I ran across this video and had to share it, because it shows that the principle of inflation is so basic it can even be explained to children on a cartoon like Ducktales.  The end of the video suggests that deflation won't occur with the Federal Reserve system that we have; that we will be stuck with inflation and its negative consequences.  This is probably true, since we now have "Helicopter" Ben Bernanke as the chairman of the Fed, a guy who has promised to go as far as releasing money from helicopters if necessary to fight off deflation.

PlayItOnTheWeb and Big Fish Games have partnered to bring you My Game Space, a customizable social networking website serving a community based on games and entertainment.  Gamers from around the world participate in online competitions, contests, tournaments and other gaming activities, while also having the ability to create and customize their own games-based web portal and personal website.

MyGameSpace also has an innovative new revenue sharing program that allows members who sign up to refer others to their personalized web portal, earning income when they sign up or purchase upgrades.  And when your friends invite their friends, the rewards multiply.  MyGameSpace boasts a 25% revenue sharing rate, one of the highest in the industry, at ALL levels of the downline.

It used to be that you could only get truly, TRULY passive income in the paper sector -- dividends or capital gains on negotiable instruments.  Which is all well and good; I have a bit myself.  But the richest people in the world got there by building businesses.  Even Warren Buffet built a business around buying other insurance businesses.

But there's always the hassle of running the business...  maintaining the physical location and staff of employees.  Yes, if you build your business right you can have someone else run the whole thing.  But you have to have a lot of trust in your CEO, and when a human is at the wheel I still feel it prudent to check up on them once in a while.

Most people are caught in the trap of not understanding the economy, not understanding business, and not understand personal finances.  These are the people that live paycheck to paycheck -- even if they ARE saving for retirement, it's a flawed strategy to exchange your time for small amounts of money because there is no leverage.  They work for 50 years making their boss rich, making their banker rich, and making the government rich -- instead of using the idea of creating value = creating wealth.

There's a Pro-Ron-Paul meme going around, to the effect that 2008 is the new 1964; i.e. that on the premise—debatable in itself, of course—that the GOP has no chance of winning the presidency next year, conservatives should run a Goldwater-style insurgency to remind the party we're here & set up some influence for 2012. Bruce Bartlett floated the meme here.

I got a thought-provoking e-mail along similar lines (one of dozens like it I've had on that Paul column) from Ben Novak, who lists himself as "founder of the Americans in Europe for Ron Paul Meet-up Group in Bratislava, Republic of Slovakia." Blimey. Well, here's what Ben says.

If you've read any of my writings before, you'd know I have a pretty dismal view of our present situation in the US, especially economically.  Our monetary system is based on nothing, the mere illusion of confidence and there is every reason to believe the inevitable end which must come will come quickly.  Our educational system has more propagandized indoctrination than it does education.  Our culture has become one of apathetic indifference and instant gratification.

Many people think we are past the point of no return economically, and I fear they are right.  If it is possible to turn things around, then the United States needs a hero.  I found out about this congressman from Texas and I couldn't believe the things he was saying...   truth!  From a congressman!  I think Ron Paul might be America's only hope.

Some people have some pretty funny ideas about what the term "web 2.0" means.  Many people are even coining their own definitions for web 2.0, saying that it refers to a "semantic web" or a "machine learning web", etc.  This all stems from the fact that many people hear the term, but don't know what it means.  The term actually originated from a progamming method called AJAX (asynchronous javascript and XML) that was the first widely-adopted way of programmatically getting around the limitation of waiting on page reloads to and from the server as you navigated around a website and performed searches, form submissions, and other operations.

Google is a powerful search engine, to be sure, but most of us use it for only the simplest of queries.  Why?  Because the true power behind the Google engine lies in special commands that you probably don't know.  These special commands (called advanced operators) can take you to places in Google (and thus places on the web) that you would never find otherwise.  Here are the most powerful of the advanced operators:

• filetype: The page must be of a specific file type or extension
• link: Returns pages that link to the specified page
• cache: Returns google's cache of the specified page
• site: The search term must appear in the domain
• inurl: The search term must appear in the URL
• inanchor: The search term must appear in the anchor text of links to the page
• intitle: The search term must appear in the title
• intext: The search term must appear in the text of the page

Crossword puzzles are a great way to stimulate the intellect and imagination, and you can learn something new every time.  The new website Agile Crosswords has a wide variety of challenging crosswords to choose from, and a free online crossword maker that will let you make a crossword puzzle on whatever topic you choose, quickly and easily.  Each crossword puzzle you make gets its own easy-to-remember web address, so it couldn't be easier to share them.  Make a football crossword, a racing crossword, or a crossword about whatever topic you are interested in, and share it with whomever you wish in just a couple of minutes.

Most businesspeople know that McDonald's is a classic example of a business system that is extremely well-built, efficient and profitable.  I ran across an interesting video game the other day, that lets you try to run your own virtual McDonald's franchise, complete with such business issues as employees, inventory, sales, production, marketing, and more.  It lets you control every aspect of the business (even some that you would not normally control in a franchise), from the usage of land for cattle and grain production to selecting national marketing campaigns to win the approval of a board of directors.