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Small, buzzing bees. They bothered you at your picnics when you were a kid. You never really took much notice of them, until one day, they started to disappear. Sounds like science fiction, right? Well believe it or not, bees all over the country have been disappearing at an alarming rate over the past 6 months.

Dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, by scientists, this phenomenon is leading to millions upon millions of honey bees mysteriously dying. Well, big deal, you say.. I really don’t like the bees anyway! Many people aren’t aware of this, but the bees ability to pollinate crops is absolutely crucial to the entire agricultural industry in the United States. Crops such as apples, almonds, cotton, onions, broccoli, carrots, sunflowers, cantaloupe and honeydew melons are pollinated a majority of the time by honey bees. Without the bees, the crops don’t get pollinated, and therefore the fruit won’t grow. This creates a problem for not only farmers, but consumers as well. Some fruits may start to see slight increases in price as the lack of bees affects the production numbers across the board.

The CCD phenomenon has been reported in some 30 odd states across the country, with more and more states chiming in to report a strange loss of the bees as well. It has even been reported abroad in countries such as Canada, India, Brazil, and some regions in Europe as well. The House Subcommittee on Horticulture and Agriculture even held a hearing on March 29, 2007 to try and flesh out the exact nature of the problem and some potential solutions. The most interesting part is that in most cases the bees never even come back to their hives – they just disappear.

There are several theories as to why this is happening, including lack of genetic diversity, contamination of their environment, disease, or a combination. The most interesting theory, in my humble opinion, is that the proliferation of mobile phones may be to blame. Scientists from Landau University have done a study whereby they placed a cell phone near a bee colony, and the bees refused to return to that colony. They believe that the radiation may be interfering with the bees navigational systems.

Another facet of this problem that you should be concerned about is the financial aspect of it all. What if the major agri-businesses saw huge losses in most of their crops? What if you were invested in those companies – would your portfolio take a big hit because of the lack of bees? Now you may think that I’m just over-exaggerating everything, but to be honest I really am concerned. Not only are the small farmers all the way up to the major company farms at risk, so are all the companies and people along the supply chain. We have done so much damage to the planet in recent times that things may be slowly falling apart around us. I hope that some solutions crop up to help deal with the loss of these bees and hopefully reverse the slow deaths of such large numbers of colonies, but only time will tell.

For further reading, you might want to check out GNN’s excellent article, “Please Lord, not the bees”, or the Wikipedia entry on Colony Collapse Disorder.

Well that got me thinking, just what would our world, and business specifically, look like without cell phones. Could you go a whole day without a cell phone? A whole week? The cell phone has become so integral and so essential that it’s hard to imagine a world without them, just like you’d have a hard time imagining a day without your car, or without watching a television.

Photo by Prosto Photo’s

Of course, while drivers enjoy their cell phones, it also hurts their ability to do what you’re supposed to do while in a car’s driver seat: drive your car! (Outrageous, I know) University of Utah psychologists had people sit in advanced driving simulators, and had them drive while talking on their cell phones. Guess what? They found that “motorists who talk on handheld or hands-free cellular phones are as impaired as drunken drivers.” Wow. So should we outlaw using cell phones while driving? Should people have to pull over? There have been bills floating around various city and state legislators around the country to force people to do just that, but they have had a hard time being passed.

It seems to me that what we should be doing instead of worrying about this is pushing for cars that can drive themselves! We already have the Lexus LS460 that parks itself. So listen up, car manufacturer’s! Get a car that drives itself and cell phone usage in the car will no longer be a problem. The LS460 also has a system built in that will automatically active the brakes just before an impact with a pedestrian or other object, lessening the impact and potentially saving lives.

Overall, cell phones are a necessary tool, but they just aren’t safe to use while driving. If you have to use your cell phone while you’re in a car, get a headset. I’m only preaching because I want to cut down on the number of accidents that occur while people are on their cell phones!

Some interesting stats: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) states that 85 percent of all cell phone customers talk on the phone while driving. It has been estimated that 6 percent of auto accidents each year are caused by drivers talking on their phones. This total means 2,600 people will be killed and 330,000 will be injured in cell phone related car accidents this year.

