That's a big number!

I was sitting in Operations Management last night. It's one of my classes in the MBA program at Northwest Nazarene University. The professor was talking about the proposed federal bail out of the banking industry, and he said he couldn't get his head around the number 1 trillion. So I whipped out my handy dandy calculator and tried to come up with a way to help myself grasp  the enormity of this figure.

I had seen an e-mail that went around talking about how 1 billion seconds was almost 32 years. Well, if that's the case, then 1 trillion seconds is 1,000 times that. 32,000 years -almost. 32,000 yeas ago, they say, Neanderthals were walking around France (probably wondering about car insurance).The average human life span is .236% of that. If you could count from the day you were born until the day you died and say one number per second, without stopping for food or a bathroom break, you would only getup to little more than 2.36 billion. Thats about how many beats your heart has in it.  That still seems a little big to comprehend. So I decided to divide some other big numbers in to a trillion and see what that comes out to.

The surface of the earth is 196,940,400 square miles. Dividing that in to 1 trillion, you get 5,077 earths. Holy crowded solar system, Batman! 

Heres another way to look at this. The total volume of water on the earth is estimated at 1,360,000,000 (1.36 billion) cubic kilometers. 1 trillion kilometers cubed is a little more than 735 times that. 

In the average human brain it is estimated that there are 100 billion neurons. So, a trillion would be 10 human brains. That's quite a bit of thinking. 

 

In one cubic foot of sand there are approximately 769,230,769 grains. To get to 1 trillion grains you need a shovel full more that 1,300 cubic feet of sand. That's almost enough to fill 5 ten cubic yard dump trucks (about 1.85 cubic yards shy, actually). It's starting to get a little easier now. Or is it?

Back to the bail out. Let's say they actually have to print that 1 trillion dollars or 10 billion $100 bills, and they could print 100 of them in one second. It would take 100 million seconds, or nearly 3.2 years to do. Talk about going green. eh? 

Oh, and don't forget the interest!

Turn OFF the spigot!

Twenty years of spending too much money has brought the financial market to its knees. Many say it was those greedy Wall Street types who took all those huge salaries of millions of dollars; sometimes after the company had been financially destroyed. Yes, this is probably some of the problem, but the blame for all these large lending institutions going belly up can be spread around.

Consumerism, which is a fancy word that can be defined as spending beyond one's means, is partly to blame. According to CNNMoney,com the average American that has at least one credit card holds nearly $9200 in credit card debt. It's amazingly easy to run these suckers up, especially when there is a need for plane tickets or shoes for the kids, or any number of things. Most people I know have one or more credit cards. I don't know what kind of balances they carry, but its safe to assume there is debt on them. So let's say that 100 million Americans have at least one credit card(that's roughly a third of the population). Can you see where this is going? 100 million times $9200 is.... lets see..... carry the one.... and... that's $920 billion. Wow.

I was watching Bill Moyers last night on PBS. I don't usually follow the national new guys, because mostly it's conjecture, speculation, and opinion, and that's not news. Anytime you hear, "many say", or "some say" or "could have" or "might bring" or "possibly due to" you aren't listening to news. News is facts, not somebody's opinion. You know what they say about opinions, right? Anyway, back to Bill Moyers. Well not Bill Moyers really, but his guest - Kevin Phillips, author of "Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism". Phillips sees this era of expanded finance and shrunken manufacturing as a dangerous mix as private debt has quadrupled to (hold on to you wig) $43 trillion. Bigger Wow.

While Kevin Phillips is a truly likable guy, his outlook for U.S. financial stability can only be described as moribund. He cites all the wealthy, powerful societies that have come to an end. He cites Spain, in the 17th century, Holland in the 18th century, Great Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries, and how they all fell victim to the over financialization of their economies. All of which were world powers, and are now playing fiddles below the United States. He contends that because the financial sector of our economy has doubled its share of GDP and the Manufacturing sector has been multiplied by .5 that we are in heepum big doo doo. Yes those countries are still alive and doing fairly well, but they certainly aren't as prosperous as they once were.

