One of the most crucial developments in the field of professional continuing education (CPE) is the relatively recent concentration on ethics, leading to the proliferation now of many an ethics CPE course.
While surely 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 simple human decency should today be so unheard of as to warrant an explicit requirement.

Obviously, malpractice jokes roasting doctors, lawyers, and accountants have long been a staple of humor and given such a context the now-official admiration 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 primarily made such courses so vital!
But there’s no questioning the fact that when fundamental human decency has to be taught so many years after kindergarten, where they were primarily encountered (likely an unlucky fact in itself, as the first place anyone should find their ethics should be the home!), society is doomed to an evermore miserable 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 usually are not even given the protection of common workplace discrimination and harrassment laws.
No, really!
Even multi-billion-dollar corporations, for example 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 improving productivity and lowering costs on the backs of young people without money?

When I think of something similar to an On Off Digital World I think of the good ol’ days of personal computing, the golden age of the 1980s focused on the Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga. Now, in fact, despite commanding a large share of the market, corporate problems back at headquarters brought about the ultimate demise of Commodore and so the Amiga lost market share, practically overnight, to Apple Computer. However, it’s a safe and true statement that the ’80s belonged to Commodore. Those were some good times, what with the medium still very new and many a creative programmer pushing against the technological envelope. Indeed, it wasn’t until the middle part of the decade that a piece of software required more than a programmer or two or three! But still, no matter than there was less than 64KB to work with – or precisely because of it – among the most imaginative feats of programming excellence took place, like a fully functional graphical WYSIWYG OS!

Taking online CPE courses is more convenient than ever, but it’s still something that one would have to take seriously.
Those unfamiliar with continuing professional education may imagine that it’s just some kind of nonsense or they may think it’s like school all over again.
The truth is, however, somewhere in the centre.

Online CPE courses help make it even less like school, and for all the seriousness involved they could be almost fun.
A well-written course can make things seem less onerous – as anything obligatory usually tends to be – but of course if one is a professional then one will do whatever has to be done regardless of the fun factor!

Still, it’s good to know that not all online CPE courses have to be as dull as traditional mail correspondence courses were.
No need to make a chore even more of a chore, after all!
Hopefully, staying on top of advancements in one’s field, whether it be the law or medicine or any other profession, could well be exciting enough in and of itself.

Frankly, if undergoing continuing education would be a difficulty, then there is no reason to enter such careers in the first place, despite the prestige and the higher income.
(And, when it comes to lawyers, the higher income is nowhere near as certain as for the other professions!)
These days, even personal fitness trainers are anticipated to take continuing education courses.
That’s right – those guys and gals at the gym!

Chalk it all up to an ever increasingly competitive job market, where credentials mean getting a foot in the door.
Naturally, it’s not just market pressures, as the scope of knowledge in a discipline like medicine is always improving with each new discovery.
However, while something like the law can also be subject to constant change, it simply does not command the same kind of rates lately as it once did.
Law graduates have actually gone on to file class-action lawsuits against their alma maters, putting those legal abilities to the simply use they can find in this economy!

Affiliate marketing is a good way for the tech-savvy hobbyist to generate 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 long been that of Dr. Arnold Kim, M.D.
Though still a medical student, he started a website dedicated to 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 subsequently 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 due to his medical practice, but affiliate marketing also generated a six-figure income – and he was only devoting fairly 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 realm of professional blogging.

Similar types of internet riches abound, such as that of the teenager who became a millionaire by producing free MySpace designs for people to download, or the college student behind “The Million-Dollar Homepage” which made money by simply selling space to advertisers.
What they have in common is that their success is completely 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 receive 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!

DC electric motor repair is generally made for industrial equipment such as generator turbines and the like, though the most essential principles are known to the home hobbyist and his or her electronics science kit.
Obviously, when it comes to power plants and other large-scale applications, the quantitative difference becomes a qualitative one as well.
Yet there is a lot about commercial DC electric motor repair which children with an interest in fixing broken toys, sometimes strictly mechanical ones employing no electricity, will readily grasp, the first of which regards the very meaning of an engine, the very physical features of a motor.

Today’s curious, scientifically minded child may almost comprehend about as much of electricity as the polymath Ben Franklin ever did.
Depending on the age, generally speaking, they can rather adroitely indulge in a fit of DC electric motor repair somewhat in the manner of a prodigious young Anakin Skywalker in the Stars Wars prequel “The Phantom Menace.”
From exotic gravity-defying vehicles to incredibly intelligent robots, Anakin manages to restore them all.
While today’s youngsters are hardly so versatile, it’s arguable that they are commonly smarter somehow than their own parents were at similar ages.

So is that in reality the situation?
Has technology itself – its presence, its use – shaped our young in ways that render them somehow more intellectually able than we ourselves had been in youth?

