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By Abigail Aaronson

One of the primary concerns for women who are considering breast augmentation is what size of implants to opt for. Since this surgery is a life-changing process, the possibility of going too big or too small is the cause of much agonizing for most women.

The first thing to remember is that breast implant sizes are not evaluated the way bra sizes are. While a 36C bra made by one manufacturer can be the same as a 34B bra made by another, implants are based on cubic centimeters or cc(s), depending on how much volume of saline or silicone is used to fill the implant.

While your bra size is an important factor in deciding how big or small you want to go, be prepared for your surgeon to discuss size in terms of cc(s). Most doctors will recommend that you have a general idea of the aesthetic look you want to achieve and compare before and after pictures of women with a similar body type and frame before you decide how big or small your size should be.

If you have friends who’ve had augmentation surgery ask them about sizes and how they decided on theirs. Another way to get an idea is to ask around on online communities and forums where women display photos of their results with their exact measurements before and after surgery. Find out how many cc(s) they used and whether it was saline or silicone. You can also get recommendations for plastic surgeons who can give you the look you want.

There are a few tricks you can use to help you make that decision right in the comfort of your home. The rice technique uses pantyhose or old stockings, to create pouches filled with rice. These pouches are then inserted into a bra of the size you hope to wear after surgery. A general guideline to follow when performing the rice test is to use the quantities here to simulate cc(s).

* 1 cup of rice generally equals 236 cc

* 1/2 cup of rice generally equals 118 cc

* 1/4 cup of rice generally equals 59 cc

Wearing these pouches gives you an idea of how your new breasts will look and feel. Although most women use rice to simulate the added weight of the implants, you can also use oatmeal or potato flakes as a filling. Implants are available in sizes from 125 to 1200 cc, which is the largest legal size allowed. However, the most popular options range from 350 to 450 cc.

Using the guidelines above, you can experiment by increasing or decreasing the quantity of rice in the pouches. Keep testing to see how much is too big, too small or just right for you. Wear the pouches day and night around the house and under your clothes to see how they look and feel in daily wear.

If the rice test is not for you, invest in a professional sizing kit containing a bra with special pockets for gel implants. This is available for around $50 and will give you an estimate that is very close to what your surgeon will tell you. Another DIY option is to stuff a bra with old socks. Women have used this for generations, but it’s not an exact method, and you would have to take the socks in to the surgeon’s office during your consultation.

When choosing your size, keep in mind that your breast skin will be stretched over the new implants, so there’s a limit to how big you can go. When in doubt, its better to go bigger than smaller, because one of the primary reasons for breast revisions is that women want to go bigger. Your surgeon will discuss this with you during your consultation, so you should voice your concerns right there.

Choosing a doctor is also important to the outcome of your augmentation procedure. You need to research a number of doctors and make sure your plastic surgeon is certified by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and also trained by Allergan or Mentor, the primary manufacturers of breast implants.

Also make sure your surgeon shares your aesthetic goals or you may end up unsatisfied with your size. Some doctors prefer the natural look, while others will allow you to choose the fake look, if that’s what you want. While there is no way to guarantee that your decision on size will turn out to be right for you, keeping all these suggestions in mind will help you make an informed choice.

About the Author: If you’re researching the right surgeon for your breast augmentation, Hagerstown MD will help you explore your enhancement options and create a surgical plan that offers the beautiful results you seek. Visit the website at

plasticsurgeryservices.net

to schedule a consultation.

Source:

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By Bruce Deitrick Price

As long as there have been schools, people have been asking, ‘So, how would we create the perfect school??’

I think the answer is obvious. You would not do any of the things that our Education Establishment likes to do. Indeed, you would do the opposite.

I believe I know exactly what they would do. They would sweep through the Warehouse of Current Educational Fads, grabbing stuff off the shelves with drunken abandon. Of course, their school would have Constructivism in all classes, with the teachers as Guides at Their Sides or, even worse, Facilitators. Lots of time would be wasted while students reinvent all of humanity’s discoveries, and teachers ascertain each student’s Prior Knowledge. Always, children would be encouraged to have deep discussions about the little they know, a fad called Critical Thinking. Meanwhile, the children would not learn to read, by using the method called Sight Words. They would not learn how to do arithmetic, by studying the fad called Reform Math. They would be prohibited from really knowing anything, according to the doctrine of No-Memorization. They would learn contempt for accuracy, according to the doctrine that praises Fuzziness. They would all get straight A’s, according to the doctrine of Self-Esteem. They would be made to work in groups, never learning to work independently, according to the doctrine of Cooperative Learning. And to top it off, the faddists would brag that their school teaches 21st-Century Skills! Unfortunately, this last cliche refers collectively to all the other cliches already mentioned.

My own take is that all of these fads are best understood as sound-good marketing slogans, more or less on the level of McDonald’s ‘i’m lovin’ it.’ Who could be against Self-Esteem? Cooperative Learning? Critical Thinking? Multiculturalism? Reform Math? Whole Language? 21st Century Skills? These artful slogans seem designed to make parents believe that something important is going on, and to convince students that they’re not wasting their time at school.

Unfortunately, none of these fads is much concerned with content, substance, facts, or knowledge. Our Education Establishment has a long track record of being gaga about social engineering, but dismissive of intellectual engineering. Predictably, their schools are to education what scooters are to long-distance transportation. As Professor Arthur Bestor noted more than 50 years ago, public schools will never get better, no matter who much money is spent, as long as the Education Establishment retains its hostility to content.