Much of the blame, however can be placed squarely at the feet of the federal government. These guys are the dirtiest of all, according to Phillips. Although he is not enamored of either of our political parties he points out that our old buddy, Slick Willie Jefferson Clinton was the catalyst for the securitization of consumer debt. Clinton's repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 which was set up in the 1930's had a major impact on how financiers could manage risk. Glass-Steagall basically kept different sectors of the financial system from mixing.

To understand this, one should know a little bit about finance. People who buy risky assets, like Sudanese corn futures, can expect higher returns on their initial investment because of the higher risk, but they can also lose their you know what. When the idiots in congress (you'll remember Republicans were in charge in 1997) decided to allow Wall Street to mix these assets with our private lending instruments the risk of loss in the whole market was increased. Open the spigot. What this did was allow banks and financial institutions to take on more debt. Then in the name of diversity, the banks were pushed by the government to make riskier loans, because money for lending was so cheap to borrow. With prime rate as low as it was in the first few year of the Bush Administration, banks were pressed to get loans out the door to make up the for the lower interst payments by volume ( Number of approved loans). So what did they do -lent money to high risk borrowers a few million times over. Then they bundled the loans and sold them to big financial institutions.

And of course there was some amount of predatory lending. I see this as a failure of the education system. Economics and budgeting should be part of every highschool cirriculum. You've heard, "They didn't know what they were signing!" This may be true for some, but not for the speculators who got caught when the housing bubble burst.

So basically, It wasn't a problem of capitalism, it was a problem of poor management, corruption and incompetance. I learned to pay off the creditors and once that is done, I'll stay debt free for good.

Up From the Ground Came a Bubblin' Crude

Black gold, Texas Tea or what ever you want to call it is one of the most useful substances the genius of nature has ever produced. Just open your eyes, and you can't miss it because it's in almost everything you can see. Just looking at my desk, I can see a multitude of stuff that is made from oil. Various parts of my computer, keyboard, mouse, digital camera, my magnifying glass, my son's Bionicle (its a toy), that he left here while watching "Total Drama Island", the router, the glasses my old eyes are looking through, and almost every other thing I have was delivered to me because there is such a thing as the hydrocarbon. 

I went to the "How stuff works" site this morning to get an idea of just what it takes to make all these things. Here's the long and short of it. Oil comes out of the ground, and it isn't all the same. Some is clear, and thin as water, and some is black and as thick as grandma's aspic. Nevertheless, it all contains a very versatile molecule; the hydrocarbon. The raw oil, or crude, as we call it is delivered to a refinery, via various forms of transportation, and it gets refined. But we're not talking charm school here. 

The refiners use a process that it called fractional distillation. Because crude contains all these different sizes of hydrocarbons, it must be separated to get get all the hydrocarbons of the same size and type together in their own separate groups. When one thinks of distilling, images of whiskey or vodka come to mind. It is basically the same idea, except that instead of getting just one type of adult beverage, many are produced.

The process starts with boiling the crude so it turns to vapor (different sized hydrocarbons turn to gas at different temperatures), and as it cools it turns back to liquid at different temperatures. Inside these boilers there are layers or stacks of pans that catch the liquid at differing heights as it changes from a gaseous state back to a liquid. And at each layer a different distillate is produced. One of the major components of the refining process is gasoline; approximately 40% of a barrel of oil (a standard barrel of oil is 42 gallons) is turned in to gasoline by way of this process. Other distillates such as hydrogen gas, naptha, diesel, kerosine, benzine, heavier oils and coke are also produced. 

Naptha is a broad term that means any highly flammable liquid hydrocarbon, and is used in making high octane fuels, industrial solvents, other chemically generated refining processes, and gets into some pretty complicated chemistry for polymers and plastics from here. Kerosine is what all those airplanes use in their jet engines, and is also valued as a heating oil. Benzine is mainly used as a degreasing  solvent for the motor vehicle industry. Coke (not the drink) is used in dry-cell batteries and other chemical processes. The heavier oils are used for lubrication, and further refining by a process called, "cracking".

