Weird & Wonderful

Clearly the best way to use aluminum foil is to fashion it into a cone-shaped hat to block aliens or the "Government" from reading your thoughts. However, aluminum foil has other uses -- even beyond cooking.

Here are a few ways to transform a cheap and durable kitchen staple into a marvel of home economy.




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By Erik Sherman
AOL Jobs

Better-paying jobs need better skills. Rather than plunking down thousands of dollars for, say, a degree in computer science, what if you could learn much of what you needed in 20 hours? What if you could stay ahead of the competition by learning every new gadget, software and technical skill in just 20 hours?
Author Josh Kaufman, right, says it is possible, and that he taught himself how to code -- as well as windsurf, play the ukulele and many other things -- in less than 20 hours each.

"A 14-year-old could learn to do this," says Kaufman, who chronicled his experiences in his best-seller, The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything ... Fast. "Once you get into it, it's really not as difficult as it seems."

Writer Malcolm Gladwell has famously said it takes 10,000 hours of practice to fully master a skill. But Kaufman cites research showing that most skill improvement happens early on when you go from incapable to "developing the capacity to perform." In his experience, that can happen in 20 hours.

By Eamon Murphy
Daily Finance

The money (left) and control/neutral (right) pictures used to "prime" participants in one study of how money influences moral outcomes. The mere thought of money can trigger a subconscious mindset that predisposes people towards unethical actions, according to recent research by professors at Harvard and the University of Utah.

Earlier work suggested that subtle exposure to money can influence behavior and decisions in self-centered ways, making people in studies more likely to choose an individual activity over a group one, for instance. This new research set out to to determine how such exposure might impact "morally relevant outcomes," in light of money's enormous importance to society in general and business organizations in particular.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when we practice to make personal gain from taxpayer money. Canadian politics has been rocked in recent weeks by revelations from the Senate expenses scandal. Already, four Senators have resigned from their respective caucuses and the Prime Minister's chief of staff fell on his sword for cutting a personal cheque to cover Senator Mike Duffy's inaccurate living expense claims. Alas, political expense scandals are not uncommon but they are invariably entertaining and, as a taxpayer, infuriating. Here are five of the most egregious expense scandals so far this century.

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Prince Alwaleed, Testy Saudi Billionaire Owns A lot of Things: Here Are Some of Them

By Claire Gordon
AOL Jobs

When NSA contractor Edward Snowden reportedly blew the whistle on two enormous government surveillance programs, he did it old-school, leaking documents to two esteemed reporters. But a recent report finds that more whistle-blowers are publishing the secrets themselves -- online (like the infamous hackers of Anonymous, pictured right). This leaves them vulnerable to employer-retaliation as the laws lag behind the new realities of cyberspace.

Miriam Cherry, a professor at Saint Louis University School of Law and author of the report, calls them "virtual whistle-blowers." Unlike past generations, they're blogging, dropping surreptitious videos onto YouTube or leaking documents to online groups such as WikiLeaks, as Bradley Manning allegedly did. Cherry points to a growing army of "whistle-bloggers," employees who blog -- usually anonymously -- about illegal activities at their places of work. No state so far, she notes, has whistle-blower laws on the books to explicitly protect bloggers -- let alone the people who post YouTube videos or leak to Wikileaks.

Daily Finance

On the eve of the latest Superman movie, "Man of Steel," comes news that a comic book featuring the superhero's first-ever appearance just sold on comic book marketplace ComicConnect.com for $175,000 -- and that's considered a bargain for the comic book in question.

Two years ago, another copy of the 1938 Action Comics No. 1 sold for more than $2 million. This one, found by a Minnesota man in the wall of a house he was rebuilding, started off in less than mint condition and suffered further damage when the back cover was ripped off in an argument shortly after its discovery.

The renewed focus on Superman in the run-up to his movie reboot surely played a role in driving up the bidding price, as did the media attention surrounding its unusual provenance. But of course, what really made it so valuable is its utter rarity, with less than a hundred original copies estimated to still exist. So it's unlikely that you'll be finding a copy in your grandma's attic or hidden in a wall (or, for that matter, in a cornfield in Kansas).

People are always on the lookout for scams. You kind of have to be, these days.

While a website may assure you you're that millionth visitor, you probably don't want to risk it for an iPod. Believe it or not, "male performance enhancements" are probably just playing into people's own self-doubts. And most infomercial products won't revolutionize your life.

The issue with this, of course, is that sometimes awesome products that actually work get written off because people's spam filters just think of them as a scam. These days, how exactly do you sell something that really is "too good to be true?"

Luckily, Reddit recently had a thread where people mentioned things that seem like scams but are actually legitimate.

Here are the 11 most interesting of them:

By Lisa Mahapatra
Daily Finance

Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is well known for his extreme wealth and his fun hobbies, like throwing dwarves. But he takes the former very seriously. So much so that he's suing Forbes for libel after the magazine reported his worth at $20 billion, ranking him 29th on its annual list of the world's billionaires. Alwaleed says he's worth at least $9.6 billion more.

He has filed a defamation claim against Forbes in a high court in London, according to the Guardian.

Meanwhile, he can content himself with his toys. Journalist William Cohan interviewed the prince for a feature-length profile for Vanity Fair and wrote about some of the things Alwaleed owns. Here's a sampling:

The life of a CEO is fast-paced and demanding. Results mean everything, and when things are going less than smoothly, it's easy to turn to the top in search of answers.

Ron Johnson's run as CEO of JC Penney, Inc. (NYSE:JCP) ended in April, just 17 months in to his two- to three-year plan to rebuild and rebrand the company. In May, The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG) CEO Bob McDonald stepped down after a four-year stint that saw competitors start to gain ground on the consumer products giant.

It's a given that a CEO must be deeply invested in the company that he or she leads, but here are five CEOs who have taken the extra step -- or misstep -- in an effort to support their brand.

On Wednesday afternoon, the winner of the largest sole jackpot in U.S. lottery history stepped forward to claim her winnings. Gloria C. Mackenzie, 84, bought the winning $590.5 million ticket at a Publix supermarket in Zephyrhills, Florida.

Mackenzie will take a lump-sum pretax payout of $370 million. And while the odds of winning that much money are steep -- 1 in 172.5 million in this case, according to one estimate -- it's not uncommon for people to come into a sudden windfall, such as an inheritance.