Call Me What You Want's List: Pedagogy

• She might never have put down those words if not for Rainier Scholars, which guided Maika out of less-distinguished neighborhood schools and into Garfield High’s Accelerated Progress Program, then paid to send her to Exeter Academy in New Hampshire for summer science classes.

   

  This in addition to driving her through 1,500 hours of extra class- and homework time, every minute of it geared toward bringing Maika closer to a college diploma.

   

  More than just academic acceleration, Rainier Scholars takes students on a life-altering journey, training them to act as leaders and to speak for themselves.
• “People always say you can’t expect certain outcomes with certain groups of students, but what they’re really saying is we don’t have the will to put the money toward those groups,”
• Rainier kids don’t necessarily begin as academic superstars. Most are B-level pupils with high promise — and high hopes. Of the 500 fifth-graders who apply each year, about 60 are admitted into the program

• Nationally, college-going rates for low-income students hover at a stubbornly low 51 percent. But in Washington, it’s far worse. A shocking 18 percent of disadvantaged students here enroll at four-year institutions, even counting academic stars like Maika.

   

  Christopher Avery, a professor of public policy at Harvard University, has been puzzling over such figures for years.

   

  In 2013, he partnered with Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University to study low-income high-achievers — about 30,000 kids each year with the grades and test scores for acceptance into the most selective schools, but who rarely apply because there is no counselor telling them they have a prayer.

   

  “Obviously, these are talented students,” Avery said, “and that they can’t figure out the college application process is a pretty big indictment of the system.”

• Back in Oakland, Jameil Butler arranges chairs in the ersatz library at Castlemont High — nothing more than a few bookshelves pushed together.

   

  He earns little more than the minimum wage, yet as an adviser with the College Advising Corps, Butler will help send dozens of students onto California campuses in the fall.
• Similar to Teach for America, the AmeriCorps- and grant-funded program pays its battalion of 20-somethings about $25,000 a year to act as higher-education navigators in 425 schools across the country.

• But they’ll take anyone who walks through the door, including kids like Marcus Jackson who — abandoned by his parents and raised by his mother’s ex-boyfriend — struggled with poor grades and might have given up completely were it not for Corps adviser Jennifer Alcaraz.

   

  In her first year at De Anza High, Alcaraz has spent much of her time writing college letters on Marcus’ behalf. So far, the response has been a series of denials. But Marcus, who envisions a career in computer programming, remains undeterred.

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• For the most part, students in the UI REACH program do not take the same courses as traditional students, although some REACH students have taken traditional classes in special education and multiculturalism. Their learning is aimed at their development as a member of society while in many cases aiming the student toward a career they find meaningful. It is a life-skills program in the expansive environment of a college campus.

• The phenomenon was first identified by Hermann Ebbinghaus, and his detailed study of it was published in the 1885 book Über das Gedächtnis. Untersuchungen zur experimentellen Psychologie (Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology).
• This robust finding has been supported by studies of many explicit memory tasks such as free recall, recognition, cued-recall, and frequency estimation (for reviews see Crowder 1976; Greene, 1989).
• This suggests that semantic priming underlies the spacing effect in cued-memory tasks. When items are presented in a massed fashion, the first occurrence of the target semantically primes the mental representation of that target, such that when the second occurrence appears directly after the first, there is a reduction in its semantic processing. Semantic priming wears off after a period of time (Kirsner, Smith, Lockhart, & King, 1984), which is why there is less semantic priming of the second occurrence of a spaced item. Thus on the semantic priming account, the second presentation is more strongly primed and receives less semantic processing when the repetitions are massed compared to when presentations are spaced over short lags (Challis, 1993). This semantic priming mechanism provides spaced words with more extensive processing than massed words, producing the spacing effect.
• A number of studies have demonstrated that the semantically based repetition priming approach cannot explain spacing effects in recognition memory for stimuli such as unfamiliar faces, and non-words that are not amenable to semantic analysis (Russo, Parkin, Taylor, & Wilks, 1998; Russo et al., 2002; Mammarella, Russo, & Avons, 2005).
• Study-phase retrieval theory

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• BRAC launched its operation in Philippines yesterday setting a lofty goal of bringing the light of education in the troubled region of Muslim Mindanao.
• With the support of the Philippines Government
• Francisco M. Varela, Under Secretary of Department of Education

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• It takes more than talent alone to attain a dream job working for the house that Stan & Jack built. You’ll need a killer portfolio, the right attitude, and someone to hand deliver you to the editorial board.

• Luckily, Marvel “Scout” Jim McCann braved the horrors of driving alongside 70-mph death machines piloted by oblivious soccer moms (a.k.a. Nashville Traffic) to share his advice for aspiring creators this weekend at the Nashville Horror Convention. He’s also there talking to fans, answering questions, and reviewing portfolios that could end up on the desks of Marvel editors.

   

  It’s not hard to see why McCann knows what editors are seeking in an artist. He has over four years experience in the sales, marketing, and communications side of Marvel, 20 years of dedication as a Marvel fanboy, and will soon debut his first full-length comic What If? House of M co-authored by Brian Reed. And while McCann can’t reconcile the fan reaction to Spider-Man’s marital situation, he can offer plenty of tips for aspiring creators trying to break into the industry.

• “What people should bring for portfolio reviews — and this is for everywhere they do portfolio reviews or send them in — is always bring photocopies with your name and contact information at the top or on the back,” McCann said. Photocopies can be either 8 by 11 inch or the larger 11 by 17 inch size standard of most art boards.

   

  The artwork itself should demonstrate a variety of skill sets, according to McCann, who adds that he’ll be looking for examples of pin ups, sequential art, backgrounds, and use of perspective.

   

  “A lot of people can draw [pin ups]…but, you pretty much don’t break in as a cover artist,” he said. “You will break in as a penciler so you need to be able to show your sequentials.”

   

  Sequential art, which is the practice of telling a story from one point to another using sequential images, came from Will Eisner, inventor of the graphic novel. But being familiar with this concept isn’t essential if you can show examples of good storytelling in your portfolio.

   

  “If you don’t know who Will Eisner is, at least know modern storytellers. Know the basics…basic anatomy. You’d be surprised at how many people don’t know basic anatomy.

• Aspiring creators should not be scared to ask questions, according to McCann. People who have never had their portfolio reviewed have used the critiques to learn more about what editors are looking for in a good story, portfolio, or whatever position may be.

   

  “Just showcase what you’ve got. Don’t be afraid to come and get pointers,” he said. “I had a couple of people who were just students — I’m talking, they were kids. Their parents brought them up and obviously a 12-year-old is not going to get published… (usually).”

• If you have the confidence to get your portfolio reviewed, be prepared for criticism that shouldn’t be taken personally. The risk of coming off as arrogant is the last thing that will bring someone closer to their dream of making comics, according to McCann.

   

  “People should be professional and open to what is being said,” said McCann, — even if what’s being said is harsh and unpleasant. You can be professional when you hear critiques but when you’re arrogant it shows right away. It’s a very unattractive quality.

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• If you were to ask the average child to describe the perfect form of government they would probably come up with something like Libertarianism. No rules! No laws! Trust everyone to be nice to each other! This is also known as anarchy and it doesn't work.

  I had a buddy back in '92 who was Libertarian and he explained to me the basic idea of the movement. He said "Reduce government to 1% it's current size. Then a year later reduce it to 1% of that." I was aghast and told him so. Mankind in his current state simply couldn't function well in such a situation. Maybe 300 years from now when we live in a Star Trek-like utopia Libertarianism would be fine, but today? It would degenerate quickly into chaos ruled by armed gangs, much like Iraq, Afghanistan and parts of Central and South America.

  And what has Libertarianism ideas (No Regulation! No Transparency! Trust everyone to be nice!) brought to the financial markets? Chaos, colapse, bankruptcy and people running for the protection of armed gangs, so to speak.

• Actually Doughdee222, I would suspect that liberals mirror the ideas of a world a five year old would believe in:

  The Government will always have everybodies best interest, and it will always do the right thing for everyone. The government can always be trusted, nobody is every corrupt, and its ok to give the Government all the power it wants, because it will never ever abuse it, unless of course a bad ol republican is put in charge, then we need to get rid of them and everything will be perfect, because liberals can't be wrong, because the world is perfect and the gov't is perfect. Liberals act like five year olds in most ways, helping everyone always is possible, because the world is perfect and all is fair. As usual as a liberal you refuse to actually learn about the ideas of anybody else, your knowledge of libertarians come from a friend who once told you what he thought the movement amounted to, well I once had a friend tell me that liberals believe that as long as another liberal were in power democracy wouldn't be all that important, so I guess that must be what all liberals believe!

• Actually, Libertarians don't believe that you should just trust everyone and they will be nice.

  We are realistic and assume that most people will act in their own best interest, even if they claim to be doing what is best for the greater good. In fact, we believe that the people you should trust the least are the ones who say that they are going to help you out by relieving you of your money.
  

  We believe that people should behave as adults- adults who are capable of being reasonable and rational but who are also motivated to play fairly by the knowledge that they will be held accountable for any ill actions that they take against anyone else. Personal responsibility is one of the most important concepts of Libertarianism. I haven't seen much of that in the government for a long time.

• I assume that libertarians accept the need for effective laws, and institutions such as an independent judiciary and police force to implement them. In other words, that these bodies should be in place to protect one citizen from another.

   

  I presume also that "personal responsibility" doesn't extend to personally enforcing your rights against the gun toting, tatoo'd, Hell's Angel next door who doesn't believe you're entitled to them.

   

  If this is the case, and libertarians acknowledge the need for such institutions to police society, and protect them from malefactors, then why shouldn't there be some type of government regulation to police the financial world?

   

  Could it be that libertarians welcome government intervention when it is protecting their interests (eg shielding them from physical harm etc), but shun it when it seeks to protect the interests of others (eg those who neither pay heed to, nor particularly understand, the free market system but who, in the event of a crisis, invariably suffer the most)?
• There is a big difference in the government protecting people from others and it protecting people from themselves.
  

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• 1. Men Reach Their Sexual Peak at 18, and Women Reach Theirs at 28
     TRUE: With regard to their supply of sexual hormones, at least. Testosterone peaks at age 18 in men; women's estrogen hits its high point in their mid-20s. "But peak hormones don't mean peak sexual performance," says Marc Goldstein, M.D., a professor of reproductive medicine and urology at Cornell University's Weill Medical College. So feel free to try for a personal best—at any age.
• 2. Semen is Low-Carb
     FALSE: "Semen is mostly fruit sugar [fructose] and enzymes—not low-carb," says Dr. Goldstein. Which finally explains why there's no Oral Sex Diet.
  
• 3. Masturbation Yields the Strongest Orgasm
     TRUE: But it's not a hard-and-fast rule, as it were. "It depends on the individual," says Jon L. Pryor, M.D., a professor of urologic surgery at the University of Minnesota. "For some it does, but for others, there's nothing that beats good ol' intercourse."
• 4. The Average Erection Measures 8 Inches
     FALSE: Relax, Shorty. It's closer to 6.
  
• 5. No Penis is Too Large or Too Small for Any Vagina
     TRUE: But perception still wins the game in the end. "I was once at a dinner meeting with seven other sex doctors—six men and one woman," says Dr. Pryor. "The men all agreed that size doesn't matter. The woman looked at us and said, 'Think what you want. Size matters.' We all left dejected."
• 6. Oysters Make You Horny
     FALSE: You make you horny. "There is no scientific evidence that oysters increase libido," says Dr. Pryor. "But there may be a placebo effect, so if it works, great!"
  
• 7. Green M&Ms Make You Horny
     FALSE: Unless they do. Then it's true. Isn't the mind wonderful?
• 8. Men Think About Sex Every 7 Seconds
     FALSE: That number is tossed around a lot, but the truth is that only 23 percent of men claim to fantasize frequently. But maybe the rest are just too distracted to check the clock.
• 9. Cutting Out Broccoli Will Make Your Semen Taste Better
     TRUE: Semen is naturally bitter, and eating broccoli and drinking coffee can make it worse. A ray of hope for the Oral Sex Diet!
• 10. Having Sex Before an Important Event—the Big Game, the Critical Presentation—Can Ruin Your Performance in the Event
     FALSE: Swiss researchers performed stress tests on people 2 and 10 hours after the subjects had had sex, and found that by 10 hours, the participants were fully recovered. There was only a small dip in performance 2 hours after sex.
• 11. Having Sex in Water (Swimming Pool, Hot Tub, Shower) Will Kill Sperm
     TRUE: Some of your swimmers may die, but it isn't an effective method of birth control, according to Dr. Pryor. Though a hot tub can overheat your testicles and kill sperm, there should be plenty left for the egg hunt.
• 12. You Can Become Addicted to Web Porn
     TRUE: But the risk is low. Only 1 percent of all people who check out Internet porn will become addicted. If you're sporting a ring, be careful: 38 percent of addicts are married.
  

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• Features, I’ve recently come to realize, can be obstacles. Problems. The more powerful an application is, the more specialized it is, and thus with increased power its intended audience shrinks, and ironically, it becomes more, not less, vulnerable to competition.
• Specialization, traditionally, is a good thing. But, as Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist argue in their Netocracy, those who overspecialize will not do very well in the age of the Internet. Want to succeed? Be influential in as many important networks as possible, they argue.

  • Netocracy was a term invented by the editorial board of the American technology magazine Wired in the early 1990s. A play on the words internet and aristocracy, netocracy refers to a perceived global upper-class that bases its power on a technological advantage and networking skills, in comparison to what is portrayed as a bourgeoisie of a gradually diminishing importance.
  Add Sticky Note

• Even in this fast moving age specialization can be ok if you’re a person, but what if you’re a service, catering to thousands or millions of people? Sure, if the conditions around you don’t change much, you can satisfy the needs of a certain group very well, but if you exist in a fluid, everchanging medium such as the Internet, where everything shrinks and expands and overlaps all the time, the power that you offer might work against you in the end.

   

  From this notion a new paradigm has arisen. Less is more. Simplicity is power. Create a solid foundation, and let others build a thousand different houses, each catering to a different need, and you’ll never go out of fashion. Simplicity is the key that unlocks the web. Bear with me.

• The Twitter Dilemma

   

  I, as many other authors, have bashed my head against the wall thinking: how is it possible that Twitter remains popular despite their frequent technical problems and the fact that there are other similar services out there which offer more? It is an unprecedented situation: normally, a service with solid competition which has the advantage of not having technical difficulties that prevent their user base from using the service (whether or not Twitter’s competition is better with this regard is debatable, but based on current data anything seems to be more reliable than Twitter) would have been dead and buried ages ago. Twitter, however, endures. Why?

   

  The answer is simple: Twitter belongs to a new breed of services, perhaps accidentally discovered, that win by doing less, not more. It’s a foundation upon which hundreds of new applications were built, yet, in itself, it is little more than an API for a simple one-to-many short message broadcast system. I, myself, have thrown my hands up in frustration and tried to find an alternative I can stick with - Pownce, Plurk, and countless others. Unfortunately, it seems, all these services are too good to be a viable alternative.

