How Many Minimum-Wage Hours Does It Take to Afford a Decent Life?

Unbelievable! Stats from article,"Want a modest two-bedroom apartment in New York state for the standard 30 percent of your income? You're going to have to toil at a minimum-wage job for 136 hours a week. In California? One hundred thirty hours. How about in Texas, where one in 10 hourly workers make the minimum or less? Eighty-eight hours. Don't forget, there are only 168 hours in a week. That doesn't leave a whole lot of time for sleeping and eating."

http://www.good.is/post/how-many-minimum-wage-hours-does-it-take-to-afford-a-decent-life

Can you choose?

I moseyed over to Simple.ology blog because there was an interesting post

"What to Do When "Picking One" Is Too Much for You"

Bean Jones offers a clear description of what it is like to be overwhelmed with choices and then includes an action plan for dissipating the feeling.

I have one more item to add to the action plan:

Hire me!

My clients are relieved of the "maximizer" syndrome. They have a professional reader sifting through all that data and delivering the information most relevant to them.

If you are the type of person who needs to know "all options were considered" and is mentally stalled because of the insurmountable task then hire me!


Technorati Tags: simpleology, professional reader, the data digger, decision

So you want to start a blog

Courtney Tuttle gives detailed description of how to blog

clipped from courtneytuttle.com clipped from courtneytuttle.com 5,263 Words On Starting A Profitable Blog clipped from courtneytuttle.com I want people to be able to get started after reading a single article, and there is no such article that I know of. This is the most thorough article on this subject I have seen anywhere on the internet. Where I Would Start If I had to start my entire business from scratch right now, I would start a blog. (I actually did start this blog recently, although I already have some profitable websites.) Why I Would Recommend Starting A Blog Instead Of An E-commerce Site (or any other type of site) Another reason I would start with a blog is that your blog will do some of your marketing for you. The program that I’m going to tell you to use will automatically alert some blog search engines when you post a new entry. These blog search engines will create links for you, and people will be able to find your site. The more you post, the more exposure you will get with the blog search engines.

Marketing in Second Life

The investment of time far out weighs the return on investment. However, virtual worlds are social networks. Platforms like Second Life should not be ignored.

clipped from gregverdino.typepad.com 7 tips for real-world businesses in Second Life Interestingly, despite last year's rampant over-hyping of SL and the recent negative downturn, at least a few of the avatars that visit us for coffee With crayon say that there are still lots of marketers who are first discovering Second Life and other virtual worlds, and thinking about what opportunities and challenges they present.  Of course, these marketers (and more importantly, the consultants and agencies that they are calling on for guidance) seem a bit more focused on getting it right this time around.  That's good news. Get to know the cultural landscape Improve, don't invade Involve and engage Prioritize usability Leave your parachute at home Understand technical limitations Work with in-world businesses

Ben McConnell's book available...

Are you a high school or college educator?

clipped from www.churchofthecustomer.com "Citizen Marketers" for educators So, high school and college educators: If you're interested in a review copy of "Citizen Marketers" to consider for inclusion in a course syllabus, email me at ben ****at*** benmcconnell.com and we'll make arrangements.

31 Days to becoming a better blogger

Action item list!

clipped from northxeast.com Make the next month your best blogging month yet — one day at a time. Day 1. Write a better ‘About’ page. Day 2. Start using more images in your posts. Day 3. Write a week’s worth of posts in advance. Day 4. De-clutter your sidebar. Day 5. Highlight your most popular posts. Day 6. Start making friends on a social media service like Digg or StumbleUpon. Day 7. Pitch a guest-post idea at the most popular blog in your niche. Day 8. Craft a great resource-list. Day 9. Offer a free service to your readers (without expecting anything in return). Day 10. Pitch a link to one of your blog posts to three other blogs in your niche. Day 11. Add social media links to the bottom of your posts and to your feed. Day 12. Participate in the comments on one of your own blog posts. Day 13. Work out an editorial calendar for your blog. Day 14. Prune your feed subscriptions. Day 15. Write a 10-page report or mini eBook. Day 16. Try adding a new income stream to your blog. Day 17. Think up 20 post ideas you can use.

Sarcasm

clipped from www.google.com Albert Katz, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Western Ontario, has recently looked at the wisecrackers’ focus on one-upsmanship from a biological perspective, showing that people whose brains are best equipped to understand sarcasm tend to have aggressive personalities. Subjects who scored high on aggression tests showed different patterns of brain activity in response to sarcasm than those who did not. The differences suggest that the aggressive subjects were processing nonliteral meaning more quickly. “Sarcasm is definitely a dominance thing—it’s related to being top dog,” Katz says, both for initiators of sarcastic banter and those who catch on and offer a retort.

Something from the world of poetry

interesting imagery

clipped from www.poems.com The Rain-Streaked Avenues of Central Queens D. Nurkse Poetry January 2008 It ends badly, this glass of wine, before you drink it you have to drink a prior glass, before you sip you gulp, before you chug the bottle you pour it down your throat, before we lie together naked, we divorce, before we rest we grow old, it ends in chaos, but it is delicious, when we wake it is the past, we are the faces staring from the high lit window, the unmet lovers, the rivals who do not exist, united in a radiance that will not fade at dawn.