Cracking is done by taking the largest of the hydrocarbon molecules and breaking them in to smaller hydrocarbons. Naptha is used here to get more gasoline out of the heavier oils. Other refining processes include unification, and alteration. In unification hydrocarbons are combined to make naptha into gasoline. Alteration is where the light-weight hydrocarbons are rearranged to make naptha again and used in gasoline octane improvement. 

What amazes me is that all this comes from the natural process of the life cycle of carbon based life forms. So the next time you throw on that polypropylene hoodie and that helmet for a ride on you motorcycle, you can thank the brilliant humans who figured all this stuff out so you could get bugs in your teeth.  

Back Yard Black Holes

I found out today that if you have a spare $10 billion laying around you can make your very own black hole. The LHC (large Hadron Collider), located near Geneva, Switzerland, is a machine designed to send a stream of protons around a big circle at ever increasing speeds in opposite directions, and then smash them in to each other. It's like a infinitesimally small version of demolition derby, but it costs about 10,000,000 times as much. That's okay, because the Swiss have lots of money and little else to do; what with all that snow and those big mountains everywhere. 

Seriously, the reason for going to such great expense to smash things you can't see is to try to detect a specific particle that could reveal the mysterious things we see out in the farthest reaches of outer space. It's a little dew-hickey  called the Higgs boson. Some have deemed it the "God Particle" because they believe it is fundamental to all of the matter that we see today. Scientists at CERN (which stands for European Organization for Nuclear Research, don't ask how) fired this baby up to see if they could prove themselves right about the existence of such a particle. The theoretical  sub-atomic particle is said to exist because it is the only thing that makes sense. I'm not sure if it is going to answer questions, or create more of them. Either way it will be interesting to find out what conditions may have been like a few billionths of a second after the Big Bang. 

Smashing protons together is cool and all, but what is really amazing is what it took to build this thing. You can't just go around smashing protons any old place because when you do, you wind up with temperatures about 100,000 times hotter than the sun. And when you get those protons really zooming, and I mean zooming (99,99% of the speed of light) you need a track they will stay on. In fact, when the protons are at full speed they will go around the 17 miles of track 11,245 times per second (Al Unser Jr. eat your heart out).  And to do that you need lots of super cooled magnets, and by cool I mean cold (-271.3º Celsius, or 456.34ºF). Brrrr. They use liquid helium. Imagine what your voice would sound like on that. 

Many are worried that when the LHC starts directing the two opposing streams of protons into each other that a small black hole (watch for the tin foil hat) will be created . But the problem with this worry is that a black hole requires a lot of mass to sustain its light-sucking gravity, and without that initial mass a black hole can't form - theoretically speaking. But you know how it goes, when ever anyone builds something new or figures out a new way of doing anything, there will always be those who think it's crazy. I think that if they do create a black hole and it does swallow the earth that we wouldn't have any clue it even happened because it would happen, in our perception of time,  instantly. 

What the hell is a scuppernong?

My wife has a small, but growing, cookbook collection. Her most recent garage sale find is the Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook, by Ruth Berolzheimer. The book is about 10" x 7", and about 3.5 inches thick. It has almost every recipe you can imagine and many you would never think of, or want to. It was originally published back in 1950, but our copy is the 1962 edition. It's tabbed like a dictionary for easy use and sports a table of  equivalents, like how many egg whites makes a cup (8 to 10, depending on the size of the eggs), or my favorite, 1 teaspoon fresh horseradish is equal to 2 teaspoons bottled horseradish. I didn't know that it takes 60 drops to make 1 teaspoon. Actually, I never even thought about it. And heres a good one - a peck of potatoes equals 15 pounds. Can you imagine how long it must have taken Peter Piper to pick that many peppers?

Some of the more interesting recipes include; chicken corn cake, spiced ham loaf, rinktum ditty, apple slump and heart goulash. Remember this is 1960 we're talking about. My computer's dictionary didn't know what to make of rinktum ditty - neither did my big paper version. Sounds yummy though - actually its a cheese sauce with cooked tomatoes, minced onions, butter, salt and pepper, sugar, served on toast. The book has it under entrées, but it sounds more like an appetizer - come to think of it I don't know about that either. Also you can easily convert your rinktum ditty to scotch woodcock simply by adding 2 to 3 tablespoons of anchovy paste, a dash of cayenne, and  putting some hard cooked egg slices on the toast before you pour the sauce. "Hey Mom, I like the Woodcock much better that plain old Ditty! Can't we have Woodcock? Pleeease?" 

What really sounds good is the Turkey and Ham Mouse. Oops, it calls for a jello mold, so maybe not. What's really funny about this book are some of the captions under the pictures. Like this one, "Creamed chicken takes on a whole new glamour when it appears on a noodle or rice ring." Sorry, but meat of any kind should never be creamed. 

But here is a recipe we can use: Home made English Muffins. My wife said, "Who knew you could make English Muffins at home." I replied that it was probably the English. That went over about as well as the stuffed beef heart recipe. But here's how you make English Muffins

3 tablespoons butter

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons sugar

1 cup milk

1/4 cup luke warm water

1 egg, beaten

4 cups sifted flour

Add butter salt and sugar to milk and cool to luke warm (I don't know what cool to luke warm means, so you'll just have to figure it out for yourself), Soften yeast in water. Add yeast, egg and 2 cups of flour to cooled milk. Stir to blend well. Then knead in remaining flour until firm and elastic. Let rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour. Roll out 1/4 inch thick  on floured board, cut in to 4" circles. Leave on board and cover. Let rise again until it has doubled in bulk, about 1 hour. When light, sprinkle with corn meal if desired and bake slowly on hot ungreased, heavy griddle or frying pan about 7 minutes each side. Brown slowly. Make 12 muffins.

And heres the caption next to the picture: "The English muffin, so light and  golden brown, is a favorite with many the whole year roun' "  Well, at least you can see why we don't make English muffins at home any more. Who has time to wait around for bread to rise - twice! Its a good Saturday project with the kids though. I suppose if you went into mass production in your kitchen you could probably freeze a few dozen. 

Whether you are slaving over a hot dish of Roast Squirrels, or serving up some soup from chicken feet (pg. 899) you'll get rave reviews using the multitudinous milieu of culinary delights from this classic cook book. Bon Appetite.

Oh yeah. I almost forgot to tell you what a scuppernong is. It's a large French grape that's a little smaller than a plumb. It has seeds like a grape, instead of a pit like a plumb. Now you know. Bye.  

The Slow Death of American Aerospace Prowess

For the past couple of years we have been watching American automakers slowly being bled to death by the advance of evermore stringent environmental standards (not that I don't like clean air), unions with eyes for short term gratification, and the quality driven foreign manufacturers. On the face it looks as though a few are getting rich of  the backs of the many, but in reality the the big US automakers are staying barely out of the ditch due to the sales of automobiles in foreign markets. But now the Big Three are lobbying congress for a $50 billion in loans so they can compete, says an editorial in the Wall Street Journal by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.  The reason they say is because of environmental standards placed on the cars they make which have strangled production in North America. Well, that's not the whole reason. If one looks back through the years one can see a slew of sweetheart deals handed out by state governments for foreign automakers designed to bring jobs. In 1984 Mitsubishi got $249 million from Illinois. In 1992 BMW got $150 million to locate in South Carolina and another $80 million in infrastructure improvements. Alabama secured a Mercedes plant with  $258 million in 1993. The list goes on and on, and long term planning has taken a back seat to shifting short term gains in to high gear.

What does this have to do with aerospace, you ask?

Well it isn't going to be long before Boeing, one of the largest employers in the Northwest, finds itself riding shotgun to foreign airplane builders. Recently the International Association of Machinists decided to walk. Management at Boeing probably does't see this as troubling as long as the strike doesn't last for over four months. According to one economist, the last two strikes, one in 1995 that lasted 69 days, and one in 2003 that lasted 24 days, hardly registered on the economic radar. No big deal, right?

