gofer articles

Marriage is surely the highlight of one’s life – the word for marriage in German used to be “Hochzeit,” or “high time” (as in Mozart’s opera “Die Hochzeit des Figaro”).
It’s a whirlwind of activity: guest lists, party games, dinner menus, wedding favors…it’s actually a long day, to be sure – as well as night!
But is marriage under attack, as cultural conservatives often allege?
Is the venerable institution being denigrated in the media?
And just why is marriage very important, anyway?

Truth be told, the establishment of marriage has typically been quite diverse – in its practice, and in its very observance.
Most people throughout time weren’t formally married, due to the fact it’s something of an elaborate affair that was affordable to the rich.
Lots of its traditions, just like wedding favors, originated as an exclusive practice of the well-off; certainly, who else could have had the means to present such deluxe gifts to so many guests?
Furthermore, cultural definitions of marriage varied rather widely.
American cultural conservatives would be aghast that in many parts of Africa polygamy was the acknowledged norm.

Certainly, imagine just how such a ceremony could have been!
The brand new wife, no doubt young and shy, being introduced to some chieftain or other prominent member of the society – in addition to to his other wives!
What could the actual vows have been like?
Most likely, not really different from some such sentiment as currently utilized in the West, along the lines of “to cherish and to hold,” that kind of thing (omitting, obviously, the part about “forsaking all others!”).
A very important factor would not seem to be so foreign to us, even so: wedding favors.
While the exact nature of such gifts will likely vary according to the culture, the act of offering them at all should be acquainted enough.

In what may be yet another sad sign of the times, pros like doctors, lawyers, and accountants may now have to take ethics CPE courses. Yes, that’s right: as a part of maintaining their licenses to practice, these professionals might now be required to learn the big difference between right and wrong.

To be certain, an ethics continuing education course is commendable, and if it’s important then it is good that such a thing is out there. But the fact that it needs to be necessary at all – since ethics courses already form a part of most people’s educational background, whether as undergraduates or in law school, med school, and so on – is disturbing.

Yes, life is packed with morally ambiguous circumstances, and having an application that applies the eternal verities to modern times should prove valuable. But ethics CPE courses only came about because of the many abuses that have cropped up within the careers. It is an unfortunate commentary that the problem should be so bad regarding warrant such courses – for one may possibly presume that the certifying bodies governing professional licensure would not have compelled the requirement otherwise.

That said, and things being what they are, it is a wholly optimistic development that an official stance has come out against abuse and misuse. For the necessity of such continuing professional education curricula demonstrates at least some measure of committment to ethical standards from the industry itself. The need, moreover, represents an agreed-upon goal: this is just what a lawyer is, this is what an accountant does, this is how a doctor behaves.

Not to pick on doctors, lawyers, and accountants, obviously, as the term “the professions” is also applied to K-12 teachers and, if the ACSM and others have their way, even to personal fitness trainers as well (!), but suffice it to say, one may view the emergence and developing popularity of such curricula as a positive development.

Now is the best time yet to go get a used Macbook for much, much less than any other time.
That’s because Apple is poised to mention the iPad 2 in March, therefore many retailers will be busy trying to move old stock out to make room for what’s anticipated to be another bum-rush for the latest and greatest.
Consequently getting a used Macbook will probably be a value proposition like no other, because in their relative desperation many a vendor is sure to lower prices even more, just to get rid of the thing!

As a buyer, this is a great circumstance to be in.
Apple is generally regarded as being a high-end company offering upscale products, but the anticipated frenzy for the iPad 2 really should make even an otherwise top-of-the-line used Macbook an easy bargain a lot more similar to what’s available on the “Wintel” side of things.
Needless to say, speaking of Windows and Intel machines, these should still be the best bang-for-the-buck deals going on anywhere, online or off, Mac liquidation sales or no.

