Ethics continuing education couldn’t be more important than now, given all this Murdoch phone-hacking business. One of the most monied of patriarchs worldwide, Murdoch makes billions from a diverse portfolio of properties and investments, one of which is the legendary News of the World tabloid. A long-time money-maker for him, this property has now become his greatest challenge yet, both personally as well as professionally.

What does any of that have to do with the need for ethics continuing education? Simply that some common decency would have helped prevent the scandal in the first place. The matter was originally one of a lost young girl. As interest in her case grew, the tabloid sought to distinguish itself in the media scrum by gaining special insight into the circumstances surrounding her disappearance. This was the motivation behind all the illegal phone-hacking.

That was already against the law, but what makes this matter one involving ethics continuing education is because the tabloid actually erased messages when the voicemail box was full so as to get new ones to report on! Thus a false picture emerged of the girl as being still alive and well, apparently checking in on her voicemails and deleting them. Unfortunately, the girl had been long dead, and even more unfortunately for the News of the World, their hacking was soon found out.

Not even the royals and their prime minister were immune from Murdoch’s prying henchmen (and women)!

The upshot of it all is that a hundred year-old paper’s closed, wtih workers out of a job, while a grieving family feels toyed with, and the public’s trust in its police force (Scotland Yard had previously on two occasions denied any phone hacking at all by Murdoch’s company) shattered once more. Moreover, the tycoon has had the Sky Network acquisition fall through on account of intense concern over his control of the media!

Commercial property owners renovating or building a new structure will need to enlist the services of a ceiling painting contractor. A professional company will employ skilled professionals specifically trained to do this type of work.

Some people mistakenly think anyone can do this job without realizing specialized paint, equipment and skills are necessary to do the job right. Applying paint to walls is much easier and requires using a different technique. A skilled expert has access to the right equipment and the knowledge and experience necessary to get the best results.

The contractor works closely with the building owner to coordinate a plan for the paint application process. A customized plan will fit the client’s needs and take into consideration the normal activity going on in the affected area. The project will take place with little or no disruption to the normal course of business.

Location dictates the technique needed to produce the best results. A professional contractor will be familiar with all the various methods used to clean commercial building ceilings as well as perform industrial ceiling painting in an industrial structure. Commercial ceilings require special attention to make the environment presentable for customers.

Regular maintenance including occasional cleanings will prolong the life of the structure. Sandblasting is the most common method used for ceiling cleaning. Despite the name, sandblasting does not involve the use of sand. The equipment used directs tiny pieces of copper slag, steel grit or walnut shells at the surface under high pressure.

All commercial property owners should invest in occasional ceiling painting and cleaning. This process will remove any harmful chemicals stuck to the surface in an industrial setting and make the environment safer for employees. Businesses that receive walk-in customers will present a more professional image when all areas of the building are clean.

What do you do when you have a mortgage worth more than the property? Such is the quandry in which owners and lenders of mortgages have been stuck. It’s what’s most directly responsible for the current economic malaise. What happened was that people who normally would never have had any business being homeowners was able to get subprime loans that lenders never meant to hold onto themselves, selling them instead to someone else in the manner of a Ponzi Scheme.

You don’t have to be an industry insider such as Isaac Toussie to see the writing on the wall about this one. Given the sheer amount of defaults involved, the market’s understandably flooded with foreclosed homes, which in turn further depress prices in a vicious cycle which the country’s still under, all these years later. That’s not even to mention the other side of the matter, the fraudulent lenders and cynical gamblers involved!

Indeed, many, many other factors have contributed to the mess, and in a sense no one is entirely blameless. But the subprime angle just outlined is the most popularly understood narrative because it is actually the simplest to comprehend. For all that, what does the national outlook look like now?

As bleak as ever. It does matter that interest rates are lower than they’ve ever been. So all those foreclosed homes are just sitting there, often boarded-up and abandoned. And despite profits at historic highs, businesses refuse to hire. This means an uncertain jobs outlook that has people afraid to make the sinle most expensive purchase they are likely to make in their entire lives.

