Archive for April, 2006

links for 2006-04-30

Sunday, April 30th, 2006

links for 2006-04-26

Wednesday, April 26th, 2006

links for 2006-04-25

Tuesday, April 25th, 2006

links for 2006-04-24

Monday, April 24th, 2006

links for 2006-04-22

Saturday, April 22nd, 2006

links for 2006-04-18

Tuesday, April 18th, 2006

links for 2006-04-12

Wednesday, April 12th, 2006

links for 2006-04-10

Monday, April 10th, 2006

The Next Version of Life

Sunday, April 9th, 2006

The last read for me was Life 2.0 by Rick Karlgaard, the publisher of Forbes magazine. It describes everyday examples of people who have moved successfully to a different location to “find the where of their happiness” and actually found a happier life. Most of the circumstances are people moving from ultra expensive areas such as Palo Alto, CA, Greenwich, CT, New York City (and the list goes on) to smaller towns, Minneapolis, MN; Binghamton, NY; Elmira, NY, towns in Montana; Austin TX, are others. The last third of the book gives profiles for about 150 towns (sorry to say I only skimmed that section of the book). Mixed in with the freedom stories from the people Rick interviews is the narration of his learning to fly to visit the towns across the US to find these interesting people.

The stories were interesting to learn about the towns with pockets of technology being overlooked by most of the media. Each differed in the lower cost of living compared with where the person of the said story was coming from, yet each had the same theme mentioned later in the book the Era of Cheap will be upon us. The Cheap Generation is right around the corner with lower costs - maybe this will happen once the housing bubble pops, we’ll have to see. Another essay compilation I’ve been reading talks about getting lean staying cheap as well in Getting Real. Spending less money isn’t a new idea, it can be fogotten easily as slews of buget books come out and even Oprah starts talking about it. One saying about investing in stocks is when everyone starts to give you stock advice, it’s time to get out. Same with spending less money - if everyone’s spending less and prices stay high, someone is going to have to spend a ton to jump start the market again, hopefully everyone will spend less and prices will go low in the cheap generation.

With globalization being a large factor in the next score of years, prices could drop and standards of living could increase across the whole globe. Although for America the jump won’t be as astounding, will we get complacent and bored with the higher standard of living, ever edging towards exponential growth in standards of living rather than dealig with incremental improvements? A recent article about IBM mentions the next big thing isn’t out there. Is the roller coaster of living standards finished and doomed to only mediocre improvements? Then again any amount of increase is better than a decrease(80’s depression) or a great decrease(Great Depression). In the Cheap Generation gas and transporation won’t be cheap unless E85 and alternative fuels start coming out in quick order to the masses.
As for Life 2.0, I’m enjoying the journey in finding the where of my happiness, it isn’t an overnight revelation, yet a subject to be contemplated on for quite a while.

Let’s Start Blogging

Thursday, April 6th, 2006

It’s not too late to start…