If you're headed in the wrong direction, u-turns are allowed
For every 60 seconds of anger, you lose one minute of happiness.
Kindness: a language the deaf can hear, the blind can see, and the mute can speak.
When you see someone without a smile, give him one of yours.
I do not think happiness is too hard to find -- it is how you treat it once you get hold of it that counts.
What holds you together is far greater than what can tear you apart.
My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to be in the first group; there was much less competition.
Respect costs nothing.
Don't marry the person you think you can live with. Marry the one you can't live without.
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one, which had been opened for us.
The days are very long, but the years are very short.
Sorrow looks back, worry looks around, faith looks up.
Answer just what the heart prompts you.
The heart is wiser than the intellect.
Fortune truly helps those who are of good judgment.
Speak only well of people, and you need never whisper.
Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.
Pray for what you want, but work for the things you need.
Wise men learn more from fools, than fools from wise men.
Get your mind set; confidence will lead you on.
It is better to share happiness than keep it to yourself.
Be direct; usually one can accomplish more that way.
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Who decided red means "stop" and green means "go"?
Dear Cecil:
Who decided, back in the mists of time, that red was the color for "stop" and green the color for "go"?
The commonest form of color blindness makes the colors totally useless. A warning sign that is near-invisible to a significant portion of the population strikes me as a bad idea. --Barbara T., Los Angeles
Cecil replies:
Well, now's a fine time to mention it, Barb. Why didn't you bring this up 80 years ago?
The present system of color coding was developed by the railroads around the time of World War I. But its roots go back much further. Tradition among railroaders has it that red was chosen for "stop" in commemoration of a farmer who tried to flag down an early choo-choo with his red shirt. This is cute, Red, the color of blood, has been a danger signal since time immemorial. It's said the Roman legions bore the red banner of the war god Mars into battle 2,000 years ago.
The other colors have changed over time. When the first primitive railroad signaling devices were developed in the 1830s and 1840s, red meant "stop," green meant "caution," and clear (i.e., white) meant "go." This system had several defects. One obvious problem was the fact that the white signal could easily be confused with an ordinary white light. What was worse, however, was the fact that the system wasn't fail-safe. This was tragically demonstrated sometime around 1914. The red lens supposedly fell out of a signal so that it erroneously showed a white indication. This caused a train to sail through the "stop" signal, resulting in a disastrous crash. The railroads subsequently decided to drop white and make green "go" and yellow "caution." Yellow presumably was chosen because it was readily visible and offered the most striking contrast to the other two colors. When the first electric traffic signals were installed in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1914, they used red and green indications. When the first modern automatic traffic signals were put up in Detroit in the early 1920s, they used red, yellow, and green, and that's what we're stuck with today.
Colorblindness poses less of problem for drivers than you might think. About 8 percent of the population suffers from some color vision deficiency, with difficulty in distinguishing green and red being most common. But it's rare to find someone so colorblind they can't tell bright red and bright green apart. Usually they only have trouble with pastels or in dim light. If all else fails they can fall back on the knowledge that on most stoplights red is on top. Cecil speaks from personal experience. You'd never want to take me hunting for wild raspberries in the forest. But I can tell when the damn traffic lights say stop.
--CECIL ADAMS
Published in U S Legacies Magazine January 2005
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