Apple evangelists notwithstanding, there is truly no persuasive reason to get anything the business offers, unless one is an insatiable technophile and really enjoys being an early adopter.
Otherwise, knock-offs show up in time, with pretty good enough prices and capabilities to match.
The only other “reason,” so-called, is aesthetics.
For some reason, likely relating to CEO Steve Jobs own origins as a designer prior to he became quite the businessman, Apple has always had a knack for being attractive.
Hey, there’s hardly any arguing with a trophy wife.

It’s the sizzle, not the steak.
Luckily, throughout the buying public, there’s enough meat left over to go around – and around.
But politically incorrect combined metaphors aside, used Macbooks will probably be priced to move very soon, so get ready to pursue them!

Good luck coming by any small business loans at this time. It’s not as easy as it used to be because of all the crazy financial stuff going on, the economic stuff that’s made the whole world so uneasy these last two or three years. Financing was easy at the time, which resulted in a great deal of risk-taking – it wasn’t their money, naturally, but others’ money, belonging to investors…and, as we now know, the public at large, finally. Thus naturally it was tempting to gamble – with other people’s money – but now everything is in tatters and so banks and other lending institutions are really leery. Absolutely scared, even. But a company like B.F. Advance provides, as can be divined from the name, cash advances against anticipated monthly credit card receipts.

Money is clearly critical. It’s the very first thing anyone needs in society. And, basically, one of the greatest ways to get tons of money would be to start your very own business. But what, really, should you do? A retail electronics operation like Lafnac Digital Computers seems like it should work because, hey, everyone loves gadgets. But these types of enterprise is capital-intensive, particularly when it comes to the startup costs. Even given some savings or some venture capital, you may not decide to bet everything away on any such adventures.

Moreover, when it comes to retail stores, it’s all about one thing: location, location, location – which in turn means only one thing: rent. The rent a Lafnac Digital Computers pays must be over the top. Obviously, it’s only a few short blocks away from world-famous Times Square with its mass of tourists, ready to buy. That implies top dollar as for the rent. Consider that even for a simple restaurant on Broadway on the Upper West Side, miles away from the Crossroads of the World, rent would be in the tens of thousands of dollars every month; imagine something located in the heart of midtown Manhattan! Even if profits are grossly under-reported (ahem) or customers are defrauded outright it could well be quite a struggle just breaking even, let alone pumping a worthwhile profit.

Many undervalue the effect rent has on a business. They look at something like Lafnac Digital Computers, with its enviable size of foot traffic and suppose that that’s all it takes to make a fortune. Of course, those New York landlords are shrewder than a stereotypical Scotsman, and even if you were to bring in some fifty thousand dollars a month your rent would probably be over half that amount – at least!

So yes you can rely on high levels of foot traffic, even foot traffic that’s rather well-heeled, but it’s in all probability going to be tricky all the same because of the rent. No, making a profit is not easy, not even for a store in the middle of New York City. But what else is there? Unquestionably something that guarantees recurring income, income such as royalty payments that require merely a small amount of work to maintain at most. Come up with the next bestselling novel, for example, anything whereby you could rest on your laurels for the rest of your life, basically anything where you just keep getting money for work that was done just that one time! The next Billboard Number One, the next hit film, anything, so long as there are assured royalty payments each time it is used!

Realty is often a complex industry. It doesn’t need to be, nonetheless it often is, and frequently it is made more complex by that which is meant to make it less so! Take online valuation calculators for an example. Quite a few of the very first websites around the internet concerned the property market and offered mortgage calculators and such, including widgets for pricing property prices around the United States. These web-based tools were easy to use and easy to understand, one of the most popular things people would log on to do back in those first years of the 1990s. All that had to be done was to input many data, depending on the calculator, beginning with the quantity of bedrooms and bathrooms available. Many also factored in the amount of storeys involved, whether the house was attached, semi-attached, or fully detached; whether front lawns and backyards were included; even right down to the zip code for computing surrounding property values.

