Clams are World's Oldest Creature

Tortoises live an average of 177 years in captivity.

But this impressive lifespan has been more than doubled by an ancient mollusk.

Researchers from the U.K.’s Bangor University recently dredged a 405-year-old clam from the Arctic Ocean off Iceland.

The scientists discovered the bivalve by accident. They were studying climate change by counting the rings (growth lines) on clamshells. Alas, the creature died as the researchers examined it.

No word on whether it was then enjoyed with a light garlic and white wine sauce.

Source: National Geographic

Your Bags Too Full

"'30 million bags are mishandled globally each year," estimates the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, and about 1 million bags were lost, delayed, or damaged in air travel in the U.S. last year.

One common hold-up: Your bag can be delayed if Transport Security Administration (TSA) inspectors open it - and have trouble closing it back up.

So when you’re traveling by plane, try not to pack too much into one suitcase. If you have to sit on the bag to get it closed, leave something out.


Source: tsa.gov

Robert Ringer on Success and Speed

Robert Ringer writes in a recent contribution to Early To Rise:

Following are some of the more important reasons why I believe action begets results.

1. When you do too much planning, there’s a tendency to think of one reason after another why what you’re contemplating won’t work.
Many of the reasons you come up with may be correct. But the important thing is that it doesn’t matter. Why? Because, as you move forward, circumstances continually change - and those changes often render irrelevant many of the concerns you may have before taking action.

In other words, don’t try to figure out steps two, three, and four before taking step one. The legendary Joe Karbo once told me that he ran his first ad for The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches (a million-copy seller) before he even began to write the book! In fact, he told me that the ad he wrote served as an outline for the book itself. Talk about going against conventional wisdom…

2. When you procrastinate, you tend to lose your enthusiasm.

That, in turn, causes homeostasis to set in. Homeostasis is the tendency to live with existing conditions and avoid change. You get comfortable with the way things are and allow your great idea to fade into the comfort zone of oblivion.

But when you take action, your creative "juices" flow faster, your resourcefulness kicks into high gear, and the things, people, and circumstances you need to accomplish your objectives are drawn to you almost like magic. This is not hocus-pocus. I’ve done it enough times to be able to assure you that it really works.

3. Even though changing circumstances often negate many initial concerns you may have had, they can also place new obstacles in your path.
As a result, if you wait too long before taking action, the opportunity may become less and less appealing as those obstacles start to make their appearance.

I wrote about this danger in my book To Be or Not to Be Intimidated? under the auspices of the Fiddle Theory, which states: "The longer you fiddle around with a deal, the greater the odds that it will never close."

Time is your ally when you take action. But time is a two-sided coin. If you hesitate or procrastinate, time becomes your worst enemy. As a general rule, I assume that if I take action, perceived problems will tend to disappear - and that the more I hesitate, the more time I give new obstacles to come on the scene.

Very happy to pay “The Age” the 40 cents

Hi Wayne

Remember at your seminar in Melbourne last year that I attended with my son William, I queried you about how you can allow Google to put ads into my blog.

Naturally I did that – not that I was expecting any revenue stream, but really only to keep up with the emerging technologies.

So to date I have earned $25.

But the real story (totally unrelated to the above) is the benefits of using Google Adwords.

The story is this: just last Friday a chap rang me from Bendigo – someone had placed one of my Google Adwords on the front page of the online newspaper “The Age” - and he saw it and clicked through. Since then we have had a few chats. Now I’m off to have lunch with him and his wife at their home as they like my strategies for investment properties and they have three older investments in Brisbane. They want me to help them re-fresh their portfolio. Very nice.

I presume that “the someone” is “The Age” itself. They must be using Google Adsense to make extra money. And Big Brother obviously knows that I am in Melbourne.

But I’m going to be very happy to pay “The Age” the 40 cents they earn from my $1.00 Google Adwords.

Thought you might be interested for your quiver of interesting stories.

Bernard Kelly http://www.retirelaughing.com/


Get Bernards FREE report on Recurring Income

Help James Buy The Bulletin

From Anthill's Editors blog:

Posted by James Tuckerman, Publisher, Founder & Editor-In-Chief

Last week, ACP Magazines made an announcement that, to my mind, simply didn’t make sense.

The Bulletin, Australia’s oldest continuing weekly magazine, would be closing after 128 years on Australian shelves.

According to ACP chief executive Scott Lorson, the magazine’s demise could be blamed on “the impact of the internet”. Circulation figures of 57,039 were approximately half of what the magazine enjoyed in the mid 1990s.

In a statement, Lorson said: “We have invested heavily in the title with top editorial, photographic and design staff who have been devoted to making The Bulletin the best of its genre. However, despite our best efforts, the magazine has simply not been commercially viable for some time.”

Indeed. A bit too ‘heavily’, me thinks. Let’s do the maths.

Firstly, with a retail cost of $5.95 per copy and sales of over 57,039, The Bulletin should be attracting weekly revenues of around $339,382. Of course, subscriptions make up part of this circulation figure and subscriptions are usually sold at around 30 percent less than retail. So, let’s be conservative and subtract 30 percent from the entire weekly sales figure estimated above, giving us weekly sales of $237,567.

Most Australian magazine publishers would agree, that’s a hefty chunk of change.

And, of course, that brief analysis fails to consider advertising revenue.

If memory serves me correctly, a full page advertisement in The Bulletin was around $14,000. You’d expect 20 full pages per edition. But, to err on the side of caution, let’s assume the ailing magazine has been attracting 10 full pages per edition. That’s $140,000 in advertising revenue per week. Factor in web advertising and you can safely project an even larger figure.

Add these two sums together and it seems reasonable to assume that the magazine was attracting approximately $375,000 in revenue per week.

That’s $1,562,500 per month.

Or… $18,750,000 per year!

Am I mad? Is this right?

How can an Australian magazine generating $18m a year in revenue be considered not ‘commercially viable’?

For those people who know a little bit about Anthill Magazine and its origins as a $15k start-up, you’ll appreciate my incredulity.

So here’s the thing: contrary to all the headlines, print media isn’t dying – it’s just changing out of necessity. Sure, it’s evolving away from an archaic model formed centuries ago during the Guttenberg era.

But that’s a good thing.

The reality is, for the vast majority of people in developed countries, print media is no longer their primary source of hard news (and that’s hardly news to anyone). Television and the internet are far too instantaneous, pervasive, cheap and easy to distribute and consume for print to remain competitive.

However, print can not only survive but thrive if it focuses on its strengths relative to these rival mediums: its ability to engage and inspire readers – alone in their armchairs, on the train, in their office.

The way The Bulletin did in its heyday.

So, here is my succinct message to private equity company CVC Capital Partners, which paid $4.5 billion to Packer’s Publishing and Broadcasting for 50 percent of PBL in October last year, owner of ACP Magazines:

For one shiny dollar, I offer to purchase 51 percent of The Bulletin. If the new entity does not turn a profit in the first year, you can have it back. I might want to make some changes. But heck, change would be better than a permanent holiday for this Aussie icon.

This blog post might sound like chest beating. But sometimes that’s the only way to wake an 800 pound gorilla.

Come on. Who wants to help me buy The Bulletin?

Best Time To Send An Email Determined | WebProNews

Best Time To Send An Email Determined by Doug Caverly of WebProNews- Wed, 01/02/2008 - 1:41pm.

Hurray for hump day


From a recipient's point of view, email is wonderfully easy to ignore. Senders want their emails read, however, and when links are involved, it's even better when the reader clicks through. So a new eROI study has found the 'best email day.'

That day is, to summarize, Wednesday.
'The average open rate on Wednesdays in the third quarter was 25.4%, and the average click rate was 3.9%,' reports MarketingCharts.

As for the time of day - this study really got into the details - 'there's a marked upward trend as time passes,' so click rates peak around 4 PM, and open rates top out an hour later.
eROI offers details about other times and days, but we know you'll want to follow the practice that's been determined 'best.' Unless, of course, your industry happens to follow some special schedule. Or until everyone learns of the eROI study, email recipients respond by changing their habits, and the whole thing gets turned on its head.

In the short term, maybe it's just best to stop overthinking things and try to send emails midweek."

You know you are getting old when...

One elderly couple is visiting another for supper. The two women go into the kitchen for a moment, leaving the men to talk.

One of the men says to the other, 'The Mrs. and I went to the nicest restaurant last night.'

'Is that right?' the other inquires, 'What was it called?'

'That's just it,' he replies 'I can't recall. 'Say, what's the name of that red flower that has thorns all over it?'

'A rose?' he responds.

'YEAH, THAT'S IT!' he says energetically.

He then whirls around and yells into the kitchen, 'Hey, Rose! What was the name of that restaurant we went to last night!?'

For many of us that's not such a funny story. For many of us, our memory, or rather our lack of a memory, affects our performance and production.

Have you ever walked into a room and couldn't remember what you went there for?

Have you ever grasped the hand of a potential client and then when the hand shake broke, the name seemed to disappear from your memory?

Or have you ever left a prospect and as you drove away remembered a key point that you should have shared with them?

That's when you now your getting old....

The Man in the Mirror

Courtesy of peoplestuff from Phil Evans:

The Man in the Mirror

When you get what you want in your struggle for self, and the world makes you King for the day;
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself, and see what that man has to say.

For it isn't a man's father, mother or wife whose judgement upon him must pass; The fellow whose verdict counts most in this life, is the man staring back from the glass.

He's the fellow to please, never mind all the rest, for he's with you clear up to the end; And you've passed your most dangerous and difficult test if the man in the glass is your friend.

You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years, and get pats on the back as you pass, but your final reward will be heartache and tears if you've cheated the Man in the Glass

Time to try something else

Justin Herald's great motivation newsletter often contains thought provoking ideas... in the latest issue he asks : "Is it Time to try something else "

Recently I was talking to a very good friend of mine. For the past year or so he has been struggling with his personal finances. This, in part, was due to his business not going as well as he had hoped.

Whilst he had been working hard in the business and he was very knowledgeable in his field, the pay off just hadn't happened and he was going backwards at a fast rate of speed.

We discussed many ways that he could keep everything going but in the end it was all too late for him.

I haven’t spoken to this person for a few months due to being away and yesterday I ran into him again. He looked shocking.

The strain and stress was quite evident by just looking at him. I asked how things were going to which he told me that he was still struggling along.
Had things changed for the better? Not at all!

In fact it was now getting serious. There were people coming from all angles trying to get money from him that he owed them.

His biggest problem was that he was going about his business the exact same way that had leaded him to this point.

Essentially he was doing the same things but expecting a different and better result than he had had for all of these years.

read more of the story here: