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Verizon wireless phones are mobile handsets that come along with a subscription to one of North America’s largest cellular network service providers. Until recently, just about every manufacturer in the world that makes cell phones can be found in the Verizon catalog, but with Apple’s recent entry this year of its flagship iPhone, Verizon customers now have a complete lineup!

On the other hand, these devices are just commodities now and people don’t really talk 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. The market is vastly different from what it used to be just five years ago, never mind ten or even twenty, when such handsets were status symbols! No, today cell phones are ubiquitous, to the point that the corner payphone of old has just about disappeared from most city streets in the industrialized world.

And so this is why folks don’t specifically speak of 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.

Think again! Cellular network companies argue that since they subsidize part of the cost of the phone, making it cheaper when purchased as part of a subscription plan compared to being bought separately, they have the right to lock their phones – yes, “their” phones. 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!

Luckily, there’s a way around such a restriction: “jail-breaking” or unlocking the phone. Depending on the kind, GSM or CDMA, one could be unlocked by simply punching a particular code into the keypad!

Caribbean medical schools have long been decried as diploma mills for the rich and undeserving; they are strictly for-profit institutions serving American kids rejected by U.S. medical schools, yet they rely on hospitals in the U.S. to provide the necessary clinical experience in the third and fourth years 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?

Because Caribbean medical schools are first and foremost businesses, they charge a lot of money to provide something of a second chance for students rejected by American medical schools. At an elite institution like Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, donors from investment banker Sanford I. Weill to real estate developer Isaac Toussie provide a lot of money, reducing costs to around forty-five thousand dollars each year. Compare that to the Caribbean ones, where it can cost up to 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.

Traditionally, 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?

Some females buy modest swimsuits on account of being self-conscious about their looks. These ladies believe that they’re fat and, you know, perhaps that’s so — but who cares? Wearing them for religious reasons is one thing (and a very big, very ridiculous thing at that — but that’s another rant), but wearing them simply because you have body issues and low self-esteem?? Well, such girls should know that there are perfectly normal guys out there who actually prefer fat chicks — not only Rubenesque, but fat, as in hundreds of pounds overweight! And it’s not like these guys have freaky festishes, either, usually – they’re otherwise fine everyday kind of guys who just happen to have different tastes than the mainstream, that’s all.

Visiting On Off Digital World, will you? No better day for it. Great temperatures, after all. So good you ought to walk, if not bicycle or even jog, there. Best not to drive, though. It’s great temperatures, which makes you feel young again, thanks in part to a nice welcome breeze about, soothing and not annoying at all – no upturned skirts, no runaway hats, everything just nicely alive. Heavenly day! Hope to be enjoying it myself soon enough (well, in about another two to three hours or so, depending on work)! Such a day does not immediately recommend electronics, yes – not the kind to be holed up indoors playing videogames – but On Off offers photography equipment, too.

It’s crazy that modest swimsuits are supposed to hide the female figure, because they can attract just as much attention, for reasons all their own! In fact, “less is more” is quite often true, which is why lingerie can be so seductive in a different way than what bare naked flesh offers – that is to say, stimulating the imagination can be much more erotic than leaving nothing to the imagination. In fact, let’s face it, some girls look a lot better covered up, don’t they! As a guy, it isn’t that important what a girl decides, 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!

Why modest swimsuits are becoming more popular now could be on account of the rise in religious fundamentalism around the globe — or, rather, within the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Maybe it’s something to do with the kind of mindset typically fostered under monotheism, and maybe this kind of “my-way-or-the-highway” attitude is what informs the religious wars and persecutions that make up most of monotheism’s sad history. Mass murder may not be the sole province of a monotheistic outlook, but there’s no denying that the most infamous cases in history have been perpetrated by monotheistically inspired people.

What a great day, what great weather! But for all that, the news was unavoidable: I happened to be strolling by On Off Digital World, an old-timey New York retail operation specializing in electronics and photography, 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.

For many people, philanthropy is something that other people engage in – people such as billionaires. 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, no matter the branch or denomination, there is the idea of tzedakah, which comes from the Hebrew for “justice,” and this is an obligation for all, even the poor. For to make charitable donations is prescribed as a religious duty and not one subject to personal fancy. 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 on on high. This leads to the further injunction to carefully vet all recipients to ensure that any donations made will actually work for good and not ill.

At first glance, this may sound like yet another curious aspect of the religion. But – as with many aspects of Judaism, even for an outsider – there exist profound philosophical reasons for them. That’s because by ordering even the poor to make acts of pious philanthropy, the religious duty to give makes of them actors and agents, not just passive charity cases, thus restoring their humanity, their own moral agency.

