Bill Hicks Live - Satirist, Social Critic, Stand-Up Comedian

Love All the People: The Essential Bill Hicks by Bill Hicks and John Lahr

Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution by Kevin Booth and Michael Bertin

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

http://www.alchemygoods.com/

Two years ago, Eli Reich was a mechanical engineer consultant for a Seattle wind energy company when his messenger bag was stolen. The environmentally conscious Reich, who rode his bike to work every day, decided that instead of buying a new one, he would simply fashion another bag out of used bicycle-tire inner tubes that were lying around his house. Soon compliments on his sturdy black handmade messenger bag turned into requests. “That was the catalyst,” says Reich, who obtained a business license, gave up his day job, and quickly launched Alchemy Goods in the basement of his apartment building. The company’s motto: “Turning useless into useful.”

http://www.BoomerangBoxes.com

When Marty Metro and his wife added up the number of times each of them had moved over the years, it came out to an astounding 29 times. Metro knew they weren’t alone in using massive amounts of cardboard boxes and was convinced he could help movers, businesses and the environment by creating a solution to the cardboard quandary. For now, BoomerangBoxes.com offers an online exchange for those outside the delivery area to link up and exchange boxes with others for a nominal fee. With annual sales projections exceeding $750,000, the company boasts 75 percent-plus gross margins.

http://www.pickydomains.com/

Eugene Gromov is a domain wizard. Software developer by trade, he has accidentally discovered that software companies are having a hard time finding available domains for their new products and services. But coming up with unique, memorable domain names was his hidden talent. After naming domains for others part-time for three years, he was literally forced into going into domain name business full-time. “When I started getting multiple orders a day, I realized that I can’t do it on my own any longer. I needed help”. So he launched PickyDomains.Com a site that aggregates orders for domain names and shares 50% of the profit with people who name domains for him.

http://www.invisiongolf.com/

While golfing with his brother one day, Andy Yocom saw prime advertising space on the flags on the course. He and his brother Timmy reasoned that any marketing messages would get prominent attention if they were placed on the flags, since golfers focus on them when they take their shots. Today, Invision Golf Group has expanded its advertising and marketing services beyond just flags to include whole golf course sponsorship-from banners in locker rooms to advertising on golf carts. The strategy is working: At press time, the sales were standing at $300,000 a year, and the company now has a presence on 142 golf courses in 26 states.

http://knifethrower.com/

Ten years ago, The Great Throwdini (David Adamovich), now 59, retired as a physiology professor, bought a billiard hall and took up knife throwing. Adamovich now holds six world records and performs about 20 solo shows a year. He has performed on Broadway, at corporate events and weddings and on TV shows such as “Late Show with David Letterman” and ESPN’s “Cold Pizza.” He makes around $100,000 a year for his knife-related ventures, but for $75 an hour Adamovich also offers private lessons at his Long Island, N.Y. home.

http://www.lemonaidcrutches.com/

Leg casts decorated with Sharpie markers are so five years ago. What’s the new must-have item for the injured fashionista? Designer crutches, of course. For Laurie Johnson, founder of LemonAid Crutches, the idea of adding a little pizzazz to the drab world of medical supplies was born out of terrible tragedy. In 2002, a small-plane crash took the lives of her husband and 2-year-old son, and left her with a broken femur that wouldn’t heal. A year later, still in emotional and physical pain, Johnson decided to take life’s lemons and make lemonade. It all started when her sister spray-painted Johnson’s crutches and fabric-trimmed the handles. “I sat there thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so silly, but they make me feel better!’” says Johnson, 46. “I said, ‘If I feel this way, someone else is going to feel this way, too.” And though the designer-crutch business may seem like a small niche, Johnson has big plans for several new projects, such as offering crutches to children’s hospitals. Last year Lemon-Aid brought in just under $150,000.

http://www.recycledseatbelts.com/

Betty Funk’s purses, made from used seatbelts, are so strong you can pull a truck with one, as a customer found out when a tow rope proved too short. The purses are so strong, you could whack a purse snatcher into next Tuesday. The strap won’t rip, either, if you get into a tug-of-war with a pilferer. After all, the purses are made from material designed to save your life. Some people balk at the prices, which range from $40 to $130, depending on the size of the bag, and can rise to $160 for custom-made bags. But the business is booming. The company has sold close to 1,000 bags so far.

http://www.ustarnovels.com/

Like so many great business ideas Katie Olver’s eureka moment came to her out of a desire to buy something that didn’t exist. She was on the look-out for a personalized novel as a present for a friend, but the only ones she could find were for children. With a little persuasion, she convinced her partner of seven years, Jon Reader, to help her turn the idea into a business, and got to work on setting up U Star Novels, a series of personalized romance novels where the reader is the protagonist. The 2007 revenue is expected to be around $140,000.

http://www.itsyousmall.com/

Ralph Trumbo is neither an athlete nor a celebrity. Nevertheless, he has a bobblehead likeness of himself sitting on his mantel. Bobbleheads, those shaky-headed 3-D caricatures, have jiggled free of their mass-produced roots of an earlier generation. Once merely featureless figures decked out in team colors and handed out on game day, they now depict just about anyone who wants one. Ralph, who graduated from the University of Iowa with a fine arts degree in 2002, has been drawing caricatures since he was a child. He turned that interest into a job making bobbleheads after graduation. He won’t say how many he makes beyond ”quite a few.” Prices range from $150 to $200.