It is not simple speculation, idle or otherwise.
Research into how modern tools has influenced children’s cognitive development makes headlines periodically with some startling advice or other.
Furthermore, millions have been spent by private industry in the hope of gleaning some crucial market insight that will bring about dramatically big revenue.
And, once more, it’s arguable that kids today are subtly smarter, at least in the sense of being savvier.

Wind chimes are not just pretty decorations to hang up around the house or garden which happen to make noise from time to time.
They have actually been used in real music, from high-brow modern music to popular everyday fare such as videogame soundtracks.
The French composer Oliver Messiaen has written for glass, wood, and seashell chimes in his opera depending on Saint Francis of Assisi, while David Sitek of the American rock band TV on the Radio often hangs a wind chime at the end of his guitar for texture.

Possibly the most famous unknown use of wind chimes in the world was made by Koji Kondo, lead musician at Nintendo, the Japanese videogaming giant.
He is in charge of the music in such bestsellers as Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, and has incorporated chiming sounds throughout his work, such as the theme for the “Vanilla Dome” world (or stage – that is, game level) in the sequel Super Mario World.

Nevertheless, it ought to be noted that musical instruments already can be found which employ chimes or chime-like hardware.
Without a doubt, one such device, a mark tree, is also usually known as a chime tree or a pair of bar chimes.
It is performed by sweeping a finger or stick through the length of hanging cylinders, usually made of metal though of varying lengths.
These cylinders are hung from a bar and mounted in pitch order.

Similar instruments include tubular bells and the bell tree.
Like wind chimes proper, they are often thought of as percussion instruments, generally used by musical color.
Tubular bells, however, can produce harmonic spectra
and therefore are capable of melodies.
But these are often very simple, and few solos are written for tubular bells.
One noteworthy use of the instrument is produced by the animated television series Futurama, for its theme.
In the 1980s, the famous children’s show Sesame Street also featured tubular bells through part of its ending credits.

The potential of Blu Ray video is being fulfilled so quickly. While some releases have been critically panned for not living up to the technological potential of the format, these are thankfully quite the exception. Compared with the situation with DVD a decade before, when many discs were nothing but straight ports of VHS copies, there being none of the improvements in sound and picture quality possible with the format – some of these actually played straight through from beginning to end, just like a VHS cassette – much if not most of the Blu-ray discs available on the market today do offer the best sound and video possible anywhere. What’s more, given prices that are often barely distinguishable from what’s charged for DVDs, it’s about time you yourself got on board!

The recent Japanese disaster has shone a spotlight on the country’s relatively unique social structure.
Unlike many other circumstances of natural disaster elsewhere, no looting or rioting has followed to compound the catastrophe — and this has greatly impressed many a non-Japanese observer.
From the patient orderly lines to the return of valuables, “yamoto-damashii,” or the Japanese spirit, has elicited admiration and additional sympathy from the world.

As can be imagined, articles have made an appearance seeking to explain the phenomenon of people who continue to be law-abiding citizens even with being deprived of not simply creature comforts but everything they own and even of loved ones.
Police stations all along the coast are loaded to capacity with the personal household safes of victims which have washed back to terrain or been recovered from the rubble by rescue workers.
Then there is the seemingly suicidal heroism and self-sacrifice of many nuclear power plant employees.
Even animals have displayed yamoto-damashii: a dog made worldwide headlines for standing by another dog caught under rubble, refusing to leave!

Much has been written both for and against the “Japanese-spirit interpretation” of events.
On one side, people note that the country is a wealthy one, a technologically advanced one, and one that is probably uniquely homogenous among the leading industrialized societies of which it is a member.
Certainly household safes and other belongings have been returned or at least still left unmolested!
It figures, argue such people, because there is no motivation to loot and riot when the country as a whole offers so many resources to provide succor.

Others note that the spirit of Japan is such that rules are observed simply because they are rules – Japanese rules – and one is Japanese.
Safes are not broken into because that is not what a Japanese person does, in basic terms.
This side of the argument notes that no matter how rich the society, individual victims always suffer – yet they generally do so patiently, in a manner uniquely Japanese.

It’s one of the safest locations on Manhattan Island, or, in fact, all of New York City. But the situation wasn’t always so. Just ask the old-timers, those like a On Off Digital World or one of them handful of mom-and-pop operations still around. They’ve been through it all, and it wasn’t always lovely. However, there’s a particular type of person, and a particular sort of New Yorker, one that actually misses the bad ol’ days. Such folks imagine that the city was authentic then; it had its issues but it also had a lot of spirit, too, lots of spirit. In these times, they grumble, midtown Manhattan is just an internationally flavored version of a typical outdoor mall in America.

Going to a store like On Off Digital World takes me back to my childhood. Never was all that into shopping, but in this case I can imagine the appeal it might have for some people. Here, anyway, it has to do with experiencing the kind of, well, retail experience I once had long ago, with exactly this kind of store, one that was once found throughout New York City but which has now suffered greatly from the “big box” stores such as Best Buy and the like. Yes, On Off is a throwback to the ’80s and perhaps earlier, that’s for sure.