March Madness

As you probably know, the NCAA tournament starts tonight as UNC-Asheville and Arkansas-Little Rock kick things off at 6 P.M.  It's always a fun time, especially if you are an avid basketball fan.  I'll be rooting for the Jayhawks as they attempt to win another national championship.  What I love about the tournament is that it offers smaller teams an opportunity to showcase their skills on college basketball's biggest stage.

In addition to the NCAA tournament, there are other postseason opportunities for teams- the NIT, CBI, and CIT, which contain 32, 16, and 24 teams respectively.  Over the next two weeks, I will be watching more basketball than is healthy for a normal human being to watch.  Tonight, there are 2 NCAA tourney, 7 CIT, 4 CBI, and 9 NIT games, and that's only the beginning.  On Thursday and Friday, the first round of the Big Dance will be played on CBS and station affiliates.  Think I'm obsessed?  You are probably right.

Lost On the Moon

A few weeks ago, we did a very interesting group project in my leadership class.  The main point of the activity was to prove how group work is more effective than working alone.  This exercise was provided by NASA, and here it is.

Objective- To come as close as possible to the best “solution” as determined by the experts of NASA.  

The Scenario-

Your spaceship has just crashed on the moon. You were scheduled to rendezvous with a mother ship 200 miles away on the lighted surface of the moon, but the rough landing has ruined your ship and destroyed all the equipment on board except for the 15 items listed below.

Your crew’s survival depends on reaching the mother ship, so you must choose the most critical items available for the 200-mile trip.
Your task is to rank the 15 items in terms of their importance for survival. Place a number 1 by the most important item, number 2 by the second most important, and so on, through number 15, the least important.

______ Box of matches

______ Food concentrate

______ 50 feet of nylon rope

______ Parachute silk

______ Solar-powered portable heating unit

______ Two .45­caliber pistols

______ One case of dehydrated milk

______ Two 100-pound tanks of oxygen

______ Stellar map (of the moon’s constellations)

______ Self-inflating life raft

______ Magnetic compass

______ 5 gallons of water

______ Signal flares

______ First-aid kit containing injection needles

______ Solar-powered FM receiver-transmitter

I’ll post the answers soon.  When I did this, I did better than most of my peers, but I still made some very silly choices.  See how you do!  If you feel inclined to leave a comment with your answers, please do!

Vouchers for Religious Schools?

Last week, an Indiana bill that would use public funds to send students to religious and other private schools was proposed.  Not surprisingly, the bill has stirred up quite a debate within the Indiana community.  

Republican Indiana state Senator Brent Steele sent out a letter to every Indiana lawmaker this week, stating he would not want this taxes to pay for students to attend a school run by the Westboro Baptist Church.  As you probably know, Westboro is run by Fred Phelps, the same man who organizes demonstrations at funerals of soldiers.  His bigotry and hate have unfortunately gained him and his crew the attention they crave.  

Now, it must be noted that the Indiana bill will not fund Westboro Baptist Church.  However, because Westboro was recently recognized as a religious entity whose free speech is protected, Steele’s point was, “How would you like your tax dollars going toward educating children being privately schooled inside their church?  I don’t want my tax dollars used to raise a child who is going to want to kill my grandchildren because they are of a different religious belief.”  I agree entirely, Senator Steele.  It’s a shame lawmakers cannot cut off federal funding for abortion providers as well.  

The allocation of our tax dollars is a serious issue.  Legislators in more than 30 states have proposed these voucher bills in this session.  House Speaker John Boehner and Senator Joe Lieberman are supporting a bill to reauthorize a Washington D.C. voucher measure.  Why the fuss over this bill?  First, voucher subsidies for religious schools violate the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of church-state separation.  Secondly, voters oppose this.  In a democracy, lawmakers are supposed to listen to the people. 

National Public Radio Turmoil

As you might know, National Public Radio has been going through a tough week.  The traditionally liberal, federally funded radio station’s president and CEO resigned Wednesday to limit the damage caused by a fellow executive that degraded the right-wing Tea Party as “seriously racist”.  Ron Schiller then went on to call most of America “uneducated”.  Because the Republicans have a House majority, there has been pressure to cut of federal funding of public radio and television.