http://www.gaming-lessons.com/

Tom Taylor never expected to be a player in the business world; he just wanted to play video games. But as he got better and better, his passion for competitive gaming–and his desire to share his expertise with others–grew. Last year, Taylor, a top-five rated player in the pro-gaming circuit, started a video game coaching business to help others who wanted to improve their games. “I wanted to offer them a shortcut so they didn’t have to go through what I did to learn,” says Taylor, who started playing video games at age 7. Running his business, Gaming-Lessons, out of his Jupiter, Fla., home, Taylor draws dozens of clients from middle-school kids to middle-aged parents and from college students to celebrities. His fees? A whopping $65 an hour.

Money for Nothing: Real Wealth, Financial Fantasies and the Economy of the Future

Maximum Marketing, Minimum Dollars: The Top 50 Ways to Grow Your Small Business

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur’s Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

More Online Business Ideas

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of “War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” and “I Don’t Believe in Atheists“, is back with another diatribe about our morally-bankrupt society. Whether you agree with all of his assertions or not, “Empire of Illusion” is a necessary, thought-provoking work on the role of entertainment in American culture.

Particularly fascinating is Hedges’s take on professional wrestling. Whenever an academic brings up wrestling, it is usually as an example of low-brow culture. Hedges doesn’t snub his nose, however: He merely observes and reports.

His thesis that wrestling storylines have “evolved to fit the new era…by focusing on the family dysfunction that comes with social breakdown” is on the money: Gone are the simple bouts of good vs. evil. “Morality is irrelevant,” he writes. “Wrestlers can be good one week and evil the next. All that matters is their own advancement.” The “illusion” here isn’t that wrestling is fake. The “illusion” is that the wrestlers are idealized versions of what we want to become. He asserts that this mirrors a fundamental change in society.

Hedges traces this change through other American institutions (reality television, celebrity culture, the adult industry, universities, psychologists), arguing that we are “unable to distinguish between illusion and reality”. We forgo morals for an elusive and unattainable happiness. He states that we “will either wake from our state of induced childishness…or continue our headlong retreat into fantasy”.

The subtitle–”The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle“–is somewhat of a misnomer. Even with the alarming illiteracy rate in this country, it’s a stretch to say that literacy has literally come to an end. “The Triumph of Spectacle” is a more accurate description of the book’s contents.

“Empire of Illusion” is a snapshot of America, circa 2009 AD. Some of the precepts that it touches on–such as universities churning out morally-dubious graduates–are already coming under populist fire due to the banking crisis. WWE, wrestling’s most popular promotion, has toned down the sex and violence in recent years. The once-popular Jerry Springer Show limps along on basic cable, its cultural relevancy having long since expired.

Hedges believes that the financial crisis “will lead to a period of profound political turmoil and change.” In a recent Truthdig article, he wrote that “Those who care about the plight of the working class and the poor must begin to mobilize quickly or we will lose our last opportunity to save our embattled democracy.” “Empire of Illusion” makes a strong case to be the much-needed cry for arms.

How to profit from complaints

Christmas Decorating As Business

Crowdsource Your Branding

How to build muscle, NOT taking mega doses of protein supplements

new twitter gadgets and tools

Link of the day - I will pay you $25, if you come up with a cool domain name for me.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

1. PickyDomains.com

Get paid for coming up with cool domain names? This is exactly what this online business is about. With all good and obvious domain names long registered, the demand is high for quirky and easy to remember names that will stand out. Full story

2. Thinkofthe.com

Somebody steals your sandwich from the office fridge. This keeps happening again and again. Could this be a start of a great business idea? You bet! Full story

3. Utilikilts.com

Sell skirts to MEN? This has got to be the dumbest business idea ever. Well, this guy sold ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND man-skirts (kilts, really) and I am sure this is a story you’ll want to read. Fullstory

4. Cakerental.com

Why would you want to rent a fake wedding cake? Isn’t is a special occasion? Well, with prices for wedding cakes sky-high this crazy little niche business is booming and something tells me that recession is only going to add new clients. Full story

5. Afterlifetelegrams.com

As the name suggests, this service is for contacting the dead. Terminally ill patients memorize messages and deliver them when opportunity permits.  And no, I am not making this up. Full story

6. Iwearyourshirt.com

Jason Sadler has been selling the upper part of his wardrobe ever day of 2009 to companies that want him to wear a t-shirt with the logo on it. His pricing structure is very interesting though. He’s sold January 1st for $1 and is selling December 31st for $365. Every day in between goes for the price of it’s day of the year. I wasn’t to excited about that until I calculated (using Gauss’s method) how much money he’d be earning for the year: $66,795! Full story

7. Wallstreetprisonconsultants.com

Believe or not, there is a firm that specializes in helping bankers and stock analysts do time: Welcome to Wall Street Prison Consultants. My name is Larry Levine, and I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce  Fedtime 101, a revolutionary new program tailored specifically for white collar offenders  entering the Federal Prison System. Full story
8. RunPee.com

