Delegates begin planning for changes to U.S. Constitution

Delegates begin planning for changes to U.S. Constitution





Michael Conroy, Associated Press

David Long, Indiana Senate president pro tempore, welcomes delegates Thursday during a meeting to set up the framework for states to amend the U.S. Constitution at the Statehouse in Indianapolis.
June 12, 2014 2:50 pm • Dan Carden dan.carden@nwi.com, (317) 637-9078

INDIANAPOLIS | Representatives and senators from 29 states met Thursday in the Indiana Statehouse to begin planning for the first state-led revisions to the U.S. Constitution since the nation's fundamental governing document was enacted in 1789.

The significance of the work undertaken by The Mount Vernon Assembly to prepare for a future Convention of the States was not lost on the 94 official and participating delegates, mostly Republicans, who filled the House chamber.

"Nothing like this has occurred in over two centuries, though certainly the founders of this nation assumed it would have happened long ago," said Indiana Senate President David Long, R-Fort Wayne, an organizer of the meeting.

Article V of the U.S. Constitution requires Congress call a Convention of the States for proposing constitutional amendments if legislatures in two-thirds of the states (34 states) request one. If the convention approves an amendment, it then can be ratified by three-fourths of the states (38 states) and added to the Constitution without additional congressional approval.

However, because an Article V convention never has been called, there are no clear procedures on how it would begin, what rules the convention would follow or whether it could be limited in scope.

The Mount Vernon Assembly, which organized last December at George Washington's Virginia estate and is planning to change its name to the Assembly of State Legislatures, has taken it upon itself to start answering those questions to ensure a future Convention of the States gets off on the right foot.

"It has been a failure on the part of state legislatures for not stepping up for the past 200 years and saying, here's how we're going to do it, so that's what we're doing," said state Rep. Chris Kapenga, a Wisconsin Republican.

"It's time we accept the responsibility given us because there's little debate in state legislatures, or in the public, that something's not right in Washington."

Throughout the morning, delegates discussed their organizing principles and whether they were being too deliberate in their planning.

Kapenga pushed back on the few lawmakers who wanted to jump ahead to debating amendment proposals that someday could be considered by a Convention of the States.

"This is the Constitution of the United States — we have to be very cautious and go through this process where we make sure anything that we put down is debated and discussed, and debated and discussed, and the final product is solid," Kapenga said.

In the afternoon, delegates organized into four committees to begin tackling detailed planning questions for a Convention of the States, including how many delegates each state should have, whether states must send Congress an identical request and whether past state calls for Article V conventions, such as those submitted by Indiana in 1861 and 1979, are still valid.

State Sen. Jim Arnold, D-LaPorte, was appointed co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He will help shape answers to those questions and others ahead of the assembly's December meeting, where its proposed rules for a Convention of the States will be approved.

Ultimately, the Convention of the States, if one ever is called, must decide whether to accept the rules and procedures proposed by the Assembly of State Legislatures.

Long said regardless of that decision, the work of planning and preparing for a convention has reminded states of their rights under America's federalist system of government and their role in the constitutional amendment process.

"States' rights has never been, nor should it ever be, a partisan issue," Long said. "It is instead a constitutionally based concept that has made us the great country that we are today — 50 independent states, governed separately but united together."

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Hydrogen bomb and nuclear tests in space

Declassified U.S. Nuclear Test Film #51

Quote of the Day
The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea.
Mortimer Adler

Stoicism

Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BC. The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.[1]

Stoics were concerned with the active relationship between cosmic determinism and human freedom, and the belief that it is virtuous to maintain a will (called prohairesis) that is in accord with nature. Because of this, the Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life, and they thought that the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how that person behaved.[2]

Later Stoics, such as Seneca and Epictetus, emphasized that because "virtue is sufficient for happiness," a sage was immune to misfortune. This belief is similar to the meaning of the phrase "stoic calm," though the phrase does not include the "radical ethical" Stoic views that only a sage can be considered truly free, and that all moral corruptions are equally vicious.[1]

From its founding, Stoic doctrine was popular with a following in Roman Greece and throughout the Roman Empire — including the Emperor Marcus Aurelius — until the closing of all pagan philosophy schools in AD 529 by order of the Emperor Justinian I, who perceived their pagan character as being at odds with the Christian faith.[3][4]

Stoicism 101: A Practical Guide for Entrepreneurs

Stoicism 101: A Practical Guide for Entrepreneurs

337 Comments
Written by Tim Ferriss

Topics: Filling the Void, Mental Performance



Stoicism was born on the porch of Zeno, but it can be used in the concrete jungle.
(Photo: Blue Cinderella)

“There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living; there is nothing harder to learn.”
-Seneca

Few of us would consider ourselves philosophers.

Most of us can recall at least one turtleneck-wearing intellectual in college who dedicated countless hours of study to the most obscure philosophical points of Marx or post-structural lesbian feminism. For what? Too often, to posture as a superior intellect at meal time or over drinks.

Fortunately, there are a few philosophical systems designed to produce dramatic real-world effects without the nonsense. Unfortunately, they get punished because they lack the ambiguity required for weeks of lectures and expensive textbooks.

In the last three years, I’ve begun to explore one philosophical system in particular: Stoicism. Though my preferred Stoic writer, Lucius Seneca, I’ve found it to be a simple and immensely practical set of rules for better results with less effort.

Ryan Holiday is 21 years old and works directly with Dov Charney as his online strategist for American Apparel. He gets more heat, makes more high-stakes decisions, and take more risks in a given week than most people experience in any given quarter. He also happens to be a die-hard Stoic and incredible at putting the principles into practice…

He kindly agreed to write this piece, and I hope you find it as valuable as I do.
Stoicism 101: A Beginner’s Guide for Entrepreneurs

Author: Ryan Holiday

For those of us who live our lives in the real world, there is one branch of philosophy created just for us: Stoicism.

It doesn’t concern itself with complicated theories about the world, but with helping us overcome destructive emotions and act on what can be acted upon. Just like an entrepreneur, it’s built for action, not endless debate.

When laid out in front of you, it should be instantly clear what it means. If you have to study it to understand it, someone is probably try to pull something over on you.

Popular with the educated elite of the Greco-Roman Empire, and with thinkers like Montaigne, John Stuart Mill and Tom Wolfe, Stoicism has just a few central teachings. It sets out to remind us of how unpredictable the world can be. How brief our moment of life is. How to be steadfast, and strong, and in control of yourself. And finally, that the source of our dissatisfaction lies in our impulsive dependency on our reflexive senses rather than logic.

If this were your average introduction to philosophy, we would have to talk about how Stoicism was started (stoa means porch, where the early followers used to hold meetings) and when it began. I happen to think that the history of a philosophy is less interesting than its proponents and applications. So, for a change, let’s spend our time on the latter.

Stoicism had three principle leaders. Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of the Roman Empire, the most powerful man on earth, sat down each day to write himself notes about restraint, compassion and humility. Epictetus endured the horrors of slavery to found his own School where he taught many of Rome’s greatest minds. Seneca, when Nero turned on him and demanded his suicide, could think only of comforting his wife and friends.

