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So you want to be a lawyer. You realize it is going to mean a lot of learning, a lot of time used with books – but you like reading, and figuring things out, and you enjoy words, language, and all the semantic nuances included.

You even know that the LSAT examination for admission to law school is hard, and something to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for, for special prep courses, coaching classes etc. You also realize that law school itself will be tough as nails, at least through the all-too-crucial First Year.

Great. Maybe you even know that you will be forever hitting the books as a practicing lawyer, forever taking online CPE courses and their exams, one after the other, in order to maintain your ranking with the professional association governing your licensure.

Super.

But are you aware that it will be quite tough getting a high-enough-paying job as lawyer in order to pay off your student loans? In reality, those online CPE courses will cost some money, too.

Oh, you probably think you have got that covered. You’ll graduate at the top of your class, or you’ll be accepted into an Ivy League law school and graduate none too low in the rankings so as to get hired by a top corporate law firm and easily recoup your investment in two to three years’ time.

And without a doubt, if such a thing does happen, your odds would be better than those for practically the rest of your peers, even in this economy. But “better than” does not mean “inherently good.” ’Cause guess what – globalization is coming to the legal profession also.

Yes, you heard that right – outsourcing. Certainly, some of the online CPE courses available on the worldwide web were developed overseas! And though the legal profession has attempted to resist it (after all, it took a whole decade for everyone to switch from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word!), it’s finally started to affect the industry.

When it comes to charity, many people think of it as being something other people do – namely, the rich. After all, who else has the money to fund entire schools or hospitals?
But for Judaism, no matter the branch or denomination, there is the idea of tzedakah, which comes from the Hebrew for “justice,” and this is an obligation for all, even the poor. For to make charitable donations is prescribed as a religious duty and not one subject to personal fancy. In fact, it is taught to regard the very money for available tzedakah as not one’s own, but on loan, as it were, from on on high. This leads to the further injunction to carefully vet all recipients to ensure that any donations made will actually work for good and not ill.

On the face of it, it may sound surprising to an outsider, as with many aspects of Judaism. However – as with many aspects of Judaism, even for an outsider – there exist profound philosophical reasons for them. For in commanding even the poor to give, the rabbinical injunction to perform acts of tzedakah in effect empowers the poor to regard themselves as capable, too.

For what can be more empowering than to give? To give means to express our power, our ability to give, and in sharing we express ourselves – our love, our sacrifice, our character. It is not that poverty ennobles, but to bear poverty in righteousness: that is noble. As a result, in the Jewish tradition it isn’t necessary to be a successful developer like Isaac Toussie in order to make donations. For Jews, such religiously commanded contributions are not just an obligation but a right.

For poverty is not so base as when it prevents one from sharing of one’s own means. This insight into human nature is what inspires the Jewish tradition to insist that even the poor not only have the duty to share, but can actually even enjoy sharing, giving, as a right!

Just about the most surprising uses of wind chimes has been as musical instruments in their own right.
This looks quite out of the question initially, as common varieties seem to consist of nothing more than tinkling cylinders, with the sound only slightly different depending on whether stone, wood, metal, or glass is used.
And so it is that [wind chimes] do indeed possess only a very limited set of musical capabilities, whether melodic or percussive, but that has not stop some ingenious musicians from deploying them into their work.
And in fact, just about the most famous uses of one has been in just about the most popular videogames of all time.

That’s right, in a videogame.
Koji Kondo is a long-time audio director at Nintendo, responsible for scoring some of the company’s biggest hits, standard-setting bestsellers such as Super Mario Bros. as well as the Legend of Zelda.
In the sequel Super Mario World, wind chimes figure rather conspicuously in the theme for the “Vanilla Dome” game level (or “world,” in the parlance of the Mario games).

Chimes have also been featured in the works of musicians as varied as modern composer Oliver Messiaen and rock guitarist David Sitek.
Perhaps what’s most amazing about their use is the truth that there are currently a handful of chime-like instruments available – the mark tree is even occasionally mistaken for one!

Tubular bells are another such instrument which are often mistaken for wind chimes.
Yet these misconceptions by casual observers can be easily forgiven, given that one cylinder can only so different from another, even when on an altogether different instrument – and, perhaps, none of this class of instruments look different!