So, how do we create the perfect school, supposing we’re serious about this quest. First of all, we start from a profound love of facts, and a reverence for knowledge, We proceed in a systematic way to teach foundational knowledge, and then to build on that knowledge, wider and higher. With the results that typical students in the seventh grade will know more than the high school graduates that the Education Establishment turns out. Perhaps just as importantly, these young students will know what they do not know, unlike the Critical Thinkers who are encouraged to believe they know everything they need to know.

Throughout history, all the great schools are virtually identical in having great seriousness of purpose. Without that, everything is a joke and a squandering of money. The main improvement we can make on the past is to use the insight that you often accomplish more with carrots than with sticks. A smart school ensures that students have fun. They should look back and say, ‘Yeah, school was a blast.’ I think it’s a matter of keeping things moving, of creating a wave of learning, of being deeply serious but having a light touch, of mixing sports and extracurricular activities in with the academic work, of mixing field trips in with the class work. Mainly, in the digital age we have so many more tools for memorable presentation of information.

I think really successful schools manage a sleight-of-hand, an intentional deception if you will, so that students don’t realize that they’re actually in a very intense academic environment. It surely helps a great deal if a school is like this from kindergarten onward. Young children, treated as little scholars, will grow into the part. They’ll know that facts are fun, and knowledge is power.

Finally, the difference between the good school and the bad school is merely a matter of attitude and perspective. Good schools revere facts and knowledge, and want to inspire that feeling in children. Bad schools ricochet ineffectually from fad to theory to therapy, never committed to the reason that humans built schools in the first place: to transmit the best of the past to the future.

(For a discussion of Foundational Knowledge and other themes related to this article, please see ’43: American Basic Curriculum’ on Improve-Education.org. For a more sweeping statement of this article, see ’38: Saving Public Schools.’)

About the Author: Bruce Price is an author, artist, poet and education activist. He founded Improve-Education.org, which is now in its fifth year and has become a leading voice for education reform. This site explores many intellectual topics and is especially concerned with reading (see ’42: Reading Resources’). Article summary: To create a perfect school, avoid the common educational fads. Focus instead on basics, content, knowledge, and mastery.

Source: isnare.com

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By Ed Sneineh

Insurance companies use different criteria to rate their auto insurance customers. The main criteria used are the following:

1. Credit Score. Credit score rating is used by certain preferred and standard companies. People with higher credit score will have lower premiums. Actually some companies may sharply increase premiums for auto and home polices with bad credit score, or may even decline insuring them if the applicant was in bankruptcy in the past few years, for example. Insurance companies believe that people with better credit are more responsible, hence they will be more responsible too in their behavior on the road and more responsible in the filing of their claims, if any.

Many people think that credit score pricing is unfair. The truth is that the entire insurance industry can be understood like (legally unfair), an industry that does price discrimination because of applicant’s financial credit, gender, marital status, and age. Discriminating against people and charging them different prices because of their age, gender, marital status is perfectly legal in the insurance business.

Many auto insurance companies that are credit score oriented have created parallel programs to insure people without using their credit score. To cope with the extra risk for not checking their credit, those companies did set a lower liability limits (close to the state minimum) as a maximum for any policy they issue without checking the credit and offered these products with a little higher premiums.

2. Demographics of the Target Market. Some demographic factors are more important than others in determining the price. This includes age, sex, marital status, ages of certain household, geographic location (ZIP), and occupation.

Youthful drivers (widely defined as someone under age 25) and old drivers (over 70 years) pay more money than others. Males under age 25 also pay higher than females of similar age. Married people pay less also. Certain companies may prohibit certain classes of occupations like bar tenders, musicians, entertainers, etc. Driving record, prior insurance history/ experience will also affect the price (people with accidents/ moving violations pay more.) People in particular ZIP codes pay more than others because of bad claim experience for the insurance companies in those ZIP codes.

3. Premium Rating System: There are two widely accepted premium rating systems: Rating by Vehicle Symbol and Rating by Actual Cash Value.

In the event that you are buying a new policy or replacing an existing vehicle with a newly acquired vehicle the result of the transaction may be high or low premiums depending on your company’s way of rating , the symbol of your vehicle and the actual cash value of your automobile.

A Vehicle Symbol is a number assigned by the Insurance Service Office (ISO) to each vehicle. The symbol is determined based on certain factors such as loss experience for that particular vehicle, vehicle size/ weight, wheelbase, body construction, and horsepower. Vehicles with higher symbols have higher insurance premiums. Some companies that utilize their rating based on the Symbol of the vehicle will charge you more if the vehicle has higher Symbol, and less if vehicle has lower symbol. Notice here that a vehicle with a value (ACV) of $15,000 and symbol of 14 will have higher premiums than another vehicle with a symbol of 7 and a value (ACV) of $20,000.

Actual Cash Value method is dissimilar. The insurance premium is usually based on the Actual Cash Value of the automobile (ACV = automobile replacement minus depreciation) . The ACV of the automobile is based on the fair market worth of an average automobile of the same year, make & model sold in the area. When there is a total loss the insurance company will use that dollar value to pay for the claim, but may modify the amount of claim according to given facts like authentic mileage and the physical conditions of the automobile before the loss (automobiles that have double mileage as the average automobiles will have values smaller amount than the ACV.) So for two automobiles that have ACVs of $15,000 and $20,000 the insured will pay more for comprehensive & collision with the 2nd automobile, but liability premiums remain unchanged!

About the Author: Ed Sneineh, insurance professional for over 20 years, former college educator of insurance, and founder of Insurance Navy, a leader in providing auto insurance quotes, Chicago. Visit our website and get your car, SR22 insurance quotes in 5 minutes or less. Insurance Navy represents major carriers such as AAA, Travelers, Progressive, Hartford, and more than 20 other carriers.

Source: isnare.com

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