It was the single most popularly heralded uses of the then-nascent web, and remains a characteristic such sites over a decade later. But many people fail to realize, despite many an obligatory disclaimer posted, that such calculators provide ballpark estimates at best, and can be wildly off the mark in quite a few cases. This is part of the reason why the overwhelming vast majority of valuations provided online are supplied in the form of a range. Indeed, different calculators may vary considerably in the valuation they give for the same property using the same variables, with differences of up to half a million dollars!

As a result it is important to always talk to local authorities that know the area and possess professional experience of several years worth to provide. Industry insiders just like Isaac Toussie already know this, after all, but naive first-time homebuyers and the like probably are not and would be wise to apply all due diligence, conducting the most extensive of investigation and self-education first!

The conventional idea of heaven in the West today can, in reality, be traced back thousands of years to the east, to old Persia and its idea of Paradise, a word that literally means “garden.”
Given such a rugged landscape of mountains and deserts, it is understandable how the ancient people of that land imagined heaven to appear like nothing less than a garden, an oasis teeming with foliage and water.

And the sounds of Paradise; are they created by wind chimes or by comely maidens bearing sweet fruit?
Just what does one do in Paradise, really?
That the concept is seriously held by religions the world over implies a universal yearning for relief from the harsh realities of this life, but what, exactly, is being aspired to?
What, in other words, will people actually do in Paradise?

Listen to wind chimes all the day long – or entertain an eternity of frolic with lovely maids?
How devastating must ancient lives have been to imagine such a basic life the just reward of the righteous!
Or is it that we in our age usually do not properly comprehend the true concept of life?

An eternity of ease and leisure seems life punishment to our modern goal-oriented state of mind.
Certainly, the very question of what one would do in Paradise suggests the impatience common to our world of status and ambition.
Could it be, then, that Paradise, should it ever truly exist, suffices quite enough in offering nothing more than gardens and a breeze to play its wind chimes?

And what could be the meaning of this, that eternal life, the greatest reward of all, ought to be conceived as a great big bore?
Would it be that the ancients were simpletons?
Or could it be that we do not appropriately value life, such that to merely live is counted by us as misery?

You can’t have a football game without NFL flags.
To do otherwise will be decidedly un-American!
Okay, never mind that these things are most likely made in China.
Hey, what’s more American than having others do your stuff for you?
So NFL flags are probably produced in China.
Hey, it’s cheap and sufficient for the Sunday game.
Who cares?
Sports transcends politics, right?

The truth is, those “old-economy” jobs are basically never coming back to the United States – or any other advanced industrialized nation, for that matter.
Naturally, who wants to make a living making NFL flags?
Not the Chinese.
No, really!
Even they don’t want to do this kind of work forever.
Actually, the authorities over there are already trying hard to steer their economy away from making low-value stuff like flags, shoes, and other simple things.
Indeed, haven’t you discovered that lots of your apparel is coming from places like Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, and even Mauritania?
No joke!

That’s precisely how things are.
It’s called capitalism.
Businesses will do whatever they can for cash.
And it simply doesn’t make cents – as in dollars and cents – to have American workers, with their lifestyle (as lowered as it is in the 21st Century, to be sure) and needs, making low-value products.
Obviously, you can still find companies here in the States making these products, but then you are going to have to pay a premium price for them – which, needless to say, many a patriot does basically on principle alone.
And so the “Made in USA” label is really a proud marker that businesses are eager to screen.
After all, what’s more American than free choice?
And so many a football fan will wave their American-made flags with satisfaction, deciding to literally put their money where their mouths are!

The law is incredibly interesting due to the fact although it is intended to reflect right and wrong it can often deliver an outcome that offends many people’s impression of what is right and what is wrong. This is how murderers get off Scot-free on a technicality or how in quite a few states accidentally shooting someone can warrant jail time even as killing someone through drunken driving may not.