How were these comments recorded?  Some top executives were out to lunch with who they presumed to be potential donors.  Schiller also stated that NPR would be “better off without federal funding”.  You’d expect to hear this kind of talk from conservative talk radio hosts, but to hear this comment come out of an NPR executive’s mouth is rather shocking.  The donors were in fact posing as Muslim activists, referring to NPR as “National Palestinian Radio”.     

Just two months ago, NPR publicly admitted to firing analyst Juan Williams over his comments regarding Muslims.  Then, NPR apologized to Rep. Gabrielle Gifford’s family after it falsely reported the congresswoman’s death.    

Despite the obvious hit that NPR has taken in the past few months, they are not the entity that will take the worst hit.  It is small public radio stations that will have the most to lose.  If the spigot of federal funding is turned off, NPR runs the risk of losing small stations nationwide that depend on that money for about 30 percent of their budgets.  

Needless to say, federal funding for NPR should not be a priority in a time when the state and federal governments are attempting to trim their budgets.  While NPR does provide informative programs, it is an interesting debate nonetheless.  Should federal funding for NPR be ended?

Dispatch 3/11/11

Sitting in my dorm room.  This week has flown by and things are going well so far.  This morning, I read that a tsunami caused by an earthquake has struck Japan.  Hundreds are already dead, which is terrible.  I'll be interested to see how the international community will respond.  Hopefully, we can get all kinds of help and assistance to those poor people.  On CNN, there was footage of cars being swept away by water.  It's not uncommon for Japan to experience tremors and earthquakes.  When my mom visited, she said her hotel room would shake in the middle of the night.  The Japanese are taught from birth how to deal with earthquakes, but coping with a  

I had my scholarship interview with Koch Industries today and it went well.  I simply try to answer their questions to the best of my ability, then move on.  I think they were trying to get a sense of what kind of person I am and if I would potentially be interested in working for them.  If they are interested in giving me the scholarship, I'll found out soon enough, but until then, I am not going to worry about it.  As you might now, Koch is the second largest privately held company in the world.  I read in an article that if Koch was publicly traded, it would be the sixteenth largest Fortune 500 company.

The season of Lent is here.  That means Christians must prepare for the passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Back in grade school, we were asked to "give up" a vice or give more generously to charity.  This Lent, I'm taking a slightly different approach.  I spent quite a bit of time making myself a better person.  I work very hard in school, try to engage the process of leadership, and be an honest, genuine human being.  This Lent, I am going to actively seek opportunities to make others better.

The next few weeks are the most exciting in the world of college basketball.  The Jayhawks play later today against Colorado in the semifinals of the Big 12 tournament.  The NCAA tournament starts next Tuesday.  As you probably know, the field of teams has been expanded to include 68 teams this year, an increase of 3 from last season.  A lot of people I know perceive sports as an unproductive way to spend their time.  I can understand this argument, but when you grew up around sports all the time, it's difficult to let them go.  I watch every Jayhawk basketball game I can and it's fun to cheer for your favorite teams.    

I saw an advertisement recently that caught my eye.  If you go to endofamerica4.com, you can learn about a guy named Porter Stansberry who thinks a drastic, unparalleled crisis will occur very soon.  He has a video where he explains his theory, but this sounds like a ton of bologna.  He tries to pad his credibility in the beginning by stating that his firm predicted Wall Street's collapse and warned investors to avoid Fannie and Freddie, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers.  Of course, there is a catch.  If you pay $50, you can have access to this secret investment information.  None of this language surprised me, as there are many scammers out there.  What surprised me was that this advertisement was aired on ESPN, which is a national network.  I hope to get more information on this thing in the future.

Thanks for reading this,

Joe

4 Viable Ways to Make Money Online

Over the last month or so, I have extensively researched ways to make real income online.  Admittedly, I haven’t been as successful as I’d originally hoped and I have attempted a few unfruitful efforts, but I have discovered viable, real ways to make a little extra spending cash on the internet.  Before I start, you can’t get much in the way of online income without a PayPal account.  If you are interested, you can set up a PayPal account quickly and safely here.  Here’s my list...

1. Become a Guide for ChaCha

We all know about ChaCha, which is a search engine specializing in answering questions.  ChaCha uses a technique known as the human search engine, where all your questions are actually answered by human beings.  You have to take a few introductory courses and pass a test to become a guide, but if you’re in, you can make anywhere from $2-$6 an hour by simply sitting at your computer listening to music and answering questions.