• How can this be? The web, most experts agree, is a platform - a platform for any service that has to do with information of any kind. Unfortunately for developers, as far as platforms go, it’s a very undefined one; there is no universal API for the Internet. Furthermore, the damn thing changes all the time. Web portals were once huge; now they seem clumsy and cluttered, because many new applications have created more elegant ways to start your online day. If you want to develop an application for the Internet, you must first find a way to channel and organize the information that’ll flow through; if you jump on the wrong train here in the very beginning, your application might be doomed.

   

  Some smart developers have thus began to understand that it’s better to build a very simple service that caters to a very basic need, and slap an API on top, than to try and create a specific, complex service that does a lot right from the start. The first type of service, if executed well, has shown to be very resilient: once it breaks the initial attention barrier, competing against it is practically impossible.

   

  By catering to a basic need, creating a service that satisfies it in a simple way and opening it up through an API, you’ve unlocked, or perhaps deciphered, a small part of the web as a platform. You’ve created a mini platform which everyone is going to use because it’s, simply put, good enough. As long as people have a need to send short messages to other people from wherever they are, Twitter is going to be a highly sought for commodity. Unless someone else makes it even more simple.

• Less Is More

   

  Add a couple of features to Twitter and it’s Wordpress. Why is a Wordpress minus a couple of features so popular? You have to stop thinking in the traditional way and adopt the new “less is more” philosophy to understand that.
• By far the most popular application that thrives from being simpler than its competitors is Google Search. Remember the way search engines looked before Google? Yahoo, with its unbelievably crowded homepage at the time of Google’s advent was probably the worst offender, but Lycos and others were no better. Google Search was very, very good at what it did, and that’s the reason it became so popular, but even beyond the inner workings of its algorithm it was very difficult to compete with it because the site consisted of almost nothing, sans a text form, a logo and some text. How do you top that? Apparently, no one has come up with the answer to that one, yet.
• Another such application is FriendFeed. Having come to the game of lifestream aggregators late, it swept everyone off their feet and competitors like Profilactic and Second Brain have received very little press ever since. This is because, again, it does very little: it takes data from your various social profiles, creates a stream out of it and lets users comment and “like” single items. In fact, it’s eerily similar to Twitter, and now - just like in Twitter’s case - applications that bring new functionality to FriendFeed, like NoiseRiver, have started to appear. Would FriendFeed have done better if they provided this exact functionality from the start? I’m betting no, and here’s why.
• Distribution Vs. Complexity

• Once upon a time, if you wanted to create a successful application, one of the keys to success was to offer a lot of features your competitors don’t have. Adobe’s Photoshop is one such application. If you need to edit some photos, it’s the best, period, because it has every tool you could possibly need.

   

  But this is the disconnected world we’re talking about. On the web, things change. It’s not only important what you can do; you also want to be able to do it from wherever you want; you want to plug in into other services, you want to work together with other people. Furthermore - and this goes even more for mobile applications and services - on the Internet, complexity is looked down upon. People don’t want big applications that can do everything; they want simple, widgety applications that cater to a specific service.

   

  Partly, this is because complexity makes web applications slow and clumsy. Partly, it is because the attention span of an average Internet user has shortened, and partly, it is because his willingness to learn the nuts and bolts of a complex application has diminished. Most importantly, it is because the Internet constantly changes and it’s really hard to build something big and complex on such shaky grounds.
• Is it thus smart to create a lot of small apps, each aimed at a different niche? It’s definitely a sound approach. But I think an even better one is to find the lowest common denominator, an underlying basic need that connects all these various niches, cater to that, open it up and let mashups do the rest. This way, people can choose exactly which features they want to use, and your application becomes a fluid, modular service that can be as simple or as complex as the use wants it to be.

• The Magic Formula

   

  Determine a basic need -> Create a service that satisfies it in the simplest way possible -> Open it up.

• “how is it possible that Twitter remains popular despite their frequent technical problems and the fact that there are other similar services out there which offer more?”

   

  A possible answer might be that if one day Scobbles or other “twitter-popular” guy/girl left Twitter it’s possible that many of us would follow him/her where he goes for various reasons. Coz in many cases you dont stay at Twitter because of its simplicity or functionality but because there are some people out there that you follow and interact.

• I’m having a tough time separating out ‘web service’ vs ‘online software’ here. This theory applies to a web service like Twitter, for sure, but not as cleanly to online software like Flickr.

   

  What made Flickr so popular isn’t the fact that it is simple to upload photos, but that they added in a whole set of additional functions that made it possible to create all sorts of communities around the photos. If you want to make Flickr simple, you’d remove those extra features and reduce Flickr to a web service to store and display photos.

• I think with social networks, people will go to the site where their friends are at. What exactly starts the trend (say, from MySpace to Facebook), well, social media experts are getting paid a lot to try to figure that one out.

   

  There have been a lot of historical studies that examine cultural fads/trends (and I think Twitter qualifies as one) and there are so many different factors that can influence their development–economic, social, political, technological influences as well as generational and gender factors. And sometimes, the popularity of a phenomena is simply illogical. Why did Crocs appear out of nowhere and suddenly be ubiquitous footwear for children? There probably was a business plan but sometimes it’s just the Zeitgeist, a fortuitous blend of timing and luck.

   

  But as a person who doesn’t work in technology, I appreciated your analysis. There is a whole simplicity cultural movement that runs counter to the more consumption-driven trends.
• Excellent post. To use the cliched quote: “Lack of features can be a feature”
• There is another factor - Twitter was the first. Once enough people got in, the ’social inertia’ factor prevents them from moving to another application. That’s why Qwerty is more popular than Dvorak - and why windows is still popular than Linux.
• They survive for one simple reason… they’ve achieved a network effect. Like ebay, once formidable network effects are achieved you can $hit on your users and they won’t leave.
• I disagree with your intro paragraph, and I think it contradicts much of what you say later on. Yes, additional features can be bad, but not because they increase specialization. It’s just the opposite: having a complex web app with tons of features decreases specialization (and thus appeal).

• Looking at your examples of Twitter and Google back in the day, it seems that’s how it works.

   

  You offer some interesting opinions on why simple applications tend to succeed, but I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that users’ “willingness to learn the nuts and bolts of a complex application has diminished.” I’m not sure that it’s diminished, but simply that we’re catering to a new crowd now. Then years ago, how many people spent multiple hours a day browsing the internet? Hardly anyone compared to the world of today — probably only your most techsavvy friends. I’d argue that these are the people who are and have always been willing to learn how to get the most out of any complex app, but that these new casual users are not. And since a social networks is only valuable when it has lots of users, it’s best to cater to these casual people as well by focusing on simplicity.
• The majority will only do what’s simple, and so the bigger, better, more complex apps will never really have enough people to succeed.

• The other I’d say that turns people off about big, do-everything applications is overlap. Nobody really wants to use a service whose features they already make use of at other locations, even if this service provides some different features as well. For example, I don’t know a soul who makes regular use of Facebook chat, because everyone already uses GTalk/Chat, AIM, and other services.

   

  With that said, features are not a bad thing: they make good services better and more powerful, and I doubt there exists someone who’d refuse to use a service because it’s better and more powerful than it otherwise could be. What’s important is being smart in implementing these features, so they don’t make your sight overly complex and turn-off casual users. Equally important is releasing the features at a gradual and easily-manageable pace. Once you have millions of users, it’s okay to pile on the features and improvements — people won’t like them to begin with, but if these features are actually worthwhile then your users will adjust. Hopefully at this point your user-based is being propelled by virtually-unstoppable viral growth, so you app is valuable enough that new users are willing to take the time to learn about your features.

   

  Facebook is a perfect example of this style of development in action.
• There’s a question here as to cause and effect. You are postulating that developers add too many features which leads to failure. But often, the problem is that the one core feature that the product was launched with flubbed, then the developers tried to make up for that by adding on more features. Ex post, it looks like the simple systems succeed and the complicated ones fail. But often the simple ones manage to avoid getting complicated because they succeed early and the developers are smart enough to know not to mess with success. So the lesson may be a bit different: launch with something simple and if it doesn’t work, don’t lard it up; trash it and start over.

• 100% in total agreement. The need for simplicity also reflects the maturity of the market (ironically). The new users are by their nature more technical, more interested in pushing the limits of the product/service. When the market becomes more mainstream, you find that the majority of users just want to use the core functionality. The introduction of whiz-bang bells and whistles just overwhelms the user and adds confusion to the interface. Two examples are… Tivo vs the the VCR/DVD controllers of the past. And the Flip videorecorder vs digital camcorders.

   

  Because Qlubb’s market comprises the mainstream audience, we made a VERY conscious decision to take out functionality rather than add functionality. But it has not been easy; it’s too easy to fall into the feature-race trap.

   

  But as with all markets, a big developing market will need to differentiate among the various user classes – one size does not fit all. And one of those markets will comprise the basic, mainstream user who wants simplicity.

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• there's a lot of academic work that's out of print and should be made available without finding the son of the deceased widow to pay a royalty to see a monograph on Hungarian social reform in the 1930s.
• By chance I happened to be present, on another case, when the last last piece of the endless Napster litigation was presented in Federal District Court here in San Francisco. When it was all over, six lawyers in their 50's and a judge even older sat around and grinned at each other, as though they had all accomplished something wonderful.
  
  It was like watching the Queen of Hearts play croquet in Alice in Wonderland. Are college kids now paying for all their music, after all the endless hearings and unbelievable expenses of the Napster litigation? No one is pirating music any more? What exactly was accomplished? Aside from fattening the bank accounts of countless attorneys, and wasting hours of the Court's time, it's hard to figure out.
  
  We need a better approach.
• A few years ago I taught about copyright at my son's elementary school class. After having all the students draw a picture or write a poem for one minute, the cards were sent around the room and other students were encouraged to "add" to the cards. While most had fun marking up their classmates cards, some were visibly upset that their work had been changed without permission. These children instantly understood the purpose of copyright.
  
  The purpose of copyright is to encourage and support authors and artists -- providing them the economic return to make a livelihood. Academics like Professor Lessig (and myself) have the luxury to have university patrons to pay our salaries and allow us the ability to write without compensation. Most musicians, poets, playwrights, authors, painters, and filmmakers have no such support.
  
  Without copyright we would return to an era of professional works funded only by patrons. How much more power would the media giants have under such a regime than they have now?
  
• There are two differences between your example with elementary school children.
  
  The first is that the existing work still exists. The remixed work does not in any way supplant it.
  
  The second is that while no one really wants to hurt the feelings of elementary school students, artists who can’t handle critique or unexpected responses to their work, should probably just keep it in a drawer. One of the things that art is supposed to do is affect people, cause them to think about the piece and respond to it and they may do so in ways that the creators of the original piece aren't fond of.
  
• If we want to access and use someone's copyrighted works should permission be asked? Sure. Is finding an address to e/mail someone at and waiting for a response reasonable to ask of rank and file citizens? No. However great a solution it may sound to be, if I have a sweet video thats funny and it happens to have Kanye West in the background, I'm probably not going to wait to see if I have permission to post it. I would bet 99% of people feel the same way.

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• Dear Cecil: 

    Every so often you see it on the news: streets full of Middle Eastern men indiscriminately firing guns straight up into the air. If I learned anything from physics class, it's that what goes up must come down. I'm certain the returning projectiles don't float harmlessly to earth and wonder how often they plunge into bystanders.

    

  — Kathy Johnson, Madison, Wisconsin
• How dangerous is this really? The question is controversial. Let me lay it out point by point.

• Datum 1. At first I thought being struck by a bullet falling straight down would be no worse than getting hit over the head with a two-by-four--not the average guy's idea of fun, but not fatal either. What goes up must come down, but it needn't do so at the same speed. You run up against what's known as "terminal velocity." A bullet fired straight up will slow down, stop, then fall to earth again, accelerating until it reaches a point where its weight equals the resistance of the air. That's its terminal velocity.  

   For further insight, we turn to Hatcher's Notebook (1962) by Major General Julian S. Hatcher, a U.S. Army ordnance expert. Hatcher described military tests with, among other things, a .30 caliber bullet weighing .021 pounds. Using a special rig, the testers shot the bullet straight into the air. It came down bottom (not point) first at what was later computed to be about 300 feet per second. "With the [.021 pound] bullet, this corresponds to an energy of 30 foot pounds," Hatcher wrote. "Previously, the army had decided that on the average an energy of 60 foot pounds is required to produce a disabling wound. Thus, service bullets returning from extreme heights cannot be considered lethal by this standard."  

   If 30 foot pounds doesn't mean much to you, the bullet made a mark about one-sixteenth of an inch deep in a soft pine board. About what you'd get giving it a good whack with a hammer.  Note that we're talking about bullets shot straight up here. If the bullet is fired more or less horizontally, it may not lose much speed before returning to earth and could easily kill someone.  

• Datum 2. Then someone sent me an article from the Los Angeles Times about the problem of falling bullets in L.A. around New Year's and the Fourth of July.  According to the article, doctors at King/Drew Medical Center, a major L.A. trauma center, published a report in a medical journal (Journal of Trauma, December 1994) saying that between 1985 and 1992 they treated 118 people for falling bullet injuries around New Year's Eve or the Fourth of July. Thirty-eight of the victims died.  

   "There is some skepticism about the numbers reported by the King/Drew team," the article continued. "The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the Los Angeles Police Department--which serve a vastly larger area-- reported only about half a dozen deaths in the same period. . . . Other hospitals contacted by The Times . . . reported few cases."  

   King/Drew handles a lot more gunshot cases than other L.A. hospitals. But the King/Drew doctors also used fairly liberal criteria to identify falling-bullet victims (no gunshot heard or weapon seen, wound consistent with bullet falling from above, etc.). Given how confused trauma victims and witnesses often are about what happened, the numbers reported are probably high.  

• Datum 3. Still, the question isn't how many people get injured or killed by falling bullets, it's whether such things are possible at all. On further investigation, it appears the 60 foot-pound injury threshold cited by Hatcher may be misleading--a falling bullet's kinetic energy (foot pounds) alone is not a good predictor of the speed it needs to inflict a wound. B. N. Mattoo (Journal of Forensic Sciences, 1984) has proposed an equation relating mass and bullet diameter that seems to do a better job. Experiments on cadavers and such have shown, for example, that a .38 caliber revolver bullet will perforate the skin and lodge in the underlying tissue at 191 feet per second and that triple-ought buckshot will do so at 213 feet per second.  

   Mattoo's equation predicts that Hatcher's .30 caliber bullet, which has a small diameter in relation to its weight, will perforate the skin at only 124 feet per second. It's easy to believe that such a bullet falling at 300 feet per second could kill you, especially if it struck you in the head. In fact, maybe I need to rethink my dismissive comments about the danger of throwing a penny off the Empire State Building, although I still think the penny's tumbling in the updrafts would render it harmless.  