So for all the talk about The Great Recession being over, it’s 2011 and no citizen imagines that the immediate future is going to be any different.

In regards to ye olde standard business cards, it’s anyone’s guess what “they” will think of next. Such as those far-out little mini-CDs! These “cards” are generally rectangular, except with the two shorter sides being round (almost quarter-circular, in fact) to facilitate spinning in a drive. Like all CDs, however, these business cards are pre-printed on one side, offering the usual tidbits like name, title, and contact information. On the other side, there is (usually) a multimedia presentation touting some product or service. What a way to make an impression, eh! Just what will they think of next??

Whatever the next “it-thing” is going to be, standard business cards have become so…well, standardized that even you will wind up trying something — anything — to stand out! Handing out eye-grabbing mini-CDs for a business card is just one way, and so far it’s not been topped — though the practice itself has been stopped due to its gimmicky nature, which in turn is probably on account of the fact that most folks really have no multimedia presentation to put onto the disc anyway!

Of course, gimmicky cards are not new. People have always resisted, if that’s the word, standard business cards. In real estate, people have always embellished their cards. In contradistinction to just about everyone else in business, real estate folks routinely include their pictures on their business cards. No, really! And no one’s put off by it; the practice isn’t considered unprofessional at all.

And no wonder. For research into consumer psychology has proven that people purchase homes based on unquantifiable emotional factors. Part of that involves feeling a sense of trust towards the agent, the realtor, or the broker. Hence the photos on the card — and, for that matter, the house’s very “for sale” sign out front. After all, why waste time with a non-prospect right from the get-go?

Of course, realtors aren’t the only ones in business to take such an approach to the old business card. Still, evertyhing from holograms to folding cards have been tried, especially by those in advertising and marketing. Every other field, such as accounting and human resources, are likely to prefer a more traditional look: the standard one!

Verizon wireless phones come from one of the largest cellular service providers in the Western Hemisphere with certain of their subscription plans. But given the iPhone’s recent entry into the Verizon catalog, however, subscribers can now enjoy an even broader selection to choose from!

Of course, mobile communications are a commodity these days and many if not most folks could care less about Verizon wireless phones or those from any other carrier. It’s almost like choosing laundry detergent, with everybody offering the same general feature-sets on their phones and the same general terms and conditions for their plans. Chalk it up to much changed times: a decade or so before these phones would have been highly sought-after status symbols! But these days everyone has one, such that there’s hardly a street corner with a pay phone anymore.

That’s why many don’t care about something like Verizon wireless phones – they just want something that allows them to talk, first and foremost, carrier be damned! And so carriers have taken to “locking” up their phones (that should be “their” phones, really – more on this in a moment), recognizing that customers have no brand loyalty anymore. Correct: the phone is rendered inoperable when customers switch service providers! You would imagine that since the phone is bought and paid for, it belongs to you, and you can determine which service provider to use it with.

Wrong! Carriers say that because they actually subsidize part of the cost of the phone, they reserve the right to lock those phones when someone is no longer a customer. Curiously, there has been no class-action lawsuit against such a potentially anti-competitive policy, one that’s long been adopted by all the carriers in the industry. Surely there are legal loopholes involved, though one wonders why tobacco companies can be successfully sued but not wireless service providers which purposely render people’s handsets useless!

But all hope’s not los; there’s a way around the onerous policies. Depending on the kind, GSM or CDMA, one could be unlocked by simply punching a particular code into the keypad!

With a reputation as diploma mills, Caribbean medical schools are dedicated for-profit businesses that serve rejected applicants from the United States – but they still depend on American hospitals for the crucial clinical experience required during the second half of a medical education. Of late, however, efforts have been afoot in New York City to preserve the limited space available in hospitals for those studying at American schools. Yet how did foreign and domestic medical schools come to be competing for the same spots in domestic hospitals?

As the foreign schools were profit-making businesses above all, they take just about anyone able to pay, especially those rejected by more prestigious American schools. Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, for example, has the likes of investment banker Sanford I. Weill to real estate developer Isaac Toussie provide a lot of money, resulting in tuition and fees of about forty-five thousand dollars a year. In contrast, a Caribbean medical school can charge as much as sixty thousand dollars!