You’re sitting comfortably in your plush chair at the multiplex, when suddenly you feel a twinge in the back of your neck. A quick glance down at your 136-ounce cola and you instantly realize that nature is calling, and it’s urgent. You don’t have time to wait this time, but next time you can plan ahead for your restroom breaks with RunPee.com. Full story9. Cuddleparty.com

Runs events at which adults “explore communication, boundaries, and affection” by donning pajamas and getting physical. Ix-nay on the naughty stuff. Cuddleparty got so big and successful, they even got their own Wikipedia page. Full story

10. SoftwareJudge.com

Trash some crappy software AND get paid for that? If you are a software lover then here is a golden opportunity for you make a few bucks every months for reviewing software at softwarejudge.com. They pay you anywhere between $1 - $50 for each software reviewed. You are not supposed to advertise any software by making a positive review. You can review the software the way you like it. You will be paid whether you make a positive or a negative review. Souns good to you? Full story

Want more examples of crazy business ideas? Here is a list of books you are sure to enjoy. And don’t forget to submit this story to your favorite social network.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur’s Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

How to stop eating and lose fat without any suppliments and day by day dieting

Johnny Cash: The Autobiography

Anchored In Love: An Intimate Portrait of June Carter Cash

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

In this revealing study of a Southside Chicago neighborhood, sociologist Venkatesh opens a window on how the poor live. Focusing on domestics, entrepreneurs, hustlers, preachers and gangs linked in an underground economy that “manages to touch all households,” the book reveals how residents struggle between “their desires to live a just life and their needs to make ends meet as best they can.” In this milieu, African-American mechanics, painters, hairdressers, musicians and informal security guards are linked to prostitutes, drug dealers, gun dealers and car thieves in illegal enterprises that even police and politicians are involved in, though not all are criminals in the usual sense. Storefront clergy, often dependent “on the underground for their own livelihood,” serve as mediators and brokers between individuals and gang members, who have “insinuated themselves—and their drug money—into the deepest reaches of the community.” Although the book’s academic tenor is occasionally wearying, Venkatesh keeps his work vital and poignant by using the words of his subjects, who are as dependent on this intricate web as they are fearful of its dangers.

2. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Economics is not widely considered to be one of the sexier sciences. The annual Nobel Prize winner in that field never receives as much publicity as his or her compatriots in peace, literature, or physics. But if such slights are based on the notion that economics is dull, or that economists are concerned only with finance itself, Steven D. Levitt will change some minds. In Freakonomics (written with Stephen J. Dubner), Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of everyday life don’t need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent crime rates to a drop in violent criminals and, digging further, to the Roe v. Wade decision that preempted the existence of some people who would be born to poverty and hardship. Elsewhere, by analyzing data gathered from inner-city Chicago drug-dealing gangs, Levitt outlines a corporate structure much like McDonald’s, where the top bosses make great money while scores of underlings make something below minimum wage. And in a section that may alarm or relieve worried parents, Levitt argues that parenting methods don’t really matter much and that a backyard swimming pool is much more dangerous than a gun. These enlightening chapters are separated by effusive passages from Dubner’s 2003 profile of Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, which led to the book being written. In a book filled with bold logic, such back-patting veers Freakonomics, however briefly, away from what Levitt actually has to say. Although maybe there’s a good economic reason for that too, and we’re just not getting it yet.

3. Ragnar’s Guide to the Underground Economy

Through detailed case studies Ragnar shows you how carpenters, woodcutters, farmers, housecleaners, computer consultants, mechanics, lawyers, vendors, locksmiths and others are cashing in on today’s booming economy - and keeping what they earn by not paying taxes. From these undergrounders you’ll learn how to locate work, get paid without supplying identifying numbers, prepare a realistic budget, advertise your services or product and finance your project when you can’t go to the bank. You’ll also learn the pitfalls of working off the books and what you can do to prepare for them.

4. How to Survive Without a Salary: Learning How to Live the Conserver Lifestyle

I thought that this book was so funny in places that I haven’t laughed so hard, so much, for a long time. Charles is a skilled writer; the book is very readable, intelligent, thoughtful,and well organized. It contains a copious (even prodigious) amount of tips, for a 200-page book. Very practical, and at the same time touches on abtruse philosophical areas, especially at the end of the book.

Hey, I used to think I was cheap. This guy is CHEAP. His anecdotes include waiting for it to rain to take a shower instead of installing indoor plumbing. He had a big hole in the floor of his entryway, or somewhere in his house, into which the kids and a few guests fell. He refused to spend one cent covering the hole, until a neighbor told him about a steel grate they threw away years ago, so he went to the dump and found it.

The point is that you can learn from a top-notch “conserver”; an applied example I would give is to buy two gallons of milk when it’s on sale and freeze one for later use (works well!). This guy probably drinks powdered milk though.

I disagree with his economic analysis; prudence CAN be a vice, as any virtue most certainly is in its extreme, or even overdone. But Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is not just about “McPimple Burger” or keeping up with the Joneses. Any system on a mass scale is going to have gaping faults, and the weaker of us might succumb to our basest impulses. But perhaps Long goes a bit too far the other way…

At any rate, he sounds like an economic anarchist. Very well thought out book, great advice.

5. Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets

In Freakonomics, many people were fascinated by a section that described how most crack cocaine dealers lived at home with their mothers. Why? They make less money than minimum wage. The source of that factoid was research conducted on site by Sudhir Venkatesh, author of Gang Leader for a Day, who describes in this book how he did that research and came to make decisions one day for part of the Black Kings gang in Chicago.

In the process of reading this book, you’ll learn more than you ever expected to know about the ways that the poorest people support and protect themselves. You’ll also find how drug-dealing gangs are both a help and a hindrance to the poor.

More powerfully, you’ll be exposed to the great difficulties involved in observing the lives of the poor and the gangs that spring from them. The moral and ethical dilemmas this book presents are almost beyond belief.

6. Under the Table and Into Your Pocket: The How and Why of the Underground Economy

Under The Table And Into Your Pocket: The How And Why Of The Underground Economy by Bill Wilson will provide the non-specialist general reader with a complete education on a facet of the American economy rarely (if ever) covered in school. Beginning with an introduction to just some of the ways governmental regulations strangle business, overtax the little guy, and enable Washington to be the drunken big spender that it is today (if you overpay your taxes by $7,000 and don’t reclaim it within three years you’re out of luck - but underpay it by $7,000 and the IRS can and will come after you no matter how much time has passed!), Under The Table proceeds to demonstrate how the little guy can circumvent taxes by doing business away from Big Brother’s prying eyes. From boarding houses and flea markets to roadside merchants and dominatrix work, Under The Table covers the benefits, disadvantages, tips, tricks, techniques and much more of common underground ways to earn a living. Under The Table is emphatically not a legal guide; neither the author nor the publisher assume any responsibility for the use or misuse of information contained within - but the eye-opening ins and outs of a truly free economy make for quite fascinating and advantageous reading.

7. Deep Inside the Underground Economy: How Millions of Americans are Practising Free Enterprise in an Unfree Economy

Are you fed up with giving so much of your hard earned cash to the government, then watching it get spent on ridiculous pork-barrel special-interest projects? Would you like to hold on to more of your money for your own special-interest boondoggles? The underground economy continues to grow in spite of ever-widening atttempts by the government to regulate and tax everything we do. Millions of Americans are practising fee enterprise in today’s increasingly unfree tax society. This is the most comprehensive how-to book ever written for those entrepreneurial individuals who have decided to end their slavery to a wage and to government taxation as well. Discover how you can keep more of what you earn for yourself. Here you will find complete and up-to-date information on the ins and outs of guerrilla capitalism and the underground economy in this country.

8. Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, and Street Scavenging.

In December of 2001 Jeff Ferrell quit his job as tenured professor, moved back to his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, and, with a place to live but no real income, began an eight-month odyssey of essentially living off of the street. Empire of Scrounge tells the story of this unusual journey into the often illicit worlds of scrounging, recycling, and second-hand living. Existing as a dumpster diver and trash picker, Ferrell adopted a way of life that was both field research and free-form survival. Riding around on his scrounged BMX bicycle, Ferrell investigated the million-dollar mansions, working-class neighborhoods, middle class suburbs, industrial and commercial strips, and the large downtown area, where he found countless discarded treasures, from unopened presents and new clothes to scrap metal and even food.

9. McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld

In McMafia, Misha Glenny draws the dark map that lies on the other side of Tom Friedman’s bright flat world. That connected globe not only brings software coders and supply-chain outsourcers closer together; it’s also opened the gates to a criminal network of unsettling vastness, complexity, and efficiency that represents a fifth of the earth’s economy, trading in everything from untaxed cigarettes and the usual narcotics to human lives and nuclear material. Glenny’s a Balkans expert, and he begins his story there, with the illicit–but often state-sponsored–underworld that grew out of the post-Soviet chaos, but he soon follows the contraband everywhere from Mumbai and Johannesburg to rural Colombia and the U.S. suburbs. It’s not just a hodgepodge of scare clips, though: Glenny reports from the ground but follows the leads as high as they go, showing how the dark and bright sides of the flat world are more connected than we imagine.

10. Living Well on Practically Nothing

Living Well on Practically Nothing: Revised and Updated Edition is for people who need to live on a lot less money. If you have been fired, demoted, retired, divorced, widowed, bankrupted or swindled - or you just want to quit your job and remain financially self-reliant - this book is for you. In it are hundreds of tips, secrets and necessary skills for living well on little money. Chapters include: Save Up to $37,000 a Year and Live on $12,000 a Year; Low-Cost Computers for Fun, Profit, and Education; Some Ways to Live on No Money at All; A Day of Cheap Living; A New Career or Business for You; Fix Things and Make Them Last; and Protect Your Investments and Make Them Grow. From cover to cover, this book is stocked with proven methods for saving money on shelter, food, clothing, transportation, entertainment, health care and more. The author left the “system” in 1969 and has worked for himself ever since. Let him show you how you, too, can live happily, comfortably and with complete financial freedom.