Stoicism differs from most existing schools in one important sense: its purpose is practical application. It is not an intellectual enterprise. It’s a tool that we can use to become better entrepreneurs, better friends and better people.

Stoic writing isn’t about beating up on yourself or pointing out the negative. It’s a meditative technique that transforms negative emotions into a sense of calm and perspective.

It’s easy to gloss over the fact that Marcus Aurelius was the Roman Emperor without truly absorbing the gravity of that position. Emperors were Deities, ordinary men with direct access to unlimited wealth and adulation. Before you jump to the conclusion that the Stoics were dour and sad men, ask yourself, if you were a dictator, what would your diary look like? How quickly could it start to resemble Kayne West’s blog?

Stoic writing is much closer Yoga session or a pre-game warm up than to a book of philosophy a university professor might write. It’s preparation for the philosophic life – an action – where the right state of mind is the most critical part.

Stoics practiced what are known as “spiritual exercises” and drew upon them for strength (Note from Tim: I dislike the word “spiritual” for reasons I’ve mentioned before, but scholar Pierre Hadot explains it’s appropriateness here).

Let’s look at three of the most important such exercises.
Practice Misfortune

“It is in times of security that the spirit should be preparing itself for difficult times; while fortune is bestowing favors on it is then is the time for it to be strengthened against her rebuffs.”
-Seneca

Seneca, who enjoyed great wealth as the adviser of Nero, suggested that we ought to set aside a certain number of days each month to practice poverty. Take a little food, wear your worst clothes, get away from the comfort of your home and bed. Put yourself face to face with want, he said, you’ll ask yourself “Is this what I used to dread?”

It’s important to remember that this is an exercise and not a rhetorical device. He doesn’t mean “think about” misfortune, he means live it. Comfort is the worst kind of slavery because you’re always afraid that something or someone will take it away. But if you can not just anticipate but practice misfortune, then chance loses its ability to disrupt your life.

Montaigne was fond of an ancient drinking game where the members took turns holding up a painting of a corpse inside a coffin and cheered “Drink and be merry for when you’re dead you will look like this.”

Emotions like anxiety and fear have their roots in uncertainty and rarely in experience. Anyone who has made a big bet on themselves knows how much energy both states can consume. The solution is to do something about that ignorance. Make yourself familiar with the things, the worst-case scenarios, that you’re afraid of.

Practice what you fear, whether a simulation in your mind or in real-life.

Then you, your company, and your employees will have little left to keep you from thinking and acting big.

The downside is almost always reversible or transient.
Train Perception to Avoid Good and Bad

“Choose not to be harmed and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed and you haven’t been.”
-Marcus Aurelius

The Stoics had an exercise called Turning the Obstacle Upside Down. What they meant to do was make it impossible to not practice the art of philosophy. Because if you can properly turn a problem upside down, every “bad” becomes a new source of good.

Suppose for a second that you are trying to help someone and they respond by being surly or unwilling to cooperate. Instead of making your life more difficult, the exercise says, they’re actually directing you towards new virtues; for example, patience or understanding. Or, the death of someone close to you; a chance to show fortitude. Marcus Aurelius described it like this: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

It should sound familiar because it is the same thinking behind Obama’s “teachable moments.” Right before the election, Joe Klein asked Obama how he’d made his decision to respond to the Reverend Wright scandal. He said something like ‘when the story broke I realized the best thing to do wasn’t damage control, it was to speak to Americans like adults.’ And what he ended up doing was turning a negative situation into the perfect platform for his landmark speech about race.

The common refrain about entrepreneurs is that they take advantage of, even create, opportunities. To the Stoic, everything is opportunity. The Reverend Wright scandal, a frustrating case where your help goes unappreciated, the death of a loved one, none of those are “opportunities” in the normal sense of the word. In fact, they are the opposite. They are obstacles. What a Stoic does is turn every obstacle into an opportunity.

There is no good or bad to the practicing Stoic. There is only perception. You control perception. You can choose to extrapolate past your first impression (‘X happened.’ –> ‘X happened and now my life is over.’). If you tie your first response to dispassion, you’ll find that everything is simply an opportunity.
Remember–It’s All Ephemeral

“Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both.”
-Marcus Aurelius

I understand that entrepreneurs need to dream big and have unshakable faith in themselves in order to do great things. But if recent Valleywag headlines are any example (Cisco Exec Makes Death Threat Over $4,000 Bike), the inhabitants of start-up land can probably benefit from some practice of humility and self control. Not that bad tempers and ego are new problems.

Alexander the Great conquered the known world and had cities named in his honor. This is common knowledge.

Stoics would also point out that, once while drunk, Alexander got into a fight with his dearest friend, Cleitus, and accidentally killed him. Afterward, he was so despondent that he couldn’t eat or drink for three days. Sophists were called from all over Greece to see what they could do about his grief, to no avail.

Is this the mark of a successful life? From a personal standpoint, it matters little if your name is emblazoned on a map if you lose perspective and hurt those around you.

The exercise Marcus Aurelius suggests to remedy this is simple and effective:


“Run down the list of those who felt intense anger at something: the most famous, the most unfortunate, the most hated, the most whatever: Where is all that now? Smoke, dust, legend…or not even a legend. Think of all the examples. And how trivial the things we want so passionately are.”

It’s important to note that “passion” here isn’t the modern usage we’re familiar with. From Wikipedia:


One must therefore strive to be free of the passions, bearing in mind that the ancient meaning of ‘passion’ was “anguish” or “suffering”, that is, “passively” reacting to external events — somewhat different from the modern use of the word. A distinction was made between pathos (plural pathe) which is normally translated as “passion”, propathos or instinctive reaction (e.g. turning pale and trembling when confronted by physical danger) and eupathos, which is the mark of the Stoic sage (sophos). The eupatheia are feelings resulting from correct judgment in the same way as the passions result from incorrect judgment.

The idea was to be free of suffering through apatheia or peace of mind (literally, ‘without passion)’, where peace of mind was understood in the ancient sense — being objective or having “clear judgment” and the maintenance of equanimity in the face of life’s highs and lows.

For those interested in browsing the Greek words used in Stoic writing that are often mistranslated or miscontrued in English, here is a glossary of common terms.

Returning to the point of the exercise, it’s simple: remember how small you are.

For that matter, remember how small most everything is.

Remember that achievements can be ephemeral, and that your possession of them is for just an instant. Learn from Alexander’s mistake. Be humble and honest and aware. That is something you can have every single day of your life. You’ll never have to fear someone taking it from you or, worse still, it taking over you.