3 more annotations...

• 1. Not showing up.

   

   

  Maybe you’ve heard this quote by Woody Allen:

   

   

  “Eighty percent of success is showing up”

   

   

  One of the biggest and simplest thing you can do to ensure more success in your life – whether it be in your social life, your career or with your health – is simply to show up more. If you want to improve your health then one of the most important and effective things you can do is just to show up at the gym every time you should be there.

   

  The weather might be bad, you might not feel like going and you find yourself having all these other things you just must do. If you still go, if you show up at the gym when motivation is low you will improve a whole lot faster than if you just stayed at home relaxing on the sofa.

   

  I think this applies to most areas of life. If you write or paint more, each day perhaps, you will improve quickly. If you get out more you can meet more new friends. If you go on more dates you chances of meeting someone special increases. Just showing up more can really make a big difference. Not showing up will not get you anywhere.

• 2. Procrastinating half the day. To keep it short, my 3 favourite ways to get out of a procrastinating state are:

   

   

   

  - Swallow that frog. What´s this means is simply to do the hardest and most important task of the day first thing in the morning. A good start in the morning lifts your spirits and creates a positive momentum for the rest of the day. That often creates a pretty productive day.

   

  - How do you eat an elephant? Don´t try to take it all in one big bite. It becomes overwhelming which leads to procrastination. Split a task into small actionable steps. Then just focus on the first step and nothing else. Just do that one until it’s done. Then move on to the next step.

   

  - The Get around to It Paraliminal. I find this guided mediation to be very useful. After 20 minutes of mostly just lying on my bed and listening I’m far more productive for a few days. I don´t feel the urge to sink into that procrastinating state or the need to find out what’s new over at one or five of my favourite websites.

• 3. When actually doing something, doing something that isn’t the most important thing right now.

   

   

  One of the easiest habits to get stuck in, besides procrastinating, is to keep yourself busy with unimportant tasks.

   

   

   

   

  To be effective you probably need some kind of time management-system. It might be something really simple, like using the 80/20-rule at the beginning of each day. The 80/20 rule, or the Pareto Principle as it´s also known, says that you´ll get 80 percent of your results from only 20 percent of your tasks and activities. So you need to focus most of your energy on those few important tasks to be effective.

   

  When you have prioritized using this rule just write down the top 3 most important things you need to do that day. Then, from the top, start doing them. Even if you just get one of the things done, you have still done the most important thing you could do today. You may perhaps prefer some other system, such as GTD. But however you organise your work it’s still of highest priority to find the most important tasks so you don’t spend days, weeks or months doing busywork that isn’t that essential anyway. Just getting things done faster isn’t that useful if the things you get done are unimportant to you.

• 4. Thinking too much.

   

   

  And thereby seldom taking action. Paralysis by analysis can waste years of your life. There is nothing wrong with thinking before you do something. Do some research, make a plan, explore potential upsides and problems.

   

  But compulsively thinking and thinking and thinking is just another way to waste your time. You don’t have to examine everything from every angle before you try it. And you can’t wait for the perfect time to do something. That time never comes. And if you keep thinking you’ll just dig yourself down deeper and deeper and taking action will become more and more difficult. Instead you just need to stop thinking. Shut of your mind – it just helps you up to a point – and go do whatever you need to do.

• 5. Seeing the negative and downsides in just about anything.

   

   

  When you see everything from a negative perspective you quickly punch a hole in your own motivation. You find faults everywhere and problems where there are really none. You cling to details. If you want to find a reason to not do something then that’s no problem. From a negative viewpoint you can find ten reasons every time.

   

  And so very little gets done, you whine to anyone who wants to hear – and many who don’t – about how crappy your job, life and boss is. Which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as you create the life that is appropriate considering how think and see your world.

   

  A solution is to realise the limits of a negative perspective. And that your perspective isn’t some kind of 100% true picture of the world. Then try other perspectives. For instance, trying to establish a habit of seeing things in a more positive and optimistic light can be quite useful. In that vein, you may want to try the Positivity Challenge. It´s not easy, but if you do the challenge and try to only think positive thoughts for 7 days it can give you an insight in how much your perspective and beliefs changes how you interpret your world. And what results you get.

• being closed to outside influences.

   

   

  It can be hard to admit that what you thought or believed was not the best alternative. So you cling to your thoughts harder and harder and keep your mind closed. This makes it hard to improve and for instance to become more effective. Even really considering the possibility that you can change your life can be difficult in this position.

   

  One solution, obviously, is to open up more. To open up and learn from the mistakes of others, from your own mistakes and from other sources like books. This is easy to say though. It can, as almost anything, be harder to do. One suggestion I have is to, like I said about the previous habit, realise the limits of what you know and the way you going about things. And then just try something new.
• Another tip is to read A New Earth<!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" o:spt="75" o:preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"/> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"/> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"/> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"/> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"/> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"/> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"/> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"/> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"/> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"/> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"/> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"/> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"/> </v:formulas> <v:path o:extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect"/> <o:lock v:ext="edit" aspectratio="t"/> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="" style='width:.75pt; height:.75pt'> <v:imagedata xsrc="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\Henrik\LOKALA~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image001.gif" mce_src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\Henrik\LOKALA~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image001.gif" o:href="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=theposblo-20&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;l=ur2&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;o=1" mce_href="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=theposblo-20&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;l=ur2&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;o=1" /> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--> by Eckhart Tolle and especially look at the chapters about the Ego. If you stop identifying so much with your thoughts and your Ego, as Tolle prescribes, it becomes a whole a lot easier to let new ideas and thoughts come into your life. And to let go of old thoughts that aren’t useful to you anymore. On the other hand I’d like to add and counter-balance with these tips: don’t get stuck in reading, in just taking in new information either or you might become a self-help junkie. Use the new information, put what you have learned in to action and try it out.

• 7. Constantly on information overload.

   

   

  With information overload I don’t just mean that you read a lot. I pretty much mean an overload in all input. If you just let all information flow into your mind it will be hard to think clearly. It’s just too much stimulation. A few more potential downsides to this habit are:

   

   

  - Some of the input you receive will be negative. The media and your surroundings often put a negative spin on things for various reasons. If you aren´t selective in what input you want in your life then you’ll be dragged into this negativity too. This affects how you think, feel and act.

   

  - It creates an urge to keep up with what’s happening but there are always ten more things happening so you can’t keep up. This makes life stressful.

   

  - It becomes hard to make decisions and take action if your mind is constantly bombarded with information or trying to sort through it all. Personally I find that if I get too much information it leads to a sort of paralysis. Not much get´s done. Or you get stuck in habit #3 and keep busy, busy, busy at high speed with low priority activities.

   

   

  To be able to focus, think more clearly and take action it´s useful to be more selective in what you let into your mind. When you work shut out as much distractions as possible. Shut off the phone, internet and shut the door. It is strange how much you can get done when you aren´t interrupted every fifth minute or have the opportunity to procrastinate by checking your RSS-feeds or favourite websites.

   

   

  Now I´m not suggesting that you should stop reading all blogs or newspapers. But think about what you really want to read and what you read just read to fill your time. And have a look at other areas of input where the doors are wide-open.

• “ineffectiveness” is Nature’s way of telling you that your lifestyle sucks. Find ways to lavish your skills on yourself instead.

   

  You have heard “Those who have the gold, make the rules.” But, let an INTP say, “Those who make the gold, break the rules.”

• Save the environment, procrastinate away.

   

  Be paralyzed by thought as opposed to thrashing by action in the wasteland we call corporate America, at least you’ll do less damage.

   

  90-95% of jobs / careers are meaningless, you probably have one.

   

  No need to become effective at the production of meaningless junk to sell to the mindless drones of overconsumption throughout suburbia.

   

  To what end? Ineffectiveness is the most effective tool to slowing production and doing the least damage to the unarmed citizenry advertisers, salespeople, marketers target and the environment in general if you had just taken a moment to think. 

• while I realize you are trying to limit yourself to 7, may I suggest an 8th: Don’t keep records–appointments, contact information, important documents– all the things people use to schedule their time, their activities, and their progress.

   

  That seems to be a key component of the highly ineffective people I have been unfortunate enough to have close contact with. 
• I also read somewhere, and it works quite well: In case of procrastination, instead of saying to youself, for example, “I have to write a report”, say “I CHOOSE to write a report”. It does help.

• There are always more than one side to any issue and it is often good to be able to see more than just the one. Not all apsects of an argument or debate are going to be good, some are likely to be negative. Surely it is good to be able to see the negative or downside, so long as you do it for the reason of finding ways of avoiding or overcoming them!

   

  Where I agree with you is that always seeing the negative or downside is likely to stop you moving forward or doing anything! 

11 more annotations...

• 1. The 80/20 rule.

   

  <!-- mitten_artikel DISABLED-->This is one of the best ways to make better use of your time. The 80/20 rule – also known as The Pareto Principle – basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities.

   

  So a lot of what you do is probably not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think.

   

  You can just drop – or vastly decrease the time you spend on – a whole bunch of things.

   

  And if you do that you will have more time and energy to spend on those things that really brings your value, happiness, fulfilment and so on.

• 2. Parkinson’s Law.

   

  You can do things quicker than you think. This law says that a task will expand in time and seeming complexity depending on the time you set aside for it. For instance, if you say to yourself that you’ll come up with a solution within a week then the problem will seem to grow more difficult and you’ll spend more and more time trying to come up with a solution.

   

  So focus your time on finding solutions. Then just give yourself an hour (instead of the whole day) or the day (instead of the whole week) to solve the problem. This will force your mind to focus on solutions and action.

   

  The result may not be exactly as perfect as if you had spent a week on the task, but as mentioned in the previous point, 80 percent of the value will come from 20 percent of the activities anyway. Or you may wind up with a better result because you haven’t overcomplicated or overpolished things. This will help you to get things done faster, to improve your ability to focus and give you more free time where you can totally focus on what’s in front of you instead of having some looming task creating stress in the back of your mind.

• 3. Batching.

   

  Boring or routine tasks can create a lot of procrastination and low-level anxiety. One good way to get these things done quickly is to batch them. This means that you do them all in row. You will be able to do them quicker because there is less “start-up time” compared to if you spread them out. And when you are batching you become fully engaged in the tasks and more focused.

   

  A batch of things to do in an hour today may look like this: Clean your desk / answer today’s emails / do the dishes / make three calls / write a grocery shopping list for tomorrow.

• 4. First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.

   

  This is a bit of a counter-intuitive thing. There is often an idea that someone should give us something or do something for us before we give back. The problem is just that a lot of people think that way. And so far less than possible is given either way.

   

  If you want to increase the value you receive (money, love, kindness, opportunities etc.) you have to increase the value you give. Because over time you pretty much get what you give. It would perhaps be nice to get something for nothing. But that seldom happens.

• 5. Be proactive. Not reactive.

   

  This one ties into the last point. If everyone is reactive then very little will get done. You could sit and wait and hope for someone else to do something. And that happens pretty often, but it can take a lot of time before it happens.

   

  A more useful and beneficial way is to be proactive, to simply be the one to take the first practical action and get the ball rolling. This not only saves you a lot of waiting, but is also more pleasurable since you feel like you have the power over your life. Instead of feeling like you are run by a bunch of random outside forces.

• 6. Mistakes and failures are good.

   

  When you are young you just try things and fail until you learn. As you grow a bit older, you learn from - for example - school to not make mistakes. And you try less and less things.

   

  This may cause you to stop being proactive and to fall into a habit of being reactive, of waiting for someone else to do something. I mean, what if you actually tried something and failed? Perhaps people would laugh at you?

   

  Perhaps they would. But when you experience that you soon realize that it is seldom the end of the world. And a lot of the time people don’t care that much. They have their own challenges and lives to worry about.

   

  And success in life often comes from not giving up despite mistakes and failure. It comes from being persistent.

   

  When you first learn to ride your bike you may fall over and over. Bruise a knee and cry a bit. But you get up, brush yourself off and get on the saddle again. And eventually you learn how to ride a bike. If you can just reconnect to your 5 year old self and do things that way - instead of giving up after a try/failure or two as grown-ups often do – you would probably experience a lot more interesting things, learn valuable lessons and have quite a bit more success.

• 7. Don’t beat yourself up.

   

  Why do people give up after just few mistakes or failures? Well, I think one big reason is because they beat themselves up way too much. But it’s a kinda pointless habit. It only creates additional and unnecessary pain inside you and wastes your precious time. It’s best to try to drop this habit as much as you can.

• 8. Assume rapport.

   

  Meeting new people is fun. But it can also induce nervousness. We all want to make a good first impression and not get stuck in an awkward conversation.

   

  The best way to do this that I have found so far is to assume rapport. This means that you simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.

   

  This works surprisingly well. You can read more about it in How to Have Less Awkward Conversations: Assuming Rapport.

• 9. Use your reticular activation system to your advantage.

   

  I learned about the organs and the inner workings of the body in class but nobody told me about the reticular activation system. And that’s a shame, because this is one of the most powerful things you can learn about. What this focus system, this R.A.S, in your mind does is to allow you to see in your surroundings what you focus your thoughts on. It pretty much always helps you to find what you are looking for.

   

  So you really need to focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. And keep that focus steady.

   

  Setting goals and reviewing them frequently is one way to keep your focus on what’s important and to help you take action that will move your closer to toward where you want to go. Another way is just to use external reminders such as pieces of paper where you can, for instance, write down a few things from this post like “Give value” or “Assume rapport”. And then you can put those pieces of paper on your fridge, bathroom mirror etc.

• 10. Your attitude changes your reality.

   

  We have all heard that you should keep a positive attitude or perhaps that “you need to change your attitude!”. That is a nice piece of advice I suppose, but without any more reasons to do it is very easy to just brush such suggestions off and continue using your old attitude.

   

  But the thing that I’ve discovered the last few years is that if you change your attitude, you actually change your reality. When you for instance use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see things and viewpoints that were invisible to you before. You may think to yourself “why haven’t I thought about things this way before?”.

   

  When you change you attitude you change what you focus on. And all things in your world can now be seen in a different light.

   

  This is of course very similar to the previous tip but I wanted to give this one some space. Because changing your attitude can create an insane change in your world. It might not look like it if you just think about it though. Pessimism might seem like realism. But that is mostly because your R.A.S is tuned into seeing all the negative things you want to see. And that makes you “right” a lot of the time. And perhaps that is what you want. On the other hand, there are more fun things than being right all the time.

• 11. Gratitude is a simple way to make yourself feel happy.

   

  Sure, I was probably told that I should be grateful. Perhaps because it was the right thing to do or just something I should do. But if someone had said that feeling grateful about things for minute or two is a great way to turn a negative mood into a happy one I would probably have practised gratitude more. It is also a good tool for keeping your attitude up and focusing on the right things. And to make other people happy. Which tends to make you even happier, since emotions are contagious.

• 15. Write everything down.