After all, the very act of giving is empowering in itself? 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. Hence, in Judaism one need not be a successful businessman like 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!

Due to out fast-paced society, fast-paced because new discoveries are being made all the time which leads to things never stand still, even personal fitness trainers need to take CPE courses to be able to stay in good position professionally.
As a former personal trainer myself, I have to say, however, that the standard trainer may still not be as well-informed as such accreditations may wish to suggest.

Those employed by chain gyms, which is the vast majority of those today, are often kids for whom personal training is a gig they happen to have come upon.
At something like New York Sports Club (NYSC), they wear the red tee shirts that say “here to help you.”
Now some are, obviously, quite knowledgeable and rather considering the subject, but for most it is just a job that seemed to fit nicely with a relaxed interest in sports.

The certification exam they take is genuine and rigorous enough for any employing a multiple-choice format, but it is really nothing more than a memory test and really indicates no real expertise.
The required CPE courses run generally along the same lines, regurgitating data by rote.
The truth is, these trainers have no knowledge that could not be obtained by anyone who logs online.

Certainly, one may say the same of any profession – but when it comes to physical fitness, the very nature of the area enables for no small amount of misinformation and outright quackery.
The reason for this is really pretty simple: no one actually knows.

Yes its true.
I’m a former personal fitness trainer and the only one who will tell the absolute truth: no one really knows.
Unless he or she is God or was there at the creation of Adam and Eve, no one really knows.
Therefore, all the personal trainer CPE courses in the world isn’t going to make up for this plain but shocking truth – “the human body is centuries prior to medical science,” as Doctor Sir Roger Bannister stated.

No need to be an industry veteran like Isaac Toussie to know that different jurisdictions can handle real estate matters differently. It’s what makes real estate law so fascinating – as well as quite a challenge to stay on top of! Look at Alabama, for instance. In that state, “buyer beware” is held in a very, very high regard by the courts, such that even in cases of outright fraud buyers may have no legal recourse anyway – since the property is recognized as being sold on an “as-is” basis. That’s right: Alabama case law takes the old dictum of caveat emptor very, very seriously, to the point of, in effect, allowing for otherwise illegal activity!

A recent case determined that an as-is clause in the sales contract not superseded by another provision will be interpreted literally, or “as-is.” In this particular case, a pre-sale misrepresentation was made that was only found out (that is, proven false) post-sale. Most anywhere else that’s just fraud and will probably lead to some jail time, yet in the Heart of Dixie the as-is clause is king and must be specifically superseded by some other provision agreed to by seller and buyer – or the as-is clause shall be taken literally!

That was an ambiguous situation in the eyes of Alabama law, but it should be noted that not everything is always as draconian as that. Such strict interpretations of an as-is clause only apply to used property in the state, and not to new developments. Such as-is clauses are also superseded in cases where the misrepresentation is not obvious and potentially harmful to health and safety.

In this case, Teer v. Johnston, however, while the misrepresentation of flooding is indeed not something immediately obvious, it was not considered harmful to health and safety, making nothing more than an inconvenience or nuisance at most. What plaintiff ought to have done was to provide either in the sales contract or the deed that pre-sale disclosures should survive the execution of the deed!

When I was a personal fitness trainer, I wasn’t too pleased with the idea of an entire certification process just to be able to help people exercise.
But that was nothing compared to my shock that certification had to be maintained via online CPE courses as well!
Now obviously the aim of certification is to be publicly recognized as being professionally competent, and since things are constantly changing in our fast-paced modern world being competent naturally means some sort of continuing education.
My shock, however, stemmed from the typical view of those outside the fitness industry that trainers are simply muscle-heads and nothing more.

Nevertheless, just because I was a muscle-head who happened to be aware of a little bit about the human body doesn’t mean that everyone else curious in becoming personal trainers also do.
But more to the point and very much to my chagrin, it turned out that as much as I actually believed there was so very much, much, much, much, much more that I could not – never mind online CPE courses; I barely had the essentials covered!

My newfound respect for education with respect to the fitness industry now means that I no longer laugh at online CPE courses for personal trainers.
It isn’t going to be as hard as what lawyers, doctors, and accountants have to contend with, to make sure, but neither is it just a ruse, either.
For sure it is mostly memorization of facts at this point, nothing so academically rigorous that any high school student would find it not familiar, but still – it’s a good step in the right course for the industry as a whole and one which I now not only understand but additionally fully support myself.
My days as a trainer have ended but I have stored a lot of respect for continuing education for anyone.