Tim: To illustrate a few real-world examples, here is an email from me to Ryan as we were working on this post:


Thanks, Ryan. Read it all and ran over all the material again. I think we’re getting there. The piece should be uplifting and empowering without being defensive, so it will still take some working, but no worries. I’ll be reading Epictetus tonight for more ideas. The part that bothers me is the entire “Remember you’re small” bit, which doesn’t jive with start-up founders. To do huge things, I really think you need to believe you can change the world and do so better than anyone else in some respect. It is possible, however, to simultaneously recognize that all is impermanent: the transient pains, bad PR, disloyal false friends, irrational exuberance, hitting #1 on the NY Times, whatever. I think it’s about not dwelling on pain and not clinging to ephemeral happiness. Enjoy it to the fullest (this is where I disagree with some of the Stoic writings), but don’t expect it to last forever, nor expect some single point in time to make your entire life complete forever.

*****

Stoic writings are not arcane arguments for bespectacled professors—they are cognitive exercises proven to center practitioners. To humble them. To keep them free and appreciative.

Stoic principles are often practiced in rehabilitation clinics with alcoholics so that coping mechanisms don’t drive them to drink. One wouldn’t view their new perspective on life as pessimistic or limiting; we celebrate the fact that, for their first time in their lives, they are empowered and unburdened.

We’re all addicts in some respect, and we can all experience that same freedom.

You can be a Stoic, and joke around and have a happy life surrounded by what’s valuable to you.

In fact, that’s the ultimate goal.
Stoicism is Ideal for the Entrepreneurial Life

The Stoics were writing honestly, often self-critically, about how they could become better people, be happier, and deal with the problems they faced. As an entrepreneur you can see how practicing misfortune makes you stronger in the face of adversity; how flipping an obstacle upside down turns problems into opportunities; and how remembering how small you are keeps your ego manageable and in perspective.

Ultimately, that’s what Stoicism is about. It’s not some systematic discussion of why or how the world exists. It is a series of reminders, tips and aids for living a good life.

Stoicism, as Marcus reminds himself, is not some grand Instructor but a balm, a soothing ointment to an injury wherever we might have one. Epictetus was right when he said that “life is hard, brutal, punishing, narrow, and confining, a deadly business.”

We should take whatever help we can get, and it just happens that that help can come from ourselves.

To finish, I want to share some of my favorite Stoic reminders. Look at them as short, mental routines to run through often. Each is a quick reset to recalibrate yourself and be happy with the things that matter:

***

Marcus Aurelius

“So other people hurt me? That’s their problem. Their character and actions are not mine. What is done to me is ordained by nature and what I do by my own.”

“Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside.”

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own–not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me.”

“Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.”

***

Seneca

“‘What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend.’ That is progress indeed. Such a people will never be alone and you may be sure he is a friend to all.”

“Show me a man who isn’t a slave; one who is a slave to sex, another to money, another to ambition; all are slaves to hope or fear. I could show you a man who has been a Consul who is a slave to his ‘little old woman’, a millionaire who is the slave of a little girl in domestic service. And there is no state of slavery more disgraceful than one which is self-imposed.”

“Count your years and you’ll be ashamed to be wanting and working for exactly the same things as you wanted when you were a boy. Of this make sure against your dying day – that your faults die before you do.”

“Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.”

“Cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity and always take full note of fortune’s habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything that is in her power.”

***

Epictetus

“So-and-so’s son is dead
What happened?
His son is dead
Nothing else?
Not a thing.

So-and-so’s ship sank
What happened?
His ship sank.

So-and-so was carted off to prison.
What happened?
He was carted off to prison.
-But if we now add to this “He has had bad luck,” then each of us is adding this observation on his own account”

***
Related Post:
Harnessing Entrepreneurial Manic-Depression: Making the Rollercoaster Work for You

The Stoic Reading and Resources List:
(Note from Tim: I have bolded my favorites, the first two from Seneca)

Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
Dialogues and Letters (includes “On The Shortness of Life”) by Seneca
The Meditations (Gregory Hays translation. I strongly recommend this translation over all others. It’s the difference between liking and hating it.)
The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius by Pierre Hadot
Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault by Pierre Hadot
The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters
To Philosophize is To Learn How to Die (essay) by Montaigne
Discourses and Selected Writings of Epictetus by Epictetus
An Essay on Marcus Aurelius by Matthew Arnold
An Amazing Lecture Series on Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism
A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe (Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities etc, wrote an epic book that is a modern allegory of the teachings of Epictetus)
Seneca on Trial: The Case of the Opulent Stoic The Classic Journal, Vol. 61, No. 6 (1966)
Rudius Media Book Club Discussion of Stoicism (led by Ryan Holiday)

Have you seen?
Tim Ferriss on TechCrunch’s Crunchbase
Tim Ferriss on Google Profiles
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The Tim Ferriss Podcast, Episode 4: Ryan Holiday
The Obstacle Is The Way — The Tim Ferriss Book Club, Book #4
How to Travel: 21 Contrarian Rules
The Tim Ferriss Book Club Launches — Book #1: Vagabonding
How to Dominate Any Tradeshow, and Why Even Solo Entrepreneurs Should Try

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How Car Recalls Work

How Car Recalls Work
BY JORDAN GOLSON
06.11.14 |
2:26 PM |
PERMALINK




The 2015 Cadillac Escalade was recalled earlier this year because of an issue with the passenger-side front airbag. GM recommended that “occupants should not sit in the front passenger seat position” until the issue was fixed. 1,223 customers were affected. Image: General Motors

Recalls like the one GM is suffering through bring to mind fiery crashes, angry consumers, and publicity-seeking politicians. The reality is most recalls don’t stem from accidents and are settled pretty easily.

Cars have thousands of parts and things go wrong all the time—since the beginning of 2014, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced nearly 100 different recalls. There are rules in place to put things right. Here’s how that process works.

Drivers who find something wrong with their car can report it to NHSTA, whose technical experts take a look. If the agency receives enough reports (there’s no fixed number) about a particular problem, it takes action. That involves ordering the automaker to fix the problem safely, effectively, and for free.

Most recalls are spearheaded by automakers, which discover problems via customers, dealers, lawsuits, and their own inspections. Those defects don’t always affect safety. Sometimes a car just isn’t quite up to code for federal regulations or the automaker’s quality standards.

When an automaker initiates a recall, it’s required to notify NHTSA and file a public report airing all the dirty details, including how it discovered the problem, who is affected, and how it plans to fix things. That last bit usually means notifying customers and asking them bring their cars to dealerships for a free repair.

Because federal guidelines change slowly and old people still own cars, automakers must send those notifications as letters—in the mail!—to the registered owners of affected automobiles, then follow up with a postcard every three months for a year and a half to remind them to take care of the issue. GM can also send notifications through its cars’ OnStar vehicle diagnostics system and via a monthly “state-of-the-car” email that customers can choose to receive. If things are bad, dealerships and customer service folks may call owners to push them to come in for repairs.

GM spokesperson Alan Adler played down the fact that his employer has recalledsome 7 million vehicles this year. “We’ve added 35 investigators to our product investigation group,” he explained. The company is catching more issues coming through the system and ultimately issuing more recalls to fix them. It’s not that there are more problems now, it’s just that GM is noticing more. Great!

“There are some things we could [have done] differently,” Adler said, but the company is aggressively looking to improve. “We’re running issues to ground very quickly,” he said. “We’re not going to wait around for stuff to develop.”

