|
|
When I played clarinet in high school, I never practiced. I blamed it on my dog, who howled, but basically I was a lousy music student.
At my weekly lesson, though, the teacher would scold me, guessing that I'd only practiced three or four hours the week before. I was so good at sight reading that while I was truly mediocre at the clarinet, I was way better than anyone who had never practiced had any right to be.
We often test sight reading skills, particularly in job interviews. In that highly-charged encounter, we test the applicant's ability to think on her feet. That's a great idea if the job involves a lot of feet thinking, but otherwise, you're inspecting for the wrong thing, aren't you? Same with a first date. Marketing yourself to a new person often involves being charismatic, clever and quick--but most jobs and most relationships are about being consistent, persistent and brave, no?
[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]
Don't want to get this email anymore? Click the link below to unsubscribe.
Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498 |
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
President Obama's Lies Regarding U.S. Dependency On Foreign Oil Posted: 01 Mar 2012 11:13 PM PST The Los Angeles times notes Obama, chart in hand, presses his case on gas prices As rising gas prices are putting pressure on politicians to act, President Obama called on Congress to vote quickly to eliminate subsidies for the oil industry, returning to a favorite target the president.Really? No, Not Really? The Facts show that President Obama is disingenuous at best, and a blatant liar at worst. I lean towards the latter. Reader Tim Wallace provides charts to prove it. Petroleum Distillates Usage ![]() That looks pretty good, doesn't it? But what the heck does it have to do with reduction in foreign demand, and more importantly, Obama's role (or lack thereof) in achieving those gains. For the answer to those most pertinent questions, let's display the usage in terms of foreign demand. Petroleum Distillates Percentage Usage ![]() Chart Explanations Reader Tim Wallace writes ... Hello Mish -There you have it. President Obama absolutely did not cut dependency on foreign oil. In fact, foreign oil dependency rose from roughly 37% to 40% under his administration. To be more precise, foreign petroleum usage in his administration went from 37% to a peak of 41% last year, currently at 39.9%. The only way Obama can take credit for the decline in consumption caused by the recession, is to take credit for the recession itself. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
Huge Problem With Bernanke's 2% Inflation Target Explained in Pictures Posted: 01 Mar 2012 12:22 PM PST Ben Bernanke wants prices to rise 2%. There are numerous problems with such a proposal, the first being increases in money supply sometimes lead to asset bubbles and not increases in prices of consumer goods. Indeed the Fed completely ignored (if not encouraged) the housing bubble because home prices are not in the CPI. A housing bubble and a housing crash was the result. The second major problem with inflation targeting is prices may go up, but wages may not necessarily follow. Indeed they haven't. Let's start with a graph of 2% price inflation over time. Inflation Targeting at 2% a Year ![]() click on any chart for sharper image Real Disposable Personal Income ![]() That chart nicely shows a slight parabolic pattern similar to the start of the first chart. However, that growth is a mirage based on population changes. Let's factor out population increases. Real Disposable Personal Income Per Capita ![]() Real Disposable Personal Income Per Capita Detail ![]() Income Gap Discussion That "Income Gap" is not the only problem. One must also consider "skew". As a result of Fed policies, there have been some income gains, but only at the top end. "Per Capita", by definition, averages out those gains. In reality, a select few percent have done exceptionally well as a result of Bernanke's tremendously misguided policies. Another few percent have simply done well, and another perhaps slightly larger group have barely kept up. The bottom 80 percent or so have fallen much further behind than the per capita charts suggest. Except for the banks, brokers and bondholders, and everyone else bailed out by the Fed, most have been clobbered by Fed policies. Ironically, many of those bailed out have the unmitigated gall to whine about their plight. Please See Unbelievable Stress of Making "Only" $200,000 After Taxes for details. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
Unbelievable Stress of Making "Only" $200,000 After Taxes Posted: 29 Feb 2012 11:53 PM PST People who have nothing to eat, no job, and are about to be tossed out of their homes in foreclosure, really do not know what stress is. To fully appreciate stress, please consider the sorry "plights" of Andrew Schiff, marketing director for Euro Pacific Capital, Daniel Arbeeny, a Wall Street headhunter, and hedge-fund manager Richard Scheiner. Bloomberg describes the out-and-out horror stories of all three in Wall Street Bonus Withdrawal Means Trading Aspen for Coupons Andrew Schiff said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country's top 1 percent by income, doesn't cover his family's private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.Imagine the Stress
Imagine the stress knowing full well that none of the above is enough, yet not being able to whine about it. "I wouldn't want to whine," Schiff said. "All I want is the stuff that I always thought, growing up, that successful parents had." This is more than nauseating, so if you need to excuse yourself to take care of matters, please do so now. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
You are subscribed to email updates from Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 |
|
Exploring the New Features in Bing Webmaster Tools |
Exploring the New Features in Bing Webmaster Tools Posted: 29 Feb 2012 02:44 AM PST Posted by Daniel Butler This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. Bing recently announced some pretty cool new features within their Webmaster Tools, so in this blog post we are going to delve a little deeper to see exactly what these tools are capable of. The Markup Validator (Beta)Found within the ‘Crawl’ tab of BWMT, the Beta Markup tool works in a similar way to the Google rich snippets testing tool extracting the following elements from a specified URL:
The inclusion of the open graph is a nice touch, and I can see this coming in handy. Upon submitting a URL, we are presented with a neat extract of any featured markup. Let’s use imdb.org as an example: However other than extracting elements from a page, there seems to be little actual validation taking place. There are no references to missing elements for example, or whether the mark up could potentially generate a rich snippet. Let's take a closer look at a URL with incomplete mark up. In the following example an “fn” field is missing for the hproduct element of a page, causing a flag to be raised within Google’s testing tool: However pasting this same URL within the Bing markup validator just produces the below: The URL actually being tested here contains hreview-aggregate and extensive use of hreview but there are no references within the Bing Validator, so results are also incomplete. I really want to like this tool, but I need jam in my Victoria sponge - as this is still in a Beta format, fingers crossed for an update (or perhaps a rename). Bing Keyword Research ToolSo Bing have finally released their own keyword tool: Overview of features:
A very clean and simple to use interface but a shame that the data isn’t yet available via an API as there is going to be quite a bit of heavy lifting if you’re generating a substantial keyword research campaign, but none the less we now have some data to play with from Bing directly. There are a ton of awesome posts to check out on SEOmoz that go into detail about the keyword research process, so I’m not going to go into great detail here, but with the data available from Bing I would be looking to:
For illustration purposes here is a quick mock up of how this can be developed: The numbers along the bottom reflect specific keywords, but for demonstration purposes these have been labelled as numbers. Although the keyword data from Bing isn’t yet available within an API, Bing has released an API for the rest of the data within Webmaster Tools (looking forward to having a play around with this). Look forward to hearing about your experiences using Bing’s latest tools. Whew! That, my friends was my first ever SEOmoz post. Did I get round to introducing myself? I’m Dan, Senior SEO consultant at SEOgadget. I’d love to know what you think and how you’re using the new features in Bing’s toolset. Until the next time! Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! |
You are subscribed to email updates from SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 |