There are many fantabulous things in this world that have no explanation…the Nazca lines, crop circles, why when you put a pair of socks in the dryer only one comes back out. The kind of things that for the sane and logical mind, no matter how hard you try, have no rational explanation.

Well, I have one more to add to the list of the great mysteries of this world – the dog with the shrinking head! Now, I know what you are thinking…obviously this writer has had way to many malted milk balls and is functioning in some hallucinogenic state, induced by way too much chocolate. But here is the proof:

After a visit to the vet last month, River, (The Boykin Spaniel with the shrinking head) was observed to have a head that was…how to put this delicately…her head was no longer in proper proportion to her body! I mentioned this to the vet who became quite amused. She regaled me with the story of a similar patient, whose owner presented her at the vet with “ a shrinking head.”  She seemed quite amazed and in a state of wonder that her dog, while seemingly quite healthy, had a head that was getting smaller and smaller. Offering photos as evidence, she proudly showed her pictures in which her head was in correct proportion to her finely tuned frame.

As the vet giggled a little more, she explained to me that this was a common problem resulting from a Dancing With the Stars addiction (it’s one of River’s favorites), squirrel watching from the back of the couch and creating a worn spot in the ceramic tile in front of the treat cabinet. I assured the vet that there was no way that River was opening the cabinet and treating herself to yummy granola-crusted chew treats and Better Than Ears treats  – who knows what’s in those things, but at least they don’t have little hairs on them!

We agreed that we would not assign blame to River since we had no proof of her thievery and other interested parties all plead no contest to the accusations. Nevertheless, River has agreed to chase her Frisbee a little more, spend less time trying to coerce Jumbo milkbones from parties, which shall remain nameless, and give up Reality TV for Lent. We conceded that if there was a summer version of Dancing With The Stars that she could indulge if she promised to dance along with them.

So, short of a voodoo priestess showing up in a foggy mist, smelling of swampy bayou water and Spanish moss and sprinkling zombie dust on her head, the condition should reverse itself shortly.

In general, the number zero did not have its own Roman numeral, but the concept of zero as a number was known by medieval computists (responsible for calculating the date of Easter). They included zero (via the Latin word nullus meaning none) as one of nineteen epacts, or the age of the moon on March 22. The first three epacts were nullae, xi, and xxii (written in minuscule or lower case). The first known computist to use zero was Dionysius Exiguus in 525. Only one instance of a Roman numeral for zero is known. About 725, Bede or one of his colleagues used the letter N, the initial of nullae, in a table of epacts, all written in Roman numerals.

A notation for the value zero is quite distinct from the role of the digit zero in a positional notation system. The lack of a zero digit prevented Roman numerals from developing into a positional notation, and led to their gradual replacement by Hindu-Arabic numerals in the early second millennium. On the other hand, the lack of positional notation may have prevented the Romans from developing a “zero”.

Zero is the great numerical invention of the Arabs and the Maya. The Maya and related peoples had zero as an independant discovery.   The Arabs use of zero created a revolution in mathematics that the Romans, and even the early christians, didn’t know about. Europe was a zero-free zone until the Arab culture crossed paths with the Hebrew and Chrstian cultures in the melting pot of Spain.

Silent Monks Singing Halleluia

by Darlene Cook

If you enjoy the playful art of using sarcasm then you are all too aware of the problem that often sarcasm is one of those human expressions that is best understood when it is verbalized rather than written. In order to assist with the issue of conveying sarcastic ideas to writing, a new punctuation mark has been developed to help end confusion in documents, e-mails and instant messaging by making sarcasm just as easy to type as it is to say.

Created by Sarcasm Inc., the SarcMark, as it is called, is a new punctuation that you can download to your Mac or PC. The symbol, which looks like a spiral with a dot inside, is used at the end of a sentence, like an exclamation point or a question mark. Except, when you want to type a sarcastic remark, you would use SarcMark at the end of the sentence instead.

So now when you let say, e-mail an accounting intern to let him know what a wonderful thing he did in wiping out the company’s latest quarterly projections, he will no longer be confused when you type something like, “Nice job, genius.”

The SarcMark is available for download for only $1.99. After you install the symbol, you can make it appear when you need to by pressing the Ctrl and . (period) keys together.

I once heard of a tale about a man with two wives, one young and one old. The young wife, not wanting to be seen with an old man, picked gray hairs off of his head everyday to keep him looking younger. The “older” wife (she must’ve been a cougar) did not like being mistaken for his daughter. Each night she would pluck out the dark hairs from his head, leaving only the gray. Before long the man that could not choose between two wives found himself quite bald and unattractive to either of them!

The moral:

Don’t try to be everything to everyone; know your market and your audience and you’ll be the apple of their eye. Try to be all things to all people and you’ll find yourself lonely and bald!

To that end – we redesigned out website, EnticeAdvertising.com, redefined what we want to focus on and we’re not going to go bald! We’re pretty proud of our new look and hope that you visit us often to see our most recent projects and keep up with what’s going on!

You can also keep up with us on our Facebook Fan page, Twitter, LinkedIn and on SmallBizMemphis.com. Check us out! We hope to keep our blog quite interesting and lively. Please feel free to read our blog, subscribe to the RSS feed and share it with your friends!

Welcome to Entice Advertising & Design, LLC – our rants, raves, gripes and quips…and maybe even some useful info every now and then. My first thought when beginning this blog was to research what makes a great blog. Our goal was to provide our readers/clients/friends with useful information about designing website and collateral material for their business or organization. But my first dip of the toe in the vast ocean of research found some chilly, uninspiring waters – the true motives behind blogging. Now, I’m not saying every blog is a bad thing – there are some great folks out there offering up some really good information and interesting ideas. I’m just saying don’t believe everything you read.

Being of warm-hearted nature myself I was shocked to learn that most (ok – a lot of them) are being PAID to ramble on, in the most outrageous ways, to draw people to a particular site for….wait for it….selling advertising! Yes guys and girls – blogging, in most cases is being used to sell advertising. The folks doing it are getting paid, the advertisers are paying for the ads and YOU are paying with your valuable time (that you can’t get back by the way) all in the name of the glorious dollar. Social media has become another money-making machine in the guise of what?…free speech? Well, we will accept NO ads, we will ask for nothing, we’ll offer no sales pitches here…we simply want to offer you quality content, reliable tips and tools for visual communication! We’ll answer questions for free and help if we can. If we happen to be humorous every now and again…that’s a bonus!