CPE requirements of late (relatively speaking) has emphasized ethics more and more, especially for lawyers and accountants.
Generally, continuing professional education courses contain self-study, whether online or with the use of traditional materials like workbooks and the like.
However, credits may also be earned through attending qualifying seminars, such as those popular talks given by those accountants, lawyers, and others charged of so-called white-collar crimes.

Yes, listening to fraudsters and scammers could satisfy some CPE requirements, depending on the certifying body governing the occupation in each state!
Okay, so it’s quite an amusing idea, but then again, who else is there better qualified to educate of such things than those with personal knowledge by virtue of their criminal activities?

Probably the most well-known of such speakers is Sam Antar, the former Chief Financial Officer for Crazy Eddie’s, his cousin’s eponymous business in consumer electronics.
Rising from a lowly stockboy back when the company was a really modest local neighborhood success, Sam Antar wound up very close to his cousin Eddie Antar because of his role as the professional enabler that greatly facilitated the organization’s widespread accounting fraud.
Given such an insider’s role, it’s easy to see why his lectures today can command credits that meet CPE requirements: after all, it takes one to know one!

Indeed, Sam Antar, while acknowledging the depth of his crimes, doesn’t flinch from the truth: he is only on the right side of the law these days because he was caught.
Had the whole Crazy Eddie’s saga never collapsed because of greed and in-fighting among some of the principals included, Sam Antar might well be busy today enabling white-collar crime as he always had, not fighting it himself as he is in a sense forced to do on account of economic conditions related to his now poisonous work history and professional notoriety.

Affiliate marketing is a great way for the tech-savvy hobbyist for making some money on the side.
For a select few who have managed to put their finger on the Zeitgeist, however, it means full financial independence, with income in the tens of thousands per month!

Probably the most celebrated cases of affiliate marketing made good has been that of Dr. Arnold Kim, M.D.
Though still a medical student, he began a website focused on rumors about Apple products.
This was back right at the turn of the century, before the word “blog” had entered into the well-known lexicon.
Even while diagnosing patients, Dr. Kim kept up the site, though quickly enough it took on a life of its own, with forty million page views per month, as certified by independent research firms.

Dr. Kim was already well-off as a result of his medical practice, but affiliate marketing also generated a six-figure income – and he was only devoting comparatively little time to his site!
Believing that things could grow so much more were he to invest his whole day, Dr. Kim gave up his stethoscope and plunged whole-heartedly into the world of professional blogging.

Similar types of internet riches abound, such as that of the teenager who became a millionaire by making free MySpace designs for individuals to download, or the college student behind “The Million-Dollar Homepage” which made money by just selling space to advertisers.
What they have in frequent is that their success is totally traffic-driven: it’s all about the eyeballs, the number of visitors per month, week, day, even hour – both repeat and first-time (known in the industry as “unique”).
Get the numbers, and you will make money.

But how do you get the numbers?
Content.
“Content is king.”
If you have something lots of people are interested, such that they will keep visiting your site, you will make money – confirmed.
The only real question is what content or material to serve up!

Just about the most important developments in the field of professional continuing education (CPE) is the relatively recent stress on ethics, resulting in the proliferation now of many an ethics CPE course.
While certainly a good thing when the professions insist on not just what is legal but what is ethical and, even, moral, additionally it is quite sad that basic human decency should today be so uncommon as to warrant an explicit necessity.

Needless to say, malpractice jokes roasting doctors, lawyers, and accountants have long been a staple of humor and given such a context the now-official understanding for proper behavior is to be applauded.
There are certainly more serious scenarios than having ethics CPE specifications – namely, the lack of them with the world still being the way it is: the very way which first made such courses so essential!
But there’s no questioning the fact that when fundamental human decency needs to be taught so many years after kindergarten, where they were first encountered (likely an ill-fated fact in itself, as the first place anyone should come across their ethics should be the home!), society is doomed to an evermore unhappy race to the bottom for all.

Why, just take a look at the well-established practice now of companies hiring unpaid interns to do full-time jobs – real jobs, for which these volunteers are not even given the defense of common workplace discrimination and harrassment laws.
No, really!
Even multi-billion-dollar corporations, including General Electric (which managed to pay no taxes for the filing season of 2011), make extensive use of these unpaid workers daily.
What good has all the ethics CPE courses in the world really achieved when corporate bean-counters still continue to easily invent new ways of posting a profit while increasing productivity and lowering costs on the backs of young people without money?

The affiliate marketing successes just keep pouring in: the most up-to-date circumstance history concerns one Ashley Qualls, a seventeen year-old who’s become a millionaire by simply giving away totally free MySpace layouts.
Yes.
It’s no joke.
A teenage girl in high school makes seventy thousand dollars a month by giving stuff away for free.

