offer 4WD or AWD systems, and even some compact cars, like the Mitsubishi Lancer and Toyota Matrix, offer available AWD systems. Oftentimes, more than one system is available for any given vehicle, leaving consumers puzzled.

With so many options to choose from, it's easy for drivers to get confused by a barrage of acronyms, each more meaningless than the last. For most shoppers, there are three basic options: Full-time 4WD, part-time 4WD, or AWD. Although each system has its own merits, one thing is certain--any 4WD system will make your vehicle less fuel efficient and more complicated to repair and maintain. In many situations, it'll also add quite a few dollars to your vehicle's purchase price. 


http://consumerguideauto.howstuffworks.com/your-ride-4wd-vs-awd-cga.htm

List of cars:
http://consumerguideauto.howstuffworks.com/your-ride-4wd-vs-awd-cga1.htm

Parenting: The Trouble with Bright Kids

Here's an excerpt from a good article at Business Week (bolding below by zRoundtable.com):

It’s not easy to live up to your fullest potential. There are so many obstacles that can get in the way: bosses that don’t appreciate what you have to offer, tedious projects that take up too much of your time, economies where job opportunities are scarce, the difficulty of juggling career, family, and personal goals.

But smart, talented people rarely realize that one of the toughest hurdles they’ll have to overcome lies within.

...

When I was a graduate student at Columbia, my mentor Carol Dweck and another student, Claudia Mueller, conducted a study looking at the effects of different kinds of praise on fifth-graders. Every student got a relatively easy first set of problems to solve and were praised for their performance. Half of them were given praise that emphasized their high ability (“You did really well. You must be really smart!”). The other half were praised instead for their strong effort (“You did really well. You must have worked really hard!”).

Next, each student was given a very difficult set of problems — so difficult, in fact, that few students got even one answer correct. All were told that this time they had “done a lot worse.” Finally, each student was given a third set of easy problems — as easy as the first set had been — in order to see how having a failure experience would affect their performance.

Dweck and Mueller found that children who were praised for their “smartness” did roughly 25% worse on the final set of problems compared to the first. They were more likely to blame their poor performance on the difficult problems to a lack of ability, and consequently they enjoyed working on the problems less and gave up on them sooner.

Children praised for the effort, on the other hand, performed roughly 25% better on the final set of problems compared to the first. They blamed their difficulty on not having tried hard enough, persisted longer on the final set of problems, and enjoyed the experience more.

Read more here:
http://www.businessweek.com/management/the-trouble-with-bright-kids-11212011.html?campaign_id=rss_topStories

Buying Organic can be Pricey

Here's an article that has useful information.  Buying organic can be pricey -- but what is MOST important to buy organic??

By now, we all know there’s a benefit to buying some stuff organic. But these days you’re faced with the option of gettingeverything organic—from fruits and veggies to mattresses and clothing. You want to do right by your body, for sure, but going the all-natural route en masse can be pricey.

So we wondered: What’s really essential for our health? That’s why we came up with this definitive list. Here's what should be in your cart—and what you don’t have to worry about.

Read more here:

http://shine.yahoo.com/event/green/11-things-you-should-buy-organic-2467411/

Take Me Out to the Ballgame (Costs to attend a MLB Game)

The baseball season has started.  We were talking with some friends -- and were amazed that parking alone at Yankee Stadium was $35 (more for valet parking!).  Here is a look at some of the expenses to attend a baseball game.

The average ticket price across all 30 teams is $26.91, which is only a 1.2 percent increase from last season.
Here are some of the other highlights from the report:

• The highest non-premium ticket prices
 are the Boston Red Sox ($53.38), the New York Yankees ($51.83), the Chicago Cubs ($46.90 and the Chicago White Sox ($40.67).

• The lowest non-premium ticket prices
 are the Pittsburgh Pirates ($15.30), San Diego Padres ($15.45), Arizona Diamondbacks ($15.74) and the Los Angeles Angels ($17.13).

• The most expensive parking
 is the New York Yankees ($35), Boston Red Sox ($27), Chicago Cubs ($25) and the Chicago White Sox ($23).

• The cheapest parking
 is the Tampa Bay Rays ($0), Washington Nationals ($5), Detroit Tigers ($5), Minnesota Twins ($6) and the Kansas City Royals ($6).

Read more here.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/42381528

WSJ article on Amy Chua's controversial parenting ideas

This article on parenting, called, "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior" has generated a lot of buzz because everyone wants what's best for their children.  We feel that the author, Amy Chua, is trying to sell books -- and is thus being very extreme and controversial -- but because it is generating so much interest, here are some excerpts:

Can a regimen of no playdates, no TV, no computer games and hours of music practice create happy kids?  And what happens when they fight back? 

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too.  

  

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html