Second Life is the more established of the two (Yes I’m ignoring There and a few other worlds, there’s no time man!), so let’s look at SL first. The blog Second Life Insider tracks the daily movements of money on Second Life, and for April 26th $1.2 million US dollars were spent, and $30,000 of stock was traded on the WSE (World Stock Exchange). Wow. That is unbelievable. Where do they come up with those numbers, you ask? On the Second Life’s official Economic Statistics page, of course! Those numbers alone should make businesses stop and take pause, if nothing else.

What are the business uses of Second Life? Well since everything is user created, there is a market for clothing, items, and other do-dads that have been designed by builders. Several shopping websites have been setup, that can take dollars, transfer them to Lindens (The official currency of Second Life), pay them to the seller, then facilitate the transfer of the purchased item to the Second Life user in-world. One example of these is SL Exchange. One interesting item would be the Virtual Reality Room, which in essence is just like the Holodeck on every nerd’s favorite show, Star Trek. It allows you to load up any type of environment you can think of, just like a Holodeck. Wired evan wrote an article entitled “Second Life’s Must-Have Stuff”, so people are definitely making money that way. Even American Apparel is getting into the clothing on Second Life act, opening up a store in the Linden Labs world.

Besides offering goods, one can offer services. This is where most of the companies are currently making inroads into Second Life. For instance, H & R Block even bought its own island and created a “virtual tax experience” where people can go for free tax information. They can also purchase a discounted version of the company’s “Tango” product. I prefer swing dancing, myself.

So who else has shown up? Scion released a virtual car into Second Life to promote itself, along with Pontiac and Toyota. Coldwell Bankers has entered Second Life in an effort to get into the online real estate business. This really is serious stuff, and companies are spending a lot of money to get things going online, although it pales in comparison to traditional advertising outlets. Maybe that’s why it’s so popular! (As of today, the LindeX (the online currency exchange over at Second Life) shows a ratio of 267 Lindens to every dollar. Pretty soon Second Life is going to have a GDP that will rival small countries!)

Sony’s Playstation Home has yet to be released, so I’ll just be touching on it briefly. It’s scheduled for release in Fall of 2007, and will be available as a free download for PS3 owners. In Second Life, you must pay a monthly fee to own any land; I wonder if Home will be the same. Right now, the biggest difference to me is the space in which you enjoy each virtual environment. Second Life is only available for computers, and as such is usually enjoyed in the comfort of your bedroom (or maybe the family room if that’s where your computer lies), whereas Home will be used in a PS3, and as such will be proudly displayed on the biggest television in the house. Why would you do that, you ask? Well it just so happens that Sony plans to make movies available for download directly within the Home environment. So you could be hanging out with all your friends online, then all decide to watch a movie, and it would immediately be streamed to everyone’s televisions, so you could all enjoy the movie simultaneously. Who really notices the person next to you in a movie theater anyways? (Unless you just needed a place to get away from Mom and Dad so you could make out with your new girlfriend).

The key question is, how does Sony plan to make money off of this, because of course money drives our wonderful capitalistic society. Turns out that they plan to lease space to companies, which can then offer their own games or products or services or whatever, but Sony has been curiously quiet about which companies have signed up and how many there really are. Now I’m sure businesses will be lining up at the door to target that ever-so-hard-to-reach 13-21 year old male market that spends gobs of money on video games every year (Incidentally, a study by the Wall Street Journal found that more money had been spent on video games than movie theater tickets over the past two years, to the tune of $8.9 billion versus $7.3 billion in box offices receipts), but what will their capabilities be? In Second Life, users can use a scripting language to create anything, but it remains to be seen whether Home will be that open and available to either companies or users. Honestly, I know of not a single friend that owns the PS3, and although I have heard of people buying it simply because it’s a cheap blu-ray disc player, I wonder if this will help Sony with PS3 sales, or if this is merely an effort to capitalize on a trend! Only time will tell…

In the end, online virtual worlds could become the next World Wide Web – what consumers will use when they go shopping for clothes, immersed in an online exotic locale before they take the leap to buy plane tickets to the real one, how they interact with their friends (This stuff makes Web 2.0 look so last year!), and maybe even how they met their husbands or wives. The potential is out there, unfortunately nobody knows what the best iteration will look like in ten years, so companies should really just hedge their bets and be everywhere, and that way when the next big thing hits the front cover of Time magazine, they’ll already have mastered it. And for you individuals, spend some time on either service and see if you feel comfortable building houses, selling clothes, running a detective agency (There really is one on Second Life!), and maybe it could become your hobby/business venture. You won’t know until you try.

… encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire – to satisfy our political, economic or military needs. In turn, they bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people. The owners of U.S. engineering/construction companies become fabulously wealthy.

Wow, does that blow my mind. I mean, we all knew the United States was leveraging its position as a global power player to force smaller countries to do its bidding, but this is on a scale never before imagined.

The very first question out of my (and it seems everyone else’s) mind is, is this guy for real? A quick look on Amazon brings up the fact that Perkins is also the author of books such as “Psychonavigation: Techniques for Travel Beyond Time” and “Shapeshifting: Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation”. They are spirituality related books, and while I certainly don’t think that should have any relevance, many do. I suppose everything you read these days should be taken with a grain of salt!

Moving along, the book is divided into four parts, with each part representing a different period of time. Part I includes the years 1963 to 1971, and covers the story of how Perkins ended up joining the Peace Corps and going to Ecuador, being trained to become an EHM (economic hit man, get with it) by a beautiful and mysterious woman named Claudine, and his first major assignment, Indonesia. Perkins worked for an engineering company called Chas T Main Inc., which similar to Halliburton and Kellog, Brown, and Root, represented some of the major engineering companies who benefited from the work of the EHMs.

Part II deals with the Panama Canal and Saudi Arabia. Again Perkins tells of his exploits in the region, how the America companies exploited the poor indigenous cultures, and especially about his fascination with Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. I am very much interested in global politics and finance, so this book was very interesting just because it let me peer into a world that most Americans would normally have no idea about. Perkins points out how the indigenous people, while poor, may be happier than us, because “.. the wealthiest cultures in human history are plagued with the highest rates of suicide, drug abuse, and violence”. The author makes many salient points throughout the book, but the switching between historically/culturally relevant stories, global macroeconomic lessons, and personal revelations does not always go smoothly. Several times I found myself wishing the story would be over or the personal awakening would pass – I suppose I was hoping for more of a financial/economic focus in the book.

Part III covers the time period between 1975-1981. During this time, Perkins was dealing with the Shah of Iran, Columbia, and Ecuador. Columbia has had a very storied history, and those wishing to investigate Columbian history (and the drug wars specifically) should read a book called Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlawby Mark Bowden.

Part IV is 1981 to the present. The two biggest events that took place were the deaths of the Panamanian president, Omar Torrijos, and the death of the Ecuadorian president, Jaime Roldos. Both were populist presidents loved by the lower and middle class, but shared in their refusal to bow down to the “corporatocracy” (The combination of corporations, banks, and governments all looking to further global empire, as Perkins describes it) interests of American empire. For this, says Perkins, the CIA assassinated them.

This book is a fast and easy read. Clocking in around 220 pages, you could finish this in a few days if you really put your mind to it. The question, though, would be is this book really worth your time? Maybe if you really had no clue about the America empire this book would help open your eyes, or if you were fascinated by world politics and economics (like me), but for the well read historically informed citizen this book merely repeats what you already know. However, many people have not peered into this historical period and may benefit from the lessons that Perkins hands down. This book is full of fascinating history, interesting stories of political figures, and even with the duplicative nature of Perkins’ remorseful stories, I would still recommend it to friends (And isn’t that the true test of any book). Stay tuned for my next book review, Global Financial Warriors, by John B. Taylor.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Yes I make a little bit of money if you buy the book, thanks for asking.

Web 2.0 refers to the usage of the World Wide Web as an interactive medium, inviting users to take part in shaping the content of their favorite websites. A few examples include Wikipedia, Myspace, and Del.icio.us. All these sites allow users to create their own content, which then becomes available for everyone to read. Many magazines and newspapers have done articles stating that Web 2.0 is the next evolution of the Internet and the Web, and a conscious person will want to take advantage of Web 2.0 for career development and advancement. So what can you do with Web 2.0 to further your career?