   

  If your memory is anything like mine then it’s like a leaking bucket. Many of your good or great ideas may be lost forever if you don’t make a habit of writing things down. This is also a good way to keep your focus on what you want. Read more about it in Why You Should Write Things Down.

• I work at a tech startup, and one of my coworkers has a favorite saying: “All engineering problems eventually come down to heat.”

   

  In general, most fields will have a reasonably specific problem which is the cause of any trouble you have 90% of the time. So if you’re having a problem and you’re not sure why, think of that one first.

   

  Also, item 15 is probably the best advice to give anyone, ever. Not because it’s the most important, but because it’s extremely important and people hardly ever mention it. 

• Fantastically comprehensive list of life lessons.

   

  For the philosophically minded - I humbly submit the following lesson: Only preach to the converted.

   

  When I found out about the hidden world of government malfeasance and financial cabals that are responsible for so much misery in this world, and that exist with the help of the media’s complicity, I naturally assumed a lot of people would want to know.I spent all sorts of time and emotional energy on my soapbox, to be met with bored stares or snide remarks. The only time such speech-making and arguing was productive was when I had found someone already inclined to my way of thinking who was looking for answers, as I was.

   

  So Liberals, stop trying to convert Conservatives, and vice versa. Veggies, leave those BBQ eaters alone. If you want to change the world, start with yourself so as to provide an example, and then only preach to people who ask for a sermon! 

• Excellent suggestions. The thing is, that what we call a “university” in the usa today is actually many trade schools pulled together onto the same campus. And yes, a person in her or his early years at college is required to take classes in all the different trades.

   

  The things that you bring up here, are not things which are specific to any trade, and thus they are never taught.

   

  I would love to see a new kind of college education - where perhaps the philosophy department could expand to become the overall auspices of the school. This would be a school for folks who want to learn how to think critically, and reason independently. Woven into the curriculum, there would be training in all the tools a person needs in this modern world, to start her own business. Computer programming, web design, introductory economics and business courses would be important. This would be a school for both thinkers, and for entrepreneurs. 
• Put something in the “piggy bank” each pay check, even if it’s just a dollar. This may sound dumb but it really is good advise. Don’t blow your cash but save and set goals.

• Great list of useful skills on your list! I’ll add a couple I wish I had been taught in School.

   

  1. To read at a useful rate (not subvocalizing)
   2. Maximize my quality of sleep (therefore minimize sleep time) 

• Know your weaknesses and then either work to correct them or surround yourself with people who offset them.

   

  Some weaknesses are things we care about, but we just haven’t had time to address. Others are things that we either are not capable of correcting, or really, really don’t care too. As an entrepreneur, you don’t have to know all aspects of business, technology, finance, marketing, etc, if you surround yourself with the right people. 
• These are all great lessons, but what I REALLY wish I had learned in school is: Your “permanent record” is a myth that school principals made up to scare you! Breaking the rules can be useful and occasionally necessary.
• a slightly more practical skill not taught: personal finance. It’s amazing to me you can graduate high school and college without learning how to balance your checkbook and plan your finances. They’ll spend weeks teaching you CPR which you’ll likely never use but no time spent on how to manage your finances which will likely determine how you can provide for yourself and your family.

• While your list has some valuable life lessons, they really don’t seems like things that would be ‘Taught’ in school.

   

  I think our schools should teach us systems for filing and retrieving information so that we can manage the great deal of information we come across in our lives.

   

  I think schools should spend time to teach ‘Personal Finance’ budgeting, saving, investing, credit use and maintenance. We live in a consumer society and schools do very little to prepare us.

   

  Cooking! Everyone has to eat and many people mess up their finances by spending way to much money eating out. You can eat better and save money if you can cook.

   

  Basic maintenance. How to fix a toilet, how to change your oil, simple troubleshooting for the day to day technical difficulties which we all encounter.
• By the way, if you want to really achieve great things in your life you should consider delegating or outsourcing as many of your routine activities as possible. These minimum wage activities are not worth your time. If you are effective in your work, you should be able to make better use of this time and pay or ask someone else, such as an employee or a child, to assist with those activites.

• It’s quite amazing when looking back (I’m 27) all the things you THOUGHT would happen after high school that didn’t. I had a horrible time with bullying in school. Although I knew it was just a school thing and as soon as I got out of there it would be “a lot better” I didn’t think of it as “100% better” as people don’t do constant barrating and name calling like what happens in schools.

   

  Some things I wish were taught in school: I forget the percentages but something like when you are in a class, immediately you are going to forgot half of it. Within a year you’re going to forget 90% of what you learn and/or experience. Basically to focus on what you most cherish from any moment and hope that’s the 10% you still remember.

   

  Nothing is free. Something happened to my train of thought within the past couple years that now whenever I sign up for some service or someone offers me something for free I ask myself “what are they getting from this?” With my brother, for example, always like to give me stuff he no longer uses, which was nice and all. Problem is he never let me forget that. Whenever he wants something in return that cost me money and I don’t want to give up (say copying a game) he starts pulling out “but I gave you …”. When signing up at websites I try to guess what is their motivation. Is it ad revenue? going to charge later on? Now for some people, the “fee” is just knowing so many people use your service and benefit from it. Other’s want to monetize it. 
• I was lucky to come across good books with success principles and meeting some people who practiced and taught these principles when I was 23 years old. Same as you I was upset at first why such important lessons were not taught to me in school. Later on I realized it was not only the schools who are responsible for that but mainly the grown-ups you grow up with, the parents. Parents have the children around for thousands of hours before the first teachers arrive on the scene. It is too easy to lay responsibility for lack of peopleskills/success principles/positive thinking etc. on the educational system. I’m now 50 years old, have successfully used many of the key points you talk about in your post.

• Here’s one, the trilemma or the art of trade-offs. (I never heard the word trilemma used to describe the principle but I learned it a long time ago and it’s a very useful tool to approach many (any?) projects.

   

  The classic example is managing a project where three major variables are time, cost, quality. Out of the the three you can only really choose two variables, the third one will be ruled out by virtue of the other two being present.

   

  Here’s a discussion of trilemmas:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilemma
• A word of caution on the 80/20 rule (#1):
   “This is what’s wrong with a lot of 80/20 optimizations- the belief that truncating the system at the head will optimize its effectiveness; in many cases it actually cuts off a critical piece of the overall ecosystem.”
   -Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody
• This was a great reminder of many of the things that help make us successful and happy in life. I am going to print this out and put it on my wall. To think, if they did teach us these “basic” but fundamental things in life, how many frustrations we could have avoided while learning or stumbling on them by ourselves?
• I got kind of a different interpretation from the 80/20 rule, which is that because the rule constantly applies, you can not only cut out a lot of wasted time, but you can find what makes that 20% of your time work well for you, and apply it to the rest of your efforts, continually improving your productivity.

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• Certainly to humans and our domestic animals, fleas appear to  be annoyances. Not only do fleas cause intense itching and scraggly  coats in cats and dogs, the ingestion of fleas by these animals  causes infestation with tapeworms which can lead to serious digestive  trouble. However, think about the flea from the perspective of the  tapeworm. Without the flea as transport, the tapeworm could not  successfully breed and be transferred from host to host. The  tapeworm relies on the flea to complete its lifecycle.
• Fleas not only carry tapeworm progeny, they transmit myriad  bacterial species including notable pathogens. "Yersinia pestis" is  a species of bacteria that causes the bubonic plague, also known as  the black death. The bacteria were spread from Asia to  Europe in the 1300s, carried by fleas that infested stowaway rats,  and killed nearly one third of the population. From the perspective  of the bacteria, fleas were instrumental in their reproductive  success and allowed the bacteria to colonize new territory just as  their human counterpart explorers were. The Dark Ages were certainly  a terrible time. However, William H. McNeill, author of "Plagues and  Peoples", asserts that quarantine principles, though not terribly  effective, were first developed during the plague; we still rely on  principles of quarantine in today's societies.
• Other pathogens that owe their success to fleas are  "Bartonella henselae", the cause of cat scratch fever and "Rickettsia  typhi".
• Human sprawl into previously sparsely populated rural areas  has increased the contact of domestic pets and humans with fleas of  wild animals, increasing encounters with the bacteria.
• Fleas are proving of interest in scientific research for  reasons other than their transmission of significant pathogens.  Recently, a British lab showed that fleas parastizing red squirrels  had circadian rhythms that were linked to those of their host.  Research into circadian rhythms is an important scientific avenue for  investigating human sleep disorders, and the flea may turn out to play  part in the advancement of this knowledge.

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• 1. Get organized. We’re not going to scold you (like those other “How to Pull an All Nighter” articles) and tell you that you should have been organized from the start. We’re not your parents. But if you pull it together now, you can make it. Put all of your assignments in front of you, so you can see all of them. Rank them in order of importance (think point value and how close you are to bombing the class). This order will be your homework roadmap for the night. Also, if you have any small, easy assignments, make note of them (see step 5).
• 2. Take a quick stock of supplies. According to wikiHow, you’re going to need cold water (to drink, not to dunk your head), and protein-rich snacks like cheese and sandwiches. Stay away from caffeine until later, though, because if you hit it too early, you’ll just crash later. Stay away from sugar, it’s all bad news.

  • Its actually better if you study all your material a little before the test and then go to sleep because you brain can maintain information better when you sleep. So your better off with less studying and sleep then with more studying and an all nighter.

  • The thing with caffeine is, people usually consume it as coffee (with sugar added in it). Caffeine+sugar gives you a rush and instant energy but after a while you come down it all, crashing pretty hard and then it's tough to keep on going. I've experience it and trust me, it sucks big time. My advice would be to buy some caffeine pills, cut them into little 50mg-100mg pieces and keep taking them after a set amount of time (say, 3-4h) to avoid that "crash". Works just great for me but you need to have time set aside to take a good long nap afterwards :)
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  • • Take a shower and freshen up every so often.

    • Be careful about driving and operating machinery after an all-nighter.

    • Pulling multiple all nighters within a week can really take its toll on anyone.

    • Eye-strain: This is caused by excessive tiredness, reading in bad light, or staring at computer screens for long times. Take a break at reading or computers every ten minutes, simply by turning your head and looking around the room for a few seconds.

    • Caffeine and Sugar: Both, while giving you a temporary high, will induce a "crash" which will only make you more tired. These are both to be avoided, as they'll screw up any chance of performing life-like in class or work the next day. If you are used to coffee, know what it does to you and feel you can get it all done by the time you "crash", it may be worth it.

    • Eat high-protein foods on an infrequent basis through the night: smoothies, cheese, a sandwich, a plate of stew will all keep your energy levels as high as they are during the daytime.

    • Work with good lighting. You don't want anything too bright, but too dim and you'll doze

    • Turn off Instant Messengers, the TV, and do not surf the internet, edit wikiHow, read, draw, etc. In fact, pinch yourself if you do.

    • Micro-Naps: Take them for about ten minutes. Set a loud timer to wake you up, and stay half-awake. Short naps refresh you. Anything longer and you'll fall into a deep stage of sleep, which will leave you groggy when you are forced awake.

    • If you feel your eyelids drooping: pinch yourself, rub your face with a piece of ice, stand up, run in place, and do a few jumping jacks to get an adrenaline rush, or, if at worst, take a ten minute nap. Be careful with naps!

    • Before you leave for the test, jump around, do push-ups, drink a little caffeine drink and get pumped up and awake. Be ready to do well on the test. You worked hard for it, and you probably know a lot more than you think.

    • Avoid coffee or soda until just before the test. If you drink a lot of it while studying, you will completely crash a few hours later.

    • Realize if you are "hitting the wall" and you can't even remember what you just read or you are nodding off involuntarily. Sometimes it's better to get four hours of sleep and cram what you can in the morning rather than be in a complete dreamworld for the test.

    • Think positively

    • Eat protein-rich foods like sandwiches, cheese, and other dairy products. (no sugary stuff!)

    • If you are tired and are completely slumping over your work, sit up straight. It could immediately make you feel more awake. Yes, it sounds stupid, but try it.

    • Try sitting in different places around the room.

    • Work through it all. If you have time at the end, pack up your stuff, lay out your clothes, then set your alarm as late as possible, to achieve the most possible sleep.

    • If applicable, rotate subjects every hour. You'll quickly mentally wear out on one topic.

    • If you're going to nap, set a timer. Don't nap for more than 20 minutes, and stay half-awake. Avoid napping at all costs, though. "Just 20 minutes of relaxation" will more likely involve you waking up past your class the next day.

    • Do not work in bed, on a couch, or on the floor. If you work in any other place than a cold, hard table and chair, you will feel very tempted to sleep. If possible, work somewhere far away from your room/bed, so it's a pain to go back and sleep. Try to be around some other people so you do not feel comfortable sleeping in your chair.

    • Work with windows open: cold air will keep you awake. Warm air knocks you out.

    • Play (softly, if you have a roommate) a fast-paced, grating music. You may enjoy it, but it must be, at all costs, harsh and a bit arrhythmic. This will keep you from being lulled to sleep.

    • Avoid caffeine, if possible. See warnings for why. Drink two brimming glasses of ice cold water every 30 minutes. Not only will the cold keep you awake, but you'll need to urinate very often. It's difficult to sleep on the toilet.

    • Plenty of times, you get sidetracked. Avoid this by setting a constant pace for yourself: 50 minutes of work, and a 10 minute break. Besides, keeping your mind occupied will make it easier to stay awake.
  Add Sticky Note
• 3. Choose a hard surface to do your work on. Like a desk or a table. Especially if you’re already tired, don’t use anyplace that would make an impromptu bed, like the couch, the recliner or the floor. In your sleepiness, you’ll be tempted to get more comfortable. Resist it, Frodo, you must resist it.
• 4. Do the most important assignments first. Which teachers will be less understanding if you walk into class tomorrow with nothing but a blank expression? Get their mega-points assignments out of the way first. Push the easygoing prof’s homework further down the list, because he’ll probably be more lenient should you drop the ball, again.
• 5. Use the easy assignments as filler. Did you make a note of your small, easy tasks? If so, you can whip one out to recharge yourself after finishing a tougher assignment. Your brain will appreciate the lighter load, you’ll feel more awake, and then you can take a quick break without feeling like you just received a pummeling (see step 6).
• 6. Break for 10 minutes every hour or so. Go outside, walk around, do jumping jacks, listen to music, watch TV, but be ready to pry yourself away from all distractions and get back to work when your time is up. And oh yeah, no napping on your breaks (see step 7).
• 7. No napping. Some people can power-nap and be okay, but as stated at WhatIThinkAbout.com, if you stop for a quick nap, you run the risk of waking up bright and early the next morning looking like a chump. Don’t risk it. Fight off sleep by drinking a lot of cold water, eating your snacks, reading your assignments out loud, taking deep breaths, and telling yourself you’re almost done.

  • Go Out For A Run - Exercise will speed up the heart and increase blood flow and metabolism.