Tubular bells, however, are much more widely used out of all the chime-like instruments.
The theme for the well-liked animated television series “Futurama” is played with tubular bells, as was that during area of the closing credits for the renowned children’s television show “Sesame Street” during the 1980s.

It’s a tough test, but that’s most likely for the best since an eternity of continuing professional education awaits the publicly certified accountant.
Generally known as CPE for CPAs, these courses ensure that bean-counters stay on top of the latest changes in the law so that last year’s legal loopholes are used if only still applicable!

But technical matters are not the only concern of such courses.
A big element of modern CPE for CPAs is ethics.
Yes, that’s right – plain old right and wrong!
Somewhere across the line it’s been forgotten in a major way, ethics.
Then again, unethical dealings have been part and parcel of the career ever since the Middle Ages, when its Italian founder noted common accounting ripoffs already prevalent even back then!

All the same, ethics CPE for CPAs is undoubtedly a good thing – particularly for course authors!
For they are more likely to ever run out of fascinating topics to go over.
Many a former white-collar offender still shakes his head at the lax practices still so prevalent in the industry, almost assuring another round of scandal, scandal such as what had brought them down once.

Take the case of Sammy Antar of Crazy Eddie’s fame.
A CPA and former CFO of his cousin’s legendary retail electronics business, Sam now rails against accounting fraud of the sort which he used to practice for more than a decade.
The truth is, he is now a speaker who gives classes on how to catch white-collar criminals.
Moreover, folks can certainly earn CPE and CLE credits for attending his talks!
But the very fact that he should still have something to say – something for which audiences still gather to hear – underlines the unlucky currency of accounting fraud.

Obviously, ethics deal with morality rather than mere legality.
It may be difficult for numbers-crunchers to think in deeply philosophical , but that’s precisely why continuing education is a need!

DC electric motor repair is usually made for industrial tools such as generator turbines and the like, though the most essential principles are acknowledged to the home hobbyist and his or her electronics science kit.
Obviously, in terms of power plants and other large-scale applications, the quantitative difference becomes a qualitative one also.
Yet there is a lot about commercial DC electric motor repair which children with an interest in fixing broken toys, sometimes strictly mechanical ones employing no electricity, will quickly grasp, the first of which regards the very meaning of an engine, the very physical attributes of a motor.

Today’s curious, scientifically minded child may almost comprehend about as much of electricity as the polymath Ben Franklin ever did.
With regards to the age, in most cases, they can rather adroitely indulge in a fit of DC electric motor repair somewhat in the manner of a prodigious young Anakin Skywalker in the Stars Wars prequel “The Phantom Menace.”
From exotic gravity-defying vehicles to unbelievably intelligent robots, Anakin manages to fix them all.
While today’s youngsters are hardly so versatile, it’s arguable that they are generally smarter somehow than their own parents were at similar ages.

So is that actually the situation?
Has technology itself – its presence, its use – shaped our young in ways that render them somehow more intellectually ready than we ourselves had been in youth?

It isn’t simple speculation, idle or otherwise.
Research into how modern technology has affected children’s cognitive development makes headlines occasionally with some startling suggestion or other.
Additionally, millions have been spent by private industry in the hope of gleaning some critical market insight that will lead to dramatically big revenue.
And, once again, it’s arguable that kids today are subtly smarter, at least in the sense of being savvier.

Wind chimes are not just pretty decorations to hang up around the house or garden which happen to create noise from time to time.
They have actually been used in real music, from high-brow modern music to well-liked everyday fare such as videogame soundtracks.
The French composer Oliver Messiaen has written for glass, wood, and seashell chimes in his opera depending on Saint Francis of Assisi, while David Sitek of the American rock band TV on the Radio often hangs a wind chime at the end of his guitar for texture.

Probably the most famous unknown use of wind chimes in the world was made by Koji Kondo, lead musician at Nintendo, the Japanese videogaming giant.
He is accountable for the music in such bestsellers as Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, and has incorporated chiming sounds throughout his work, such as the theme for the “Vanilla Dome” world (or stage – that is, game level) in the sequel Super Mario World.