2. Blog

While writing posts and publishing them on your blog does not generate any income in itself, you can sell advertisements on your page as I have done.  Google AdSense and Indeed are my highest income earners so far, but I am still relatively new to this.  Also, you can submit your blog posts to organizations such as Triond, which publish your posts on multiple websites and give you a cut of the advertisements your article generates.    

3. Review Music

At slicethepie.com, you can listen to and review songs for cash.  The pay isn’t great, but if you write good reviews, you can get paid more per review all the way up to $0.20 cents per song.  A nice benefit of this site is that you get to choose the genres of music you review.  You won’t get rich doing this, but it will generate enough income to buy the groceries every month if you work at it.  

4. Sell Items on Amazon or eBay

This method has not panned out for me the way I had hoped.  In order to have people buy your items, you need good ratings.  I haven’t sold any items yet, so my ratings are non-existent.

The bottom line is that money does not come easily online.  If you have a blog, you must market yourself to the whole internet, which is no easy task.  To get any income from a blog, first you must have traffic (visitors).  However, if you are willing to put in the time, you will see enough income to purchase the month’s groceries and perhaps pay for a few bills.  Beware though, because you should not expect to get rich by making money online.  

Living A Better Life

The process of improvement is a slow and arduous task, but if you are willing to persevere, you can accomplish nearly anything.  The old cliche “Practice makes perfect” is only true if you know what you need to practice and you are patient enough to stick with something.  Furthermore, daily small improvements will amount to huge results over time.  

Consider these three questions:

What do you want to do better?

What’s stopping you?

What strategy will you use to make yourself better?

Back in the early stages of high school, I feared communication.  It felt like everything I said was cliche, pointless, or useless.  I was afraid to raise my hand in class and participate because I feared I would say something stupid and dumb.  As time progressed, I became more comfortable with the idea of participating in class only because I was forced to.  In most classes, participation accounted for a portion of my grade, so there was an extrinsic motivation to communicate.    

When I came to college, the same fear manifested itself again.  This time, I was intimidated by how much knowledge some of my professors held.  I hesitated to strike up conversations with them because I feared I lacked the knowledge base to hold my own.  My goal became clear--I wanted to acquire knowledge and understand more about various fields.  Right now, I am still a far cry from being smart enough to teach a college class, but that isn’t the point.  Personally, I have become a better communicator because I have acquired more knowledge and experience. 

I know I am improving because I can now walk into a professor’s office and rattle off five or six questions about relevant material in a course.  I only gained this confidence because I worked at it.  So often, fear is what holds us back from expanding our minds and improving our lives.  Psychologically, fear can be overwhelming.  Fear can negatively affect all our decisions and take a negative hit on our self-esteem.  

In whatever walk of life you come from, one universal truth is that everyone must go through a process of becoming.  Becoming the best version of yourself does not happen overnight.  Actually, improving at something takes time, discipline, dedication, and strategy.  Here’s my four-step process that has helped me conquer my fear of speaking publicly.  

1. Avoid the paralysis of analysis

If you want to accomplish something, you must act.  If there is some area in which you want to improve, you must DO SOMETHING.  When I first started writing essays in high school, they were absolutely terrible.  I didn’t understand the concept of a thesis statement and I lacked the skills to write well.  Simply through the process of trial and error, I have improved my writing skills.  If you do nothing, it is foolish to expect improvement.  

2. Do something every single day

After you set your goals, you must ACT frequently.  After starting a new project, we are normally very excited, but when that initial excitement wears off, discipline must kick in.  Every day, I communicate with people.  I have chosen to increase the amount of communication I do every day, and as a result, I have improved.

  

3. Realize that what you think is your best effort is NOT your best

The mind has a way of shutting down before you can reach your full potential.  If you want to improve at something, NEVER GIVE UP!  If you want to go somewhere, realize that failure is not an option.  Even if you think you gave it your all, you probably held back at least a little back.  Find a way to maximize your potential.  

4. Think and reflect         

Action without thought is like eating without digesting.  Even if you put forth a ton of effort into something, if you don’t ask yourself what you learned at the end of the day, you effectively put yourself back at square one.  The idea here is to solidify what you learned and become able to apply it in other situations.