Adler broke down how a recall moves through a big company like GM: Potential product issues first undergo an Investigation Status Review—basically engineers talking to engineers. If a problem is discovered, the Field Performance Execution Team gets into the action. It brings representatives from different departments to determine the logistics of making repairs, like how to get parts that may have gone out of production years ago. (For the ignition switch recall, GM has two production lines running full time to build new switch assemblies and hopes to have enough parts to fix the affected vehicles by October.)

That data is passed to a Recommendation Group, which decides if it’s looking at a safety or customer service issue. From there, a safety recall moves to the Executive Field Action Decision Committee, with executives from departments including engineering, quality, powertrain, and manufacturing. It decides if there will be a recall, and how it will be classified. Once the collective mind is made up, GM has five business days to inform the NHTSA.

Then it hopes that all its customers get the repairs done.

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Google’s New All-Seeing Satellites Have Huge Potential—For Good and Evil

Google’s New All-Seeing Satellites Have Huge Potential—For Good and Evil
BY MARCUS WOHLSEN
06.11.14 |
6:30 AM |
PERMALINK



Building SkySat-1 in the clean room of Skybox in Mountain View, CA, in 2013. Photo: Spencer Lowell

The reach of Google’s online empire is hard to overstate. In a sense, the Google search engine is the loom through which the entirety of the public internet is woven. With tools like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs, the company also handles many of our private online tasks. Using the data generated by these services to target online ads, Google has built a business that generates tens of billions of dollars a year.

Now, with the $500 million purchase of Skybox, a startup that shoots high-res photos and video with low-cost satellites, Google can extend its reach far across the offline world. Thanks to its knack for transforming mass quantities of unstructured data into revenue-generating insights, the unprecedented stream of aerial imagery to which the company is gaining access could spark a whole new category of high-altitude insights into the workings of economies, nations, and nature itself.

But this acquisition will also demand assurances from Google that it will incorporate privacy safeguards into its vast new view of the world. Already Google gets a lot of flack for tracking user behavior online. With Skybox’s satellites, Google may gain a window into your everyday life even if you don’t use Google at all.
Really Big Data

In his WIRED feature story on Skybox, David Samuels describes some of the stunning ways high-resolution images shot from space are being used to unlock secrets about life on the ground. One company is tracking cars in parking lots to create retail forecasts. Images of pits and slag heaps reveal the productivity of mines. Pictures of property damage from above can tell insurance companies whether a claim is valid.

“Many of the most economically and environmentally significant actions that individuals and businesses carry out every day, from shipping goods to shopping at big-box retail outlets to cutting down trees to turning out our lights at night, register in one way or another on images taken from space,” Samuels writes. “So, while Big Data companies scour the Internet and transaction records and other online sources to glean insight into consumer behavior and economic production around the world, an almost entirely untapped source of data–information that companies and governments sometimes try to keep secret–is hanging in the air right above us.”

In a statement, Google has said that, in the short term, it plans to use Skybox’s satellites to keep Google Maps up to date. And, in the future, the company says, it could use them to help spread internet access to remote areas, something that will help improve the reach of its existing services. But imagine all the other things Google could do turns its artificial intelligence expertise onto a constant stream of images beamed down from above.

One Skybox insider told Samuels that satellite images alone could be used to estimate any country’s major economic indicators. Take, for example, this Skybox case study of Saudi oil reserves measured from space. Now consider the insights that could come from marrying that visual data with Google’s Knowledge Graph, leveraging all the company’s algorithmic might. Google could learn all kinds of new things about the world.


Gold Mine in Uşak, Western Turkey. Photo: Courtesy of Skybox
Military-Industrial Ties

But it could also learn all kinds of new things about you. Skybox can take photos from 500 miles up with a sub-one-meter resolution of the ground below. That isn’t likely to sit well with privacy activists who already don’t trust Google. What does the right to be forgotten mean when Google can always see you anyway?

Skybox’s pedigree likely won’t help assuage anyone who likes a good conspiracy theory. According to Samuels, one of the company’s co-founders, John Fenwick, had previously worked as as a liaison in Congress for the National Reconnaissance Office, “the ultrasecret spy agency that manages much of America’s most exotic space toys.” A major investor had worked as an intelligence officer in the French army, while its CEO held previous jobs that brought him into close contact with the Department of Defense.

That’s not to suggest there’s anything nefarious about Skybox or its intentions. It’s hard to get anything into space without entreé into government and military circles. But Skybox CEO Tom Ingersoll told Samuels that the government is interested in his company’s imagery. “In the end,” Samuels writes, “the government will likely commandeer some of Skybox’s imaging capabilities under terms similar to those imposed on other vendors.” With Google now involved, that begins to sound a lot like the NSA commandeering the internet servers to spy on U.S. citizens.
Skybox or Skynet?

Even if a network of high-powered imaging satellites could give Google the power to track an individual from space, it probably wouldn’t. Setting aside any legal or moral constraints, there’s just no percentage in it. Monetizable insights of the kind that would interest Google or companies willing to pay Google for access to that data are derived from observing patterns and populations, not individuals. As geeks of all varieties are fond of pointing out, n=1 is a terrible sample size.

If Google finds ways of using these satellites that ends up making users’ lives more interesting and convenient, most people are unlikely to object, just like revelations of NSA surveillance haven’t exactly dented Gmail’s market share. But people may find the idea of Google looking down from the heavens on their physical selves more discomfiting than peering through their browsers at their virtual personas. After all, putting an all-seeing Google eye in space gives a whole new meaning to “do not track.”


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Obama is driving the country to ruin

MICHAEL GOODWIN

OPINION

Obama is driving the country to ruin


By Michael Goodwin

June 7, 2014 | 10:22pm


Photo: INF Photo

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If you think of the United States of America as a store, its recent decisions and scandals resemble a sale, perhaps a fire sale. Or maybe even a “Going Out of Business” sale.

The list of dramatic markdowns is breathtaking. They include trading away five murderous terrorists for a likely Army deserter, an open invitation to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to cross the Mexican border, and a decision to recognize the terrorist group Hamas as part of the Palestinian government.

On the home front, environmental regulations will cost thousands of coal miners their jobs and drive up the cost of electricity for millions. The ObamaCare mess is hardly resolved, and the Veterans Affairs scandal keeps getting worse. The acting agency head reported the deaths of 18 more vets who were kept off the official waiting list in Phoenix.

Ticking quietly in the background is the mother of all threats — an Iranian nuclear bomb. That ticking grew louder last week as the ayatollah mocked our nation by standing in front of a banner that proclaimed, “America cannot do a damn thing.”

Technically, he’s wrong. It’s not that we cannot stop the mad mullahs’ march. It’s that President Obama has taken the military option off the table, and without it, Iran has nothing to fear. Our impotence was a choice.

Add to the combustible mix the expansionist moods in Russia and China, and the series of events recalls an observation by the late economist Herb Stein. Speaking in another context, he said that, “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.” That sums up the current sense of the nation as a whole.

