Does making money bust your conscience?

I was talking to a friend who recently got involved in "another" MLM kind of opportunity. Well I am not sure if it is MLM but the ignorant me tends to conveniently lump anything and everything concerning selling products by word of mouth or through an online network of leaders, distributors or what-have-you under the MLM category (or network marketing, whatever). Not sure if I am right but I don't really care lol. :P Anyway because he is a good friend of mine, I was racking my brains to think of ways I can help while he was telling me about his new passion. I was in fact looking at the product list and scrutinizing the text to see how any of the products might be of use to my family or me. I then asked him whether the products have been patented and if he can provide more details on how WOW the products claim to be, etc. But guess what? He replied that the products are not patented then went on at great length about how I can RECRUIT people, form teams and make this a stream of income. Everything will be done for me since the awesome system is automated online. Apparently he wasn't the least bit interested about the products (though he did try them out for the sake of "professionalism") and if I may say this irresponsibly, he couldn't care less if what he is selling is dirt or curd. And when I commented that this sounded like a pyramid scheme, he beat his chest and said that the company HAS PRODUCTS. In his mind, having products automatically separates the company from pyramid schemes. In our quest for money, do we sometimes need to take a step back and ensure we are acting responsibly and in good conscience? Well... to each his own. PS.: The cute inset image is from http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/money.jpg . I hope the kind owner doesn't mind. If yes, drop me a note and I shall remove it immediately and offer my apologies. Thanks in advance! :D

SpitzTunes -- Ya Gotta Love It!

Driving home from work the other day, Air Supply's "All Out Of Love" came on the radio. Despite the hilariously hokey melody and lyrics, I started thinking...are we in fact all out of love? What has happened to the love song? Has it changed for better or for worse? I guess that's for you to decide.

Computers make us lose touch with spelling

Recently, I was called back to the army to serve my annual required stint. In life, we spend one-third of our time sleeping. In army, we spend one-third of our time waiting. It is quite a perpetual game of waiting; but don't get me wrong - we do a lot of rushing too. You see, we rush to wait then wait to rush again. Loop it and you can appreciate the entire picture. Anyway, I digress. While we were waiting and about to fall off the fringe of sanity, a friend and I decided to play hangman. It is that game where we take turns to come up with a word for the other person to guess. For instance, if I have the word "miscreant" in mind, I would illustrate the 9 letters like this: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ The person guessing will choose a letter and the correct letters will be written out. After each wrong guess of a letter or word, a stroke will be added to the hangman-to-be. When the hangman is finally completed, it is game over for the guesser. (If you feel like playing the game, check out e.g. http://www2.20q.net/hang.pl - this site looks real neat to me.) I used to pride myself at having a decent competency level of English. While playing this game, I realized that I have lost touch with spelling. I used to be quite a good speller. While providing words for my friend, I was embarrassed several times because I misspelled the words I chose for him to guess. As the cliché goes, I would find a hole to hide if I was an ostrich. Upon reflecting, I realize that I have been relying too heavily on computers. For practically all browsers and word processors, a misspelled word would be marked with a red underline. While this makes rectification of any error very convenient, it unfortunately is a bane too. You see, when I correct each word, I would immediately zoom in to the correction that is most obviously correct. If I have been spelling a word wrongly all the while, I would still be none the wiser. And in my usual haste, any slip would tend to feel inconsequential and relegated to the back of my mind. So how would I ever learn? As a result of this incident, I am resolving to take spelling more seriously from now on. Instead of simply right clicking on a misspelled word and choosing the most obviously correct word, I shall instead do manual correction. And if it turns out that I really cannot spell the word, I shall endeavor to find the right spelling and commit it to memory. I hope this post resonates with at least some of you and you would make the same commitment as me to strengthen your grasp on spelling. Cheers!

Endurance Athletes

Endurance training and racing requires quite a commitment from athletes ... the commitment is for time and money ... they put up with pain, they eat for the event and buy supplements that cost a bundle ... their equipment is specialized to their events (shoes, high performance clothing, bikes, skis, wet suit, heart monitor, exercise equipment, etc., etc.) Some of the athletes are in the professional ranks, but most are age-groupers. Why do the age-groupers do it?

Best way of closing down a site

I thought this is one of the most impressive site closing announcements I have seen. You know, most usually just disappear without a noise. :P Oh btw, I was trying to access drop.io (which turned out to be real crappy) but typed in file.io instead which is this site that has already "shut down". See above screenshot. :-)

SpitzTunes -- Working My Way Back to You!

I've been away for a while .. not because of lack of interest, but because I've been away ... wanted to get this convo going ... in coming convos I'm going to do themes ... for example, politics in music, sports in music, sexuality in music ... if you have any suggestions, please let me know in the last question. And yes, the first question came about because I just did exactly that, with The Best of the Four Seasons!