One easy way is to use LinkedIn.com’s networking feature. LinkedIn is similar to Myspace and other social networking sites, which allow the user to create a specialized profile detailing their personality. However, LinkedIn is especially focused towards business use, and being “Linked In” could help enormously when you meet and network with other professionals in your field. It also can help when potential employers use the site to search for relevant candidates for a job search they’re performing.


Another possible way is to self-promote by submitting relevant websites to the various Web 2.0 sites that promote sharing of bookmarks and interesting sites, such as del.icio.us and Digg. These sites allow anyone to post a website, which then becomes publicly viewable by all site viewers. As more and more people submit a link to the same post, it becomes more highly rated and easily viewed by people coming to the site. If you are a photographer, for instance, you could submit a link to an amazing photo you took to all the different bookmarking sites, which would broaden exposure to your photography by putting the image in front of a large set of eyes.


A third popular way is to use Myspace’s networking feature. Myspace is a website which allows people to create profiles unique to themselves or their band. Within a Myspace profile, you can select several different job titles as ones you would like to inform people that you are interested in. In this manner, you can start to network with other people who have profiles on Myspace and are also interested in networking about the same job. Myspace is especially valuable simply because so many millions of people use it everyday. For instance, as a writer for Helium I could choose Writing as a networking preference, and people who want to find other writers would find my profile when they searched through the networking feature within Myspace. You could then setup your Myspace profile as a kind of resume, detailing how great you are at certain tasks and giving references to backup your claims.

A commonality between Web 2.0 sites is that the ability to post content is free, and thus is a great place to market yourself and your skill set while still remaining within a specific budget to handle your personal advertising. This is in contrast to traditional methods of promotion, such as direct mail, that have high costs. Therefore if you run your own business, or feel that your name recognition is important, Web 2.0 sites can be invaluable self-promoting mechanisms, both within your industry and across the web.

In summation, Web 2.0 offers someone looking to further their career many different options for enhancing their visibility within a particular industry. Try and submit great content, across a broad range of Web 2.0 sites, and see where the technology revolution takes you!

What is your credit report?

Your credit report is essentially a compilation of your credit history, including such things as all the credit you have applied for, money you owe, and bills you haven’t paid. The information is compiled from information supplied by banks, various merchants, and any other creditors. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is the government agency who has forced the credit agencies to set everything up so that consumers can check their credit reports for free. The bottom line is that everything is now golden, and consumers need to take advantage of this opportunity to make sure their credit is correctly being reported. The website that has been setup is called www.annualcreditreport.com, and it is the ONLY site that you can use to get the report for free. You’ll see ads on television for freecreditreport.com and a few others, but they don’t offer completely free services (free credit report tries to get you to sign up for their credit monitoring service (which costs money) before they give you access to your free report).

Who manages your credit report?

The three major credit agencies are Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, and they are sponsors of annualcreditreport.com. They have information on millions of Americans, and have great impact on many different aspects of your life (Nervous? I would be). You are allowed to obtain your free report once every 12 months from each of the agencies. What I do is stagger my free report orders, so that every four months I rotate between the agencies. For instance, I’ll order my free report from Equifax in January, Experian in May, and TransUnion in September. This way you’ll have more chances of picking up a mistake or a case of identity theft. If you have an aversion to ordering using your computer, you can call a toll free number to order the report, 1-877-322-8228.

Your credit score

The last thing to understand is the difference between your credit report and your credit score. Your credit report is freely available, but your credit score will cost you about $8. The report is a listing of outstanding debt, credit taken, and bills while the score takes all that information and uses a complicated formula to come up with one specific score. Most people’s scores are in the 500-800 range. Obviously the higher your score, the better rate you’re going to get on a loan and the more credit-worthy potential landlords will view you.

Ordering your credit report has been made easy, and it’s something everyone should do regularly. I hope this post has helped make clear what can sometimes be a complicated subject. Order your report today, and be sure to recognize any errors or attempts to steal your identity as quickly as possible. To clear those up you’ll have to call the agencies directly and inform them of the error – that’s a long process, which is why you should be checking your credit report regularly so you can begin to fix things right away if necessary. Has anyone ever found a mistake on their credit report?