What seemed for years a steady and slow decline increasingly feels like a headlong race to the bottom. America is careening downhill, and a crack-up appears inevitable.

Modal Trigger

It is no coincidence that the deal with the Taliban to release five terrorist leaders from Guantanamo brought the first threat of presidential impeachment from a respected member of Congress. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said that if Obama tried to release others without lawmakers’ approval, it would lead to “people on our side calling for his impeachment.”

That is the nuclear option, and there is good reason why it has been so rarely invoked throughout history. And yet the intense fever gripping Washington, largely created by Obama’s go-it-alone approach, needs to be broken. The country simply cannot continue to remain the beacon of the free world if we are consumed by our own dysfunction and distrust.

Impeachment is one way to try to resolve a political crisis, but as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy argues in his new book, public opinion is a vital ingredient, and it is missing. Titled “Faithless Execution,” his book’s subtitle, “Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment,” is based on McCarthy’s claim that the legal case is solid that Obama has violated his oath to execute the laws faithfully.

That’s an arguable point, but even to concede it means nothing because the Democratic Party has been so cowed into supporting Obama, regardless of what he does, that there is no chance to make the political case.

Indeed, we have reached this crisis largely because centrist Democrats have failed to stand up against Obama and demand more moderate policies.

Leaving aside occasional grumbling from party elders, he gets ­almost unanimous support from every Dem in Congress for every piece of his radical agenda. Evidence shows that one of his most pernicious practices, using the IRS to punish conservative groups, grew out of congressional demands from liberals. While that doesn’t excuse Obama’s role, it does demonstrate that his party has enabled and encouraged his improper conduct.
THE RESULT IS THAT THE CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES HAS BEEN GUTTED AS DEMOCRATS ACT AS AN AMEN CHORUS FOR THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH.

The framers put a high bar on impeachment, and merely attempting to draw up the articles is viable only when there is a bipartisan consensus that the president’s immediate removal is necessary. We are a long way from that consensus.

Still, something has to give. And unless Democrats begin to put duty to country over loyalty to Obama, America as we know it is headed to a point of no return.
Pol-pal unions wal the shots

After reading the City Council letter demanding that Walmart stop giving money to city charities, it’s easy to conclude the council members are misguided, mistaken or just plain nuts.

They may be all of those things, but they are something else, too: They are union puppets who have sold their souls for votes.

The 26 council members who signed the letter — a majority of the entire body — claim that Walmart and the Walton Family Foundation are trying to “find a foothold in New York City” by buying “influence and support.”

Shrinks would call that projection — accusing others of your own sins. Or maybe it just takes a sellout to know a sellout.

Whatever its motives, Walmart is doing something good with its philanthropy and ought to be applauded.

It announced that it distributed $3 million last year, including $1 million to the New York Women’s Foundation, which offers job training, and $30,000 to Bailey House, which provides support to low-income residents with HIV/AIDS.

Faced with such generosity, council members demanded that it “stop spending your dangerous dollars in our city” and added: “That’s right: this is a cease-and-desist letter.”

Tsk, tsk. The issue is that unions don’t want Walmart’s non-union competition, and the scandal is that local pols blocked the company from opening a single store in the five boroughs. Never mind that New Yorkers would benefit from new jobs and low prices on a wide array of products.

Almost as shameful, Mayor de Blasio voted “present” on the issue. Asked by reporters, he declined to take a stance on the letter.

Apparently he wants to confront inequality only when it means keeping unions happy. Otherwise, the poor can take a hike.
Salute to the heroes of D-Day

The importance of the D-Day invasion cannot be overstated, but its meaning becomes more easily understood during times of global chaos, such as the one we live in now. The 70th anniversary, then, captured both the magnitude of the unmatched operation and the stakes that led so many young men to bravely face the German guns.

To fully appreciate their courage, make yourself a promise. Promise that, before you die, you will go to Normandy. Promise that you will stand on the beach, climb into the bomb craters and bunkers and that, most of all, you will walk quietly through the cemeteries, which hold the remains of 9,386 Americans.

My promise is that you will never regret your visit, nor will you ever forget those brave souls.
Goop in the water

Gwyneth Paltrow says water has feelings. I say she’s all wet.
FILED UNDERBARACK OBAMA, DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS, GUANTANAMO BAY, ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, OBAMACARE, TERRORISTS


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Threads HD (Nuclear War)

Tactical Nuclear Warfare: "Atomic Battlefield" The Big Picture US Army 2...

Somewhat naive, period U.S. Army training / propaganda film.

The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama

POLITICS
The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama
He promised to bring us together. Instead, he drove us apart.


By Ben Domenech
JUNE 4, 2014




The events of the past week illustrate the degree to which Barack Obama has become a failed president.



When Obama burst onto the national scene, he almost immediately became an inspirational figure. His promise spoke to our hearts as Americans and our desire for dramatic change in the wake of the fractious Bush years. His personal story and his optimism about the future sounded an affirming and uplifting note at a time when Americans were losing their hope for what tomorrow could bring. For a moment, it seemed like the promise of a uniter, not a divider, could provide leadership which – whatever Obama’s personal ideology – could lead to a healthier politics and a less fractured society.




Obama’s tenure in office has turned all these hopes into despair – despair in the corruption of our institutions, in the capability of our government, in our ability to manage large systems and more. Consider just the events of the past few days: the slow-rolling scandal of how we care for our Veterans, full of mismanagement, denials, and a growing awareness that this problem was shoved under the rug for years; the White House’s decision to embark on a top-down monopartisan environmental policy which will squeeze the working class and make energy more expensive; and of course, Obama’s decision to trade five high ranking terrorists for an apparent American deserter in Afghanistan, a decision which directly ignores the law of the land and will almost certainly lead to future deaths.


In these arenas, we see the Obama administration at its worst: willing to engage in irresponsible and occasionally illegal acts, bowling their way through mismanagement and cronyism and the rule of law to achieve their aims, no matter the cost. It is the same approach they used in his single domestic policy achievement – Obamacare – and they have not stopped using it since.


And there will be costs. Not for Obama, of course – for him, there are no consequences except bad poll numbers. He doesn’t appear to care about those any more. But the latest CNN numbers are as grim as it gets. For Obama on the issues, the poll finds him on the wrong side of roughly 60 percent of Americans across the board: Economy 38-61, Health care 36-63, Foreign affairs 40-57, Budget 31-67, Immigration 35-61, Guns 33-64, Afghanistan 42-56, VA medical facilities 37-58, Ukraine 38-53. His overall approval is 43-55, down to 34-63 among independents. And when it comes to helping the middle class, the main issue Obama has trumpeted with his rhetoric on inequality and class division, he’s upside down to the tune of 40-58. But why would he care? Anna Wintour doesn’t.


