Hub You - News and Society

Finding The Right Career: Defining The Job That Best Suits You!
Some twenty or thirty years ago, finding the right career was restricted by lack of global internet tools, limited by more old-fashioned (if you will) values and opinions, and less important than “finding yourself.” I remember when my therapist, the savior of all saviors as far as I’m concerned, laughed with me over how I had gone about finding the right career: I had signed up to all the courses that I found interesting and many I hoped were in some way related, then tried to decide on a major/career. She lightly joked that a lot of people decide first, then do the footwork of taking the mandatory and essential and relevant courses, doing internships, and getting in at some entry-level. Obviously, I didn’t have the tools we have today for finding the right career, nor did I know about their existence and usefulness, at least.For instance, lots of students will use personality testing and employment/goal assessments for finding the right career - right from the commencement of their semesters in college. ERIK, Psychometric testing tools, and career skills assessment batteries will help to define aptitude and save you time futzing around with majors and minors that you FEEL you MAY like…when six years later on decide you need to start all over finding the right career, as offshore drilling is not for you or interplanetary travel studies will take too long or anthropological studies of tribes now extinct are wiped off the college catalogs three quarters of the way into your educational plan.An incredible implement of guidance, information, and statistical projection for finding the right career is the Index to Careers Guide, produced, upda

ve literature departments. Scholars of literature and the arts consider themselves the primary experts on culture, mediators of high culture, and interpreters of all discourse, rhetoric and cultural expression. As a historian myself, I love social scientists and scholars of the humanities. They are often passionately devoted to civil society. But that does not make them experts on civil society.

Lawyers, constitutional lawyers, and law school professors form another common array of civil society experts. These people are trained to think critically, to read and write carefully, and to debate with acumen and rhetorical skill. Lawyers are legal experts, and so if you have legal problems, they come highly recommended. But in other circumstances the society of lawyers tends to make communication incomprehensible, extremely expensive, combative, and fraught with hidden landmines (read any small print lately?). The central problem with trusting a lawyer-expert is that you can find a lawyer who will argue any position. They may believe passionately in it, or they may simply believe in the virtue of arguing for their client. In short, lawyers are useful people to pay to support your position; but that does not make them civil society experts.

Finally, former government officials and diplomats are ubiquitous civil society experts. Former domestic or foreign policy advisors-now pun

Benefits Of AdWords Part 3 - Using AdWords To Get Better SEO Results
In the third part of our series of articles let’s look at using the benefits of AdWords to get a huge head start in optimizing pages with SEO.A friend over in Corporate world just asked me this very timely question: “What are the best sites for determining which keywords to use for left hand side SEO. If I’ve got a term like {hidden for privacy}, are there sites that will show me how many searches have been done and what key words to use to target those searches?”So of course, always willing to help, I told him about three of the main tools that online marketers tend to use in such circumstances: Google’s External Keyword Tool, Overture’s keyword tool, and of course, probably the best (but not free) tool at www.wordtracker.comHowever, given that this is a series about the benefits of using Google AdWords, let’s look at why we might want to start with AdWords, then focus on SEO - historically arch enemies!Using AdWords to get better SEO resultsIn order to start optimizing your site to get high rankings in the search engines, you have to know the best phrases people might use to find you. While some phrases are obvious (& possibly very popular), the vast majority are ‘long tail’ keywords – that is, they are much less widely used, but there are literally hundreds of them.A great SEO effort will look to optimise your site for many of these lower traffic keywords. They’re easier to optimize for because there’s less competition & they can turn into solid providers of additional traffic. But if they’re not the most obvious phrases – how do we know which ones will get used the most by our visitors? And which will do the best job of converting pros

Experts are valuable, necessary contributors to our diverse and specialized society. But they cannot and should not be used to constitute or replace civil society. Indeed, the idea that anyone can claim to be a civil society expert is troubling. Civil society needs to be composed of a broad and diverse array of people throughout our societies. The internet offers us an opportunity to radically expand civil society, to debate all of the ideas and ideologies that shape the world, and to publish our speech around the world. We cannot abandon this field to experts, particularly not the much vaunted experts of civil society.

