Talking Room.

We wanted a place where people could interact and leave some thoughts about things so we added a new page we call the "Talk Room". It's a simple chat room. Feel free to drop some intelligence into some brains and eyeballs with your written word. 

The Cost of Sick Days.

When I read business articles and studies I often look between the lines for the hidden truth. I need to do this to be a successful investor and a learned human. In my my world, there is never enough information that needs to be analyzed. In the article and video I reference about the cost of sick days to companies by industry, there is a clear argument about the worth of workers. If the data is correct and true then, clearly, the average worker is well underpaid.

In the article, the cost of a sick day to the corporations is $341/day. Working 2000 hours or 250 days a year at $341/day this works out to be $85,250 per annum. The average American workers pay is far less at roughly $96 per day or $24,000 per annum, according to recent statistics, working the same 250 days a year. It is this discrepancy that made me write this post. Interestingly enough, as an aside, $24,000 is also very close to the American poverty line. This correlation will be the subject of another post in the future. 

Back to the subject, the free market of employment would rationally require the corporations to only keep the workers that could produce a profit higher than their annual pay. If the cost of a sick day to the corporation is $341/day then it would follow that the worker produces at least that much in profit daily in order to be employed. Clearly, they do based on the figures above.

While corporations think short term (by the quarter) and I think long term (a year or more depending on the metric), perhaps the executives of the corporations feel this cost can be absorbed by the diversification of risk by the number of employed workers during the quarter. Mathematically, it does work out that way, but this doesn't change my premise that the average American worker is grossly underpaid.

When you turn to an industry which is paid by commission, like the entertainment business, the cut a manager or publicist earns is often 10% of the gross pay of the client. Ten percent is considered fair. If you turn to the legal profession, the cut a law firm takes in a successful lawsuit is 33%. This is also considered fair. There are surely one off's but these two figures cover most of the range of commission paid industries. Even Apple charges around 30% to the content producers like recording companies and the movie industry. While I consider this to be too high a price for distribution, many others don't and have eagerly signed up. Since iTunes is doing incredibly well, it must also be considered fair for those using the traditional business model.

If we take a roughly median cost of employment at 20% and compare that to the gross margins of the most successful public companies, you will find them about the same at 20%. Logically, it would seem a worker should be paid 80% of the profit they earn per year to be fairly paid. After all, the corporations and investors deserve a return for the risk they take. Yet, in America, the typical worker is paid much less than the $272.80 per day or $68,200 per year that they deserve when using the same metric. 

Drones Are Cool!

Drones are off the hook. I don't mean the use of drones for security/displacing of civil rights or warfare. I mean small, flying devices that get to fly around. Actually, if the not-personally-involved politicians force our kids to go to fight some stupid war, I guess drones for warfare are o.k. if they can keep a person safe from the bad decisions that the pols make. I like the photography aspects of drones. I would enjoy the tourist uses for drones. I'll even accept the practical joke uses of drones. So, yes, I like drones. Just don't strap guns and bombs to them. Unless they are really small and used in fun, mock battles (a dream of mine since childhood, don't hate). 

I'm a geek. I freely admit it. Like most people, I dig remote controls. I grew up in a time when you had to get up to change the channel of your TV so when remote controls came up for consumers to use, I was all for it. I could sit back, hit a button to turn the TV on and never put my sandwich down. That was some incredible technology back in the day. Drones remind me of those pioneering days.

With a remote controlled drone and some decent camera's/transmitters and monitors, people could see things they would never get to see on foot. Flying over some mountain and through the canyons while you control the camera would be an experience of a lifetime. Imagine someone in a wheelchair who can't get around in rugged terrain anymore being able to see things they thought were gone forever and the elation they would receive when a huge rock structure or wild animal comes into view while they are safely located with a cold drink nearby. What a thrill! Yes, drones rock if they are used right.

The New Speculative Media.

Mainstream media has become a problem. A problem for everyone who watches and believes what they are being fed in the feeds, articles and even the network news. The Boston bombings made that clearer than ever. Pure reporting is out the door. Just take a guess at the news and see if you're right seems to be the name of the game. The news cycle is in real time while in the past, the news cycle was slowed down a bit to verify what was going to be reported. So how bad of a problem is it? 

Videos and pictures of a possible Boston bomber was widely circulated on the mainstream, network news and was broadcast to the world. Normally, I would say "Bully" to you. You're helping out find the bad guys who killed and maimed with impunity. Unfortunately, this time, once again, they identified the wrong suspects.

This kind of "report first and fact check later" type of reporting reminds me of the muckraking back in the 1990's and the Atlanta bombings. The first, widely publicised and identified suspect (Richard Jewell) in that case was also innocent and yet, even after all of the years since, has never recovered from the public trouncing he had received at the hands of the quick to jump network media. 

Just do yourself a favor and pay less attention to the news that is on the CNN's, the Fox Channel, MSNBC and other networks for several days when a breaking story is happening. Take the time to let the actual, true facts to come out about the information you are being fed before you start spreading the story as truth.

It's not only the major networks who are guilty of a "publish first, fact check later" type of system. Even my beloved internet is guilty of the same thing. Well respected and heavily trafficked sites, too! But with the number of trolls that crawl the web, you would help yourself if you didn't jump on that wagon quite as fast as well. These trolls are not the same trolls who place comments on YouTube or fill the threads of news stories. These are actually paid professionals. They are reporters/producers/owners of major news sites. They just happen to be trolls at the same time. 

Life changing, game invite. Life gone.

I've been gone for a little while. My mild case of OCD kicked in and I even had a helper. Like millions of others around the world, I found something that could enter my bloody, little brain and take over for a short time. Parasitic in nature while helping stave off mind numbing loneliness. I discovered gaming.

Not the normal, MMO or FPS game. Oh, no! Not for this psychopath! I don't chose a game which requires quick thumbs and a quick mind while sitting on the couch. No, that wouldn't interest me for too long. My thumbs have their own problems. They don't need another callous, thank you. They are also strong enough to get the things they were designed for at least halfway done. 

No. I was invited to play a game that has sucked hours from my otherwise dull life. At the same time, the game sucks gas money from the pocketbook of my long suffering wife. I was the lucky recipient of an invite to one of the hottest games on the planet. Just like all the other raging hot games, it is also one of the most recent games on the planet.

I am Enlightened. I am TPod. I play Ingress.

So long, wife and children. So long, writing articles and film making. Take it easy, money in pocket. It was nice knowing you. 

So what you need to know is that there are two sides to the game. Two factions exist. The Enlightened and the opposing faction, The Resistance. The object is simple. Take over Earth and control the minds of the people. Hmmm, sounds like the media to me, but I'll give it a go. And what a go I gave it so far. All under the guise of beta testing a game from Google spin off Niantic Labs that collects data on where people are and where people go during their busy days. Oh, and corrects Google Maps. All played on the mobile device of your choice. As long as it's Android based. 

I'll be back soon as I have neared the current end of the game for myself. Which correlates, quite luckily in fact, with the end of the funds available for gas for the car and the shoe rubber on my feet. The truth is that the game never ends, really. It just continues FOREVER! For myself, though, my goal has nearly been reached. There will be a break time. Time for me to pull back from the madness. Time for me to think of other things besides XM, portals, resonators and XMP's.