So there are no consequences for Obama, other than the occasional dings of the press or jabs from Joel McHale or Jon Stewart. For his party, though, there could be other consequences at the ballot box in 2014 and 2016. The candidates know this – which is why on Obamacare, and on the EPA rules, and on Bergdahl, Democratic candidates in Kentucky and Georgia and elsewhere will be holding Obama at arm’s length, sticking to local issues and promises of pork. But that’s hard to do – John Dickerson has this comparison: “Imagine being a short-order cook in an earthquake. Every time you try to flip a burger or try to plate a fried egg, the freezer door flies open or the gas line gets knocked out. That’s what it’s like to be a Democrat running for the Senate this year. When you’re trying to keep voters focused on the local race, a national issue intrudes.” And not in a good way.


In the end, Obama’s legacy will not be a stronger Democratic party or a nation that is happier, more harmonious, and more free. People will not look back on these years as good for the country, for our politics or our people. And as for his policy legacy, the repeal of his only real domestic achievement of significance, Obamacare, will be a core issue accepted by every Republican presidential candidate in 2016. The opposition to Obamacare is motivated, but its supporters aren’t. And Republicans will absolutely make its deconstruction their central aim should they win.


Why did this happen? Why did Obama fail? The typical answer from the left is one of racism or bigotry or Republican extremism. More even-handed analysts seem to believe that Obama tried to do too much, that he was a poor technocrat or struggled with mismanagement, or that the job of the presidency is just too big.


But I would suggest it’s Obama’s inability to actually live up to his promise as a unifier of people which proved his undoing. Maybe it’s not his fault. Coming up in a Democratic state and a Democratic city, he lacked the ability to work across lines of ideology from the get-go, and if he failed to initially convince people to agree with him on something, he had no desire to keep working at it to convince them otherwise or the personal diplomacy to meet them halfway. Charlie Cook’s latest piece nods in the direction of this idea, but this line strikes me as off the mark: “The notion that “where you stand depends on where you sit” seems to cut little ice in our increasingly rigid society, when tolerance for different points of view is becoming increasingly rare.”


The real source of the problem Cook identifies isn’t universal intolerance for other points of view, but intolerance on one side of the debate for any legitimate reasoning to legislate according to their points of view. Where in the absence of national consensus conservatives reject federal law imposing something, typically favoring state level legislation instead, liberals in the Obama era cry racism or bigotry or worse. One side of the American body politic is willing to accept principled disagreement as a signal that an issue is either unsuited to or unripe for a federal response; while the other sees it as authorization to bypass the democratic process and impose their will by any means available.


Under the Constitution, the government is supposed to protect the rights of both the country mouse who opposes cap and trade and the Bergdahl swap equally. But we are seeing the left reject this more and more as it evolves into a formalizing religion of the state, under which error has no rights, dissent must be crushed, and the law can be ignored at whim. Barack Obama has helped drive that process, and that is the legacy he will leave.


“What embitters the world,” G.K. Chesterton wrote, “is not excess of criticism, but an absence of self-criticism.” The Obama of 2008 promised he would end divisiveness by bringing us together – instead, as president, he has sought to end divisiveness by forcing everyone to accept his views. And in the end, he has achieved neither.

Originaly at :http://thefederalist.com/2014/06/04/the-failed-presidency-of-barack-obama/

Quote of the Day
It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
Rene Descartes

Buy vs. Rent a Home: 3 Common Myths Busted

Buy vs. Rent a Home: 3 Common Myths Busted


When weighing major life decisions, everyone seems to have the answer. You should marry this person, drive that car, and have so many kids—all by a certain age. Never mind if it’s actually the best choice for you!

Home ownership is no different. Deciding whether to buy or rent always comes with a generous helping of opinion. So how do you separate fact from fiction?

Let’s start by breaking down three common myths.
Myth #1: Buying a home is the grown-up thing to do.

Many folks look at home ownership as a rite of passage into adulthood. According to the National Association of Realtors, the typical first-time home buyer is 31 years old. So if you’re 25 and feel like you’re behind the curve because you haven’t bought a home yet, stop worrying. There’s no reason to rush into a big purchase just because friends or family tell you it’s what you’re supposed to do. Real grown-ups know it’s not the money-smart choice in every situation.

During times of transition, renting for a year or two gives you time to get your feet on solid ground before making a life-changing decision. Here are a few examples:

—You just graduated from college and aren’t ready to plant your roots in one place yet.

—You moved to a new city and aren’t sure which neighborhood is right for you.

—You’re in the military and don’t want to lose money on a home every time you’re stationed in a new place.

Dave also recommends waiting at least a year after getting married to buy a home. After all, it takes a year of being married to know how close to your mother-in-law to buy. Spend your first year getting to know each other and learning how to manage your money well as a team. You have until “death do you part” to take your next big plunge!

Myth #2: It’s stupid to pass up a good deal when the market is hot.

You found the perfect home, and the sellers are practically giving it away. It just might be the deal of the century. Even though Sallie Mae’s got her clutches on your pocketbook, you’d be dumb to walk away, right?

Wrong!

With real estate, you make money by buying the right thing at the right time—not by taking advantage of the market.Never buy a home based solely on the market. Buy when you’re financially ready. Here’s how you know you can afford it:

—You’re out of debt.

—You have 3–6 months of expenses in your emergency fund, plus enough cash for a 10–20% down payment on a 15-year fixed mortgage.

—You’re paying cash up front, or your mortgage payment is no more than 25% of your monthly take-home pay.

Jumping into home ownership with debt and no emergency fund is like diving into a pool with no water. You’re sure to hit rock bottom. First the A/C breaks, then the roof leaks. Next thing you know, you’re turning to credit cards and loans to pay for it all—and the hole you’re in just keeps getting bigger.

There’s nothing wrong with renting while you work to get your finances in order. In fact, Dave encourages it! Take time to lay the right foundation before you take the leap, and your home will be a blessing instead of a curse.
Myth #3: Renting is cheaper because there’s no upkeep.

Whether or not you should rent or buy a home may seem like an apples-to-apples comparison if you look at monthly costs alone. In that case, home ownership often tips the money scale because you pay for maintenance, taxes and homeowner’s insurance on top of your mortgage payment. Long-term costs, however, paint a different picture.

According to Trulia, if you bought a home today and lived there for seven years, you’d save 38% compared to renting. Why? Because you’ve got inflation on your side. When you own a home, you don’t have to worry about the landlord jacking up your rent each year. Your monthly costs are essentially locked in for as long as you live there. As your home’s value goes up and your mortgage principal goes down, that’s money in your pocket down the road.

Rent, on the other hand, rides the wave of inflation, and research shows it’s taking up a growing portion of income in many major cities. According to Zillow, the cost of rent grew twice as quickly as household income between 2000 and 2014 and currently makes up nearly 30% of renter income. That’s 5% more than Dave recommends spending on housing costs!
Get Advice You Can Trust From a Pro

Deciding whether or not to buy a home isn’t an easy choice. That’s why it’s smart to partner with a trustworthy pro who can help you navigate your options. Ask your real estate agent to show you a buy vs. rent analysis based on your specific market and financial situation.