Now, due to such high fees, Caribbean medical schools can easily pay New York City hospitals to take on their students for the practical clinical experience required of an accredited medical education – ahead of Weill Cornell’s, or NYU’s, or that from any other New York medical school.

This is the business of a medical education today.

You see, what hospitals do is mentor medical students in exchange for using the school’s prestige. And though Caribbean institutions are not prestigious, they have tons of money, which is a most important consideration, naturally.

And what administrator is going to do without such money, especially in this economy?

It’s crazy that modest swimsuits are supposed to cover up the female body, as they are often still quite sexy, for reasons all their own! After all, minimalism is really powerful, which is why lingerie can be so seductive in a different way than what bare naked flesh offers – all of which is merely by way of saying that leaving nothing to the imagination can be less stimulating than playing with it. In fact, let’s face it, some girls look a lot better covered up, don’t they! Being a guy, I have nothing against either choice a lady makes, but I do have to say that it’s ironic how they might not be avoiding unwelcome stares at all simply because they’re unwittingly provoking the imagination!

Today is the very portrait of good weather, so fantastic not even the most advanced SFX outfit in Hollywood could manufacture it! Still, there was no getting away from it: it was just as I went down the street outside of On Off Digital World, one of those old-fashioned mom-and-pop operations from a generally bygone era in New York retailing, when the TV sets in the store window displayed, what else, but more Osama bin Laden news. No way to get away from it all. It’s OBL all day, every day this week. And it’s an interesting contrast, all this dramatic historic stuff in the midst of such a serene day. This is a day of smiles for me, the very definition of a spring day, yet the news pervades my waking hours like nothing else.

Some chicks put on modest swimsuits on account of being self-conscious about their appearance. These ladies imagine they look terrible and, hey, perhaps they do — but so what? Wearing them for religious reasons is one thing (which is quite a big and rather silly thing, however), but wearing them simply because you have body issues and low self-esteem?? Well, they ought to know that there are guys who actually prefer overweight women — not simply a little on the thick side, but fat, such as hundreds of pounds overweight! But such guys aren’t fetishists or freaks, in the main; they simply grew up with an abiding interest in fat females…simple as that.

Visiting On Off Digital World, are you? Just the day for it. Great temperatures, after all. So good you ought to walk, if not bicycle or even jog, there. But not good to drive. Best way to enjoy the weather, really, a poetic day recalling Goethe’s words about first love and friendship reappearing, with a gentle though firm enough breeze going on, soothing and not annoying at all – no upturned skirts, no flapping clothes, everything just nicely alive. A young time! Hope to be enjoying it myself soon enough (well, in about another two to three hours or so, depending on work)! Not really an electronics kind of day, to be sure – certainly not playing Nintendo at home all the day long – but On Off carries stuff for photography as well.

When it comes to charity, many people think of it as being something other people do – namely, the rich. It makes sense, of course, since hardly anyone else can be expected to have the funds necessary to endow schools and hospitals.
Yet in the Jewish tradition, whether Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, or Ultra-Orthodox, the concept of tzedakah, literally “justice,” is commanded of all, including the poor. In Judaism, contributing to charity is a religious duty and not something done merely out of personal whim. In fact, it is taught to regard the very money for available tzedakah as not one’s own, but on loan, as it were, from G-d. This implies the further injunction to diligently investigate all would-be recipients of aid so that contributions will truly be of benefit and not go to waste.

At first glance, this may sound like yet another curious aspect of the religion. However – as with many aspects of Judaism, even for an outsider – there exist profound philosophical reasons for them. For in commanding even the poor to give, the rabbinical injunction to perform acts of tzedakah in effect empowers the poor to regard themselves as capable, too.

For what can be more empowering than to give? To give means to express our power, our ability to give, and in sharing we express ourselves – our love, our sacrifice, our character. It is not that poverty ennobles, but to bear poverty in righteousness: that is noble. Thus, in Judaism it isn’t necessary to be a successful investor such as Isaac Toussie so as to help financially. For Jews, such religiously commanded contributions are not just an obligation but a right.