This post gets taken down tonight

Scott Jennings received this notice:

To avoid further harm resulting to our client from the violation of the Court’s sealing Order, we hereby demand that by no later than the close of business tomorrow (February 15, 2008) you: (1) take down your January 30, 2008 article discussing the allegations in the sealed document and (2) send our office all copies of the Complaint in your possession, custody or control.

clipped from brokentoys.org Pierce To Yantis To Evers To Chance: The Rise And Fall Of IGE MMOcitizen.com, a website operated by the law firm currently bringing a class action lawsuit against IGE, obtained and published a copy of a complaint in another lawsuit involving IGE: this one brought against former CEO Brock Pierce last year by co-founder Alan Debonneville. For almost 5 years, Debonneville has dedicated his entire life to the creation, development, and success of IGE US, LLC (”IGE”). IGE’s meteoric rise from an under funded startup to the market leader culminated in a Goldman-Sachs investment of $60,000,000, which set the value of IGE at the time of $220,000,000. While Pierce, a flamboyant former child actor, has always been the public face of IGE, Debonneville has been the tireless working founder, responsible for the expansion and operation of the company.

The power of blogging

lawyers....they think they can keep things contained...they underestimated the power of blogging in this case

clipped from www.massively.com Lawyers representing gold farmers threaten Lum the Mad by Michael Zenke Feb 15th 2008 @ 10:30AM Late last month Scott "Lum the Mad" Jennings put up a post on his well-known MMOG blog site about an ongoing legal battle. It involves former IGE (yeah, the gold farmers) CEO Brock Pierce and co-founder of the company Alan Debonneville. Lum's excellent post, which quotes heavily from the lawsuit documents unearthed by the site Virtually Blind, does little more than sum up the case in one location. Not only have we been following the case along with the VB site, but numerous others have as well. harshly worded note has prompted responses from other MMOGbloggers, such as these posts from Ryan Shwayder and Matt Mihaly. Perhaps Pierce's team should have considered the impact before they asked Lum to take down his post about the lawsuit. This one, over here on his site. The one about the IGE vs. Hernandez suit. His post concerning Brock Pierce and Alan Debonneville. This post right here.

Meaningful Work

clipped from pos-psych.com Flourishing or Soulless Work? By Timothy So “Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.” Albert Camus Explanation of Crisis 2: Pursuing Extrinsic instead of Intrinsic Goals Many people work very hard solely for the opportunities of promotion, higher salary and status, competition with counterparts, recognition from others, or even fulfilling parents’ expectations. According to Deci and Ryan (1985), these motivations are all “extrinsic” in the sense that they are rewards external to the individual. On the contrary, Deci and Ryan also proposed some “intrinsic” motivations which are inherently interesting or enjoyable, such as the feeling of competency and self-worth. Understanding and appreciating the meaning of work definitely brings intrinsic motivations. Compared to extrinsic ones, intrinsic motivations are suggested by researchers to enhance employee well-being and job satisfaction – such that you will never find your work soulless.

Love is in the air

Love...it is a positive thing

clipped from www.google.com What is Love Anyway? from Positive Psychology News Daily by Aren Cohen Perhaps one of the biggest challenges is that love, like all positive emotions, borders on the spiritual. Yes we can give it words, we can give it science, but at the end of the day, what we feel borders on the magical, because it happens uniquely to us, in only that rarified situation. When we feel it deep in our hearts and our brains, our need to translate it into words and science recedes into the background. Maybe that’s why we have love songs. They allow us to feel it, to confirm that love does exists, and that people definitely love each other, no matter what questions the musicians might ask.

Some Writing Tips

clipped from www.entrepreneur.com John Williams: Image & Branding 5 Tips for Writing Quick-Read Copy Want to keep your audience's attention? Here's how to keep it short. By John Williams   |   July 09, 2007 Here are five easy rules for writing copy for skimmers, scanners and at-a-glancers: 1. Match your copy to your visual (photo or illustration). 2. Display your strongest message "above the fold." 3. White space makes your message stand out. 4. Add a strong call to action at least twice. 5. Focus on benefits, not just features. Finally, keep your sentences short and your style breezy, so your writing is easy to read and skim. When it comes to advertising copy, less is usually more.

Work is becomming 24/7

I am a wife, a mother and I own and run an online business. Gone are the days of clearly defined boundaries.

clipped from www.drewsmarketingminute.com Are the walls between our personal and professional lives crumbling? When I was growing up, my dad set the standard for how a business person behaved. He went to work every day, did his thing and came home. He would, on occasion, bring some work (read -- paper) home with him. I'm sure my dad made friends at the office but I didn't know or hear about them. Today, I look at my two worlds (work and personal) and the line is awfully blurry. Sometimes I wonder if that's a good thing. What do you think about this phenomenon? Do you think this merging of our lives has something to do with the fact that the old work day of 9-5 is also a thing of the past?