If you’re looking for a pro with the heart of a teacher, we can introduce you to an agent in your area who Dave recommends.BACK TO BLOG

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Writing Tips: How to Come Up With 50 Topic Ideas in 30 Minutes

Writing Tips: How to Come Up With 50 Topic Ideas in 30 Minutes

BY NEIL PATEL | June 2, 2014|
4 Comments |

The core issue for many content marketers is this: How do I come up with article topics? Without topics, you have no articles, no content, and therefore no content marketing. It’s obvious that we need to figure out how to come up with topic ideas quickly and effectively.

That’s why I put together this brief guide on how to come up with 50 topic ideas in 30 minutes. My goal is for you to read this article, then be able to spend half an hour to come up with your own set of topics to write about on your company’s website.
Before you start, some quick rules:
The idea behind this exercise is quantity, not necessarily quality.



You might come up with some junk ideas as you race to write them down, but at least you’ll come up with ideas. Those ideas can be massaged and coaxed into an awesome title or topic for a winning article. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Force yourself to write stuff down.

When you actually begin to type words, you begin to come up with more ideas and to think in clearer ways. There are three major sections I’ve outlined in which you will be prompted not just to think of ideas but to write those ideas down. This exercise will be completely useless unless you actually write things down.
This is idea generation only.

Now is not the time to assign article topics, craft the perfect headline, or create the chapters for your ebook. This isn’t an editorial calendar. This isn’t article outlines. These are ideas, pure and simple. Confine your efforts, and you’ll maximize your productivity.
Be as specific as possible.

The following is a process for coming up with tons of topic ideas, but the specifics are up to you. As you write stuff down, also force yourself to be specific.

For example, in a section below I ask, “How did you get started in your industry?” Come up with two specific topics based on that question. If you write down something like “Why You Should Go to College,” you’re not getting it. Instead, write down something really specific and personal.

One of my first entrepreneurial gigs was selling CDs in high school. I could have chosen to sell pirated CDs, but I opted for the legal route. That simple choice shaped the direction of my business. So, maybe I could trace out an idea like this: “Why I Didn’t Choose an Illegal Job, and How It Shaped My Life.” See how a specific trigger event can spark a killer idea?

Related: 8 Must-Have Ingredients of a Successful Blog Post
Now, let’s come up with 50 ideas...
1. Go to a place that is free from distractions and interruptions.

This doesn’t need to be anywhere magical or special. Just turn off your phone if that helps.
2. Open a document to capture your thoughts.

Since our goal at this point is speed and efficiency, it doesn’t matter what note-taking application you choose. I use Evernote and Drive for quick-and-easy document creation.

Google Drive makes it easy to create a file. Plus, you have it saved forever in your Drive archives. Evernote, meanwhile, functions as a de factobrain for some people. It’s perfect for storing ideas.
3. Start your timer for 30 minutes.

Having a specific amount of time will force you to be productive. It’s focused time. Knowing that the timer is ticking down the seconds will either paralyze you or motivate you to action. If you feel paralyzed, remember that you need to kick yourself into gear.
4. The question phase.

Time: 12 minutes

Goal: 25 topics

Instructions: Ask yourself the following questions, and try to create at least two topic ideas from each one:

What are you passionate about in your industry? Is there a certain angle or approach that gets you excited? What’s your greatest skill? What do you prefer to spend most of your time on? Rather than answer these questions directly, think of article angles that you can derive from them.

For example, I’m passionate about content marketing. It’s what inspires me, and I’m convinced it’s the key to online marketing success. But I’m not just going to write an article on “Why I’m Passionate about Content Marketing.” Instead, I’m going to channel that enthusiasm into a major work that I can get excited about, like an advanced guide to content marketing.

How did you get started in your industry? Everyone enters their niche in a different way. How did you get interested in your area? What training did you have?

Don’t be afraid of getting personal here. The best content is stuff that is personal, while still actionable and oriented to your audience. People love to hear about others’ experiences and to read things from a first-person perspective.

Again, use your answer to this question as an article topic. For example, if I started as an online marketing professional by facing a traffic challenge on a small-time ecommerce site, I can tell that story, while providing a lot of great advice. Maybe it can be something like, “Five SEO Lessons I Learned While Working on a Struggling Ecommerce Site.”

Why is your product the best? If you sell a product, you are hopefully convinced of its value. Why does it rock?

What are some mistakes that people make in your industry? Every industry has its pitfalls. What are some in your industry? What makes people go out of business, experience a slump, or lose interest?

What is the greatest challenge in your industry? If you tell people how to overcome common industry challenges, they will eat your content up. Jot down the biggest challenges, and just write “solve it!” beside them. You’ve got an idea that can transform into a powerful article.

What does success look like in your industry? What does it mean to get to the top or to dominate? How do you get there?

Who is the most successful person in your industry? Write down their names and the word “interview.” Later on, you can call them up to request an interview, or read other interviews that they’ve participated in. From published interviews, you can pick up on a salient point and tease it out into an article or two

What is the biggest news in your industry? One of the richest sources of articles is contemporary industry news. Turn your mind to the breaking news, and jot down a couple ideas.

Related: Why You Should Create Long-Form Content (And How to Do It)

What is a success story from your business? Biggest failure? Stories of personal experience are perfect for article topics. Want to write an article that gets read and shared? Discuss how and why you failed at first, or what factors led to some huge success.

What personal skills help someone become successful in your industry? This is easily a top 10 list -- several of them, actually. From time-management tips to email ninja advice, you can bust out a bunch of practical and tactical advice that will really appeal to your audience. Everyone wants to become successful. This series of topic ideas tells them exactly how to get there.

What tools do you use to get your job done? This is another list or top 10 article. What kind of things do you use -- a desk, a Macbook, an iPhone, a Bluetooth device? What about mobile apps? Web apps? Data storage? Coffee? Write it down.

Where, when, and how do you do your best work? Each industry is going to have its own take on getting stuff done -- the hows and whys. You can become the authoritative voice in your industry for how to do it. Think about tips like avoiding burnout, maximizing productivity, and accomplishing major tasks.

Why do you enjoy being in your industry? There may be some days when your work is a chore, but what about those bright moments? How do you stay motivated in your industry? How do specific challenges motivate you? How do the experiences intrigue you?

What is changing in your industry? Every industry has its developments, technological innovations, and major shakeups. These are great current topics that will fuel search queries and drive traffic. Jot down a few of these changes, and pull out some article topics. Most of the time, you won’t be able to posture yourself as a breaking news provider. Rather, you should take the position of providing opinion, commentary, response, or advice based on the developments.

What are some processes or practices that you have perfected? If you’ve achieved some level of expertise in a specific area, describe how you did it. Advanced guides and detailed topics are best. I’ve done this with SEO and content marketing and seen some really strong returns from it.
5. The Search Phase

Time: 12 minutes

Goal: 25 topics

Instructions: Here, you’ll enter the search phase -- actively seeking out ideas elsewhere on the web. Perform each of the following searches, and jot down at least five ideas from each source.

Related: 17 Content Pieces You Can Create Without Writing a Single Word

Visit the blogs of industry leaders. What are other leaders saying? If they are all discussing similar things, there’s a good chance you need to be part of the conversation. Join the topic and provide your own angle.

Some blogs share the most-visited or most popular posts. There’s a good chance that the top post is an evergreen topic that continually drives traffic. Take that topic, reshape it, and use it yourself.

Here’s what’s most popular on my blog:


Simply browsing around on an industry leader’s blog for two minutes should give you plenty of fresh ideas for content.

Visit the major industry websites. Beyond the blogs, there are other websites that provide industry information. In my niche, for example, Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Land are great sources for news and authority discussions on topics. If you’re in SEO, you can invariably extract some topic ideas from a one-minute survey of the homepage.


Visit the social profiles of industry leaders. Focus on Twitter and Google+. If you’re following other leaders in your industry (and you should be), track down their presence on Twitter, and Google+. Here, you’ll find the thread of their conversations, topics that they’re dealing with, and issues that are hot. Assuming you’re aware of four or five leaders, you’ll quickly gather fodder for dozens of ideas.

Here’s a quick glance at Barry Schwartz’s Google+ profile.


And here’s a visit to Danny Sullivan on Twitter:


Search Twitter for trending topics in your industry. Twitter is perfect for getting the buzz on current events related to your niche. Use Twitter’s search function to find out what’s trending in your particular niche. To go a step further, Twitter has a customizable trending section that you can tailor to match your exact interests.

Navigate to the Twitter home, find “Trends,” and click on “Change.”

Use Google autocomplete to come up with keywords and related topics. Google search alone is a powerful way to generate keywords that can morph into topic ideas.

From Google.com, start typing in a keyword of your industry. For example...


Continue typing. I suggest a verb.


Already, you have some ideas. Keep changing up the verbs, the keywords, and the order of words.



6. The rumination phase.

Time: Six minutes

Goal: Extra topics

Unplug and write stuff down. Now that you’ve absorbed this torrent of information, you probably still have ideas percolating in your mind. These are probably the very best ideas that you’ve ever come up with. Your mind has been pushing hard for twenty-four minutes, crawling through industry-specific topics, and generating ideas galore. Finally, relax your mind just a bit, and let the good ideas flow.
What’s next?

If you’re still in the topic-generation zone, just let your timer go off, and then keep going. You can come up with 100 topics. Or, you can start honing your titles, developing outlines, and annotating your list.

By spending 30 focused minutes, you can come up with enough content ideas to last for months.
Final Tips

Beyond your focused topic-generation sessions, you will always have some ideas floating in at random moments. Here are two closing tips to continually inspire and capture those great topic ideas.

Always be writing stuff down. Creativity gurus explain how, from a scientific perspective, our best ideas come when we’re totally disconnected from our work. It could be when you’re jogging, showering, or waking up in the morning. That’s why you need to always be writing down your ideas. Since you probably keep your phone nearby anyway, use it to jot down those ideas that come on the fly. Notes or Evernote are great options.

Always be learning. Whether it’s from reading, talking, watching Ted Talks, or trolling social media, you should always be in learner mode. The more you take in, the more you’ll be able to come up with great topic ideas. Absorb, read, consume, gain information. Always.


Copyright © 2014 Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

The 5 Books Every Entrepreneur Should Toss in Their Beach Bag

The 5 Books Every Entrepreneur Should Toss in Their Beach Bag

BY LEN MIDDLETON AND PETER ADRIAENS | June 1, 2014|
2 Comments |

Entrepreneurs work hard all year long to ensure their businesses become successful and stay successful, but everyone needs a break to relax and reflect. If you start feeling guilty about heading to the beach this summer don’t.

Here is a list of summer reads that will keep you thinking and inspired -- even from your Adirondack.

1. The Wide Lens: What Successful Innovators See That Others Miss by Ron Adner



Many entrepreneurs eat, breathe and sleep their inventions. Devoting themselves entirely to their craft is how they have learned to live and succeed. In The Wide Lens, innovation expert Ron Adner encourages entrepreneurs to pull back from focusing on themselves and explore the world around them. Travel. Make mistakes. Step outside your comfort zone. By the time they’re finished reading, entrepreneurs will start considering how bottlenecks in the value chain result in dependencies and thus the success or failure of their venture.



Big Data at Work by Tom Davenport

What is big data anyway? There is so much hand-waving by media and armchair analysts about big data that this concept has resulted in a lot of misconceptions and myths. In layman’s terms, Tom Davenport's book Big Data at Work examines how big data is not an objective by itself but an enabler of many types of businesses and that entrepreneurs have to become versed in how to manage and design their companies to extract the value.

Related: The 7 Books Every Entrepreneur Needs to Read When They're Discouraged



Getting to Plan B by John Mullins and Randy Komisar

Getting to Plan B recognizes that most startups have to make some type of pivot after starting, because they learn what customers really want and move the company in the right direction. Authors John Mullins and Randy Komisar guide entrepreneurs on the importance of being flexible and constantly evaluating your business model in order to change to meet customer needs.

Related: 3 Books to Help You Form Better Habits, Be More Creative and Think Like a Leader



Confessions of a Venture Capitalist by Ruthann Quindlen

Even the brightest entrepreneur might not understand everything when it comes to venture capital, but it’s important to have a good understanding of what your investors are thinking. In her bookConfessions of a Venture Capitalist, entrepreneurial-analysis expert Ruthann Quindlen provides basic insights into the venture capital world without sounding like a textbook, making it the perfect read for someone wanting to understand how venture capital works from a practitioner’s point of view.



Leading the Revolution by Gary Hamel

Gary Hamel is one of the top business authors of our time. Leading the Revolution is a timeless work on business innovation that focuses on how new ideas, innovation and growth help a company succeed. Whereas most books focus on current issues within a company, this one looks at how to build a future.

Related: The 3 Best Books For Entrepreneurs to Return To, Again and Again


Len Middleton and Peter Adriaens

Len Middleton is an adjunct professor of corporate strategy, international business and entrepreneurship at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He is also a board member of the Samuel Zell and Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies. Follow him at @zelllurie

Dr. Adriaens is professor of civil and environmental engineering, and professor of entrepreneurship and strategy in the Ross School of Business, where he is affiliated with the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies. Follow him at @padriaens.
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13 Signs of a Disengaged Employee (Infographic)

13 Signs of a Disengaged Employee (Infographic)

BY KATE TAYLOR | June 2, 2014|
8 Comments |


Complaining, gossiping and lying are just a few of the worst traits of disengaged employees.

Everyone has worked with a disengaged employee or coworker at one time. They're easy to spot once you chat with them for a few minutes: they just don't care about whether the company succeeds or fails. Instead of helping your business grow, they're dragging it down.



Related: 3 Savvy Tips to Help You Better Connect With (and Oversee) Your Staff

Officevibe, a company dedicated to improving corporate culture, compiled an infographic that defines the 13 personality traits of a disengaged employee. Check it out below so you know what to avoid.


Kate Taylor

Copyright © 2014 Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Sharyl Attkisson on Life After CBS News (Part 1 of 3)