The field of real estate law is no different and can offer its own rather surprising case studies, such as where a New York judge decided that a divorcing Brooklyn couple may literally split their house fifty-fifty, with the man owning the dining room while his ex-wife got the kitchen! As a result of our ever more interconnected world, a considerable number of blogs having to do with realty law exist online through which it is no longer important to be an attorney oneself or a court reporter or an industry insider like Isaac Toussie in order to keep abreast of the latest developments.

Commonly, situations of right and wrong relate not to just an attorney’s client but even the lawyer him or herself. And so it was that a South Carolina property lawyer was recently found by a court to be accountable for his clients’ underhanded ventures. The Supreme Court of The Palmetto State found that though the actions of James Fayssoux, Esq. may not necessarily constitute criminal activity, charges of lawyerly misconduct were indeed warranted. The punishment comprised of nothing more than a public reprimand, however, as Mr. Fayssoux had actually self-reported the misconduct, cooperated with the disciplinary investigation, and had no prior record of such problems. But the message was clear enough: lawyers cannot simply consider themselves disinterested conduits in the manner of a telephone company or internet service provider, merely passing along information for good or ill.

A fantastic way to develop new business for your business is to perform a targeted email campaign intelligently assembled.
It might appear odd that so many people ought to still respond to e-mail in this age of instant messaging, but this sort of direct marketing really does work.
After all, businesses just like yours pay thousands upon thousands of dollars on bulk e-mailing services frequently!
That’s because a targeted email campaign remains to be the most cost-effective way to broadcast your “good news” to the very folks who are most receptive to it, in all probability, receptive to the goods and services you have to offer them.
It’s “targeted,” after all, and so most shouldn’t find your message to be spam at all.

In fact, a truly targeted email campaign should likely never incur the eye of your ISP or bulk mail handler.
They are used to seeing a voluminous amount of e-mail traffic on a regular basis, and so would merely notice anything if it were abnormally out of the ordinary – not just a little bit, which is tolerable in the market; not even a reasonable amount, which is also predicted.

Thus, for honest businessmen and women, a good old-fashioned e-mail campaign is, rather ironically for a method so associated with spam, a sensible way to communicate to potential customers.
Of course, this could wind up all mixed up with the spam in someone’s inbox, but at least your ISP or bulk mailing service will not penalize you!

A lot of staying well within everyone’s good graces, nonetheless, concerns how really targeted the e-mail list is.
While it’s flawlessly probable to patiently and painstakingly compile your own list by scouring the web, it is a lot more time and cost-effective to use a commercially prepared one, ready to be used – and safer to boot, being “pre-cleaned” and hence less likely to result in spam complaints!

Property law is enjoyable from all of the numerous nuances involved – from state to state, in fact! For example, in Alabama, you cannot rescind your purchase even in cases of seller fraud – yes, even where it is clear from the evidence that deliberate fraud had taken place! Alabama case law takes the old byword “buyer beware” very seriously – rather literally, indeed, when it comes to sales of used realty. In Teer v. Johnston, the court determined that even if the defendant made a false pre-sale disclosure warranting something that is patently untrue, the defendant also cancelled that discloure (which means everything relating to it, including its very claim to veracity) via the addition of an “as-is” clause in the final sales contract. Meaning: buyer has no legal recourse for recovery despite the misrepresentation – despite any misrepresentation – as long as an as-is clause has not been challenged in the sales contract or the deed to the property when in Alabama!

Details abound in life, and the law is no different: that as-is clause would have been no good at all had the misrepresentation involved an unobservable defect that can threaten health or safety. Such details are what make realty law so engaging, and why there are numerous blogs committed to the latest cases involving housing law from across the country. By mindfully following such websites, one does not have to be a professional developer like Isaac Toussie so as to understand all the conceivable pitfalls that might occur where real estate transactions are involved! Indeed, something as patently complex as a real estate deal will require much attention as a matter of course, and the wise consumer will visit any number of properly licensed and otherwise qualified professionals when arriving at any matter of consequence, from brokers and agents to lawyers and appraisers.