First off, before I begin this retort, I’d like to point out that there is a comment system setup for people to actually comment on my posts and start a discussion. And if you are going to write something like this, common courtesy would have you inform the writer so that he had the opportunity to respond to any criticisms. But I digress; I had to read about Adam’s post through the magic of Technorati. As soon as this is posted I’m going to leave a comment and send an email letting him know about my post.

He starts off with this statement, in response to when I wrote: Why is it when you put a random collection of people together the discussion inevitably shifts towards a baseline that all people can understand, and why in our society does that baseline revolve around celebrities, movies, and sports?

One: do those discussions inevitably shift towards a common baseline? Do they really? Is there never a time when people tell their personal stories, which the others enjoy but did not exactly partake of? Do conversations always go towards some general common denominator like the movies or sports? Seems like kind of a massive generalization to use as one’s starting assumption.

Two: even if it’s granted that there is a general tendency to go for the common denominator, how exactly does one demonstrate that a “baseline” “revolves” around sports or movies or celebrities or anything, for that matter? If this guy’s any indication, I guess you don’t–you just treat it as a given.

Well I don’t know Adam, they certainly have shifted towards a common baseline most of the time I see people interacting with one another. I do know that according to James Q. Wilson in The Moral Sense, “Just as Labradors are born to fetch, we are born to bond.” Obviously I have not done a rigorous study claiming either way, and since I don’t see any material published by you to the contrary, I have to assume that you are, in fact, simply giving your opinion. For further reading, perhaps you could read Dr. C. George Boeree’s discussion of Defensive Conformity, which “is usually brought on by social anxiety — fear of embarrassment, discomfort at confusion, a sense of inferiority, a desire to be liked, and so on.” Perhaps the discussions centering around topics globally uniform to our society is a form of defensive conformity within a group setting. Again, I speak of a baseline because I draw from personal experiences such as the night I referenced at the beginning of my post, when it seemed people were most comfortable interacting through stories and ideas revolving around such society-wide concepts as sports or celebrities.

Next, Adam talks about my discussion of corporations pushing products we don’t need to us in order to increase their bottom line and my contemplating of the effects on our economy if we didn’t wastefully consume at such an aggressive pace.

The fixation of some people on the “bottom line” and “profits” as if they were the prime mover of everything is kind of hilarious. So what, Ryle, the fact that a company will go out of business unless it makes a profit somehow compels consumers to feel the need to support those companies…or are you arguing that the companies have somehow brainwashed people into buying their products, something that would not occur if we didn’t live in this fictitious “consumption drive society” you’ve concocted? What exactly is a “consumption driven society”?

Well Adam, I personally do not feel as if the bottom line and profits should be the prime mover, but I believe the literature out there supports that it is. An article in the magazine Frontline entitled Capitalisism Recycled states, “Global business firms are ultimately interested in one thing: profit“. Or perhaps the Wikipedia article on Capitalism, which reads: “From this perspective, in process of self-organization, the profit motive has an important role. From transactions between buyers and sellers price systems emerge, and prices serve as a signal as to the urgent and unfilled wants of people. The promise of profits gives entrepreneurs incentive to use their knowledge and resources to satisfy those wants.” (This quote is itself cited at the bottom of the entry as: Herbert Walberg, Joseph Bast. Education and Capitalism, Hoover Institution Press (2001) p. 87-89 ISBN 0-8179-3972-5). Therefore profit is in fact what drives the economic engine currently pushing us all forward known as Capitalism.

Of course consumers aren’t feeling pity for these corporations, I never said that. They are however inundated with shows such as MTV’s “Cribs”, which shows how the rich and famous live (awash in goods) and imply that goods are in fact what people need to be considered wealthy and prosperous. That is why people take out home loans they cannot afford (leading to the current subprime lending crisis), or car leases that make no economic sense. They feel as if when they have a nice car or a nice house that they are economically well off and thus more important members of the community. The fact that this is all over television gives credence to Marshall McLuhan, who in 1967 argued famously that the “medium is the message”. By this Marshall meant that it didn’t matter what you watch on television, just that you watched television. The ads and shows would do the work, regardless of which particular ones each individual chose to view.