P.S. If you’d like to know how I make my money (it’s not really “shadow” or illegal at all, but it give me freedom to do anything I want to, while providing steady stream of income), feel free to check out my websites - PickyDomains.com, NicheGeek.Com, StandupKings.com, SoftwareJudge.Com, Best Free Documentaries.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Link of the day - Who Is Shawn Casey? Is He For Real?

If you liked the video, you will enjoy Peter’s latest book - Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse

Peter Schiff, son of American patriot Irwin Schiff, has written a very useful book that can not only assist you to take the concrete steps necessary for financial survival, but also change your individual psychology toward the storm on the horizon that is rapidly gathering strength. Today, we have the illusion of prosperity, and the sooner we break through that delusional state, the sooner we can prepare for darker days.

At this point, there are so many possible triggers for the Second Great Depression, it’s striking that it has not already begun. The sub-prime meltdown may just be such a trigger that brings down the house of cards, once it becomes more clear which entities actually hold all the risk created as part of the Housing Bubble. Wall Street, sub-prime lenders, and the large banks have been ingenious in their ability to push risk onto other parties, but it’s not clear if the counter-parties will have the ability to weather the defaults. Thus, the risk may yet reside with the banks, which normally would have been more restricted in the number of loans they could create by more traditional standards. So much debt has been created, and so much risk obfuscated, that it is hard to imagine our present illusion of prosperity can be maintained much longer.

Mr. Schiff breaks through our modern mythology by shattering these illusions, and here is where he shines best. A bear’s bear, Mr. Schiff steps down from the towers of the economic elite to provide analogies that can be readily digested by more casual readers. The analogy of the Asians and the American trapped on an island together is apropos, as it reveals much about the true state of international trade. The Dollar Bubble heavily distorts trade in favor of America, which benefits disproportionately from the inflated value of the dollar.

Mr. Schiff also understands very well the entitlement crisis brewing, and aptly names Social Security a Ponzi Scheme. Most people in Generations X and Y understand that we’re the bagholders scheduled for the Ponzi Scheme, but many Baby Boomers love to be delusional about this tragic farce, thinking it’s a form of savings rather than our government writing worthless IOUs to itself and lying to the American people. They think Gen X “owes” it to them! Ha Ha! The sooner we can end social security, the sooner we can start saving real money with real assets. Until then, we are slaves waiting for generational emancipation.

I remember the first time I heard Mr. Schiff speak on CNBC. The discussion was about inflation, and I couldn’t help but notice Mr. Schiff’s definition diverged significantly from the definition used by the brainless cheerleaders on CNBC, and for that matter, our government and most of Wall Street. The proper definition of inflation is “debasement” and secondarily, “an increase in the supply of money which causes a rise in prices” (Webster’s 1982). Note the difference between these two definitions and the more commonly used definition today, which is simply “a rise in prices.”

CNBC would have us believe that money supply doesn’t matter when you can fool people into believing that the risks associated with exuberant money creation won’t be felt by anyone, or only by parties “most able to bear that risk.” How convenient! What the government doesn’t want you to know is that the Federal Reserve creates inflation, and both government and the Federal Reserve benefit from this inflation at everyone else’s expense. In the history of every mania and crash, rampant money creation is behind the genesis of every one. Usually, it takes a unique form. In this case, it was the Housing Bubble. So, inflation and the Housing Bubble are intimately linked. As many have often pointed out, the Housing Bubble was needed to replace the Nasdaq Bubble that popped in 2000-2002.

Finally, the juicy part - how to survive. Mr. Schiff advocates foreign equities that are sound and pay excellent dividends, which due to the Dollar Bubble, might do very well. So long as there is sufficient domestic demand (abroad) after a currency revaluation, this appears good advice. Although, one has to wonder if the U.S. catches cold, would Asians follow?

Next, buy gold and silver, and mining shares. This is pretty standard advice from the “Gloom and Doom” crowd as we are sometimes named. Lastly, he recommends staying liquid, which generally means reducing debt and keeping assets in a form that can be readily converted from one type to another. He recommends leveraging overvalued home equity in other currencies and storing small amounts of imported goods likely to rise in price, and a few other measures.

The piggy bank on the cover is a nice touch, and the list of books for further reading is most helpful for those who have not already read many of the titles.

A very quick read, easy to understand, and very well put together. I highly recommend this book.

Massive Economic Disaster Seems Possible — Will Survivalists Get the Last Laugh?

Naomi Klein: Bush Sees Crises in Fuel, Food, Housing and Banking as Chance to Exploit Us More

Crude Awakening - The Oil Crash

What If US Collapses? Soviet Collapse Lessons Every American Needs To Know

The Credit Crisis Is Going to Get Worse

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Link of the day - Free $50 Kmart card.

This six part series on philosophy is presented by popular British philosopher Alain de Botton, featuring six thinkers who have influenced history, and their ideas about the pursuit of the happy life.

Episode 1: Socrates on Self-Confidence - Why do so many people go along with the crowd and fail to stand up for what they truly believe? Partly because they are too easily swayed by other people’s opinions and partly because they don’t know when to have confidence in their own.

Episode 2: Epicurus on Happiness - British philosopher Alain De Botton discusses the personal implications of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270BCE) who was no epicurean glutton or wanton consumerist,but an advocate of “friends, freedom and thought” as the path to happiness.