  • Take A Shower - This is generally very refreshing. The pounding water is exciting your sensory impulses, while the heat relaxes you so that you’re not too tense (but not so relaxed that you’ll fall asleep).
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  • • Get Some Sleep - It may not be such a bad idea to get some sleep if you have a presentation or test in the morning. By sleep, I mean complete cycles, in about 90 minutes - 2 hour increments. For me, 4 hours equals two sleep cycles, where I’ll wake up quite alertly. In these cases where you need to memorize stuff, sleep helps bury it deeper into your long term memory. After you wake up, continue studying.

    • Remember that the placebo effect can be pretty strong, so if you just believe that 1/2 cup of coffee will keep you awake for another 12 hours, it probably will.

    • Focus On the Task - In NAVY Seals training’s “Hell Week”, where people have to stay up for 5 days with only a few hours of sleep, it was reported that the key to staying awake is by focusing on tasks in the present. Try not to let your mind drift at all. Forget about going to the bathroom, or sleeping, or anything else. There is just you, and the task. If you conquer it, you can get the thing you want most - sleep.

    • Motivate Yourself - As stated above, motivation is the most important thing in terms of keeping awake and working on the project. You might as well go to sleep if you don’t want to do it.

    • On the other hand, if your reasons for going into the all nighter is a lack of planning for something you are passionate about, then you are in the right frame of mind. Back in college, when I wanted to live up to my word in finishing a project for my research professor, I very very easily worked from 6pm until 3pm the next day, completing the project in the nick of time. I didn’t even need any coffee or caffeine, and wasn’t really that tired. If you are actually interested in what you are doing and excited about it, you really don’t even notice the time or how tired you are.

    • If your reasons for getting into the all nighter in the first place is because you procrastinated, then the all nigher really isn’t going to help that much. If it’s something you really don’t want to do, no matter how much caffeine you put into your body, or how long you stay up, you are not going to do it. It would be better to fix this problem by addressing the root issue by finding out what you really want. It would be easier to just fail the class or not do the assignment, and start focusing on the things you want right away. Tomorrow, explain to the person in charge that you are not really interested in whatever it is, apologize, and move on. What’s the point of doing a lousy job on something you didn’t want to do anyway?

    • The Cost Of The All Nighter
      
      The all nighter is not a way to get more time. That seems to be a common misconception that if you worked over night, then you basically gained those extra hours with no consequences. Nothing could be further from the truth! You will give those hours back by sleeping more the next few days, dozing off at school/work, etc. In fact, from my experience, I would say for every all nighter hour you spend awake that you should have spent sleeping, you need to sleep about 1.1-1.5x as many hours just to get back to the same level of alertness. Not to mention the diminished level of work that you would accomplish during those hours, which will have to be taken out of your other awake time to be made up. Therefore, all nighter hours need to be repaid by 2+ normal hours.

    • First, realize that if you have to pull an all nighter, you have already screwed up. Somewhere along the line, you had thought you would be finished by tonight, but you haven’t. The plan had not gone as you had anticipated, and now you are paying your dues. Therefore, you should examine your planning errors, as that will be of greater value in the long run. Did you spend too little time planning (or didn’t plan at all)? Did you procrastinate and not follow your plan? Did you not allow enough time for random factors in your plan?
      
      All of these things are situations that come up time and time again in your life. Therefore, it’s important to recognize these inefficiencies and try not to repeat them. You don’t have to do this right this minute, but it should be done as soon as possible while your memories of the events are fresh in your mind. Maybe a quick summary right now, with a more in depth analysis after you’ve finished your stuff and had some sleep. In the long run, a couple of wasted hours every once in a while can add up to substantial amounts of time throughout the course of your life.
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• For most gamers, there comes a time when the numbers that delineate your character's attributes, skills, saving throws, and special abilities don't come close to describing everything about that character. Stats will tell you how hard your character's fists can hit their foes, or how good they are at casting magic spells - but they don't always tell you who your character would want to punch, or what might be a likely use for their spells. But we gamers have always loved to have things written out in black and white, which results in the creation of systems like D&D's alignment, meant to quantify a character's beliefs, morals, and behavior. Whether or not alignment or other morality systems are a necessary or good thing is a long-standing debate in the gaming community, and isn't really meant to be the point of the article you're reading now. Instead, the question I'm exploring today is twofold: What are alignment or morality systems good for in a game? And if you decide to use them, which one works the best?
• First off, why bother having an alignment or morality system in the first place when plenty of games get by without it?
• This is a question I'm often asking myself. I'll confess that, all other things being equal, I personally tend to prefer games without alignment - if only because I already try to consider my characters' moral and ethical stances when I'm playing them, even without a potentially flawed system to give me a mechanical or benefit for doing so. But at the same time, there are plenty of scenarios in which having a clearly defined alignment system can be a boon. For example, when playing a character whose beliefs differ from your own, alignment serves as a handy reminder of how your character might approach certain situations differently than you would. Similarly, I've found that when I'm stumped over how my character might respond to a particular challenge, looking to alignment can give me a hint of how she might respond. Finally, alignment can be a helpful tool for new or reluctant roleplayers who have trouble getting deeply into their characters' psyches without some sort of in-game mechanical reminder to serve as a jumping-off point.

• So if alignment systems have a place in many different styles of gaming (and they do), which of the many options out there best rises to the challenge of helping players model their characters' belief systems? The first such system that most gamers probably think of comes from the game that popularized the word "alignment" in the first place - D&D. Even thirty years later, the nine alignments generated from the opposing axes of good vs. evil and law vs. chaos provide a simple, elegant, and easy-to-understand way of depicting a character's moral compass. It's no wonder that the general outline of what alignment is and how it works has persisted through all editions of D&D, and that so many other games have borrowed from this concept. For these reasons, the classic D&D alignment system often provides a good jumping-off point for incorporating codified character morality into a game.

   

  Of course, this means that the alignment system has been around long enough for it to become one of the more resoundingly criticized aspects of D&D. Like any attempt to put a complicated real-world issue into simplified game terms, D&D's alignment system has been blasted for being overly limiting and simplistic. Indeed, at its worst, alignment can become a straitjacket, with bad DMs using alignment and sessions degenerating into endless debates about whether a certain action is really Lawful Good enough.
• Yet in my own experiences, the opposite has been much more common. My current D&D group pretty much ignores alignment except in the most general sense, which seems to be the trend in many groups. This begs the question, then, of what alignment is good for in the first place if many players elect not to make it very important to their games.
• Another take on modeling character morality in RPGs is White Wolf's World of Darkness - both the original system and the revised Storyteller approach. For the most part, original WoD stayed away from an alignment or morality system. With the exception of Vampire's Humanity meter and to a lesser extent Werewolf's Renown system (both tools that was essential to the function and theme of the game), old WoD described character behavior and beliefs with a normally-not-alignment-implying Nature and Demeanor and allowed players to work out their characters' moral compasses on their own. But it's not so in the revision. In the new World of Darkness, characters of all types possess a Virtue and a Vice (basically, one of each of the seven deadly sins and the seven heavenly virtues) as well as a meter tracking Morality (or a similar virtue for supernatural types). Fulfilling either your character's Vice or Virtue earns him Willpower (much as fulfilling Nature worked in oWoD), while the Morality meter diminishes if your character carries out various unethical acts without remorse and rises if she redeems herself (though lowering it is much easier to do). Morality runs from ten (a living saint) to zero (a total sociopath) and tracks what is usually a long slow slide toward tiny little numbers, this being the World of Darkness and all.
• It's hard to compare the two Worlds of Darkness in this respect due to the often substantial differences between the original games and their revised versions, but as a matter of personal preference I'm not crazy about nWoD's system. There are some very good aspects to the system; tying the morality system directly to useful in-game rewards like Willpower makes it automatically relevant and useful, and it and other standardizing measures across the WoD were very welcomed for those wanting to run crossovers without tearing their hair out. But in the end, Vice, Virtue, and Morality strike me as limiting in a way that D&D's alignment generally is not. In terms of Vice and Virtue, there's the question of how much standardization is too much. With seven of each, there are only 49 possible Virtue/Vice combinations, which nearly as reductionistic as D&D's alignment if not more so. Add to that the fact that certain combinations are much more likely to occur than others; a pack of "fighting type" werewolves in nWoD is likely to consist primarily of characters with the Fortitude Virtue and Wrath Vice, whereas the same pack in oWoD would still be unbalanced but have a higher chance of diversity of viewpoints and behaviors thanks to the more open Nature/Demeanor system. Moreover, what if you want to play a character from a non-Western culture, who may praise or revile traits that are totally different from the Eurocentric ones offered by the WoD?
• Morality (or Humanity, or Wisdom, or Clarity, or whatever your game calls for) also suffers from many of the same problems that came along with Vampire: The Masquerade's Humanity system. Under the system as written, characters only lose dots in Morality if they don't feel sorry for the wrong they've done. Whether or not they feel sufficiently sorry is decided by a roll of the dice; if they don't, they risk gaining a psychological Derangement. Certainly involving dice in the equation makes the process seem more equitable, but it has always seemed to me that I'm a better arbiter of whether my character would regret a certain action than a handful of dice are. Also, not unlike D&D alignment, feeling bad about our characters' actions is something the nWoD Mage group I play in tends to ignore; we roll the dice and see a favorable result, say "oh, that's nice," and get on with the game without actually bothering to portray the guilt that the dice tell us our characters feel. We've also got at least one character who, thanks to occasionally flexible morals and poor rolling, is quickly becoming a walking talking mass of Derangements. Luckily for that player, he enjoys acting out the gaggle of neuroses he's acquired, but if it were someone else they might not be having nearly as much fun.
• In my opinion, the World of Darkness Storyteller system does a better job of tying its morality system directly to gameplay than D&D does, but this approach has its own problems too. So I'm fortunate to have found a game system that, at least for me, gets the job done more successfully.
• That game is Unknown Armies, a criminally underrated and somewhat obscure modern fantasy/horror RPG. UA posits that each character possesses a rage stimulus (something that makes the character really angry), a fear stimulus (a phobia the character has), and a noble stimulus (a cause or belief that the character strongly supports). Like almost everything else in UA, the field is wide open in terms of defining what these stimuli might be. When a character encounters one of their stimuli, he gets a substantial stat boost if he wants to attack or destroy that rage stimulus, escape from that fear stimulus, or go the extra mile to fight for that noble stimulus. The end result is that all characters in UA, no matter how saintly or evil they might seem, are fully capable of violence and righteous fury, acts of supreme cowardice, and moments of utter heroism - not unlike real human beings. What's more, including the three stimuli at the beginning of character generation gets players thinking about what really motivates their characters, and displaying a much wider and deeper range of believable behaviors because of it.
• Morality and character behavior in UA is also tied to five separate meters (Violence, Unnatural, Isolation, Helplessness, and Self) that behave like Sanity points on steroids, and have to do with how well the character copes mentally with the stresses of the crazy adventures all gaming characters eventually go through. I won't go into too much depth about this (awesome) system here, but suffice to say that the more exposure to weird and bad stuff a character has, the easier it is for that character to face similar stressors in the future. (Of course, too many failed rolls can also lead to psychological problems, but that's another issue entirely.) But at the same time, a character who spends too much time around heavy violence or supernatural stuff risks becoming a sociopath, unable to use their rage, fear, or noble stimuli at all.
• The thing I love about the Unknown Armies way of approaching morality is that it's reasonably realistic while still being fun. It rewards players for gaming according to their characters' moral codes by making it easier for them to carry out actions that reflect their beliefs. Madness meters also add a fun element of randomness to shake things up. When a character fails a madness-related roll upon being exposed to a level of bad they've never seen before, the player chooses whether their character's resulting freak-out is panic (run away at top speed), paralysis (stand there frozen in terror), or frenzy (beat the hell out of it!). In the UA campaign I ran, my players had a great time with this aspect of the game; it gave them a choice over how to be scared while also acknowledging that in some circumstances, real people sometimes have uncontrollable reactions to the unknown. The rage, fear, and noble stimuli also do a great job of modeling the fact that drives both noble and base can coexist in the same person, which is perfect for UA's "shades of grey" approach. If UA's system has a flaw, it's that madness meters require a substantial amount of tracking on the part of the GM (as do many other aspects of UA). But that's a problem I'm willing to face for a system that really works for me.

• Alignment can be useful, maybe even essential, if the setting relies on Evil and Good (or Law and Chaos, or Butter and Margarine...whatever) as actual external forces. Certain races and creatures, absolutley certain items and spells; these all rely on the system that they were designed for. With the system and it's individual crunchy components being designed around the assumption that all the components are semi-nonnegotiable it makes it hard to remove one part without changing a bunch of other things.

   

  That's the main reason that rather than remove alignment whole-cloth with one stroke of the GMs eraser, I spent years making it go away through the actions of characters within the world. At first, the PC (who was the greatest saintly Good-guy, er...Good-girl?...to ever walk the world) didn't realize what she was involved in though. She was under the assumption that she was on a crusade to eradicate evil. it was only much later (and thankfully her Wisdom score was much higher by then) that she realized that removing both frm the spectrum of mans influences was a Good thing to do.
• One of the major flaws of the D&D alignment system as well as other approaches to that end, is that it is applied at character creation. True, many players tend to have a fairly good image of the character they intent to play, but intent and execution just as often don’t match. Campaign background and style, group interaction and last but not least the much denied but ever-present personal playing style can all be factors that quickly change or even destroy the first concepts, more often than not invalidating previous choices in alignment. Even worse if alignment becomes a straightjacket , which most likely will happen to new players and make their first experience needlessly complicated.
• Flourbert, those are some great observations. Perhaps alignment would indeed be an easier pill to swallow for many gamers if you picked it at level 5 or so instead of at level 1, once you have a better idea of who your character actually is.
• We generally used alignment as a sliding scale back when we used it. A PCs alignment didn't dictate their actions...their actions dictated their alignment. That way you could be whatever alignment you desired at creation, but as the campaign progressed your alignment would change to suit the things you were actually doing. This always caused the arguements mentioned above ("That's not a good act!"..."Yes it is, and here's why!"), but those arguements happen anyways if alignment is used; they may as well be happening for a good reason.
• As to the “sliding scale” argument: I completely agree to the logic of alignment following action, although I would still prefer to ignore aligment at character creation. It's like finding friends by what party they voted for in the last election.

