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NAFTA and the SPP - CLICK here for full PDF

About two weeks ago, I had to write a paper on a US / Latin American policy issue. I wanted to write on an issue that I didn’t already know much about. And I found that the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) was something that I heard referred to by theorists and paranoid people…but I had trouble finding any decent analysis of it on the web. But since I had to write the paper for school, I had access to the Library Systems to research the subject and also get a good grade on a paper that might be interesting to my professor as well. And it turned out that I got an ‘A’ on this paper and it helped pull my grade from a B to an A so I am very happy to share it with everyone. Although this paper goes into a some slight detail into a specific issue of the Trans-Texas Corridor, it is by no means an all encompassing analysis of the entire SPP. This is merely a starting point for visitors to spark their interest and seek further information.

At request of some friends of this website, I’ve decided to make the paper available for viewing or download by clicking HERE.

You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to view the paper.

-Tyler

PS: To students. This paper was written by another student so it does not count as a peer reviewed article as a secondary resource for one of your papers. But you can feel free to look at the bibliography on the last page and use any of the resources there for your own information. Some are pretty dry but others were quite interesting and had a great deal of personality shining throughout the articles.

$4.99 for toothbrushes - May 26th, 2011 - CLICK for enlarged view

Inflation is a hip topic lately. Everyone has an opinion and a story, but these stories oftentimes seem disconnected with everyday life. Even gasoline has the feel of a process that takes time, technology and geo-strategic positioning to secure. But there is an item that I’ve been purchasing every couple months that does not change much in scarcity or design. That item is a Double-Pack of Firm toothbrushes.

I’ve watched he price of these very basic toothbrushes go up in price over the last year. But today, the price of a 2-pack of firm basic toothbrushes was $4.99 plus tax.

These were the same style toothbrushes that I’ve purchased for years now. The model or style has not changed. But the price sure has.

Do you remember talking to your parents about the price of a movie ticket back during their childhood? Even though their stories were shocking, there always was this distance about it. It never really seemed like an alarming change because so much time had passed.

Well, if I showed myself the receipt for the $4.99 plus tax double pack firm toothbrushes to myself even five years ago…I would have laughed in my own face.

I can’t remember how much he same pack cost a few months ago. But I know it sure wasn’t $4.99 lemme tell ya.

For $4.99, I would expect the toothbrush to come with something, like a gift certificate for toothpaste or a pair of brass knuckles or something. Wait, that doesn’t make sense with how the precious metals have been doing in the marketplace lately.

The difference between inflation and hyperinflation is the rate and scale in which the things happen. Inflation is actually a normal thing that happens in a healthy economy. But hyperinflation means that the currency is poising purchasing power and value at a much faster rate than the economy is growing into new markets. Hyperinflation becomes self evident to even the laypersons who know little about economic theory or mathematics. They directly experience the hyperinflation by witnessing and experiencing ridiculous jumps in prices in basic items that require little advanced technology to create.

For example, a flat screen tv or a sports car might not be the best determiners for hyperinflation. The parts inside can be the subject of market forces and also the labor and machines in order to mass produce them require energy to create the product. But toothbrushes are made out of basic plastic by machines with some bristles. Seeing huge price hikes in toothbrushes are beyond concerning.

The biggest warning sign will be when the price of the most basic form of Internet service increases. Because the Internet will be the main way for people to discuss how to make items for themselves. Man, I wish I paid more attention during cub scouts and sea explorers.

UPDATE: Ryan E. gave some information saying that Hyperinflation is actually when the inflation rate gets to 10% per day or 50% per week. I looked on Wikipedia and this confirmed this. So I concede the fact that this may not be “textbook” hyperinflation, there are some things that are happening in the marketplace to ease it from being so. One thing is how outsourcing and automation has decreased the production costs of many mass produced goods. If it were not for automation and cheap labor, then this Toothbrush 2-pack probably would have cost much higher than $4.99 plus tax.

Of course, that being said, if it wasn’t for automation and outsourcing we probably wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

Yet when I think about toothbrushes, these things should only cost around $1.50 or $2.00 or so. So perhaps this is more a cusp transition grey area between inflation and Hyperinflation.