The concept of a consumption driven society/economy is not all fictitious, and again a simple Google search could have saved you Adam. In an article entitled “The US Economy” published in the Indiana Business Review, Willard E. Witte, Associate Professor of Economics at Indiana University wrote, “From the end of the recession in 2001 through the end of 2005, consumption spending accounted for 78 percent of the increase in output”. Professor Witte later wrote “Consumption has held up pretty well during the past year, comprising 70 percent of growth in the first three quarters of 2006.” 70 percent of growth during the first three quarters of 2006 – that sounds like a pretty consumption driven economy to me. If 70 percent of our growth was taken away during 2006 you can bet that a lot of people would be out of work. Therefore our society is consumption based and does in fact need consumers to maintain high levels of consumption to drive the economy.

Adam then appears to go nuts over a few big assertions he wants to point out, so let’s discuss them, shall we:

1: Americans are afraid to contemplate social issues with our neighbors (true BECAUSE I TELL YOU IT’S TRUE DAMMIT)

2: We are so afraid that we allow terrible things to keep happening

3: American foreign policy caused September 11th. This one book I’m reading proves it, but I’m not really going to bother to elaborate on how.

1) How about this Common Dreams article, which discusses the issue of evolution in schools. It has a quote from Dr. John R. Christy, a climatologist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, “Teachers are afraid to raise the issue … and they are afraid to discuss the issue in public.” Here’s a line from a website called Freepreach.org under their issues section, which states “It’s not only politics that ministers are afraid to discuss in their sermons”. This is under a heading called Hate Speech Laws.

2) In Hunter S. Thompson’s article Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail in the Rolling Stone, Hunter pontificates, “That is how it works in the victory business. You see it every time. The Weak will suck up to the Strong, for fear of losing their jobs and their money and all the fickle power they wielded only twenty-four hours ago. It is like suddenly losing your wife and your home in a vagrant poker game, then having to go on the road with whoremongers and beg for your dinner in public”. The point I was trying to make is that fear paralyzes us and drives us towards making decisions that we otherwise would not have made at a rational moment, such as the passing of the USA Patriot Act by members of Congress without having actually read the act – they were so scared by the thought of terrorism that they decided to grant the executive branch extraordinary powers in an attempt to quell the fear passing through themselves and their constituents. Or how about this quote from an article published by two Michigan State University students stating “Underlying the skepticism about the motivations of Ashcroft and Ridge in issuing warnings and changing the official threat levels has been a more general concern about the use and meaning of terrorism alert warning system. On at least two earlier occasions the threat level was raised to orange in the absence of any publicly obvious event.” Now why would that occur? Maybe it was to keep the climate of fear running strong and reinforce the need for a strong executive branch to save us from the terrorists. Maybe Not. Either way, they raised and lowered the threat levels all the time, and what do you know, but we elected George W. Bush to be our president again. Hmph.

3) Here is a fabulous article which states the case far better than I could, called Blowback: The Cost and Consequences of American Foreign Policy. Check this portion out: “Most Americans find it extremely difficult to accept the proposition that terrorist acts against the United States can be viewed as revenge for Washington’s policies abroad. They believe that the U.S. is targeted because of its freedom, its democracy, its modernity, its wealth, or just being part of the West. But government officials know better. A Department of Defense study in 1997 concluded that: “Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States. In addition, the military asymmetry that denies nation states the ability to engage in overt attacks against the United States drives the use of transnational actors [that is, terrorists from one country attacking in another].” Hmmmmm!

