[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETQj3a221EQ[/youtube]
The market crashes, turns to ashes that you’re dancing on
while some fat lady cues up for a song.You just don’t panic, so they said
in all the good books that I have read.
You just lay back and feed your head,
but that ain’t clever, that never got nothing to
sell, hell, oh well, maybe we were
better off dead.
– Matthew Ebel, Better Off Dead from the album Goodbye Planet Earth, the best damn album you’ll buy today
Valentine’s Day doesn’t rank highly on my list of important days. As CC Chapman said, if you need a holiday to show someone you love that you care, you have serious issues you need to address in your relationship.
Combine that with crass commercialism and an attempt to raid your wallet through your heart by major corporations (check the stocks of 1-800-FLOWERS today – ticker: FLWS, FTD ticker: FTD, Red Envelope ticker: REDE) and you have a day I’m not wildly thrilled about.
So let’s rearrange the day of showing love a bit.
Figure out what you’d spend on an average Valentine’s Day among flowers, gifts, dinner, cards, and the other corporate subsidies pop culture asks you to buy. Total all that up, and then make a contribution to your significant other’s favorite charity instead, in their name. If you’re going to spend money today, spend it on something that will show true love – a contribution to an organization that will serve the greater good.
There’s no shortage of charities to choose from, and tons of good causes. Check out Charity Navigator to find efficiency ratings of various charities, to see how your money is used and what percentage of each dollar goes to actually help the people or causes you donated to help. Every non-profit charity with 501(c)(3) status is also required to disclose its IRS 990, so you can inspect for yourself how they use their money.
Make Valentine’s Day about love – love not only for your significant other, but about love for your world, your community, and the greater good. As my teacher Stephen K. Hayes says, there is no greater way to serve yourself and make yourself happier than to help others.
Got a charity you want to promote? Post a link to it in the comments!
Photo credit: Sister72
Worth watching, on the housing crisis.
I’ve got a post on the work blog about beer money, and would LOVE your thoughts and comments on it:
Financial Aid Podcast Community Question: Where do you get your beer money?
We’ve talked in the past about Metcalfe’s Law, the idea that in a network, every new member of the network not only derives value from the network, but makes the network as a whole more valuable; the classic example cited is the fax machine. Every fax machine sold increases the value of existing fax machines.
Blogging is one of those Metcalfe applications. Consider this: you’ve got a blog with a decent theme, and on that blog, chances are you have a blogroll or list of friends, sites, and links. (and if you don’t, you might want to consider it) On here, the blogroll is on the right-most navigation bar. The navigation of your blog probably also contains links to other things you care about, such as causes, friends, and even your own stuff on other sites.
Here’s the neat part. Every time I write a blog post, WordPress creates a new page, with a new URL. On that new page, there are a whole pile of links to other pages on this site and on the blog roll. Every blog post makes preceding blog posts more valuable, and as a bonus, every blog post creates an entirely new page with outbound links to everyone in my blogroll. They all benefit every time I blog. I benefit every time I blog. Blogging is self-reinforcing, and that is one of the features that makes it such a powerful tool.
The latest Marketing Over Coffee is now available, in which we discuss how you can make millions of dollars with useless sports slogans.
I nominate for the latest from Super Bowl XLII:
So I made a short video this morning and submitted it to CNN.
Upsides – the video got aired. They did keep the mention of the podcast.
Downsides – no link love, and they removed the titling, which I wasn’t terribly concerned with, but they did strip the credit for the music for Matthew Ebel.
A VERY well reasoned, well presented case in the debate between Obama and Clinton. Watch it.
Hat tip to Joe Carpenter.
[youtube]https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dpjkpg7vdMg[/youtube]
My company, the Student Loan Network, is running this scholarship.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eObXz_xRDOM[/youtube]
The video was made around the office 🙂