What is an expert? Experts and expertise are usually recognized through degrees earned, publications, experience and notoriety. There are good reasons for each of these things. But each of them can also be troubling. If degrees and titles make experts, then we need to carefully, critically examine the curriculum, the quality, and the ideological biases of our degree offering institutions. If publications make experts, we need to be aware of the obscurity or audience of journals and the public and private funding sources for research. Experience is very valuable; but there are plenty of rich political donors who have become consular officials without a shred of expertise. Notoriety is the most troublesome of the signs and symbols of expertise.

Famous experts are often assumed to be better experts - false. Famous people and celebrities often mistake themselves for experts and think we ought to care what their expert pronouncements are - really false! In addition, experts tend to congregate together and pat each other on the backs by awarding one another fellowships, grants, distinctions and prizes. The Ivy League is the country club of expertise. The longer you hang around, the more your expertise will be burnished, brightened and expanded by all of your expert pals who slap you on the back. Finally, success begets success. People who gain degrees, earn awards, grants and fellowships will earn more of them. If you have not broken into this club by the first year of graduate school, you are unlikely to join it later.

Civil Society Experts

A wide array of civil society experts are called in to analyze, explain and advocate prominent policy issues. From the scientist and the statistician, to the economist and the literature professor, to the historian and the constitutional lawyer, to the retired general and the retired ambassador; there is no shortage of experts to tell us how to think and act and vote in this complicated world of ours. Now we even have technocrats - those elite experts who blend modern technological training with state power to produce utopia in developing nations like China and Chile, well, eventually maybe. Then there are the experts who are not experts. Politicians and rich people, reporters and pollsters get tired of having to ask the experts or hire the experts or hunt around for someone with an advanced degree to advocate their position. So they step up to the mike themselves and are transformed into pundits. But in the end, none of these civil society experts provide us with civil society, or solutions to the problems we must work together to solve.

In the last generation we have seen the rise of a new expert - the technocrat. This is the ultimate melding of expertise with power. Now instead of simply elevating the powerful to power, we elevate (powerful) experts to power. Hey, I love meritocracy. But let us not confuse engineering, business or science degrees with the ability to lead nations and states. Scientists, engineers and CEOs are no better or worse than anyone else at voting with principle, debating important issues, or leading communities.

Perhaps most prominent among civil society experts are scientists and statisticians. Statistics is an important tool for making valid conclusions based on small data sets. But statistics is also undoubtedly the most commonly misused tool for lying in politics, the media and civil society. Next, scientists are specialized professionals who master specific tools and methods for investigating specific, narrow questions. They arrive at provisional, evidence-based answers to those questions. They do not claim to discern truth, morality, wisdom or sound public policy. If you hear a scientist claiming any of these latter findings, then you are listening to a person, who happens to hold a PhD, who also holds an opinion that may or may not be informed, effective, wise or true. Scientists and scientific research are also very expensive, and so they are paid by someone or other. The sources of funding do not determine scientific results, but they can reflect policy analysis and advocacy.

Social scientists form a lower tier of civil society experts. These can include - Political scientists: who analyze politics and may try to tell you how to vote. Economists: who analyze the economy and may try to predict the future (with predictable results). Sociologists: who may or may not perform experiments on small groups of people, then tell you what is wrong with your society and what to do about it. Historians: who analyze the past then complain that you do not know about your past and that everything you think you know about the past is wrong. Anthropologists: who used to study remote cultures and now study ritual in any culture and will tell you how your culture is oppressing some other culture. And so forth. In related fields, literary and cultural critics abound in English, foreign language, and comparative literature departments. Scholars of literature and the arts consider themselves the primary experts on culture, mediators of high culture, and interpreters of all discourse, rhetoric and cultural expression. As a historian myself, I love social scientists and scholars of the humanities. They are often passionately devoted to civil society. But that does not make them experts on civil society.