In conclusion, I am certainly not trying to elect myself as some sort of superior human being or pretentious bastard who has all the answers and carries the moral high ground. I am simply trying to jumpstart a discussion on what is important in our lives, and whether those things we value have historically been the same things and/or are really what matters. I could have done a better job of sourcing the post; that much I agree with Adam. However, I think that my conclusions are still at least worthy of discussion and I am glad Adam has taken the opportunity to do so. I await your response, brother. – Ryle

Now there are many people that use time management programs such as Getting Things Done (GTD), but what I’m proposing is a system combining the concept of time management (whichever way you want to do it) with educating yourself about the world around you with the free time you create through excellently managing your time. So to start things off, you need to make sure none of your time is wasted. None of it. Now I understand that everybody needs recreation time to chill and relax (believe me!) so that should be considered a valid use of your time. What I want you to think about is those moments when you’re at home, your buddies have taken off, and you have nothing to do. Maybe you’ll just turn on the TV for an hour or two, flipping through channels in a desperate attempt to keep yourself entertained. Stop! This is the perfect moment to allow you to get started with your education. While there are some education shows on television (Discovery, National Geographic, CSPAN, etc.), the problem with television is that it’s a passive medium, not an active one like reading. If you feel like learning about trade deficits with China, you have to hope that something or someone is talking about it on some channel, which could take a while to find. Now if you instead decided ahead of time what you wanted to learn about (by itemizing a list of relevant topics for your current career and what was important to your life in general), you could use that list to prepare yourself for free time wisely.

Everybody learns differently, so here are a few suggestions for you learners out there.. If you prefer reading, then go take a look at your public library. In Los Angeles, the system is absolutely fabulous, letting you reserve books and send them to whichever library is closest to you. If you’re not sure where to start, let me recommend a few books. The Four Pillars of Investing by William Bernstein is one of the best financial do it yourself books I have ever read (and I’ve read a lot!). Revolutionary Wealth by Heidi and Alvin Toffler (author of Future Shock) is an excellent look at the way our society is shaping up to morph into during the 21st century. Check Amazon or other online booksellers that contain book reviews by customers for more ideas. The point is, there are more books than anyone could read in an entire lifetime available, and most of them for free for three whole weeks!

Image by: DongWoo Lee

If you don’t like reading, there’s another excellent way to continue learning – podcasts! Podcasts are those radio programs you can download off the Internet, through programs such as iTunes. You then transfer the mp3 files over to your mp3 player of choice, and voila! Radio shows that talk about what you want to hear. One of my favorite podcasts is Bloomberg on the Economy, a top notch discussion regarding a huge range of economic issues. The episodes are short (5-10 minutes), but there are dozens and dozens made per month. You can use a podcast directory such as Podcast.net to locate a podcast about anything your heart desires. But Ryle, I don’t have time to listen to my mp3 player all day, you say. I bet you do – a great many people commute to work everyday, and listen to either the radio or some music while driving. There’s nothing wrong with music, but think about switching to a podcast every once in a while. Again, the different is between a passive medium such as radio (where content is pushed to you), and an active medium such as listening to podcasts (where you choose what to hear) is huge! Another great idea would be to listen to university courses on your mp3 player while driving to work – believe it or not many schools post lectures in podcast form for free. Check out UC Berkeley Webcasts which has course podcasts for the current semester, all downloadable! Classes range from Economics to Biology to Philosophy to Legal Theory.

Things you read or hear can open your mind to new ideas, new ways of doing things, and altogether increase your understanding of the world around you. This is so important, and something so many people I know neglect, that I hope everyone reads this and walks away thinking about what they want to learn and what they can do to better themselves. I only touched on a few ways of continuing education, others include classes at your local community college, online courses, joining a group of people that meet up to discuss everything from politics to photography, or even reading blogs! The point is, keep your eyes and ears open and ready to learn, and you’ll be in a much better off position, both in terms of personal development and career development.

To me, the answer to both questions revolves around the consumption driven society we live in and the need for corporations to continue to push products and services to us, so that they can increase their bottom line and keep profits rising. If the American people collectively decided they were not going to rush out and buy the latest US Weekly to find out about what Paris is doing, or to spend $12 at the movies to be entertained for a few hours, or even to buy $200 tickets to a football game so they can see their favorite players in person, what would it do to our economy? Well the way things are setup now the economy would certainly suffer. Therefore, corporations have setup vast noise machines to ensure that what they feel should be relevant to Americans is relevant – and these noise machines are working.