• I see your point about low-level PCs and how those things don't necessarily affect them at those levels. I've just always been of the mind that if it exists, it exists all the time. Let me explain that; I can't sleep at night knowing that the only reason alignment specific items or spells aren't affecting the PCs in my campaign is because they aren't at that level yet. Those things are still out there somewhere, and as such I need to know how the interact with the PCs even if they aren't going to. That's where the sliding scale comes in (or at least, where it used to come in before I got rid of alignment in favor of a system we find more preferable yet still flavorful;))

   

  In my mind ignoring it until the PCs are high enough level is the same as saying that there aren't any dragons in those woods...yet. Come back in a few levels and the kobolds won't be here, the great green will be.
• He talks about his players going on killing sprees, then "losing honor", then being confused about it. I'm sorry, but there appears something extremely wrong here. I find this to be the central problem of quantifying morality into a number system, in that it becomes just that - a series of numbers. It's not about having done something wrong, it's about dropping a number. I'm coming to the conclusion that the only good morality system is a good GM - anotherwords, that when a character does something wrong, they face the consequences for it, in-world consequences, that is. If a character goes on a killing spree, much, much more should happen then losing honor! Players have come to expect that GMs will just make them change their alignment or whatever when they do something bad, and some GMs have even used it as a stick to keep their players in line. I think this is wrong. Players should know that killing someone will probably land them in jail, and most likely have lynching gangs after them, if not more. If I had a player doing "bad things" and being smug about it, just because he/she can, I would kill that player. The only real solution to this problem is good GMing and encouragement at the table to play realistically. Which I guess is part of the problem - that seems to be in short supply.
• Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Tzuriel. I wanted to respond to what you said about the nWoD Virtue/Vice system. While the advantages you point out are true (and I do indeed prefer it to alignment), the point isn't that I can modify the system if I want - that goes without saying and I can do that with any game. The point is that if the game has a good enough morality system, I shouldn't *have* to modify it to get what I want. That's why I like UA's system better - it doesn't come with preconceived notions of what makes up a rage, fear, or noble stimulus. The player decides that based upon the character's background and personality, which leaves the field much more wide open for different perspectives than trying to shoehorn a character into a Virtue or Vice that may not really fit. But if adding a new one worked for you, hey, more power to you - I just wish I didn't have to consider doing that in the first place!
• That sounds fabulous. What resonates most with me is that we have a situational connection to the psychology. I'm not one to like rules about the personality/psychology of a character but this rule is clever. What I would add is a mechanism to adjust the stat bona to allow a disposition towards certain responses (Rage/Fear/Nobility) so that I could create a character with a +2 rage stimulus to captivity, +1 fear stimulus to water, and a +3 Noble stimulus to children. With this the mechanism has allowed me to freely shape my character to respond to situations in the way that I want. The rules are used to support the condition. Perhaps more than just Rage, Fear, and Nobility, could be modelled by this scale. What if deception or cruelty made that list? Characters would be induced to act according to their stimuli not because of an alignment, but because their natural disposition gives them an advantage being that way.

• On a limb, I'll suggest that the real reason that games have alignment is because of cultural influence from religion. And politics. We learn it from school tv, parents. Zoroastrianism certainly had the abstract Good and Evil. Christianity. Islam. Buddhism has, in my opinion, realistically embodied good and evil by keeping it where it belongs, in the mind of humans. So something like this is universally human. When angered repeatedly by someone, you might come to feel hate, loathing, want to do things that will hurt them. You might have a feeling about them that we can call, if we agree, a feeling that they are evil. Regardless of that, they're certainly causing you to somehow fill yourself with bad stuff. You know your friends, you know those who aren't. D&D has an abstract alignment system, but our lives have something else, like a socio-emotional alignment. It has ethics and morals, and I personally think these are driven powerfully by emotional reactions, and focused and tinted by the lens of our life experience. Poets and prophets and lovers have felt evil and felt good. It's in the water, so it got into the games.

   

  Did I mention I think alignment systems are weak?
• I still think my favorite system for *morality* is in Palladium (here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(role-playing_games)#Palladium ).
   It's less sytematic, and more a set of laundry lists. It works super well with the way I think, and is a good way of reminding yourself what your character is like. There's no assumptions of abstraction, as far as I can tell, but you can get the basics of your character verbally described. I'm fond of the idea of a list of things that a given character might find acceptable and unacceptable, and noting those for later reference. It isn't a straight jacket, and there's no real game mechanic that prevents you from changing later, should the change make sense. Yet you still get the coarse granularity that lets you understand, peeking at a NPC sheet, what you might expect in the long run from a Miscreant.

• In some ways the UA approach shouldn't be considered in the "Alignment" discussion because it lacks the breadth to speak to morality. It is a specific rule; and while it may suggest a morality, it certainly cannot encompass one. That has typically been my criticism of other morality systems -- they try to be general. Because each person comes to morality through the lens of personal perception, these generalizations do not fit the individual metaphor of psychology that we all have. Some systems work well for some people because they resonate. If we step back from whether we like it or not, we could examine whether the rule system encompasses a variety of perspectives. A general system that tries to address everything will fail. A system that is specific and allows a player to fill in the blanks with the yardstick by which they will measure themselves will satisfy. In essence, I believe players should build their own individual alignment system.

   

  There are many ways to read a book (schools of literary criticism). There are many ways to interpret behaviour (schools of psychology). They all have their merits. A game that keeps its rules specific avoids building a bias into the interpretation of things.

• I totally agree with Gilgamesh's last post here. Morality is, ultimately, a personal matter, as in that we each live by a personal code, and the longstanding problem with morality systems in roleplaying games is that they try to generalize something that is deeply personal, and so most of us have trouble with this, particularly those of us that aren't particularly religious or are willing to part a little from standard Christian ethics.

   

  But, still, when reading gamerchick's article, I had some trouble with UA's system, though it seems to satisfy the requirement that it be personal. This could be attributed to a strange fanboyism for one of my favorite games (told you I'd take up Lorthyne's standard), but I think it goes deeper than that. The fact of the matter is UA doesn't satisfy what I'm looking for in a moral system.

• Morality is a funny thing. I'm not going to go into the philosophical discussions concerning it as I feel Scott tackled those pretty well and I don't pretend to know exactly where we get our moral sensibilities from (yet). But, it seems people focus on one thing at a time, depending particularly on the state of the day. And, now, we're really focusing on motivation. It's important, but it's not the only thing, and that's why I can't classify it as a morality system. Morality holds many functions. One is definitely to provide adequate motivation to do "good things," which is what UA seems to focus on. But there are other aspects. Judgement, for example, is perhaps the most complex and confusing aspect. Because, morality being personal, how can you judge an act? Yet you must, otherwise society collapses. Judgement can't be ignored in an attempt to quantify something so precise and complex. And, from what I've been able to gleen, the last of the three, we need consequences. There are some actions we don't take not because they're a "bad thing" for others, or because it threatens society, but just because they have bad consequences. Like doing drugs, or, arguably, pornography.

   

  D&D falls flat on many of these levels. It's approach is far too abstract to be useful, forcing everyone to bring in their interpretations and play mortal combat with them, leading to many of the discussions you see here. In the end, everyone is forced to bend to the GMs way of looking at things, even if that's someting like "killing babies for Pelor is okay." Obviously, a bad system.

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• UA excels at one of the three qualifiers at the expense of the other two. It captures motivation almost perfectly and simply by focusing on strong feelings instead of trying to outline everything. But it's so personal, so gray that it's useless from the outlook of consequences and certainly from the outlook of judgement, both of which are important, even for a game.

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• World of Darkness is a particularly interesting system. It's the only system I've found yet to have a built in MORAL consequence system, but it can feel fake, particularly with the Virtues and Vices. World of Darkness excels at judgement and consequences, but fails spectacularly at motivation with a reward system that seems far too unreal to be taken seriously (for the record, I think it makes sense but meets trouble with the idea of measuring willpower as well as that the ST has trouble making the right situations that aren't too much or too little). You can easily judge on the sliding scale where you fall (or are falling) and the consequences are summed in the degenerations you accrue, though I agree that I have trouble with this system as it is. I think it's excellent for your white soccer mom and the good college kid who just did as his parents said. But someone raised on the street, living by gang retaliation and dope dealing? Most of these people resort to a form of sociopathy, not crazy OCD or shizophrenia. For this reason, I think the number of degenerations should be cut down, to things that really make sense. People do not develop schizophrenia from moral failings. They do, however, develop depression.

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• It also all comes down to what your looking for. If all you want is something simple that says "me good, you bad," than D&D's got you covered. If you're looking to go deeper but still focus on fun, I think UA's system is a good system. WoD goes deeper and aims for a much greater importance given to morality and it's labrythine passages. I think the best system will have to be developed by us, however.

   

  We should combine UA and WoD's systems. Have a scale people go up or down on, consequences for going down (preferably psychological) to cover judgement and consequences, keep the abstract system concerning willpower and virtues and vices, though letting players come up with their own (perhaps naming a few of the traditional ones as suggestions). Then slap on UA's system for motivation in the moment, adding the personal element but not devaluing judgment. What do you think? Ideas on how to do it?

• UNKNOWN ARMIES

   

  Unknown Armies has the Madnees Meter. Remember the name. It is not something that measures morality, it measures Madness. What I love about the madness meter is that the situation and the role you make determines wether you would run away and curl up in a ball, or just stand there and think what was happening was not really that interesting. You are crazy either way. And that is all the Madness Meter does. Do you fail a check, and therefore recoil from what caused you to fail the check next time, or did you pass the check, and therefore have a better chance of not really noticeing it. It is the difference between hiding scared in your fox hole, or telling the scared soldier "I decided when I landed I was already dead".

   

  The Madness Meter does not measure morality. The Noble/Wrath measures are the closest measure and like every other system I know they are just as black and white as any other. However they do allow player choice and thefore control. Still they are very specific and can therefore be extremely narrow. Making pretty much every other thing in the world something that washes over you. They do come close to allowing you to create a personal morality system. But if we did that we would really be helping those players that like portraying people with the PLAYERCHARACTERGAMER alignment...and that is not always what we want.

   

  It is however a very powerful roleplaying aid. But another question. How often have you played Unknown Armies in comparison to a White Wolf product? Why?
• At the end of the day Roleplaying Rules are a poor measure of a person. Modern gaming systems generally allow you to create a character who could not function on a day to day basis in any reality, other than the one they are created for, a fictional one. For a game to really work on a level of morality/humanity the system, the player and the storyrteller (or referee/gm etc) need to be on the same page. Recently I informed a group of players that I would only run NWoD once they had digested the system and spoke to me about it. Only when we are all working from the same perspective will it work.

• Very well said, bartmoss. huh, it seems like there's somebody else now that gives dissertations every time they leave a comment :). I think I could make a book from my comments on this site.

   

  I particularly like what you said concerning nWoD's western perspective. What they should do, then, with this in consideration, is release a book that focuses entirely on virtues and vices, how they can be changed, and perhaps different ones for different cultures or religious views, like Islam, Confuscianism, etc. It should also talk about these religious morals and such in depth to help people play them as accurately as possible. I would totally buy that. That's one thing I've always like about GURPS books, is their almost scholarly content that fills the books. You can learn a lot from just those books. Anyway, WoD should totally come out with a book like that. That'd be cool. It could even have sections on how a Storyteller can best use this mechanic. That's the problem with the mainstream rpgs, is that new books have always got to be new material, you know, 50 new monsters, 18 new prestige classes, etc. What I'd like to see is more discussion on what's already there. A book dedicated to Morals and virtues and vices from WoD would be awesome. Something like that from D&D would be cool, too, really. I dunno. No more new rules - just flavor text. At least WoD's got the flavor text covered.
• What I wanted to address, however, was your statement that "Roleplaying Rules are a poor measure of a person." While that may be true (I'm pretty sure my boss has a 5 morality...lol), I don't think it should be. This is the simulationist in me speaking, but I think a system should allow you to create a realistic character, one that you could actually imagine meeting on the street. RPGs are all about characters, and so the characters should be interesting, fun people, people that act realistically. I think so, anyway. I think a game should allow you to create realistic characters, should facilitate and encourage it, actually. I just don't see the point of playing and developing a character if the development isn't realistic, if it doesn't make a good story, but still one that makes sense. I don't know if any games have succeeded at this, but that's my 2 cents. They should be able to be used in real life.
• As for you comments. It would be nice to see a book describing how to build characters based on the Virtues and Flaws. It would be very nice if someone could explore other cultures using the rules set, but let me stress something here. Those cultures would need to measure morality in an entirely different way, and to be honest it would probably be very difficult to do. Of all the books released for Requiem the two I have not read yet are Rome and Fall of the Camarilla. The reason is simply the morality system. Romans did not have our morality, for instance men were expected to fight and if neccessary and sometimes just to show courage, to kill. We in our world are not expected to do that. In fact we are told killing is wrong. A Roman would look at you askance for telling him killing was wrong. A Roman Citizen cannot be killed, but there is nothing wrong with killing our enemies. We were brought up in a culture in which we are told to "Love" our enemies. How does that impact on an individuals morality? I am very interested in discovering if the morality track was changed for Rome. If it was great, if it was not...well I will be confused.
• If you want an idea on culture and how it can shape you, read Leviticus,its in the bible. There are cultural rules in that book that would shake the foundations of a person if they knew people were breaking them, yet you may find some of them just stupid. Showing disrespect to your parents once too often...you get stoned to death...in front of the rest of the town. Not doing this would be immoral. Playing a culture we have no understanding off. Very Difficult. Trying to model a collection of morality tracks to help you play the game...well it does not help the game at all (and people may play those tracks they find easiest to take certain actions in), in fact it would probably cause the game to drift from its poitn.
• There are many ways a person can be Greedy, there are many ways someone can be Lustful, there are many ways someone can be any virtue or vice. The problem with the book is it only gives you one way. A good storyteller should see where his characters are going and present opportunities for both.

• I am not sure where you are in the world, but I will guess you are in the USA. Therefore you were probably taught to drive at a young age. Look at the Drive Skill in NWoD, if you do not have a dot in it, you are a bad driver. You are relying on your innate attributes at a negative modifier. I know you are not supposed to roll a dice unless you are stressed, and perhaps if you were ever in a car chase you should be in negative modifiers...but some systems are even worse than this, they force a level of specialisation that creates very odd characters. I have oftne played characters who were capable of many accrobatic feats, stealth on a level that is scary, could shoot a pin head. But obviously never went to high school in their life (even in those games were I was palying an officer in the millitary). All because I was creating someone good for an RPG.

   

  An RPG by its nature is asking you to develop a character that exists in a Fictional World. RPGs allow you to model characters for this purpose, what they do not do, and to be honest, should never do, is model a person who exisits in our real world. It would be ridiculous to try. However it does mean most characters in modern day campaign worlds do look as if they could not function in our reality. I will stress again, this is not a problem. Dramatic characters exist for Drama not life.
• What can be realistic is the characters wants, desires, aims, beliefs etc. This is all up to you the person that adds character. It is this that can always be achieved, and if you work on this level, the rest of it does not matter. Good RPG rules help create the type of Drama they are built for. I believe NWoD achieves its goals.