Episode 3: Seneca on Anger Roman philosopher Lucious Annaeus Seneca (4BCE-65CE), the most famous and popular philosopher of his day, took the subject of anger seriously enough to dedicate a whole book to the subject. Seneca refused to see anger as an irrational outburst over which we have no control. Instead he saw it as a philosophical problem and amenable to treatment by philosophical argument. He thought anger arose from certain rationally held ideas about the world, and the problem with these ideas is that they are far too optimistic. Certain things are a predictable feature of life, and to get angry about them is to have unrealistic expectations.

Episode 4: Montaigne on Self-Esteem looks at the problem of self-esteem from the perspective of Michel de Montaigne (16th Century), the French philosopher who singled out three main reasons for feeling bad about oneself - sexual inadequecy, failure to live up to social norms, and intellectual inferiority - and then offered practical solutions for overcoming them.

Episode 5: Schopenhauer on Love - Alain De Botton surveys the 19th Century German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) who believed that love was the most important thing in life because of its powerful impulse towards ‘the will-to-life’.

Episode 6: Nietzsche on Hardship - British philosopher Alain De Botton explores Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) dictum that any worthwhile achievements in life come from the experience of overcoming hardship. For him, any existence that is too comfortable is worthless, as are the twin refugees of drink or religion.

The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World

Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Why is it so difficult to sell a plummeting stock or end a doomed relationship? Why do we listen to advice just because it came from someone “important”? Why are we more likely to fall in love when there’s danger involved? In Sway, renowned organizational thinker Ori Brafman and his brother, psychologist Rom Brafman, answer all these questions and more.

Sway introduces us to the Harvard Business School professor who got his students to pay $204 for a $20 bill, the head of airline safety whose disregard for his years of training led to the transformation of an entire industry, and the football coach who turned conventional strategy on its head to lead his team to victory. We also learn the curse of the NBA draft, discover why interviews are a terrible way to gauge future job performance, and go inside a session with the Supreme Court to see how the world’s most powerful justices avoid the dangers of group dynamics.

2. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

What Ariely has done here is shift a lot of the thinking developed by such pioneers as Kahneman & Tversky who worked in behavioural economics, and moved it into the everyday sphere. And he’s done a great, insightful job. Where the behavioural economists are focused on financial decisions (why we buy high and sell low - and confound the assumptions of the classic economists who assume ‘the rational man,) Ariely eschews the technical language and walks us through everyday examples of our often fuzzy and quite irrational decision-making.

3. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

I think “Paradox of Choice” does bring insight into shopping, but its range is actually much wider than that. Schwartz discusses people making difficult decisions about jobs, families, where to live, whether to have children, how to spend recreational time, choosing colleges, etc. He talks about why making these decisions today is much harder than it was 30 years ago, and he offers many practical suggestions for how to address decision-making so that it creates less stress and more happiness. He even discusses how so much additional choice affects children, and how parents can help make childhood (particularly young childhood) less stressful.

4. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“Buy on apples, sell on cheese” is an old proverb among wine merchants. Taking a bite of an apple before tasting wine makes it easier to detect flaws in the wine, and the buyer who does so will not as easily make the mistake of paying more than the wine is worth. Cheese, on the other hand, pairs well with wine and enhances its flavor, so a seller who offers cheese may command a higher price for the wine (and may even deserve it, if the wine is intended to be drunk with cheese). The proverb captures important psychological nuances of choice. The same product - a bottle of wine or a risky medical procedure - may be perceived differently depending on its context, and it is often possible to arrange the context to influence a choice while still maintaining the decision maker’s autonomy.

5. Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things

Richard Wiseman is an experimental psychologist and professor of “public understanding of psychology.” In this book, he discusses dozens of experiments performed by himself and other psychologists around the world over the course of the last hundred years. All these experiments have in common is unusual research methodology or amusing results.

Topics include studies of personal ads and pickup lines, determining which are most effective, how to detect liars, manifestations of prejudice and hypocrisy (are religious people or priests more honest or generous than others? it has been tested). Wiseman even ran tests to see which experiments in the book are the most interesting, to help the reader know what would be the best conversation starters at parties.

6. Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things

Clinical psychologist Van Hecke has compiled a list of 10 mental glitches that have infiltrated contemporary society, afflicting even the smartest among us, limiting thought, success and relationships. Van Hecke devotes a chapter to each blind spot, including “Not stopping to think,” “Not noticing,” “Jumping to conclusions” and “Missing the big picture.” Examining each in detail, Van Hecke details the root causes of these unconscious habits (”information overload,” “our tendency to habituate”) and tactics for overcoming them, using humorous anecdotes and other real-life examples to drive her points; the key is remaining open to new ideas and taking a step back from our busy lives in order to process information, situations and people. Filling in “the big picture” herself, Van Hecke demonstrates how embracing and understanding our weaknesses can not only improve personal and professional relationships, but also entire communities; this self-help is a welcome, highly readable first step.

7. Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind

In “Kluge,” psychologist Gary Marcus looks to the many and varied foibles, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies of the human mind and concludes that our brains are not, in fact, models of brilliance and efficiency, but are rather cobbled-together systems, designed for one purpose and pressed into action for another - the classic definition of a kluge.