Furthermore, human beings being inherently social animals, we feel a certain comfort in social interaction with our peers. The easiest way to establish ourselves as relevant members of the community is to show that we have just as much knowledge as other people in regards to what society considers important enough for everyone to have to pay attention to – in this case, celebrities, sports, and movies. (Obviously there could be many more, but those get the point across). Therefore we can sit and have a wonderful discussion about the latest big movie with just about anyone in America. This is also possible because we are all fed the same movies, celebrity news, and sports – someone in LA and someone in New York can watch the same movie, the same news about Paris Hilton, and the same NCAA championship game and converse about it.

Image by: Lee Prouten

However, that doesn’t go all the way to explaining the second question – because it seems as if the discussion (as it does in many other countries) would shift to something that has an impact on our everyday lives such as healthcare, taxes, or the next election. In America we are so afraid to contemplate real social issues with our neighbors for fear that we would offend one another and lose that social bond that we love so much. We sit complacent about war, money wasted, lack of healthcare, and a myriad of other problems currently affecting our great nation; and while these might not seem to have a direct affect on our lives, say that to the people who died on September the 11th. Those deaths were the result of American policies perpetuated by the Government designed to increase America’s status as a superpower and relegate lesser countries to mere pawns (This is further proved by the book I’m currently reading called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man – good so far!).

So what can we do? The only solution is to bring back coherent discussions on what truly affects and shapes our lives. We cannot afford to be fixated upon drunken celebrities stumbling around hopelessly trying to find a purpose for their own meager lives; instead we should focus on those politicians and people who have the true power to use America’s great wealth for the betterment of her people and not for the betterment of the “corporatocracy” (As John Perkins puts it). So go out, say hi to your neighbor, and ask them if they favor universal health care, something that every other developed country in the world has for its citizens. Or ask them if they favor billions in non-compete contracts for Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown, and Root – I bet I know the answer!

Of course, the credit for the original concept is largely given to Neal Stephenson, whose book Snow Crashpresented the first virtual world (Stephenson called it a “Metaverse”) where people simply logged in from home and through a headset visually interacted with other people in a 3D environment.

What could the advent of Home and A Second Life do to our civilization? Perhaps it could make it a more bearable, enjoyable world to live in, if people could work regular jobs during the day (Stephenson’s main character, Hero Protagonist, starts off the novel as a pizza delivery guy) and jack-in to these virtual worlds at night to relieve the stress and anxiety they carry with them in the real world. Virtual worlds would be an excellent environment for psychologists to test out new ideas about how people interact with one another and a plethora of other ideas.

This new technology is amazing, and the virtual environment within Second Life looks very realistic – predictably, the two biggest industries are sex and gambling (from a cursory look at the most popular locations) but since the users themselves generate the content, the possibilities are limitless. Reuters has even setup a journalist to monitor events within Second Life and started a Second Life News Bureau. While Home requires a Playstation 3 which may be out of reach for a great many people, Second Life has a free basic account that simply requires a computer and a broadband internet connection, something which many people worldwide already have. Indeed, according to Second Life’s website, the service already has over 4.5 million residents, 1.6 million of which have logged in during the past 60 days. The biggest question to me is, is our society ready for something like this? It would be all too easy to build up a virtual life that is a great deal better and more fulfilling than our regular lives, and simply stay jacked in as long as possible. Reports of gamers becoming addicted to various online multiplayer games such as World of Warcraft (called MMORPGs, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games – say that 5 times fast!) are already becoming widespread, and this element of a virtual life would take the possibility of total immersion and addiction to your computer one step further.

However, in the end, this is an extremely viable business model, which at the same time would enable millions, even billions, of people worldwide to interact in a never before possible manner. New monetary systems, political frameworks, and educational endeavors would all be possible. Business meetings between people on opposite ends of the Earth would be easy and even fun. I’m cautiously optimistic about the future of online virtual environments and the upsides/downsides of interacting within one, but in the end, this just has too much potential. In Part 2 of this post, I will examine the financial/business side of Second Life specifically (since Home has not yet been released) and how it has the potential to revolutionize world commerce!

PS. For more information, check out the Wikipedia entry on Second Life or the Wikipedia entry on Playstation’s Home.