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• 1. Employer e-mails are rife with grammatical and spelling errors
   2. E-mails purporting to be from job posting Web sites claiming there’s a problem with a job hunter’s account
   3. An employer asks for extensive personal information such as social security or bank account numbers
   4. An employer offers the opportunity to become rich without leaving home
   5. An employer asks for money upfront
   6. The salary and benefits offered seem too-good-to-be-true
   7. The job requires the employee to wire money through Western Union or MoneyGram

• These aren't so much scam strategies, as phishing strategies. This is step 1

   

  Step 1 Get personal information
   Step 2 Unknown
   Step 3 Make Money! 
• Let's add the carbon-copy-identical multi-level marketing scam job postings to that list.
• Also, anything that says "entry level" or "marketing".
• Step 8. If you have to squint to understand the person on the other end of the phone, just hang up.
• I had my personal information used by some moron at a big-name temporary agency to attempt to obtain credit for herself. So now I never give them my SSN# until they send me on my first job. Yeah, I know they can still scam me after that. No, they don't need my SSN# to run a criminal background check. No, I don't want to work with anyone too stupid to understand "you are utter strangers and I'm not going to give you all the information you need to clear out my bank accounts and drive me into bankruptcy."
• Learned that the hard way after college. Went to a couple of places that were advertising "entry level marketing positions". Somehow, selling urinal cakes and tampon dispensers to businesses door to door and being paid purely on commission wasn't exactly what I was expecting.
• I been using sites like career builder, monster, and Dice, since I am moving across country in a few months, and looking for job. Several of the "larger" employers want you to go to their own website, and register with a username and password. What a pain in the butt, keeping track of it all. Some of those sites also want your social security number as part of the application process. I gave it on the first site, but after reflection, I no longer do that. Several sites won't let you finish applying for the Job without one. That pisses me off, what do they need it for before they hire me? Are they doing background checks without telling me? Working in IT, doing security, that makes me paranoid, so I've taken to then emailing my resume to someone in HR, and explaining that I don't feel comfortable giving out my social security number at this point in the hiring process.. I'm sure that has cost me a few potential jobs, but I just won't do it anymore...
• I would like to know who they are as well.. i'm applying for jobs online left and right, since I'm moving cross country. I have seen dozens of companies that require your social as part of the application process, and won't proceede without it. I have gotten to the point where I don't apply on their site anymore, and find an HR email address and just send my resume and a cover letter, and explain I don't feel comfortable giving that info out yet. Why do they need my social before they hire me? There are too many chances for problems, like you seem to have found. (I'm sure not doing the application the correct way with a social has cost me a few opportunities...) Are they doing background checks without me knowing? Are they looking at my credit? They want my social, my address, my employment, etc.. Someone could have alot of fun with that info. Some of these companies are IT related companies, dealing with Security. One would think they should know better...
• My social on webforms is 111-11-1111 with a note that they can have the real one later. There is no reason they would need a ssn for making the hiring decision just knowing that you have one should be enough. I'd like to see a law the prohibits a company from asking for your SSN until a job offer has been made and accepted so that way these scammers can be shut down quickly.

• The new policy where I work is that all system administrators get background checks. You can thank morons like the guy who locked the San Francisco city government out of their computers for this invasion of privacy.

   

  Incidentally, one of the things you'll find about sites like Monster is that most of the ads are from temp agencies and placement companies. Many of the jobs don't really exist in the form they're listed. I've had far better luck checking local newspaper ads (many are online), the government-run job sites that some states have, or even the websites of individual employers in the area that I think I'd like to work for. 
• Bonus: Don't waste your time on Craigslist looking for a job unless you are in one of the major markets where Craigslist charges the employer to post a job. Scammers don't like to pay $25, apparently.

• I hear some companies/agencies are running credit checks as part of the application process. Apparently, people with good credit scores are the best workers. [sarcasm].

   

  Also to add to the list, be aware of "payment processing" or "medical billing" work-at-home type jobs. You could be laundering money for pyramid schemes and 419 scams. 
• I would suggest whenever possible to use sites like Indeed.com as they aggregate from most of the major sites and don't require you to sign up to use their service. That can help to funnel out some of the dreck.

• So here is a question for someone. I am currently looking for a job. And I had one potential employer ask if they could run a credit check on me. The employer was a hospital and I was having a face-to-face interview so it was ligit. Now I can maybe understand a bank wanting this information, but what do they think it is going to prove? Oh lets hire this person cause he has excellent credit. I was quite outraged by them asking. And the funny thing is that my credit score is well above 750 so I certainly have nothing to fear...I just thought it was such a stupid policy that I was unwilling to cooperate.

   

  Anyone else run into this or know why they would need it to work at a hospital? 
• It's a good idea for job seekers to go to the credit bureaus and lock down their credit reports before walking through the zoo of job openings, handing out SSNs from the peanut bag. There's too many people asking for access to this kind of information before offering the position, and in this kind of job market it's not like you can tell them to shove it.
• Look, they send me large checks from banks in Russia, which I cash, then I send them the money packed in air-tight foodsaver bags stuffed into half empty coffee tins, and I get to keep 10% off the top for my expenses. What's unusual about that?
• Generally they have found that if a person is at a high risk of getting in over their head with debt, said person thinks it's a really good idea to swipe drugs or medical supplies and resell them on the black market.
• and therein lies your catch-22, you cant get a good job if you have bad credit, you have bad credit because you cant get a good job and pay off your debt!! I wonder if these practices will change as more Americans are building massive amounts of debt and defaulting on loans.

• I'm getting a lot of "sell insurance and make 100k a year!" emails via Monster.

   

  So far, they have been legit companies and real emails. I've conversed with two of them on the phone. I didn't give any personal info nor was I asked for any.

   

  I did tell both parties that I was currently seeking a _______ position (my industry) and would not consider a job that involves leads generation, cold calling or working on commission. Both people were very polite and wished me well.

   

  FWIW - yahoo hotjobs seems to be getting more traction than Monster these days.
• Hospitals usually do all sorts of background and credit checks. If you're providing patient care you could steal drugs, if you're in the paper pushing side of things you have access to all the info you would need for identity theft.
• I had an account on monster.com and would constantly get emails about job offers where I would have to pay $1500 or so for training, which of course would be reimbursed afterwards.
  The best were the ones written entire in caps. Or when I'd get a number of identical emails, just with different company/employer names on them.
  I finally had to delete my account due to the overwhelming scam attempts being thrown at me.
• Also, employers that make you pay for "training." I was looking into working as a personal trainer while in school, and for a mere 400 dollars Bally's would license me, and then maybe I could work there.

• so if someone here takes your advice and their credit is locked down by the bureaus -- as requested by them...what if they now get a job and the company can't seem to run a background ?

   

  #1. Do the credit bureaus charge to locked down your credit?

   

  #2. If yes, do you need to pay to unlock it once you get a job?

   

  if no to ? #1, do u pay to lock/unlock it ??

   

  This is actually a good idea considering someone like me who is seeking employment..might try this if there's no penalty for doing so 

• Actually, they may need your SSN for a criminal background check. Or at least, it could help.

   

  My neighbor was having the damnedest time getting any kind of job for almost a year before she found out that background checks were coming up with someone with the same name with fraud convictions. 
• Vector is CutCo knives, they tend to target seniors and teens just out of high school or on summer vacation in college. They're partly on online sites, and also send out official looking job interview invites. Don't go, they'll make you buy a big sales kit you'll lose money on as people only buy so many sub-standard knives.
• I've encountered someone who's credit was locked down per their request as the result of a DMV breakin. When I called to get a credit check on them, the agent told me that they had a phone number on file that was given to them by the individual in question when the credit report was locked down. Whenever someone tried to run/apply for credit under the guys name, the c bureaus were instructed to not release the info or do anything until they had contacted the person at the # that they had provided and given the OK. No ok, no credit check/report. But, the guy was still able to have a check/report run on him if he implicitly auth'd it.
• re: Cutco/vector marketing- If you ever see online ads or telephone flyers that say "earn $15/hr part time!" that is CutCo. When you call, or apply online, they don't tell you what they do. When they call to "interview you" they don't say what it is that they do. Only after about 20 min into the group interview do you discover what it is that they do. On a related note, it is in the "manager's" best interest to have rapid turnover. They make more money that way.

• "The job requires the employee to wire money through Western Union or MoneyGram"

   

  People fall for that? Seriously, this is like natural selection in the modern age. 

• "1. Employer e-mails are rife with grammatical and spelling errors"

   

  Wait, that sounds like my boss...

   

  "6. The salary and benefits offered seem too-good-to-be-true"

   

  Oh, wait, nevermind, that's definitely not my job... 
• What about an email stating that 8 weeks of training in India were required?

• for those legitimate employers seeking new hires on the web, be as detailed as possible in your postings. i've responded to a few postings that seem genuine, but are real vague on information (like a company website &/or specific location). instead, they ask that interested applicants email a contact for more info. in my experience, the response is almost always a link to a b.s. $10,000/hr scheme. now i just pass over any posting that doesn't give me enough info to decide if it's a real post or not.

   

  & hr managers should be canvassing sites to ensure that their company is not being spoofed - i've also encountered this, with "apply now" buttons redirecting to "_real_company_.XXXXXX.com"-type domaines.

   

  finally, i've limited my info/resumes on job posting sites (monster in particular) after a rash of emails from illegitimate employers. careerbuilder still seems to have some integrity in this area - i don't know if they actually have an approval process for employers seeking access to resumes or if the cost to view them results in less "scams", but whatever they're doing seems to be working for now. 

• With my resume being public on monster.com for about 3 months now, I've only gotten 1 or 2 insurance/marketing/sales type "offer" emails. On Yahoo HotJobs, I had literally 2 a day for a week until I made my resume private again. Just for that I'm much more inclined to use monster.

   

  I second the recommendation above to use indeed.com. I never would have found the job that I just got an offer for if I didn't. 
• nthing indeed.com. Enter in an advanced search with all the terms you want and tweak that by filtering out unwanted terms and then save that as a bookmark. Instant job search every morning.

• The "ever changing" website, appears to be for research reasons. I believe they give out a different number based on the time/channel/whatever critera they want. This way they know when there advertising dollars are best spent.

   

  This is solely conjecture, but it appears to be the only logical conclusion, assuming of course that they aren't wasting thousands of dollars on domain name registrations. 

• From my experience, job-seekers should avoid listings that do not explicitly state what you would be doing on the job. I see this metioned in previous posts, but it needs to be repeated for the naive. If they won't disclose what you need to know over the phone or by e-mail, they're probably out screw you.

   

  Most online listings I've encountered were nothing more than attempts to coerce me into an interview for a job that doesn't really exist. Once there, they attempt to low-ball you into some pointless, skill-irrelevant position that is a fraction of the compensation mentioned. What a waste of time.

   

  Also, beware of any offers that want to "acquaint" you with the company before continuing the interview process. I've fallen for this once before and it turned out to be nothing but a huge marketing spiel about how you need to have their certifications to "make it" in the industry. I got up, told the speaker to fuck himself and left the building with about half of the people in attendance following suit. Good times. 

• A few things I've noticed...

   

  Affiliate sites - There are sites out there who will email you and say they have positions they think you are qualified for and you can learn all about them by clicking the link to their job site. Either this is just a random job site or some affiliate pulling in links from other job sites. I usually respond that I am only interested in the specific positions they email me the text description for.

   

  Sales - Somehow insurance sales people think my background (which has zero sales experience) would be a good fit for them. I just delete these now...should probably setup a gmail filter for them too.

   

  Headhunters - There are good ones out there and there are crap ones. Try searching around for industry specific recruiting firms...I know in the ad industry there are specific ones for media, account management, creative, etc.

   

  Placement firms - Companies like Aquent, Acquity Group, Creative Circle, etc. A lot of these are subsidiaries of Robert Half...a giant scam and a half. It is very insightful to look in the forums on Indeed.com about these specific companies. Plenty of fun complaints to read there. 
• what, seriously? if a person needs a job, they probably dont have $1500 to 'get' a job, are these the stupidest scam artists ever?
  if you are looking for a job and will pay $1500, i have a bridge to sell you....

36 more annotations...

• Hello, I’m a male porn star and it sucks!
• Now, I know what you might be thinking: “Fuck you asshole – you have a big dick and you get paid to get laid.” True, but being a “pro” isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. I’ve been “in the biz” for almost two years now and my experiences, while sexy and fun at times, for the most part have been awful. Below I’ve listed my Top 7 Reasons why being a male porn star sucks but let me say first that, yes, the overall ”kink” of what I do is pretty hot but the nuts ‘n bolts, day-to-day hassles of the porn business can really wear a guy down. (And “being down” can cost you money in this business, trust me – see Reason #2).
• So why do I do it? The money is okay, but not great, and then there’s the sex. But mostly I do it because I can – not everyone can “perform” with the lights on, and camera crews, and an insistent director yelling “fuck her harder!” And honestly, it beats working at Dunkin’ Donuts (which is what I used to do). Sooner or later I’m going to move on to more “legit” lines of work. But, for now, I guess I’ll struggle through even though it sucks. Here’s why:
• Reason #1: You Have To Have Sex: I know it sounds kind of crazy – that’s what you’re there for – but it’s true. Think about it: Maybe you’re horny all the time (as I generally am) but that doesn’t mean you want to actually “do it” every second of the day. We guys want to fuck when we want to fuck, right? Not when it’s “time to fuck”. Say it’s two o’clock in the afternoon. There are eight people in the room – you, the director, the girl you’re “working with”, the cameraman, the lighting guy, the makeup artist and some dude you don’t even know why he’s there – and suddenly it’s time to fuck. GO! Um, okay…
• Reason #2: You Can’t Get It Up: Every man’s nightmare is just an ordinary problem on a porn set. Sure, there’s Viagra and Cialis galore and you can pop ‘em by the dozen. But there are side effects to taking that medication so frequently, and the biggest one (no pun intended) is tolerance. In other words, your body actually builds up a resistance to the medication if you take it too much. So, after awhile, you can swallow handfuls of those little blue pills and they have zero effect (other than headaches and the possible loss of vision). What to do? Inject your dick (yes, with a needle) with a more intense liquid medication that works instantly – and leaves the underside of your cock filled with needle holes. God knows what else it’s doing to your body but hey, we have to get the shot, right? And what if you have an aversion to needles (or injecting some weird goop directly into your prick)? Well, there’s always someone (usually a dude) there to help. Ouch and Yuk!
• Reason #3: Male Porn Stars Make Much Less Than Female Porn Stars: The usual rate of pay for a girl in the porn business can run anywhere from $800 a scene to $2,000 per scene, depending on the number of male performers she’s “accommodating”, and what the sex act actually is (like Double Penetration, threesomes, anal, creampie, etc). How much do we guys make? On average: $200!! True, sometimes we can earn as much as $500 for a scene (and more, of course, if you’re a “name” star, like Ron Jeremy or Vince Voyeur). The thinking goes: Hey, you’re getting to fuck a gorgeous porn star so be happy you’re getting paid at all. But male porn actors have bills like car payments and rent, too, so we often have “day jobs” (or, “night gigs”, like waiters and parking lot attendants). After the cumshot you feel great but when you leave the shoot and realize you can’t pay your mortgage and have to do another shoot, right away maybe that day just to keep the creditors off your back, it’s not as much fun.
• Reason #4: You have To Have ‘Good Aim’: When it’s time for “the Money Shot” – the cumshot – the director almost always wants you to hit the female in the face with your jism. There’s nothing worse than shooting a hot scene and then, at the very end, with the girl on her knees, mouth wide open, waiting for your sperm, to shoot a giant load across the room barely getting a drop on her face! The director yells ‘CUT!” and sometimes they want you to do it again - and if you can’t they bring in another cock for the splooge. Talk about ego crushing.
• Reason #5: You’re Not Attracted To Your On-Screen Partner: Maybe you’re not into breast implants (all that bouncing around can really hurt, especially if one of those silicone pumpkins accidentally whacks you in the head). Maybe you only like redheads, or blondes, and the girl you’re fucking is a brunette and reminds you of your sister. Maybe she’s a little too fat, or skinny, or tall, or – you get the idea. It doesn’t matter if you HATE her or the way she looks, or smells, or tastes – you have to fuck her otherwise you’ll be replaced. Okay, so perhaps you take a pass on this one – you end up getting a reputation that you’re “difficult to work with” or “too picky” and slowly the casting calls stop coming. It’s a real issue, and you have to be mentally strong (and real good at fantasizing and visualizing someone else) to overcome this common problem.
• Reason #6: You’re Expected To Have Zero Hang-ups: Maybe the scene is a threesome – with another guy and one girl! Or it’s a double penetration scene where it’s guaranteed your dick will at least touch another dude. Or perhaps you just find it uncomfortable to have a cameraman lean on your shoulders while he’s trying to get that close up of her sucking your balls. Don’t like anal? Too bad. Don’t like eating pussy? Tough. Hate it when you’re expected to fling her around like Superman (against the wall, on the sink, over a couch, on a ladder…)? They don’t want to hear it. Just do it or get lost, we’ll find someone else!
• Reason #7: She Hurts Your Dick: Remember, your female porn partner is also trying to give a heated, passionate performance (her career and earning potential is on the line, too). So she bites your cock, jerks it really hard and fast, sucks those balls a little too intensely, moves her hips like she’s grinding raw meat trying to turn it into a hamburger. The list goes on and on. It’s nearly impossible to tell your partner to stop doing something that hurts, or just feels uncomfortable because it probably hurts her, too. Or she might not “get it” or just not give a fuck.. And you won’t get any sympathy from the director, or anyone on the set (at least it’s your dick that’s getting crushed so shut up). Then there’s the angles. Oh the angles!! Extreme sideways, extreme bending this way and that, all so the camera can get what people are paying for: the cock going in the pussy. What feels good and “natural” in normal life often doesn’t cut it on film so you almost have to be a gymnast to get the shot, and lots of times it’s painful. Sometimes it even feels like your dick is going to break off! But you gotta keep going, and going, no matter what. No wonder so many ‘stunt cocks’ look bent and disjointed!
• Did I mention the constant fear of being ‘discovered’ by your friends and family? Call that a Bonus Reason why being a male porn star sucks! But until I can get into college this is all I know and I suppose you just have to take the good with the bad. At least most people don’t even look at who the cock is attached to anyway, right?