Creating Good Content

clipped from www.doshdosh.com What is Good Content? A Working Definition and Some General Principles Every successful blogger recommends the same thing: Create great content and learn how to market it. The whole crux of the matter lies with the notion of good content: What exactly is it? And if it’s so important, how do you create ‘good content’? Let’s examine this idea of content quality in this article. For all its lauded benefits, I’ve not yet seen a working definition for it. Can we crack the content code and determine some general rules or guidelines for its development? After some thought, I’ve made a list of three general principles on content quality, alongside a definition of what I consider to be good content. Principle #1: Content Quality is Subjective Principle #2: Content Quality is Comparatively Determined Principle #3: There Are Guidelines to Determine Content Quality Creating a Goal-Oriented Definition of ‘Good Content’

Isn't that what clipmarks is for?

perhaps I missed the point

clipped from rohitbhargava.typepad.com IdeaBar: Statlicious & Quotelicious The main problem with del.icio.us is that most of the content for a particular link lies behind a click.  While the tags describing content are often strong, the description that people enter is usually not as useful. The end result is that you follow a link, but then are forced to scan the entire text of the page to find the one small piece that you were looking for.  The two situations this has become most evident for me is when I was seeking a stat or a quote.  Both situations are essentially a search for a single relevant line of text, instead of a full page of material.  So this leads me to the idea for this edition of IdeaBar ... what if there was a version of a tool like del.icio.us just for stats and quotes?  People would still save links for original source material, but the text of the quote or stat would be included automatically in the description.  The keywords would also describe the context of each quote or stat, making it easy to find.

Virtual Assistants

International Virtual Assistants Association
http://www.ivaa.org

Virtual Professionals are located world wide.

clipped from www.chicagotribune.com Your personal assistant, half a world away By Laurie Goering In the latest twist on globalization, it is now possible to hire a personal assistant—in India—to take care of just about anything you don't have time to do and that can be accomplished via phone or the Internet. Need your daughter's birthday party organized? A snowplow to clear your driveway? Your résumé and cover letter sent out to potential employers? How about a romantic vegan dinner for two delivered to your home, complete with live music? A personal assistant working from a cubicle in Bangalore or Hyderabad now can arrange all that and a whole lot more, and not just for the long-pampered uber-rich but for a much bigger market: America's exhausted middle class. Now, "I call when I need something, and I pay for the work they provide—no stress or anxiety about unproductive time or employees." For somebody who is "spread very thin," he says, "that's huge."

"Gaming the Vote"

Book review by Gerry Donaghy

clipped from www.powells.com Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do about It) Reviewed by Gerry Donaghy Powells.com While most Americans would characterize our electoral process as "one person, one vote," the route to the White House is considerably byzantine. Why do so-called "super-delegates" exist? Why exactly do we still utilize an archaic institution like the Electoral College? In Gaming the Vote, Poundstone explores several possibilities for election reform. All straddle the borderline between complex and confusing. If there is a drawback to Gaming the Vote, it is that the author presents readers with several different options for replacing the current system, yet offers no concrete suggestions for implementation.

Virus Alert

It's Friday. Lets have some midday merriment:

ALERT
The Centre for Disease Control has issued a medical alert about a highly contagious, potentially dangerous virus that is transmitted orally, by hand, and even electronically. This virus is called Weary Overload Recreational Killer (WORK). If you receive WORK from your boss, any of your colleagues, or anyone else via any means whatsoever - DO NOT TOUCH IT. This virus will wipe out your private life completely. If you should come into contact with WORK you should immediately leave the premises. Take two good friends to the nearest grocery store and purchase one or both of the antidotes - Work Isolating Neutralizer Extract (WINE) and Bothersome Employer Elimination Rebooter (BEER). Take the antidote repeatedly until WORK has been completely eliminated from your system. You should immediately forward this medical alert to five friends. If you do not have five friends, you have already been infected and WORK is controlling your life.

More hours in the day

interesting

clipped from jon.gaia.com How to Have a 36 Hour Day Posted on Mar 24th, 2006 by Jon How many times do you hear someone say "I wish there were more hours in the day" or something along those lines?  The fact is that all of us are only given 24 hours.  Having said that, how we spend those 24 hours varies radically from person to person.  It's become a bit of a cliche by now but the 24 hours we have is the same 24 hours that Thomas Edison and Mother Theresa had and that Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates currently have.  As the old song goes "It's in the way that you use it." So here are 10 ways that you can radically change your life and free up the time you didn't know that you could. 36 Hour Day Strategy #1: Optimize Your Sleep Wake up at the same time every morning Make your room a quiet, dark cave Experiment with polyphasic sleep Time Savings from Optimizing Your Sleep = Approximately 1.5 Hours 36 Hour Day Strategy #2: Optimize Your Diet 36 Hour Day Strategy #3: Multi Task 36 Hour Day Strategy #4: Get Organized