Precision21

Blog For Grades

Next time you have an assignment such as a paper or informal reading response, do it in the form of a Blog. Trust me, teachers these days are so bogged down with the same old boarding bla dib la bla, so spice it up by sending in your assignment via web. They will love to see that you started an online discussion with others, that your ideas are getting visibility, for sucking up you could even add a link or comment about your teacher. I just did my paper in the form of a blog using hyperlinks, video, and images to spice up the text. My teacher loved it and gave me a flat out A and forwarded it to other people in the department. If you are really ambitious you could have your classmates e-mail you their papers too and post them all up and start class comments on each posting.

When I went to art school my “experimenting” with drugs and alcohol escalated to a full blow addiction. At art school I felt as though I could not perform without the aid of pills, for “energy” and “focus”, and alcohol, to “calm my nerves”. At the time I never thought about getting drug alcohol treatment. After all I was not the only one getting inspired by e or acid, but I was one of the kids who was always high on something. After attempting to do an all-nighter in my studio one night, my teacher found me passed out at my drawing board with three bottles of empty pills peeking through my backpack. Thinking I had overdosed she freaked and called 911. Although I did not overdose the school would not let me return for the semester and threatened to take away my financial aid if I did not get clean. My parents checked me into outpatient drug rehab and let me shop around for a psychiatrist that I liked and trusted. By far the hardest thing I had to go through was medical detox program. I can honestly say I don’t think I had ever felt worse in my life. But once I got through the detox program the fest of rehab did not seem too bad. While I still have feelings of addiction, I now know how to identify those feelings and suppress them.

Fencing is an old art of combat invented some time around either the Late Middle Ages or Renaissance. The word fence comes from the Latin word defensio meaning defense.  My first fencing tournament introduced me to the odd realm in which the sport existed. At age ten I flew by myself to Kentucky in order to compete in National Qualifiers. The expo center I was fencing in was shared by a Sci Fi convention, and a home school convention. It was misfit heaven. I found myself walking around the expo center in a thick protective suit behind a questionably masculine female wearing pink fish net stockings, platform heels, and bare butt cheeks. Starring wide eyed at the surprisingly kinky sci-fi regulars was a bunch of home school kids walking in droves with yellow notepads. Interspersed were fencers practicing footwork throughout the hall.

Attraction for the Olympic sport has not quite caught on in the U.S. Perhaps the lack of the sport’s popularity can be attributed to the unusual required skill sets. Successful fencers are a hybrid between a nerdy chess player and an incredibly fast and coordinated athlete. In my experience, there is no cafeteria table for fencers. They are super powered nerds equipped with a jocks body and theatrical costumes. One of my more memorable competitors was a girl that had no eyebrows.

Click to Watch Obama Speak on NAFTA

The North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, is a much more complicated issue than the neatly drawn economic charts depict. Neoliberalism, while attractive in a graph, in practice has lead to major economic issues. The Trade Agreement, which ultimately ended tariffs between Mexico, the U.S. and Canada also, served as a means to synchronize economies through the monopoly of major corporations. NAFTA, which favors corporations over governments and municipalities as stated in Chapter 11, created a concentration of wealth especially apparent in Mexico. NAFTA also altered the way in which Mexico managed their finances and investments. Mexico in particular has suffered from the U.S. market crash. After NAFTA was passed and put in full effect in 1994, economic integration began to take place through the merging of U.S. and Mexican markets.  As a result NAFTA helped facilitate the transformation from small national banks in Mexico to large global banks, which have since gone bankrupt. However the U.S. market crash has not just affected Mexico, it has also lead to the sinking of other economies such as Japan, China, and Israel. When observing this global melt down we can visualize the interconnectedness between countries as a result of Globalization and merged markets. It seems as though when one leading country sniffs other countries develop a cough. Thomas Friedman, once a major proponent of Globalization, comments on the recent market crash in an article stating, “Globalization now taketh away — it was this democratization of finance that enabled the U.S. to infect the rest of the world with its toxic mortgages”. Viewed as having spewed out “toxic mortgages” contaminating foreign investment, Presidential candidates McCain and Obama have both highlighted on the recent market crash. The economy has been in the forefront of every Presidential debate and hopefully the plunge in the market has stimulated additional skeptism about NAFTA. Obama has called to amend NAFTA in his campaign, recognizing that NAACL and NAAEC, the labor and environmental agreements, have been faulty and ineffective. McCain responds to Obama’s desire to amend NAFTA as stifling America’s “piece of the pie.”

I was walking around SoHo New York last weekend, when I came across this image sprayed to the wall. While it is not exactly the most sophisticated art, it did give me a laugh and made me to stop and appreciate street art. It reminded me a bit of British graffiti artist Banksy. Although graffiti is often considered to be vandalism, I really thought this image added to the overall feel of SoHo. I liked the artist’s humor and I appreciate the way he framed his stencil sequentially like it was telling a story. It also reminded me of my Great Grandma’s corsets, which were made of whale bones. My uncles once used her corsets as sling shots by using the string in the middle that tied up the girdle. Anyways this graffiti caught my eye so I thought I’d share it as it most likely will be painted over sometime this month.

With the real estate market having plummeted, I was very anxious about being able to sell my house for a good price. I lived there for eight years and spent a lot of time as well as money putting custom finishes throughout my entire house. When it came time to put my house up for sale I did some research to see which real estate marketing tactics seemed most successful. I wanted my house to be feature on the web in order get more potential buyers. When looking at other houses for sale, I realized that the ones I found most interesting all had virtual home tours as a feature on their site. I thought these tours gave the house a very professional look as well as offered a better sense of the space and the unique features of the home. Having enjoyed looking at different property video tours I hired a company to make one for my own Californian home. When it was all finished I forwarded the site friends who jokingly said the tour made my house look even better than in real life and I am happy to say I sold my house for a great price despite all the market upsets.

I just read a great article about seo copywriters and how they can target specific keywords to help search engine optimization. The prices for paid listings have gotten out of hand so organic search optimization is the way to go. One must be able to find a reputable company though to trust their online marketing efforts to. emarketed offers these services and has been around for over 10 years. I recently ran into the ceo, Matt Ramage, of emarketed at a marketing conference and had the chance to ask some questions.

Precision21: What services does emarketed offer?

emarketed: We offer search engine optimization or organic search optimization, web design, paid search advertising, web hosting, and custom programming.

Precision21: What type of custom programming do you do?

emarketed: What ever our customers need online. Our latest site was built on a custom CMS we’re building called Organic. The Organic site is still under development but it will be a CMS that is search engine friendly and one that allows you to fully control your own site with no programming experience. We’re really excited about this new software and have launched a new site called Detoxx that uses this CMS.

Precision21: Why is paid search getting so expensive?

emarketed: There is so much competition and the paid search model is built on a bidding system so the more you pay the higher you’re displayed on the search engines. There are other factors as well but basically clicks that use to go for $0.40 now go for $5 or $10 per click. We’ve seem some of the more expensive terms go as high as $50 per click. That’s why companies need to invest in organic search and getting their site found in the organic listings. Once your showing up for a keyword you do not have to pay per click, but you do need to stay on top of it so your competitors don’t pass you up.

Thank you Matt for your insite. I’m sure we’ll have more search marketing content in the future. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any thoughts on search marketing.