Finally, former government officials and diplomats are ubiquitous civil society experts. Former domestic or foreign policy advisors-now pun

Should You Co-sign That Loan?
Chances are that someday you will be asked to co-sign a loan. It could be a friend, a relative or a co-worker that needs help getting a loan. You are a nice person, so you are inclined to say yes. However, before you sign anything, you need to know all of the risks.According to the Federal Trade Commission, as many as three out of four co-signers are required to repay the loan they co-signed. Why is this number so high?Well, think about why someone would need a co-signer on a loan. They have been turned down for credit on their own for a reason. This is usually due to a lack of credit history, but it could be for bad credit as well. Think about how much of a risk this person is. What do you know about their spending and finances? Do they have a steady job?In most cases, if the borrower misses a payment on a loan, the lender will come after you first. They may not even try to collect from the borrower. The idea is that the borrower didn't make the payment in the first place. The lender knows that they don't have the money or won't pay in the future.In addition to the missed payments, you could be required to pay late fees and attorney fees. You could have your wages garnished, you could lose any property that you put up as collateral and you could be sued. It could be a bad situation. Oh -- and it will appear on your credit report, which in turn could ruin your credit.Before you co-sign a loan, you must be absolutely sure that you can afford to pay the debt if the borrower defaults on the loan. You may believe that it won't happen, but life can turn sometimes. People lose their jobs, become ill, have accidents and even die. If any of this happens,

s are often assumed to be better experts - false. Famous people and celebrities often mistake themselves for experts and think we ought to care what their expert pronouncements are - really false! In addition, experts tend to congregate together and pat each other on the backs by awarding one another fellowships, grants, distinctions and prizes. The Ivy League is the country club of expertise. The longer you hang around, the more your expertise will be burnished, brightened and expanded by all of your expert pals who slap you on the back. Finally, success begets success. People who gain degrees, earn awards, grants and fellowships will earn more of them. If you have not broken into this club by the first year of graduate school, you are unlikely to join it later.

Civil Society Experts

Finally, former government officials and diplomats are ubiquitous civil society experts. Former domestic or foreign policy advisors-now pun

File Folders
File folders are necessary in safekeeping important files, documents and other pertinent papers. Vital information such as birth certificates, insurance policies, legal papers, medical records, financial information, business contracts, company presentation papers and the likes can well be kept in file folders.The use of file folders is indispensable for people from all walks of life. Whether you are a student, a mother, a businessman or a bookkeeper, you need to practice the art of filing documents. You never know when the need to retrieve or review specific information will come your way. You can never tell if a piece of document will need to be referred to somewhere down the road. It is better to be ready for the most unexpected things. File folders are very elementary tools that can save you a lot of headaches when you need to provide vital information.Once you have everything carefully clipped in various file folders, you need is to secure the files in a filing cabinet for safekeeping. Categorize your file folders as ‘working files,’ or ‘archive files,’ (those that are occasionally accessed). How you arrange the labeled file folders also matters. You can opt for either alphabetical, numerical, subject, geographical, chronological or tickler filing arrangement.Proper file management keeps you in control of your plans and enables you to achieve a higher rate of productivity. Imagine yourself cramming and endlessly stressing in a topsy-turvy world just because of a missing document. It is, to say the least, a frustrating experience. If you know how to organize and safe keep your papers in file folders, then you are guaranteed to be devoid of such trouble.

maybe. Then there are the experts who are not experts. Politicians and rich people, reporters and pollsters get tired of having to ask the experts or hire the experts or hunt around for someone with an advanced degree to advocate their position. So they step up to the mike themselves and are transformed into pundits. But in the end, none of these civil society experts provide us with civil society, or solutions to the problems we must work together to solve.