Wrong. For a few years Western firms have been helping Chinese airplane manufacturers get off the ground. Recently China has begun test flights of a new domestically produced regional aircraft. The company, Xi'an Aircraft Industry (Group) Co Ltd, a subsidiary of state aircraft maker AVIC I, said it will be able to produce 10 to 15 of the 60 seater Turbo-Fan MA 600 by 2010, and hope to be able to build 30 per year by 2012. And after that, they're going to be gunning for the big birds. In a country that doesn't have environmental controls and no unions, it is only a matter of time before Boeing and Airbus, a classic duopoly, are going to be in a dog fight with a rival who surely will have the competitive advantage-namely low wages, and less government interference. 

Todays take-away: American companies, workers and governments had better start looking to a more distant horizon because pretty soon the friendly skies aren't going to be so friendly. 

Remembering Stalin

I have a great research staff. Actually it's just my Mom. She sends me all kinds of interesting articles. This morning she sent me an article from the American Enterprise Institute by Leon Aron about what's happening in Russia. It would seem those wily Ruskies are up to their old tricks. Yep, right out of Stalin's playbook. The first paragraph of the article say it all.

On June 18-19, 2007, a national conference of high school historians and teachers of social sciences convened in Moscow. The agenda called for discussion of "the acute problems in the teaching of modern Russian history" and "the development of the state standards of education."[2] It soon became clear, however, that the real purpose of the gathering was to present to (or, more precisely, to impress upon) the delegates two recently finished "manuals for teachers." One of them--soon to be published in a pilot print run of ten thousand copies--was The Modern History of Russia: 1945-2006; A Teacher's Handbook (referred to in this Outlook by its Russian short title, Istoriya), which will become a high school textbook for use in classrooms this coming September (Aron, 2008, Sept. 8th. Emphasis added).

What's wrong with that, you ask? While it is true that all countries have some ugly episodes, sweeping them away by re-writing history is a huge mistake. That's the difference between totalitarianism and freedom. In America, we are sorry for our transgressions, and try to learn from our mistakes, but apparently Vlad Putin would rather paint the history of Russia in a much softer and filtered light. He would rather blame the transgressions of the former Russian (Soviet) leaders on forces outside that empire. At a conference in June of 2007 Putin justified the need for a standardized telling of the Russian story that would give the people of his country a greater sense of pride. He closed the ceremonies with this:

"As to some problematic pages in our history--yes, we've had them. But what state hasn't? And we've had fewer of such pages than some other [states]. And ours were not as horrible as those of some others. Yes, we have had some terrible pages: let's remember the events beginning in 1937; let's not forget about them. But other countries have had no less, even more. In any case, we did not pour chemicals over thousands of kilometers or drop on a small country seven times more bombs than during the entire World War II, as it was in Vietnam, for instance. Nor did we have other black pages, such as Nazism, for instance. All sorts of things happen in the history of every state. And we cannot allow ourselves to be saddled with guilt--they'd better think of themselves."

Pretty sad. Doesn't this sound like the definition of insanity? Whatever will he do with the thousands of people who know the truth of the brutality of the former Soviet regimes? Will they be "edited" so as to paint a happier picture? 

Perhaps some of you have seen the picture of Joseph Djugashvilli (Stalin's real name) walking along a river alone. Well the original picture showed another man walking next to him. The other man probably wound up in a mass grave in Siberia. Stalin was a master of propaganda, show trials and misdirection, and he isn't the only one. On a site put out by Dartmouth University one can view a slew of doctored pictures. The research tends to make one think that this sort of thing happens all the time. It probably does, but who has the time to check every image that comes across our screen, newspapers and magazines, billboards and the like? 

So what have I learned from this? One must remember that almost everything we see affects how we think about the world, and that one should be skeptical - especially when someone is trying to get us to think a certain way. In other words, don't believe everything you read, because seeing isn't necessarily believing.