However, it needs to be noted that musical instruments already can be found which employ chimes or chime-like hardware.
Certainly, one such device, a mark tree, is also frequently known as a chime tree or a set of bar chimes.
It is played out by sweeping a finger or stick through the length of hanging cylinders, usually made of metal though of varying lengths.
These cylinders are hung from a bar and attached in pitch order.

Very similar instruments include tubular bells and the bell tree.
Like wind chimes proper, they are usually thought of as percussion instruments, generally used by musical color.
Tubular bells, however, can produce harmonic spectra
and therefore are capable of melodies.
But these are often very simple, and few solos are written for tubular bells.
One noteworthy use of the instrument is produced by the animated television series Futurama, for its theme.
In the 1980s, the famous children’s show Sesame Street also featured tubular bells throughout part of its closing credits.

Affiliate marketing is a superb way for the tech-savvy hobbyist for making some money on the side.
For a select few who have managed to put their finger on the Zeitgeist, however, it means full financial independence, with income in the tens of thousands per month!

One of the most celebrated cases of affiliate marketing made good has long been that of Dr. Arnold Kim, M.D.
While still a medical student, he started a website dedicated to rumors about Apple products.
This was back right at the turn of the century, before the word “blog” had entered into the well-known lexicon.
Even while diagnosing patients, Dr. Kim kept up the site, though subsequently it took on a life of its own, with forty million page views a month, as certified by independent research firms.

Dr. Kim was already well-off because of his medical practice, but affiliate marketing also generated a six-figure income – and he was only devoting comparatively little time to his site!
Believing that things could grow so much more were he to invest his whole day, Dr. Kim gave up his stethoscope and plunged whole-heartedly into the world of professional blogging.

Similar types of internet riches abound, such as that of the teenager who became a millionaire by producing free MySpace designs for people to download, or the college student behind “The Million-Dollar Homepage” which made money by just selling space to advertisers.
What they have in typical is that their success is entirely traffic-driven: it’s all about the eyeballs, the number of visitors per month, week, day, even hour – both repeat and first-time (known in the industry as “unique”).
Get the numbers, and you will make money.

But how do you get the numbers?
Content.
“Content is king.”
If you have something lots of people are interested, such that they will keep visiting your site, you will make money – confirmed.
The only real question is what content or material to serve up!

The recent Japanese devastation has shone a spotlight on the country’s relatively unique social structure.
Unlike many other instances of natural disaster elsewhere, no looting or rioting has followed to compound the tragedy — and this has greatly impressed many a non-Japanese observer.
From the patient orderly lines to the return of valuables, “yamoto-damashii,” or the Japanese spirit, has elicited admiration and more sympathy from the world.

As can be imagined, articles have made an appearance seeking to explain the phenomenon of people who remain law-abiding citizens even with being deprived of not just creature comforts but everything they own and even of loved ones.
Police stations all along the coast are filled to capacity with the personal household safes of victims which have washed back to terrain or been recovered from the rubble by rescue workers.
Then there is the seemingly suicidal heroism and self-sacrifice of many nuclear power plant employees.
Even animals have displayed yamoto-damashii: a dog made worldwide headlines for standing by another dog trapped under rubble, declining to leave!

Much has been written both for and against the “Japanese-spirit interpretation” of events.
On one side, people remember that the country is a wealthy one, a computer advanced one, and one that is perhaps uniquely homogenous one of many leading industrialized societies of which it is a member.
Certainly household safes and other belongings have been returned or at least remaining unmolested!
It figures, argue such people, because there is no incentive to loot and riot when the country as a whole offers so many resources to provide succor.

Others note that the spirit of Japan is such that rules are witnessed simply because they are rules – Japanese rules – and one is Japanese.
Safes are not broken into because that’s not what a Japanese person does, basically.
This side of the argument notes that no matter how rich the society, individual victims always suffer – yet they generally do so patiently, in a manner uniquely Japanese.