Finally, former government officials and diplomats are ubiquitous civil society experts. Former domestic or foreign policy advisors-now pun

Thieves Are Outsmarting Savvy Consumers with New Scams Guaranteed to Fool You!
Like most things in life, the element of credit scams has evolved into a higher form. Those who are intent on stealing your identity and profiting from your good credit are taking the high-tech or the extremely convincing route to take advantage of you.No longer do thieve just walk up and pick your pocket for a credit card – or blatantly send you an email trying to get you to divulge your personal financial information. Now, they’re farming for information from consumers who are very protective of their identity – and they’re getting them to hand it over!It’s a new scam – and judging from the alarming number of cases, it could happen to you tomorrow. Thieves have discovered a way to brand themselves as legitimate so that you never think twice about telling them your account information and passwords.As you probably know, identity theft is a growing problem. In fact, experts have declared it an epidemic. If you haven’t checked your credit report lately to see if someone has been using credit in your name, then you might be at risk and not even know it.It takes a lot of time and hassle to clear up identity theft cases, so you want to prevent yourself from becoming a victim before it happens. See if this sounds familiar to you – and if it does, order your credit report today and cross your fingers that you haven’t been duped!It starts off with a seemingly innocent phone call or email. You have a credit card or bank account in, let’s say, XYZ Company’s name. A representative supposedly from the company calls (or emails you) to tell you that a charge of $1,500 is being processed and that they just wanted to be sure, since it was such a large pu

They arrive at provisional, evidence-based answers to those questions. They do not claim to discern truth, morality, wisdom or sound public policy. If you hear a scientist claiming any of these latter findings, then you are listening to a person, who happens to hold a PhD, who also holds an opinion that may or may not be informed, effective, wise or true. Scientists and scientific research are also very expensive, and so they are paid by someone or other. The sources of funding do not determine scientific results, but they can reflect policy analysis and advocacy.

Finally, former government officials and diplomats are ubiquitous civil society experts. Former domestic or foreign policy advisors-now pun

Law Fun Facts - Dumb Laws In New Jersey
New Jersey is a very popular city in US. The dumb laws in this city are worth noticing.These laws, however, have full explanation behind them, but still, they seem so dumb!Here is a list of some of the dumb laws In New jersey.• If you are a driver, you have to warn everyone who you pass on the highway before they do the same thing.• No minor can buy handcuffs.• If you are going to do a murder, beware! You are not allowed to wear a bullet proof.• In case of an emergency, it is illegal not to give a telephone line to someone who is in need of it.• All motorists have to honk before passing another car. This includes bicyclist and skateboarders as well.• It is against the law to pump your own gas. This funny rule applies only in two states of the US. This rule argues that pump owners should have extra labor to fill the gas. Another reason behind this is, if the customer goes to a pump which has attendants, the sale will go high because of the good service to customers.• You can not frown at a police officer.• If you are caught driving drunk, you may never get a license that is personalized.• Car dealerships can be opened on Sundays.• You are not allowed to slurp your soup.• If you are driving an automobile, you can not overtake a horse driven carriage.• You can not detain a homing pigeon.Hope you liked this section of dumb laws in US.

Finally, former government officials and diplomats are ubiquitous civil society experts. Former domestic or foreign policy advisors-now pundits, former generals and military officers-now private contractors or military advisors, former ambassadors-now think tank fellows, former congressmen-now lobbyists, former spies-now novelists, former bureaucrats-now whistleblowers. These people may or may not have done effective service for their governments in the past. They may indeed have garnered very useful experience. But you may be sure that these particular civil society experts certainly cultivated well placed friends, political favors, and public notoriety. Listen to such experts with care.

Experts who aren't

There are a variety of people who by virtue of their professions or positions voice their opinions and ideas with great authority - as if they should be listen to, believed and followed. Many of these experts are not experts at all.

First, politicians - Politicians are experts of campaigns and fund raising. They may be statesmen or stateswomen; they may be wise or principled; they may be experienced or expert in some field; but they are not necessarily any of these things. Generally, politicians (as politicians) are not experts. Elected government officials deserve respect on two levels. First, they have succeeded at communicating their ideas, marshalling personal and monetary support, and managing a campaign in order to attract democratic votes. This is a real achievement; but it does not make them a civil society expert. Second, successful politicians eventually accrue a great deal of experience in the halls of government. This is a mixed blessing in that these politicians have opportunities to contribute toward functioning governance and to help solve societal problems; but they just as frequently take those opportunities to perform bad governance, to fail to solve societal problems, and occasionally to become part of the problem. Few politicians are experts.