Frigg, Freyja, Venus, Friday

Last Sunday I wrote about panning for gold in the foothills of Idaho, and how I my interest was peaked due to an engagement party for a distant relative. I also had occasion to discuss another topic. It seems that one of the attendees was a Swedish gentleman who had immigrated to the United States permanently nigh on 20 years ago. One of the subjects that came up was Norse Mythology. I have always enjoyed mythology, and know enough to get by, but I decided to dig a little deeper into this particular subject.
Some of you may remember from your childhood comic books depicting Thor, the Norse God of Thunder. This is just one way the myths of ancient Scandinavia have become part of the modern American culture.
Try this one. How many times have you heard the song of "Jack and Jill"? Did you ever wonder where that came from, or what it really meant? Of course with a poem this old - just how old no one knows - interpretations vary, but as far as explanations go I like a Norse version which I found in a book a long time ago. The book, The Utmost Island (Farrar, Straus and young, New York, 1951), author Henry Myers notes that on Lief Ericson's long journey to Vineland (today known as North America) he passes the time telling stories. The one story Myers mentions is of the giants Jøkul and Jill who attempt to steal mead (an adult beverage made with honey) from the Gods. Jøkul was the Moon who's crown is broken as it passes through its waxing and waning. I guess the pilfering happened at night because Jill, the sun "came tumbling after. Leif Ericson lived from circa 970 to c.1120 AD, so you can see how old this is. To give you some perspective, the epic battles fought by Beowulf were put to paper, somewhre between 840 AD and 1200 AD. Hollywood just put out a CGI movie depicting the hero's story in 2007.
What few people realize is that the Norse myths are part of our lives on an almost daily basis. Yep, you guessed it! The days of the week are named after Norse Gods. Monday is Moon day, Tuesday is Tyr's day (Fenrir, the wolf bit off his arm - ouch!), Wednesday is Woden's day, or Odins day (the All-father), Thursday is Thor's day, Friday is Frigg's or Freyr's day (it's the same person, just from different sources), Saturday is for some reason is the only day that was named by the Romans (after Saturn the god of agriculture), and Sunday, of course is after the Sun (or the Son of God, in the Christisan tradition). Some might say that Sigyn, Loki's main squeeze, who is also known as Saeter, may have been the impetus for the use of Saturday. The Roman version makes more sense to me though. Loki was the god of mischief, and was bound with the entrails of his son after he killed Baldr with mistletoe (Ewww!). It gets pretty convoluted the further you get into it - pretty much the way it is with all the myths, but they make great stories.
Do you have any other cultural sayings, traditions, or the like, that have threads stretching through the past? If you do, please share them with the rest of us.

Buzz, buzz, buzz

Have you ever seen a bee buzzing around your flowers with his legs loaded with balls of pollen so large he could barely make it in to the air? I have, on more than one occasion,  seen these little fuzzy fliers so full that when they began to buzz, they actually had to walk of the edge of the pedal to find the open air. It was like witnessing an overloaded bomber going off the end of an aircraft carrier - losing altitude and then finally picking up the nose, and rising slowly toward its objective. 

But bees don't have cargo bays. They have legs, and they use them to great advantage. Each leg carries a golden nugget of pollen gathered from dozens of flowers. What I never could figure out though is how the pollen got there. Every bee I have seen dives head first in to the center of the flower; looking more for nectar than pollen, it would seem. Today I learned their secret method. I was watching them sample the treats of our Rose of Sharon tree. It's a great tree. It blooms throughout the summer, and there is never a shortage of blossoms, or bees. I watched for quite a while and finally I saw one emerge from the center of one of the flowers, and he was covered in pollen. It was all over him. He looked like he'd been rolling in cornmeal. He took off again but this time he lit on a green leaf. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera, but I took this picture later to give you an idea of the flower. As he sat there on the leaf he began cleaning himself. His front legs swept over his head and parts of his wings. Then his back legs swept over his abdomen and thorax, and soon he had gathered two pouches - about the size of the head of a pin.  Then he repeated the process and his saddle bags grew ever so slightly. He finish by scraping his front legs off on his rear legs, a little lick with his little bee tongue, a swipe at the antennae (for better reception), and he was off to gather more. I was amazed at the efficiency.