SEO is how folks are found online these days, and getting backlinks is the name of the game in SEO.
But it is probable to never buy backlinks again if you know what you’re doing and you have some significant time on your hands!
Teaching yourself some SEO tricks will need extreme dedication and finally it will still cost some money, but overall it’s absolutely a feasible alternative to almost blindly depending on online marketing experts, not all of whom may know what they are doing anyway!
Just remember that while many things in life only get easier and easier as time goes on and knowledge increases, SEO can be a continuous journey due to changing technology.

Who’d ever guess that an electronics store could transform into a gold mine? But for Georgian-born Tamir Sapir, who realized that he was basically “a schmuck in the right place at the right time,” its relationship with high-profile customers from the nearby Soviet embassy has shown to be a Godsend. For he surely could secure exceptional distributor rights to Russian petrochemicals in America, which proceeds he used to attain nearby real estate. Twenty years later, he is now one of downtown Manhattan’s most prominent landlords. Think about that the next time you sniff at something like a Lafnac Digital Computers!

E-commerce, e-publishing, e-this, e-that.
And then, in one of the strangest ever events, the kind that makes the “believe it or nuts” section of the local daily, the type that is spoofed on TV using a soundtrack of Richard Strauss’ “Thus Spake Zarathustra” for an accommodation, the creation of the e-cigarette.

Yes its true, an electronic cigarette.

Hon Lik was a Chinese pharmacist who smoked first thing in the morning, along with in-between bites of lunch and, well, just about all the time.
He would be over two packs by dinnertime, with another before heading off for the night.

Smoking prodigiously was the family hobby, and in China, where some sixty percent of the men smoke, it’s perhaps the national pastime, second only after dining out.
But when his own father died of lung cancer, the middle-aged Hon Lik finally resolved to give up smoking – and, along the way, invent the e-cigarette.

It’s one of the strangest gadgets to come out of Asia, so inquisitive that one might be surprised it hadn’t already been thought of in Japan long ago, the country most often associated with technological novelties both sublime and absurd.
But there it is, an electronic cig, a smokeless cigarette, furthermore.

You heard that right, smokeless.

No carcinogens, or very, minimal.
No nicotine, even, if the user so wishes!
A cigarette-looking device that simply uses a tiny battery to vaporize a tiny bit of flavored liquid to make, well, vapors, vapors much like stage fog.

That’s all.

As strange as these things are, nevertheless, stranger most likely will be the claims that they assist one quit smoking, or, even, are more secure alternatives to cigarette smoking – strange because such claims may be genuine, if the conclusions from a new 2010 Boston University School of Public Health review should be believed!

Passed the Certified Public Accountant exam? Congrats! The rewards? A lifetime of continuing skilled education! Welcome to the wonderful world of CPE for CPAs, in which accountants keep abreast of the latest developments in the field. Do not like books?

Too bad! This is accounting – a profession, meaning (that is, “meant,” past tense) something done outside remunerative considerations, so presumably such a profession was embarked on out of a love of books and numbers!

And plenty of reading and computations is what’s in store for the newly minted CPA, taking up the drudgery that a firm’s partners and even more senior members avoid. That, and a whole lot of CPA CPE courses! Fortunately, unlike work on the job, such self-study is often pursued at one’s own speed, with no deadlines to worry about. And thanks to the power of the worldwide web, it’s easier than ever before!

Merely log on plus a wealth of CPA CPE courses are available, some of them even free! Yes it’s true; free! Yes, it’s something they never told you about at school, but there is such a thing as a free accounting course, even if there is something of a catch. Yes, a catch! But just vaguely, and quite fairly, even: only make sure to actually finish the course and provide feedback. See, most of these offerings are but pilot courses and it is in exchange for supplying such helpful observations to the course designers that you are capable to participate for free.

So, yes, look on the bright side – at least you did not have to pay for it, onerous as it was! On the other hand, as mentioned previously, it’s not likely that anyone would make a career of accounting without finding something of interest about it, so that continuing education should not end up being so miserable!