Chalk another one up to the magic of affiliate marketing and its dramatic power.
Ashley Qualls developed a website that’s simply a repository of her designs for MySpace profile pages which anyone can download entirely free.
Her site attracts seven million visitors each month and sixty million page views.
That’s gold to advertisers.
And it’s become gold for Ashley Qualls.

Affiliate marketing works.
The true challenge lies in coming up with something that lots and lots of people will go crazy for.
Another great internet riches success history concerns an Arnold Kim, who as a professional blogger now makes income in the same six-figure range he used to as a medical doctor, only he gets to stay home with his four year-old daughter.
He happened upon his financial destiny whilst still in school, having started up a site dedicated to rumors about Apple products.
Among the first, he quickly developed quite the captive audience and, with all those eyeballs, advertisers arrived calling in equally quick succession.

That’s all it takes to make money online – traffic.
Eyeballs.
Visitors, repeat and unique (first-time).
It’s basically monetized like any other medium, whether print or broadcast.
Important differences do exist, but where fundamentals are concerned you will need numbers; you will need people.

Now how to get all those people?
Yet again, providing something of great interest to a large amount of people.
Basically, the same first principle of any business.
Determine a need and fulfill it!

Sam Antar was the former CFO of Crazy Eddie’s, his cousin’s electronics retail empire.
Sam is a much sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit nowadays, and his seminars may even earn CPE and CLE credits for the attendees.

That’s because he is a convicted fraudster.

Ethics continuing education courses are typically self-paced correspondence courses one takes at one’s own leisure as a part of maintaining one’s professional good standing.
Reading through Sam’s site on the worldwide web, however, is as educational as any structured academic account can be.

As the former CFO of Crazy Eddie’s, Sam presided over one of the most famous scandals in the chronicles of corporate crime.
He lays all of it out, bare, raw, and unembellished by any of the typical self-serving rationaliziations often given to insiders’ accounts – all unadulterated on his website.

This is an ethics CPE course like no other – if it were accredited as such.
As it is, it’s just a website – but oh, what a website!

White-collar crime never sounded so exciting.
That’s because the Crazy Eddie’s scandal was at heart a soap opera displaying all the acquainted human foibles known to a Greek chorus – lust, greed, betrayal, along with family.
Yes, family.

The familial element in this drama makes this demonstration of corporate offense so – if the pun will be pardoned – familiar to lay readers, grabbing and holding their focus where other accounts could lose them under a mountain of technical particulars.
However, it isn’t that Sam offers no minutiae of his own; his very purpose today is to combat criminal activity, after all; it’s that these details, which would be so boring otherwise with no benefit of a human drama in which to place them in the proper perspective, come to vivid life against the context of a family power fight that resonantes powerfully with everyone who’s ever underwent any semblance of sibling rivalry.

How’s that for an ethics CPE course!

Community assistance will always be a basic necessity for the survival and prosperity of hospitals and medical schools. Even most medical research facilities have had some significant amount of communal support, especially in the form of philanthropic dollars. Oftentimes, these generous donors can be found contributing to more than one institution, as is the case with Isaac Toussie and family with regards to two of the leading names in healthcare teaching and practice in the Empire State, Weill Cornell Medical College and the North Shore-LIJ network of hospitals and research centers.

Weill Cornell is named after its two single best benefactors, Ezra Cornell, a founder of Western Union, and Sanford I. Weill, the onetime chief of Citigroup, Incorporated. As one of the most selective medical schools in the United States, it admits only about a hundred hopefuls out of the nearly six thousand that apply each year. Moreover, Weill Cornell was first to accept women right alongside men as well as the first American medical school to establish its own premises abroad, just by the capital of Qatar, Doha. It can also claim a long line of famous alumni, doctors like C. Everett Koop, U.S. Surgeon General; Robert C. Atkins of Atkins Diet fame; Nobel Laureate Robert W. Holley; and Henry Heimlich of Heimlich Maneuver fame. The North Shore-LIJ Health System is the second largest healthcare network in the country as measured by the number of beds and the largest in New York State based on patient revenue. It serves over seven million people a year through more than forty-two thousand employees – the single largest employer on Long Island and ninth largest largest in the City of New York.

These two institutions owe much of their success to vigorous community support, whether through financial contributions by leading businessmen and women or non-monetary offerings such as time and expertise by local volunteers of civic or religious organizations. Even with an annual budget of several billions between them, vigorous local support will never be unnecessary for the health of Weill Cornell and North Shore-LIJ!