I have been hearing a lot of worried folk about the condition of the bee population world wide. I don't know about the rest of the world, but we have lots here - and many different types too. I don't know what kind they are, but I would like to. If there are any bee experts out there and they'd like to share their knowledge on this subject, I, for one, would bee grateful.

Beginner's Pluck

Today's post is a piece I was asked to write for Idaho Ad Agencies about my excursion in to the world of marketing. Hope you don't mind the extra click. Have a great day, and we'll see what I learned today later.

Got Inventory Extras?

I received an e-mail today from a friend who owns a ladies' shoe store. She was looking for advice about what to do with the summer inventory that didn’t find a home. The lines at Perfect Pair Shoes are very specialized and may be difficult to sell because of the high-fashion nature of the styles.
As an early riser, I tend to wake, check e-mail and listen to the radio. Here in Boise, Idaho, Wall Street Journal Radio plays from 4:30 to 6:00 am. It is a wonderful source of quick business information, that doesn’t require a pair of glasses. Who wants to try to find a pair of glasses at 5-am?
Today, Gordon Deal, the host, mentioned that Overstock.com has a new competitor -Redtag.com. It has almost everything you could possibly want, and allows you to sell everything you possibly don't want via online auction. The parent company to one of the five selling channels is Enable Holdings, which operates several inventory control sites.

Ubid.com sells inventory by auction and ensures security with a rigorous screening process, and provides customer service with a United States based call center. 

Redtag.com launched a couple of days ago and is a fixed price site. Redtaglive.com is an offline marketplace where buyers can get great deals and sellers can offload that extra inventory.  For businesses with excess inventory, consider Dibu.com, a global B2B trading company for wholesalers who need to move large quantities of inventory, and Commerce Innovations, currently still in development, is for bulk inventory lot selling and buying.

In order to become a seller you need to have a FEIN, or SSN (Federal Employer Identification Number, or Social Security Number), a valid credit card, Dunn & Bradstreet Number (These guys track your business credit), three business references, and bank account information. It seems like a lot to go through, but if you can get your money back on the seasonal extras, and free up shelf space for the new Fall and Winter lines, it just might be worth it.
Weather it’s a pair of pumps, a flat screen, or a few palates of outdoor speakers,
Redtag.com can help you make room for that next round of goods.

No Labor on Labor Day

I found out today that the Labor Day holiday was started by a New York Labor Union back in the late 1800's. According to the U.S. Department of labor, many have doubts about who was first to create the "end of the summer" holiday. General Secretary of the the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, and one of the co-founders of the AFL,  is one such candidate. His name is Peter McGuire and he declared a day to give thanks to the men "who from rude nature delved and carved all the grandeur we behold." 

Others, however, believe that it was a machinist who started the holiday. One Mathew McGuire, who believe it or not, was also ensconced  in the labor movement, and later became the the secretary of the Local 344 on the International Association of Machinists. Pete or Matt; take your pick. 

The first one was actually on a Tuesday, September 5th, 1882 in New York City,  and was planned by the Central labor Union.  They had a picnic and a demonstration to show their support for this new National holiday. The holiday didn't receive any legislative attention until Oregon, on February 21st, 1887, mandated it for state workers. After that other states followed. In June of 1894 Congress passed Labor day legislation, making the first Monday in September a legal Holiday. 

The last paragraph on DOL's website says this:

"The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker."

So, remember while you're hanging out on your back patio, having a picnic, or cook out with the family, that is was the American worker that provided all those things you are eating, watching, playing, or sitting on. They may not have made them all, but they certainly came in to your possession by way of an American worker. And don't forget those rich guys who put us all to work; they deserve a day off too. Enjoy your weekend, and have a frankfurter for me, because the work never stops here . Work = Fun.