The most famous kluge is probably the case of the carbon scrubbers on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. Crunched for time, engineers managed to create a system out of duct tape and socks (seriously) that worked adequately enough to clean the air on the space module- even though none of the materials they used were designed for, or optimal for, the job at hand. The result was ugly and inefficient - but it kept the astronauts alive. Likewise, Marcus argues, evolution has endowed humans with a hodgepodge of genetic material - the DNA equivalent of duct tape - with which to build all the sophisticated systems that supposedly set us apart from other creatures, like language, memory, and reason. The result is, for example in the case of language, “a vocal apparatus more byzantine than a bagpipe made up entirely of pipe cleaners and cardboard dowels.”

8. The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

The author writes to the layman, making the language of statistics, probability, randomness a fascinating read. It’s clear that he’s well aware of the fallacies and delusions (and consequent harm) to which most of us are easy prey. But he leaves it to the reader to draw any philosophical-theological inferences about the need for greater humility. His immediate goal is to help the reader understand the distinction between 1. the “common-sense” logic employed by self-serving finite beings coping with problems in the material world and 2. a “scientific method” that takes nothing for granted in a universe of perpetual flux. More miraculous than either the accomplishments of the romantic hero or the intercessions of a supreme being (everyday stuff for most of us) is the rare discovery that two things (or “events” in the spatial-temporal order) suspected of being connected (a hypothesis) in fact cannot be shown “not” to have such a relationship (the proof).

9. Guesstimation: Solving the World’s Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin

Somehow, guessing at numbers is unsettling, even though I’ve done it all my life. John Adam is a professor of applied mathematics, with a degree in physics. Larry Weinstein is a nuclear physicist. Their book is devoted to proving that intelligent guessing is useful and fun. The book lays out some general principles but its great strength lies in the interesting problems, a series of hints to help you solve each problem, and an interesting discussion of the pitfalls and triumphs involved.

10. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Cialdini believes that influence is a science. This idea attracted me. As a rhetorician, I have always thought of persuasion as more of an art. Cialdini, however, makes a first-rate case for the science point of view. But maybe most importantly, he makes his case in a well-written, intelligent, and entertaining manner. Not only is this an important book to read, it is a fun book to read too.

He introduces you to six principles of ethical persuasion: reciprocity, scarcity, liking, authority, social proof, and commitment/consistency. A chapter is devoted to each and you quickly see why Cialdini looks at influence as a science. Each principle is backed by social scientific testing and restesting. Each chapter is also filled with interesting examples that help you see how each principle can be applied. By the end of the book, I had little doubt that these are six important dimensions of human interaction.

Fart Gene Isolated. Now, That’s A Breakthough!

Mariage Annulled, After Bride Turns Out To Be Not A Virgin.

Whoops. Antibacterial Wipes Can Spread Bacteria

Weird $4 Gas Side-Effect

What Do People Do When Their Neighbors Win In Lottery?

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

What links a tourist who lost 84 kilograms of Bombay mix on holiday with another who had his camera stolen by a monkey? Both are among the more unusual claims received by travel insurance companies. Times Money has trawled through the files of some of the UK’s biggest insurers to bring you the 25 most bizarre travel insurance claims ever.

1. One thing you don’t expect when you go on holiday is to be harassed by a monkey. One British traveller in Gibraltar, however, was so besieged by the attentions of an over-friendly primate that he asked his insurer to refund the cost of his trip. The insurer refused but did pay out for his camera, which the monkey had run off with one evening.

2. Monkeys also blighted the romantic getaway of a couple in Malaysia, who foolishly left the window to their chalet open during the day. They returned to find their underwear, clothing and belongings strewn across the resort and neighbouring rainforest. Luckily for the clothes-less couple, their insurer paid the claim.

3. One unlucky pensioner managed to lose his false teeth after throwing up over the side of a cruise ship on the choppy seas of the Bay of Biscay. Thankfully for the squeamish septuagenarian, his misplaced dentures were covered in his travel insurance policy under lost baggage, so his claim was paid.

4. Another unfortunate pensioner had to make an even more embarrassing travel claim after a stroll on the deck of a cruise ship went disastrously wrong. The poor gentlemen was chatting with friends when a strong gust of wind lifted his toupee off his head and blew it into the sea. He never got over the shame but at least his travel policy reimbursed the cost of his hairpiece.

5. It is all too easy to lose your sunglasses, or even your passport, on holiday. Less easy, you might think, to misplace 34 large bags of Bombay mix. Yet one holidaymaker claimed he had lost £300-worth of the spicy snack while in Europe. At roughly 89p for a 250g bag, the misplaced mix would have weighed a hefty 84 kilograms. Needless to say, his insurance company turned him down.

6. It is a good idea to keep your wallet secure at all times when you are away, as one careless Briton discovered to his cost in Israel. The holidaymaker accidentally dropped his wallet down a drain in Natanya. However, his claim wasn’t for his lost credit cards or cash. It was for hospital treatment after being stung by a poisonous scorpion while reaching down into the drain to get his possessions back. Thankfully, his travel insurance covered the cost of treatment.