Rich people and celebrities - wealth, power and notoriety do not grant expertise. Celebrities are almost never experts and should not speak any louder than anyone else. Rich people are able to buy and broadcast louder speech, but it does not make them experts. (And then there is the stray expert who somehow gains celebrity. Expert-cum-celebrities sometimes deserve their notoriety. Some of them have gained celebrity through a lifetime of achievement crowned with high awards - Nobel Prizes, medals, honors, etc. These people mark an exception to the celebrity rule, but their celebrity is usually fleeting. How many Nobel Prize winners for the sciences can you name?)

Reporters and pundits - the press has become increasingly openly ideological. As the media has opened its ideological content, journalists, columnists, news analysts and pundits of all kinds have proliferated and expressed their opinions in ever increasing volume. Reporters and pundits are often widely informed by virtue of their interviews and reportage; they are also often very good rhetoriticians. Personally, I believe that open, honest, ideological expression by the press is much better than veiled or even unconscious bias contained in misleading headlines or buried ledes. But being published in print or being broadcast on cable does not make anyone an expert.

Pollsters - the ultimate non-experts. These are people who are paid to ask a representative sample of regular people what they think, then to use statistics and their analytical powers to discern what everyone thinks. Well, polls can be interesting; they might even in some cases be beneficial to policy makers or civil society. But how any of this makes pollsters experts is beyond me. Nevertheless, pollsters have become increasingly common media experts who provide journalists and pundits with a window into the mind of the common woman on the street. Where is the expert here? Wizard of Oz, we see you behind your curtain!

Finally, there is the all too common spectacle of the expert parading in public who establishes their credibility by lambasting their field of expertise - the expert insider critic or expert whistleblower. Have you seen the accredited psychologist who attacks the field of therapy or psychoanalysis right before lathering their audiences with a thick layer of relationship advice? What of the conservative scholar (tenured) who bravely eviscerates academia from within? Or the anti-medicine MD? How about the government civil servant whose civil rights (and political views) were so trampled that he had to give hundreds of media interviews to show how reactionary the government is? We could multiply examples. These experts are remarkable because they attack the root of their expertise, while all the time utilizing the same expertise to convince us we ought to trust and listen to them. Most remarkably, the slickest exploiters of the expert-insider-critic shtick actually manage to make us trust them more than other experts, even as they savage the root of their expertise.

Your Civil Society

One of the major critiques of new media on the Internet is that it accumulates much noise and little substance - too much riff raff and too few experts. Wouldn't it be better to gather quietly at the feet of wise experts, rather than sift through all of the shouting, competing voices in new media echo chambers? Oh, I have heard elderly reporters wax lyrical as they recalled the days when everyone listened to Cronkite and read the New York Times, because back then we knew that was the way it was. This common, elite meme argues that we actually need fewer media broadcasters, fewer experts, fewer points of view, and a

HTTP = HTML link (for blogs, profiles,phorums):
<a href="http://www.iadvice.info/article/187303/iadvice-The-Tyranny-of-Experts-Part-II--Experts-and-Civil-Society.html">The Tyranny of Experts (Part II) - Experts and Civil Society</a>

BB link (for phorums):
[url=http://www.iadvice.info/article/187303/iadvice-The-Tyranny-of-Experts-Part-II--Experts-and-Civil-Society.html]The Tyranny of Experts (Part II) - Experts and Civil Society[/url]

Myspace is a huge online social network, so how do you sort through all of it? Well there are a few different ways, one of which is by demographics.

Tom and Harry both enjoy coffee and web design, but in the 'big race' which one will win in search engine rankings? A techno twist on a fairy tale classic shows the importance of a solid SEO strategy.

Improving your credit score is very important and it can help you save money. Your credit must be in good standing so that you can open credit accounts when you need them. Good credit will help you get the best interest rates too.

Tags

Links

Hub You - The Tyranny of Experts (Part II) - Experts and Civil Society

Related Articles: