Wednesday, April 29, 2015

America's 9 Best Entry-level Jobs

Job hunters need to be mindful that there is always compromise between job security, career development or high pay in the job process. High paying jobs are usually at high risk for being automated or offers little growth potential over the next few years. Based on a study from WalletHub, the top 9 entry-level jobs scores well in all the three categories mentioned. CBS News had compiled their findings on 28 April 2015 to guide college students and high school seniors to consider which field to major in.

Job Starting Pay Median Pay Qualification Growth
9. Financial analyst $51,848 $76,950 bachelor's degree in business, finance or related -
8. Information security analyst $55,310 $86,170 - 37%
7. Web designer $53,041 $62,500 know programming and graphic design 20%
6. Software engineers $62,522 $90,374 bachelor's degree in computer science -
5. Environmental engineer $57,266 $86,340 bachelor's degree in environmental engineering or related 15%
4 Attorney $83,907 $133,470 law degree and pass a state's written bar exam 10%
3 Network Engineer $61,744 $91,982 degrees in computer science or related 12%
2. Web applications designer $54,586 $59,000 know developer languages such as PHP and HTML 12%
1. Training specialist $47,621 $55,930 college degree and strong communication skills 15%

The starting annual salary and the median pay for all workers in the field are based on the latest information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The salary for software engineers were based on information on the employment site Glassdoor.com. Figures for network engineer and web applications designer were derived from the employment site Payscale.com. The job growth rate is projected from 2012 to 2022 by the BLS. A growth of 10 percent or higher is deemed as normal. A growth rate of 15 percent and above is consider rapid growth.

Job Hunting

The information security analyst had the greatest potential growth of 37 percent. Their job entails a simple maintenance routine but once the system gets hacked, they will have to work round the clock to restore the system, pronto. I believe being a hacker is the best qualification for this job but there is no such thing as a certified hacker at the present moment. This may be the reason WalletHub did not list down the qualification for this job. The reason growth is not projected for financial analyst is unclear.

Growth rate for software engineers were not projected as this profession is a bit unusual. While the jobs in this field are plentiful, careers in the field may be short-lived. According to Bloomberg News, most software developers have left the profession by the time they're 40. The industry tend to favor younger engineers because of the impression that they will be more up-to-date with the latest trends.

Although the training specialist had a low income, it top because of job openings and growth potential. About one-quarter of Web designers were self-employed in 2012 but it is forecasted that employment in this field will grow by 20 percent. I believe the forecaster is expecting these self-employed individuals would grow and had the need for expansion.

Seeking Enlightenment: Economic Crisis due to Childless Millennials

REBLOG=>Sophia Logica

A rapidly aging society and a younger generation that is not willing to have kids is the formula for an economic Armageddon, CBS News 28 April 2015. Japan confronts this fate and their population is predicted to drop by one-third through 2060. Childbirth trend among Millennials is raising questions on the possibility America heading the same direction. According to a report from the Urban Institute, birth rate among American women in their 20s fell 15 percent in 2012 from 2007. This marked an abrupt change from three decades of relatively stable birthrates. The birth rate of women in the 20s is 948 births per 1,000 women.


crying baby

Nan Marie Astone, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and one of the paper's authors, believes the recession prompted women in their 20s to opt against having children. The paper cited previous economic crises, such as the Depression in the 1930s, also coincided with low points for fertility in 20-somethings. The median age for a women's first birth is now 26 years old, compared with 21.4 years old in 1970, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Would millennial women start families once they feel more stable economically, as previous generations have done after periods of financial insecurity?


My Comments

Values have a part to play in our actions today. The previous generation believe in the family and even extended families especially for Italians. People today are like a little nucleus of their own. There was happily ever after of yesterday. Today is happily never after. Broken families and high divorce rate are a common thing.

Pest in Midst: Dinosaur with Multiple Species Traits

REBLOG=>XingCai Tang

Scientists have discovered remnants of a strange dinosaur with an unusual combination of traits in southern Chile. It was named Chilesaurus diegosuarezi to honor the country where it was unearthed and the 7-year-old who spotted the first fossils. "The skeletal anatomy of Chilesaurus gathers characteristics of different dinosaur groups, like a floor is composed of mosaics of different shapes and colors. No other dinosaurs exhibit such a combination or mixture of features," said paleontologist Fernando Novas of the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires. The modern-day version of such misfit is the platypus, an egg-laying, duck-billed mammal from Australia, Reuters reported on 27 April 2015.




Chilesaurus it is a member of the same dinosaur species as Tyrannosaurus rex. Its skull and neck bear a resemblance to those of primeval long-necked dinosaurs, and its vertebrae those of primitive meat-eating theropods which are the largest land meat-eaters in Earth's history. Strangely enough Chilesaurus ate only plants, given a beak and leaf-shaped teeth and two blunt fingers on each hand. It is a two-legged created with a bird-like pelvis. Unlike the three-talon feet of most theropods, Chilesaurus had a wide feet with four toes. Four nearly complete skeletons frames were found to establish these typical misfit traits. It was relatively small, reaching up to 10.5 feet (3.2 meters) long, although most specimens found were more the size of a turkey. It lived in a region crisscrossed by rivers approximately 145 million years ago.