New Blu Ray releases are but the most recent embodiment of the observation captured by the familiar French proverb that notes how “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” As with the case of DVD ten years before, many releases failed to live up to what is possible with the Blu-ray format. Sharper pictures? Over seven channels of discrete sound, including the subwoofer? Not always, even with the 25 GB of space available on typical single-layer discs. Though much better than was the case with DVD, when VHS resolutions were just copied and pasted to disc, still too many a Blu-ray title seems rather like the DVD version!

The affiliate marketing testimonials just keep pouring in: the most up-to-date circumstance history concerns one Ashley Qualls, a seventeen year-old who’s become a millionaire by simply giving away free MySpace layouts.
Yes.
It is no joke.
A teenage girl in high school makes seventy thousand dollars a month by giving stuff away for free.

Chalk another one up to the magic of affiliate marketing and its dramatic power.
Ashley Qualls created a website that’s nothing more than a repository of her layouts for MySpace profile pages which anyone can download entirely free.
Her site attracts seven million visitors each month and sixty million page views.
That’s gold to advertisers.
And it’s become gold for Ashley Qualls.

Affiliate marketing works.
The true challenge lies in coming up with something that lots and lots of people will go crazy for.
Another great internet riches success story concerns an Arnold Kim, who as a professional blogger now makes income in the same six-figure range he used to as a medical doctor, only he gets to stay home with his four year-old daughter.
He happened upon his financial destiny at the same time still in school, having started up a site dedicated to rumors about Apple products.
As among the first, he quickly developed quite the captive audience and, with all those eyeballs, advertisers arrived calling in equally quick succession.

That’s all it takes to make money online – traffic.
Eyeballs.
Visitors, repeat and unique (first-time).
It’s basically monetized like any other medium, whether print or broadcast.
Important differences do exist, but where fundamentals are concerned you need to have numbers; you need people.

Just how to get all those people?
Once again, providing something of great interest to a large number of people.
Fundamentally, the same first principle of any company.
Determine a need and fulfill it!

Lots of personal household safes have been turning up at Japanese police stations in the wake of that country’s recent disaster.
They haven’t yet only been recovered by rescue workers digging through rubble but have also been washed up ashore, and now law enforcement is running out of space to store them.

Up to now, these safes have been kept in the station parking lot, but with each station holding onto several hundred at a time, authorities have decided to test a more pro-active way of reuniting them with their owners beyond simply watching for those people to show up.
Japanese police now hope to open these safes themselves hoping of obtaining identifying information within with which to make their own inquiries.

Under Japanese law, there’s a little more than three weeks for missing items to be claimed by their owners.
After twenty-three days, finders can grow to be keepers – or the government takes ownership.
Police hope to reunite tragedy victims with their possessions prior to the finders/keepers-law can take effect.
Normally, given the special conditions involved, extensions to the normal deadline have been provided, but any haste that can be made could surely be welcome by the victims.

The matter is especially important given the Japanese practice, found especially among their elderly, of saving money and other belongings not in banks but at home.
Such “wardrobe savings,” as the Japanese phrase goes, is very typical but has become quite the tragedy for disaster sufferers who have lost literally everything short of their lives and the clothing on their backs.
Therefore, any effort expedited on behalf of such people won’t simply be tremendously appreciated but is absolutely required to ensure even their very continued survival.
Luckily, of course, it is because of the exclusive nature of Japan that valuables have been turned in, along with the absence of looting and other rioting – a fact not lost on envious foreign observers.

China, China, China – what’s the big deal?
Why is everyone going on and on about China constantly?

Okay, so they own billions (or is that trillions) in American securities, currency, whatever.
And they make lotsa stuff.
Like NFL beach towels and stuff.
Yeah.
Okay.

It’s not like most people desire to work on an assembly line in any case, making trinkets and curios for Walmart.
But whatever.

Alright, so it’s not merely NFL beach towels that they make.
It’s that they are also climbing up the food chain, making stuff that’s a lot more high-value, such that good-paying jobs may be the next to go.
They’re hardly making textiles any more – notice that most of the clothing nowadays come from even more unique locales – like Indonesia and Sri Lanka?

In fact, to be fair, it isn’t NFL beach towels that anyone’s upset over.
It’s the fear that aircraft manufacturing might be next!
Already the Chinese government is on record as gunning for leadership in green energy products such as wind mills and solar panels, and undoubtedly they are well on their way in direction of dominating those industries.

But must it be a zero-sum game?
Does China’s rise equal everyone else’s loss?
Put another way, are they merely gobbling up ever more slices of the pie – or can Chinese ascendancy grow that pie for everyone involved?

Well, speaking of the NFL, it’s interesting to compare and contrast that sporting league’s business decisions with the ones from the NBA.
Basketball keeps growing in popularity over there while years ago a planned exhibition game of American football was canceled almost at the last minute.
If this serves as any suggestion, it may be that being in place surpasses staying on the sidelines!

The Swarovski 2028 rhinestone is a small general-purpose diamond simulant with a flatback that makes it ideal for a variety of applications.
You can use them to decorate just about anything, such as articles of clothing.
Many musicians have taken to doing just that, from jackets and vests to pants as well as shoes.

The Swarovski 2028 is also ideal for other uses, such as in arts and crafts.
Many like to decorate scrapbooks with rhinestones.
The diamond-like effect is stunning.
And with a Swarovski, the visuals are very faithful, so much like the real thing that it could well need a professionally trained eye to spot the distinctions – and then maybe only under magnification!

Of course, as can be imagined, the Swarovski 2028 isn’t the company’s top-of-the-line offering.
No such thing is offered for sale in gross volumes (literally, with a gross being a hundred and forty-four individual units), after all.
But the Swarovski name should mean a certain level of verisimilitude, craftsmanship for which it has developed a famous reputation worldwide.
With more than a hundred years of experience in making fine crystal glass products, you can trust rhinestones from them.

This is exactly why Rockefeller Center in New York City uses them year after year to adorn the top of their world-famous Christmas Tree.
With skills like that, you can trust a Swarovski to suffice for most any job.
Whenever something requires the dazzle of a gemstone without the cost of one, use a rhinestone.
But when only the best will do, select a Swarovski.
Founded back in the days of the Dual Monarchy of the Hapsburgs, everything they make is heir to a tradition of technical excellence second to none.
Glistening sparkles along with rainbows, just as with a real diamond, are available for thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars less!

Do you know anything about guerrilla marketing? I came across it unwittingly just near On Off Digital World at midtown Manhattan. What guerrilla marketing is, is just undercover marketing. Yeah, covert marketing! Like what happened with me, for example. I happened upon a pair of cute young ladies who needed me to snap their picture as a favor – a common enough request around the tourist mecca that is Times Square. All the while, however, they wound up explaining to me the ins and outs of their new digital camera – having me all curious about it in no time! That’s guerrilla marketing right there, advertising to me in a way that gets past my guard!

In terms of fireproof safes, the first thing to know is that nothing is perfectly fireproof.
In fact, all the products available to the general buying public won’t offer any protection past more than but a few hours.
Fortunately, the average fire lasts only about something like 20 minutes, and those who live in a major metropolitan area with a full-time professional fire department can expect even shorter times, but understand that nothing is going to provide excellent protection.
Nothing.

At least not on the general market, anyway.
For fire resistant safes come in a certain range of models, with one highly variable specification being the size.
For this reason, if you have massive banks of computers, row upon row, to safeguard – even whole floors and entire buildings of them – similar to what many a computer data center has, you can get one that will protect them all.
Certainly, the floor or building itself might be, for all practical intents and reasons, a veritable safe in itself!

But even then protection will not be perfect; namely, it will not last forever.
Fire is an incredible thing.
Given sufficient fuel, it will just carry on burning, and with enough time, it will wipe out anything.
But in the here and now, most fireproof safes will serve the purposes for which they are designed.
That’s why when shopping for one, it’s vital to know exactly how yours would be employed.

As an example, various ratings exist to describe the level of fire protection afforded.
These standards are devised and maintained by Underwriters Laboratories, perhaps the most respected name in product safety certifications.
Here is a significant consumer tip, however, with respect to them: many inferior products will use the “UL” label but unless it exclusively says “UL Listed” you should not assume that if has Underwriters Laboratories’ express authorization.