For poverty is not so base as when it prevents one from sharing of one’s own means. It is the genius of Jewish culture that even with its traditional concerns for social justice and the poor that it should recognize that even the poor can contribute!

The news was everywhere and unavoidable. Walk into any department store, with all the television sets on display, and there was no mistaking it. I was at On Off Digital World when I heard the news. There was no reason to pause, but even from the busy sidewalk of midtown Manhattan there seemed to be something different this time — and then the word “dead” confirmed my suspicions. It was indeed different this time. Osama bin Laden had been killed. Holy Muhammad! I was just strolling along enjoying the weather when the very serious business of our country’s twilight war on terrorism suddenly reminded me of how precious even the simplest things are, how fragile they are.

Located on New York City’s tony Upper East Side neighborhood, the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University boasts both research and teaching divisions. As one of the most selective of medical schools in the country, only some hundred hopefuls are admitted each year – from out of some six thousand candidates every year. Now named Weill Cornell Medical College and, even more often, simply “Weill Cornell,” the school was partially endowed by Sanford Weill, an American banker and philanthropist who was the former executive officer and chairman of Citigroup, Incorporated. Mr. Weill and his wife personally contributed two hundred and fifty million dollars to the medical school already at Cornell, and he was able to secure another one hundred and fifty million dollars.

The school was already famous long before Mr Weill’s contributions, so it was never at a loss for donors, many prominent only locally but generous all the same, such as real estate developer and investor Isaac Toussie. After all, it’s the first American medical school to accept women right alongside men. It was also the first American medical school to have locations outside the United States, with an Education City, Qatar campus offering a six-year integrated curriculum focused on patient care. The school is also famous for all its many notable graduates, people such as Robert C. Atkins of Atkins Diet fame and former Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop. Other famous graduates are Nobel Prize winner Robert W. Holley and Henry Heimlich of the Heimlich Maneuver.

Anyway, despite all the monetary support, the financial aspects of a medical education are severe, with some forty-two thousand dollars needed for the first year and thirty-eight thousand required for the second. Nevertheless, that’s a bargain considering Cornell’s law school tuition, which adds up to almost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the same four years!

Quite often, females will wear modest swimsuits not because they are religious but rather on account of body-image issues. In many a situation, these girls and women are fat and feel self-conscious, and excessively covering up seems like the most empowering thing to do. Yet there’s no need for any negativity at all — and, in fact, it’s completely unnecessary for them to feel bad about themselves as there really are guys out there who adore fat females. Honest! They are likely a minority of people, but there’s no doubt about it: “fat admirers,” as they like to be called, are out there, more numerous than anyone would normally guess. They are not freaks, only different in what they believe to be appealing about the female sex.

Comfortably nestled on the upscale Upper East Side of New York City, the school of medicine at Cornell University both teaches and conducts research. The school can brag about quite a few luminaries among its alumni, with famous names like Robert C. Atkins of Atkins Diet fame and Henry Heimlich of Heimlich Maneuver fame. Also well-known are former Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop and Nobel Prize winner Robert W. Holley.

The very first institution to admit women as well as men, it has more recently established itself as a pioneer in another way by operating the first medical school outside the United States – in Education City, Qatar, with a campus that provides six years of integrated studies focused on patient care. Such a respected institution has benefited from the generous support of donors throughout its history – since the very beginning, in fact, funded as it was through an endowment established by Colonel Oliver H. Payne, a New York scion of the middle nineteenth century – and its list of financial backers include the likes of professional developer Isaac Toussie.

But the single largest contributor of all is the man who whose name would be borne by the school, Sanford I. Weill. A banker and philanthropist, Mr. Weill and his wife donated two hundred and fifty million dollars of their own money, and he has been instrumental in further securing another hundred and fifty million in funding. Today the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University, or Weill Cornell Medical College (or even more colloquially, especially within the field, “Weill Cornell”), is one of the most selective medical schools in the entire United States, enrolling only about a hundred students per class out of some six thousand applicants in any given year. How selective? Well, 3.8 GPAs are typical, as are 35Q MCAT scores!