 Right jaw and teeth of the Chilesaurus diegosuarezi

University of Birmingham paleontologist Martín Ezcurra said, "The most interesting (aspect) about Chilesaurus is the story that it tells about how evolution works, 'Convergent evolution' is a process in which two unrelated species or groups acquire similar characteristics from living in similar environments or having a similar behavior," He used the example of having the wings of a bat and a bird. For 'mosaic convergent evolution,' it involves different parts of the body resembling those of other unrelated species.


My Comments

The more fossil we unearth, the harder it would be for experts to explain evolution. Very soon the theory of evolution will just fall apart. It would be easier to explain explain that the Chilesaurus came from a big bang than to fit it into evolution theory. After we finally believe the earth cam from a big bang.

Friday, April 24, 2015

Google’s Mobile Friendly Test

My Casino Gambling Tip is now a mobile friendly website. My next task would be to get XingCai Gambling Tales to be mobile friendly too. I had outlined the step involved to get it mobile friendly in my previous blog and will use the same procedure. The wave of mobile suffers had got Google to cater to them or lose page ranking. This would be a concern for webmasters until they fix the problem.

Google Mobile Friendly Certification

While Google had written to webmasters with some links to make a mobile friendly website, they provided no link to test the mobile-friendliness of the site. Using W3C tidy up could provide some additional help on the meta tags. After much surfing, I found certification from Google themselves. Visit this link and type in your website’s URL.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

John Key New Zealand Premier Hair Pulling Fetish

New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key ask for forgiveness from a waitress at his local cafe for repeatedly tugging on her ponytail. The waitress named Rosie criticized his behavior in a blog post. It began during last year's election season and carried on for a number of months and on several occasions. Eventually the cafe's manager made it clear to Key that his actions were uninvited, the CNN reported on 22 April 2015.

John Kay

Key, told reporters that his behavior was in the context of "a bit of banter," but said that he had apologized when it was clear she was offended. "But if you look at it now, no. When I realized she took offense by that I just sort of immediately went back, gave her some wine, apologized and said I was terribly sorry," the leader added. Rosie’s blog wrote that she didn't directly make her objections clear verbally, her body language "screamed 'I don't like that.'" The blog also stated that the prime minister offered two bottles of his own JK 2012 Pinot Noir wine by way of apology.

Sue McCabe, chief executive of the National Council of Women of New Zealand, accepted that Key was joking and did not mean to offend, but criticized the premier in an open letter of the organization. "The fact that our Prime Minister has joined the list of people outed for sexism highlights how much sexism is a part of our culture. And it starts at the top. Up and down this country, day after day, people are touched without giving their consent. At one end of the scale, it is an unwelcome pull on a ponytail. At the other end, it's our shocking levels of violence against women."

Carpe Diem: Seize the Day: Willie Nelson's Pot

REBLOG=>Phil Andows

Willie Nelson, renowned for singing about the merits of smoking pot in country and western music, is making his own brand of marijuana. The product features "high quality strains of marijuana," and will be on the shelves as "Willie's Reserve". It will be grown and sold in Colorado and Washington where it is legal to get stoned without a doctor's note, CNN Money reported on 20 April 2015. The motivated singer said, "I am looking forward to working with the best growers in Colorado and Washington to make sure our product is the best on the market". He founded the company out of a desire to get involved in the growing market for legal pot, Elaine Schock spokeswoman for "Willie's Reserve" told CNN Money.


Willie's Reserve picture from CNN

Nelson,81, had gone a long way for pot. He has been an outspoken supporter of marijuana legalization and an advocate for industrial hemp production. Nelson will focus on the quality of the products, encouraging responsible use and pushing for legalization. "He will serve as more than a figurehead. His values and vision set the bar for everything the company does," Schock said. A new song, "It's All Going to Pot" which Nelson duets with Merle Haggard was on April 20 to coincide with his announcement. It will make 4/20 (April 20) an unofficially declared National Weed Day. In time to come the song may be the anthem for the National Weed Day but Nelson is not the first musician to lend his name to a marijuana brand. Last year, the estate of Jamaican reggae icon Bob Marley struck a deal with a private equity firm to market and sell marijuana and other products under the name "Marley Natural."



Amenda Steels' Comments

"It's All Going to Pot" may not be the Weeds Day’s anthem as there will be too many contenders.


My Comments

I think "Puff the Magic Dragon" makes a good Weed Day's Anthem.

Seeking Enlightenment: Naked Wedding Celebrations

REBLOG=>Sophia Logica

The South China Morning Post's article dated 24 March 2015 refers to it as "naked wedding celebrations" but it is actually a social protest. Ten couples, some were married for many years, took part in the event. The couples were covered in body paint and dressed only in undergarments for the event at Hangzhou Paradise amusement park in Zhejiang province. They are rejecting modern Chinese value that placed greater value on materialism as a criteria for marriage instead of love.


Couples in body paint and dressed only their underwear hold naked weddings in Zhejiang province

Materialism makes me think of Karl Marx. Operating under a demand driven economy, China like to think of themselves as a communist state. The term has no place for economic class struggle but after decades of opening to this system, people in China would aspire to own a house or a car before they get married. A naked wedding involves a couple marrying without possessing a house or car.


My Comments

Given the current economic climate, getting a house and a car is not an easy task. This is a way to preserve the marriage institution.