Architecture and design studio Kawamura-Ganjavian has announced the innovative Ostrich Pillow – essentially a combination pillow & hat that lets would- be nappers kick back or plop down wherever they may be.
The pillow features holes for your head and hands, and “has been designed to allow you to create a little private space within a public one.”
Check out the video …
You just can’t make this stuff up …
Thanks to JNH for feeding the lead
“It is important not to read too much into any one monthly report”
Below is an encore post … a stroll down memory lane …
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Reported by Chris Moody of Yahoo News …
When the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the nation’s latest national employment last week, the Obama administration stressed that people should not “read too much” into the data.
Mitt Romney’s campaign pounced, and flagged the fact that the White House has repeated that same line nearly every month since November 2009.
See below for the roundup of articles from WhiteHouse.gov that Romney’s campaign posted on its site. In many of the posts, the authors for the administration do acknowledge that they repeat themselves:
June 2012: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report and it is informative to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available.”
May 2012: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report and it is helpful to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available.”
April 2012: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report and it is helpful to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available.”
March 2012: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, and it is helpful to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available.” (LINK:)
February 2012: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report; nevertheless, the trend in job market indicators over recent months is an encouraging sign.”
January 2012: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report; nevertheless, the trend in job market indicators over recent months is an encouraging sign.”
December 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
November 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
October 2011: “The monthly employment and unemployment numbers are volatile and employment estimates are subject to substantial revision. There is no better example than August’s jobs figure, which was initially reported at zero and in the latest revision increased to 104,000. This illustrates why the Administration always stresses it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
September 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
August 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
July 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
June 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
May 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
April 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
March 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
February 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
January 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
December 2010: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
November 2010: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
October 2010: “Given the volatility in monthly employment and unemployment data, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
September 2010: “Given the volatility in the monthly employment and unemployment data, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
July 2010: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative. It is essential that we continue our efforts to move in the right direction and replace job losses with robust job gains.”
August 2010: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”
June 2010: “As always, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”
May 2010: “As always, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”
April 2010: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”
March 2010: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”
January 2010: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”
November 2009: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”
In other words, it’s important not to read too much into the Obama administration’s past 3-1/2 years of performance.
So much for accountability …
Thanks to SMH for feeding the lead
Great analysis published this week by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center that details the potential impacts if the Bush (and Obama) tax cuts are allowed to expire at the end of the year.
The entire report is worth reading if you’re in the 53% who do pay Federal income taxes … or if you’re at the top earning end of the 47% – since you’ll get banged, too.
According to the TPC, there will be different effects on households at different income levels:
For most households, the two biggest increases would be the expiration of the temporary cut in Social Security taxes and the expiration of the 2001/2003 tax cuts.
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Potential Stock Sell-off
One implication of increasing marginal tax rates is that some investors would have an incentive to sell appreciated stocks, bonds, and other assets before the end of the year, if they believe the capital gains rate will go up as scheduled and then remain in place for tax year 2013.
That is exactly what happened following the enactment of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which increased the top capital gains tax rate from 20 percent to 28 percent.
Capital gains realizations almost doubled in 1986 and then fell back in 1987 as investors rushed to take advantage of the soon-to-expire 20 percent rate.
Similar behavior is likely this year unless investors believe that the scheduled tax increases will be averted.
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In summary: Ouch.
Punch line: Here’s an angle … An online lesson-plan marketplace allows teachers to make thousands (or millions!) selling lesson plans to other teachers.
Anybody want to buy a PVP syllabus?
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Excerpted from businessweek.com’s “How a Teacher Made $1 Million Selling Lesson Plans”
Deanna Jump is not a trust fund baby. She never married into money and she has never won the lottery. But in the past year-and-a-half, the 43-year-old kindergarten teacher has earned more than $1 million. Her unlikely strategy: selling catchy kindergarten lesson plans to other teachers.
Jump is just one of 15,000 teachers currently marketing their original classroom materials through the online marketplace, TeachersPayTeachers (TPT). Since signing on to the site, she has created 93 separate teaching units and sold 161,000 copies for about $8 a pop.
To be fair, no one else on TPT has been as wildly successful as Jump, but at least two other teachers have earned $300,000, and 23 others have earned over $100,000, according to site founder Paul Edelman.
Edelman launched TPT in 2006 after sinking grueling hours into planning his own classes. “To get ahead, Edelman and his colleagues swapped ideas and lesson plans. They also perused online sites for helpful resources, but found only sub-par, outdated materials.
After four years in the classroom, Edelman hit upon the idea for an online lesson-plan marketplace. Soon after the launch, New York-based publisher Scholastic bought the site for a low six-figure sum. Over the next few years, TPT continued growing, though not fast enough to hold Scholastic’s interest. Edelman bought the site back in 2009.
Little by little, TPT began gaining steam. Today the site has 1.1 million active members and over the past year has seen enormous growth. Last month alone, TPT grossed $2.5 million in sales, up from $305,000 in August 2011. It has 10 employees working in customer service. Teachers pay an annual premium membership fee of $59.95 to sell materials on the site, and TPT takes a 15 percent cut of most sales.
Jump admits that her own success is partly due to keeping a popular blog that helps direct readers to her TPT materials. TPT’s “Follow Me” button has also been a boon. “I have over 16,000 followers,” she says. “So every time I post a new product, an e-mail goes out to those people and—literally within an hour—I’m selling, selling, selling.”
In the past three months, Jump, who earns $55,000 per year teaching, has collected $213,000 in TPT sales. The money has not changed how she lives day-to-day. If anything, she’s working harder than ever, putting about 40 hours a week into TPT projects, apart from her regular teaching schedule. So far, she’s used the money to pay off bills, send her daughter to college, and buy a handicapped-accessible van for her quadriplegic brother.
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The Homa Files 