-Tyler

How did the filmmakers of Limitless, know about Libya? The film said after analyzing a bunch of stock information and company profiles about an energy merger “…you’d have to back out of Libya.” But the film must have been in production on that scene a while ago because I saw the movie at the dollar theater which plays movies a couple months after their release date. And the original attack on Libya didn’t occur until February.

After looking into this further, the release date for Limitless was in March.

From what I understand, most films take between 6 months and 2 years to film and produce. So for a movie to be talking about Libya in the way that it did with the timing that it had struck me as interesting.

I concede the fact that little things like this can always be added near the end of the production or even be overdubbed last minute. But the scene where Deniro and the protagonist were in the car didn’t look like it had been manipulated any more than any normal scene is. And the dubbing looked flawless. So I doubt that the lines were changed recently.

Actually, when I think about it. I think this is a perfect example of what I call Collective Unconscious Meme Convergence. There has been so many developments brewing in the Middle East region of the world, it may have just been at the tip of the proverbial tongue for Libya to be an area of interest for a film that was about powerhouse financial hardball players. There is oil there that is important to the EU and other nations etc.

So this whole thing could have possibly been a very well placed and fortunate coincidence.

But isn’t it odd that a film that is a fictional presentation about a character who has superhuman predictive power, could predict a situation that happened in real life that directly affects the audience?

I don’t wear hats but if I did, it would definitely tip to the director/writing team right now.

-Tyler

Diligence isn't just for lawyers anymore

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. This is just information that I have gleaned through experience in running a website. Take any of this information or anecdotes with a grain of salt and remember that I am not actually suggestion that you do anything. I am probably using the word ‘you’ in the same sense as the royal ‘we.’ Read at your own risk.

In the past few months I have received emails from people that they wanted to exchange ‘links.’ At first I didn’t understand why people would want to do this, if we didn’t know each other or have similar websites. But then I learned about the desire for some websites to acquire things like Pagerank and other web rank things. This practice of linking to other sites in order to gain rank is unethical and can seriously jeopardize one’s reputation and I have no idea what search engines do if they find out if people are abusing cross-linking…but I can expect that it doesn’t bode well for the searchability of articles.

So when I got the email a few months ago it basically said that the person ran a website and they liked my website and they wanted to post a link to me on their page and have a link pointing at their website on overidon.com. It sounded innocent at first, but then I did some Due Diligence and took a look at their website. They quite literally had over 500 links to other websites in the sidebar to their blog in tiny print. I instantly thought to myself, “Are you kidding me, Snoopy?”

So I sent the person an email saying, “No thanks.” And I explained how their site made no sense.

But extremely recently, I got an email from a company that wanted to purchase a link on overidon.com. I thought to myself…”Cool, someone wants to purchase an advertisement.”

I took a quick look at their website and it definitely was not a linkfarm. It actually had no outgoing links at all that I could see. It was a shareware looking web-utility site.

I sent the person an email saying hello and I told them that I sell advertising space on the right sidebar only and the prices depended on the size of the ad and the duration it will stay on the site.

I went to writer’s group and later that night I got an email back saying, that they wanted to only purchase a ‘text’ link, not a picture advertisement. And they wanted to have a quote on pricing for quarterly and yearly ad time periods.

This surprised me, because I thought that a company would take more than a a few hours to get back to me. So that raised a yellow flag in my mind. And the second suspicious thing was that the person said they only were interested in a text link, not a color advertisement.

Well, being a skeptical person, I decided to do some Due Diligence before giving any price estimates. What I found was that this shareware company had a terrible reputation on forums. The software was allegedly hard to uninstall, had minimal tech support and did not do the functions that it claimed to do.

I looked at other forums and there were a bunch of perfect “5” star ratings, with a tremendous amount of “1” star bad ratings. This was a huge red flag for me and I did more reading and many people recounted their experiences of how the company promoted its software in any way possible and claimed that it could do things, when in fact it could not.

After evaluating this information, I decided that any price would not be worth risking the small, yet adamantine reputation that we’ve established here at overidon.com. So I replied to the company and told them that we weren’t interested.

There are a lot of temptations out there for webmasters who want to gain popularity and/or incoming links. But slow growth that is based on respect will win over shortcuts every time.

-Tyler