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• 1. Stress
   Yes, I know they are your precious little status symbols, but
   if you want them to get to adulthood without becoming addicted to crack
   or being one of those people who go into hysterics because their carThere is no reason a kid over 8 shouldn’t be allowed to venture out via subway or public bus system, no reason why it shouldn’t be allowed to explore its neighborhood.
   has a flat tire, you need to get them used to stress early. They need
   to be thrown into situations where they have nobody to help them, to
  suffer the full consequences of their stupidity. Protecting your kids
   from the unpleasantness of life is like raising them in a sterile
   environment then expecting them to thrive in a sewer.
• 2. Truth, hard and cold
  Everybody dies, especially parents. Money is the most important thing in life, you can fuck women in the vagina, but also in the anus as well, the capacity for treachery and all forms of smiling deceit are the most important skills in the working world. Trust no one, not even me, do not hesitate to cause harm to anybody standing in your way. If you want your kid to grow up knowing anything about the way the world works and to be not merely functional, but successful in he world, you need to level with it.
• 3. Work
   Give them a job. They do not, and will never, appreciate the sacrifices you make to provide them with food and a place to sleep, so make money from their lazy asses. It won’t cover their cost, but it will help. If they can’t make you money, then they should at least be able to buy you some relaxation-time by doing your yard-work. They learn the most important thing about adulthood: that it consists of daily doing shit for other people when you can think of a million better things to do with your life. A kid of 10 should be able to do its own laundry and put together at least 4 basic meals from scratch.
• 4. Freedom
   Smothered kids grow up scared, ignorant, and usually turn into the kind of people that get laughed at behind their back. Give your kid a pocket knife, teach it to stab-and-run if approached overly creepy strangers, and let it spend it’s (non-working) spare-time as it pleases. There is no reason a kid over 8 shouldn’t be allowed to venture out via subway or public bus system, no reason why it shouldn’t be allowed to explore its neighborhood.
• 5. Discipline
   Fat, loudmouthed, lazy, whiny, kids are the direct fault of their parents. I am not saying that the kids aren’t responsible for staying that way, but getting that way was mommy and daddy’s doing. Every time your kid disgusts you just remember that you could have done something to keep it from being as bad as it is. Kids left without solid instruction become worthless adults, of value to no one except as prey.
• 6. An education in stubbornness
   You can either raise a quitter, or you can raise a kid who sticks to his guns no matter what. It’s pointless trying to find the balance between the two since you either have balls or you don’t. Pushovers are sometimes hard to push over, but their are still weak little bitches. Stubborn people simply do not ever give in. Keep in mind that this kid may be the one fighting for your life-support to be turned off or left on indefinitely one day.
• 7. Exposure/Variety
   Hicks aren’t only poor people from the country, sometimes they are rich kids in private school, sometimes they are ghetto kids who imagine themselves to be “street smart”. If you don’t want your kid to grow up thinking that Africa is a country, or not knowing that an impala is an animal as well as a vehicle, then continue to shelter them in your little community, your little circle of friends and their kids. Don’t travel with them, don’t force them to read. Keep them thinking that the world is as easy or predictable as TV makes it out to be.

• 8. Healthy food
  Sit in your local mall for about an hour on a Saturday afternoon and people-watch. You will see great number of young people, flaccid, greasy, flabby, spotty young people, many with shit-colored teeth. Kids who grow up pampered and catered to tend to be picky eaters and to like food that will make them look and feel like shit. They imagine themselves to have time, time to one day change their ways and get healthy, but they don’t, you don’t morph from being a lazy slacker just by getting older, it takes sacrifice, and the best time to learn to sacrifice is when young. Kids need to know that or they may will die before you, forcing you to buy caskets with your retirement money.

   
• 9. Indifference
   Kids need to know that they don’t matter in the big
   scheme of things unless they do something to make themselves matter.
   Too much involvement in their lives leads to them being dependent on
   you and helpless out in the real world. If they have any balls at all
   they will resent you for being overly attentive, but most often they
   will just take your attention for granted and get to adulthood thinking
   that they are interesting, important people. This is partly why people
   who grew up in the 90’s are such boring, self-important little fucks,
   somebody told them that they were precious and significant.
• 10. Alone-time
  One of the greatest lessons you can give to your offspring is the lesson on how to not need other people. If your kid can handle being on it’s own then it can handle pretty much every relationship mind-game that it’s future romantic partners will throw at it. It will learn to not be clingy, have no room for heartbreak, and most importantly, function without regard to what other people think.

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• • I think this is a legit question, and I'm gonna do my best to give you a thoughtful, respectful answer.
    
    First off, I'm not an aspiring MMA fighter/grappler/boxer, just a middle-aged schmo who wanted to get fit and was incredibly fucking lucky to come across this forum and get my eyes opened wide to a perspective on lifting that I believe is superior.
    
    The "idiots in the gym" thread is important for several reasons.
    
    First, it's cathartic -- many of the stories told concern ill-informed people who, intentionally or not, impeded the workout of the poster. If some tool who's curling in the power rack delays my squat workout, I'm gonna be polite in-person and not yell at him, because that's the practical thing to do. (God knows, I don't need to get 86'ed from my campus gym for yelling at some goofball). When I get home, it's healthier for me to vent my frustrations on the thread rather than bark at my wife and kid. And 99.9% of the time, the offenders are anonymous, so they aren't subject to ridicule by people in real life.
    
    Second, it's instructive -- Lord knows how many n00bs read this thread and get their eyes opened to what we DON'T advocate here. That's valuable.
    
    Third, I think S&P regulars are quick to praise hard effort and effective training, it's jsut that we don't see 'em often enough. From time to time there are posts in this thread to the effect of "hey, it was cool to see some guy/gal doing XYX at the gym today...." In other words, we'd rather report good news than bad, but it doesn't come along very often.
    
    Elitist? I prefer to think of it as setting a standard and not backing off.
    
    I have never, ever criticized anyone in person for pursuing weight training I thought was idiotic. (I might do so if I thought they were likely to get hurt). They may have good reason for doing things the way they do. But if that logic isn't apparent to me I'll go ahead and report their antics here, so that I and my online brethren can find a little humor in their apparent foibles and be that much more resolved to keep on doing things the way we think is right, no matter what the rest of the world does.
    
    I think that's valuable. If you disagree, that's cool.

  • You know…these posts honestly serve no purpose. Who really gives a damn what other people are doing in the gym? If you have time to pay attention to someone else’s form, the exercise they are performing, or whatever then you are not training and doing a great injustice to your hopes and goals. Furthermore, not everyone who goes to the gym is an aspiring MMA fighter, grappler or boxer. Believe it or not but some people just want to look and feel good. Some of you have really turned into elitists and need to be cut back down to size. All the attention you guys pay to others is probably the reason why you're not succeeding in MMA or any other endeavor.
  Add Sticky Note

• During the last few minutes of Game 6 of Boston's second-round series with Cleveland, poor Kevin Garnett looked like Forrest Gump right after Jenny pulled her top down in her dorm room. On one play, the ball swung to KG at the foul line; no Cav was within 10 feet of him. Strangely, he panicked, thinking about shooting an open J before realizing, Wait, I'm seven feet tall, that would be dumb, and barreling toward the basket to rush a clumsy jump hook. For a former MVP who makes $22 million a year, it was an astoundingly incompetent sequence. 
    
   It also wasn't a surprise.
• Garnett's crunch-time woes have been the dirty little secret of this storybook Celtics season. Sure, he saved the franchise and made the C's relevant again. He's also the reason they might not win the 2008 championship. Put simply, Garnett shrinks from pressure more times than he comes through. The NBA is a simple league to figure out: In a playoff series, the best player prevails unless his supporting cast is significantly inferior to the other team's. So when Boston's best player can't dominate close games against a quality opponent … um, that's a problem.
• The intriguing wrinkle with Garnett is he plays differently down the stretch by not playing differently. Selfless and passionate for 48 minutes a game, eight months a year, he can't raise his game because it's already raised. Like Nigel Tufnel's guitar, he's already up to 11.
• Sometimes, when Garnett's adrenaline kicks in during crunch time it's like watching a diabetic in the midst of a sugar rush. His body can't handle it. When he succeeds, he loses his mind, pounding his chest, belting out profanities and hollering at the crowd like a crazy person. When he fails (and it's happened a few times this season), his mistakes are unbelievably amateurish—intentional fouls when the team doesn't need them, taking too many steps on his signature fall-away, that kind of stuff. The pressure gets to him. You can see it. In Game 4 of the first-round series with Atlanta, after a near-altercation with Zaza Pachulia, the camera found KG on the bench and he was practically hyperventilating.
• Now, Garnett isn't the only NBA star who has struggled in big moments. Wilt was famous for it. The Mailman choked so many times I once wrote, "You know you're watching ESPN Classic if it's 2 a.m. and Karl Malone looks like he's about to throw up." David Robinson was an extremely nice guy who played like one in big games. 
    
   C-Webb passed the basketball like it was a hand grenade in the clutch. Clyde Drexler always seemed like he'd just downed too much caffeine. Even one of my favorite Celtics, Kevin McHale, got the yips. In Game 2 of the 1984 Finals, his legs shook after he missed that free throw before Gerald Henderson's famous steal. 
    
   The list of guys who came up short is as endless as the one of those who repeatedly came through in the clutch (Michael Jordan, Sam Jones, Reggie Miller, Dennis Johnson, Robert Horry, Larry Legend … ). The question is, how do you end up on one list or the other? What makes for clutch? Is it part of your DNA, or something that's honed through experience and repetition?
• Here's my answer: It's both. One of the most fascinating things about Jordan's career wasn't that he nailed the title-winning shot against Georgetown as a freshman, but that Dean Smith called the play for him. If someone is born with ice water in his veins, you know it. Smith knew it. Then again, get enough reps with anything in life, and you're more likely to succeed. Trying not to sound nervous when I started to do TV and radio a few years ago, I'd overthink and make myself nervous, battling a rush of adrenaline right before my segment started. I've learned to channel that energy now—I can speak in front of large crowds and everything. Why? Because I got my reps.
• How far can experience actually get you in matters of clutchness? After Garnett jumped from high school to the NBA, he played eight years without ever getting past the first round. Fellow high schooler Kobe Bryant landed on a talented Lakers team, failing famously as a rookie (remember his hideous air balls that ended the series against the Jazz in 1997?), then getting swept by the '98 Jazz and '99 Spurs. Name me one memorable Kobe moment from his first three springs. You can't. But 28 meaningful playoff games provided him with valuable pressurized situations. By the time the 2000 postseason rolled around, Kobe was asserting himself, capping it off with an MJ moment in Game 4 of the Finals for a championship team.
• By contrast, poor Garnett was trapped on lousy and half-decent teams until 2004, when he carried the Timberwolves to the Western Conference finals, submitting an ESPN Classic game of his own against the Kings (32 points, 21 rebounds in Game 7) in the second round. But just when it seemed as if he was getting the hang of clutch, Minnesota imploded, missing the playoffs in its next three seasons with KG. Now he's slightly past his prime. Can you blame him for not being clutch when he never got those reps in his formative years? Probably not. Think of his career like a video game: Spend a ton of time playing Grand Theft Auto, and you're much more likely to complete a mission than some guy who doesn't own a PS3, right?
• Fair or unfair, Garnett will always be measured against Tim Duncan, who has already carried the Spurs to four titles. It's easy to forget now that TD had his own blips and stumbles along the way, or that he played in 71 playoff games before famously demolishing the Nets with a 21/20/10 line in the clincher of the 2003 Finals. Wired very much like Garnett—completely selfless, phenomenally competitive, thoughtful as a teammate—Duncan learned to channel his intensity, saving peak performances for when they mattered most. He figured out that there was a crucial difference between a ho-hum January game in Atlanta and a must-win playoff game in LA. He's clearly developed a reliable mental alert: All right, unless I grab 20 rebounds tonight, we're going to lose. Or: If I don't take over this game right now and score every time down the floor, we're cooked. 
    
   Bill Russell had that switch. So did MJ, Bird and Magic.

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