7. A holidaymaker in Spain lost his camera after setting it down beside him on a park bench. The strap, hanging tantalisingly down over the edge of the seat, caught the attention of a passing dog, which grabbed it and ran off with the camera. His insurer paid for a new camera under accidental damage.

8. One family camping in a remote field in Wales had their peace disturbed when a parachutist from a nearby airbase missed his target and scored a direct hit, landing on their tent and destroying their camping equipment. Sadly, the family weren’t covered for accidental damage so their insurer didn’t reimburse them.

9. It’s every parent’s nightmare. Your children are playing on the beach and they think it would be fun to bury your camcorder worth £600. Thankfully, when this happened to a family in Cornwall, their insurer saw the funny side and refunded the cost.

10. Police in a holiday resort in France were on the lookout for a wrinkle-free burglar after a woman who had her cosmetics bag stolen from her hotel room admitted that she had transferred medical-strength haemorrhoid cream into an empty tub of moisturiser earlier in the holiday. Her claim for make-up, lotions and perfume was paid.

11. A holidaymaker who was refused entry to a plane at Manchester Airport had his travel-insurance claim for holiday cancellation declined after it emerged that he had actually booked a flight from Manchester, New Hampshire, USA.

12. Mis-reading your flight details is easy to do, usually necessitating a frantic rush to the departure gate. But one family that turned up late for their flight had no such panic. Their plane had departed the previous month. They were denied compensation from their travel insurer.

13. A holidaymaker who arrived in a ski resort only to find that there was not enough snow, claimed for the cost of the brand new skis she had bought before leaving the UK. Unsurprisingly, the insurer rejected her claim.

14. A man walking along the street in Greece became so transfixed by two bikini-clad girls that he walked straight into a glass-panelled bus shelter and broke his nose. He successfully claimed on his travel insurance for his hospital bills.

15. The fairytale wedding day for a British couple on a West Indian beach went up in smoke after the bride’s dress caught fire from a brick of coal that fell from the BBQ. The quick-thinking groom picked up his now blazing bride, ran along the beach and tossed her into the ocean. They were able to claim on their travel insurance policy for the ruined wedding outfits as they had taken out wedding cover before jetting off.

16. Another couple stayed in a Parisian hotel room infested with fleas. After two days of itching and scratching, the pair cut their trip short and returned home, where they hastily burnt all their clothes on a bonfire. However, their claims for replacement wardrobe were rejected.

17. A traveller who lost his bag on holiday claimed only for its contents: a bottle of water, a newspaper and a packet of mints. With an excess on his insurance policy of £50, his claim was rejected.

18. When you’re holidaying in the Black Forest, it’s not thieves that you need to watch out for. One family left the door to their chalet open and came home to find that their wallets and passports had been eaten by a greedy goat, who had also chomped through some sandwiches that had been sitting on the kitchen table. The family’s claim for cost of new passports and wallets was rejected.

19. Sometimes Dads don’t always know best. A resourceful father whisked his teenage daughter to a local hairdresser, after she frazzled her hair on the oven in their holiday apartment in Spain. The result was hardly the work of Mr Toni and Mr Guy, leaving the girl running in tears from the salon. The dad tried, but failed, to claim the cost of the disastrous haircut from his insurance policy.

20. A chilled-out traveller in Sri Lanka needed £400 worth of hospital treatment after a large, ripe coconut fell from a tree and landed squarely on her head while she was peacefully reading below. She was knocked out cold, which is hardly surprising. Fresh coconuts weigh roughly 2 kilograms, and the trees grow up to 30 metres tall. The coconut would have been falling at 53 miles per hour when it hit the poor woman on the skull. Her insurer covered her medical expenses.

21. Meanwhile Direct Line received a claim for two lost coconuts from a couple who returned home from a holiday in Mauritius. As a coconut costs just 69p (from your local Tesco), the claim was rejected. The couple’s excess on their policy meant they would have paid for the first £50 of the cost of any claim.

22. A customer submitted a claim for a “guitar made out of a pumpkin”. The slightly baffled staff at Direct Line were forced to reject the claim.

23. The clue was in neon lights above the door. A young party animal in Greece got badly burnt when she tried to order a cocktail in local hangout called “Fire Bar”. Ignoring the loud warning buzzer, and the disappearance of her fellow drinkers, she stood firmly at the bar waiting to be served when it suddenly became engulfed in flames. She received third degree burns to her hands, and successfully claimed £300 worth of medical expenses.

24. A British backpacker was chased down the street by an angry bull in Kerala, Southern India. It wasn’t clear from his claim whether he provoked the animal, but he did require £2,800 worth of hospital treatment after the attack, which was reimbursed by his travel insurer.

25. Finally, according to one long-serving insurance underwriter, there have been more Rolex Oyster watches, worth upwards of £1,000, recorded as lost in the Costa Del Sol in the Spain than have ever been manufactured.

Via - Money Central

Bentleys, Porsches And Other Top Line Cars Repo’d In Record Numbers

NYC cabbie is fined $1,000 for foul-mouthed tirade

The most extraordinary mathematician of the 20th century celebrated his 80th birthday, crazy and alone

Ancient humans started down the path of evolving into two separate species before merging back into a single population

Michigan youngster collects a million pennies for his school

Bookmark It

Hide Sites