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Some Revenue Sharing Sites

Revenue sharing sites are sites where a writer can login, type an article, publish it on the site. You don’t have to maintain the website and you don’t have to buy web hosting. All you need to do is to sign up which is often free.

The revenue-sharing site makes its money through advertisements on it pages. Since you write some content for the site, the revenue-sharing site rewards you with a portion of that revenue. The percentage that they give you depends on the particular revenue-sharing site.

Quite often the revenue-sharing site is monetized with Google AdSense and it may rotate your Google ads on your article pages. So in those cases, you need your own AdSense account to receive payments.

If you don’t write on Hubpages, you should definitely consider joining Hubpages here.

In the interest of full-disclosure, it is true that the link that I have provided to you is an affiliate link such that if you click that and join Hubpages, I may get an extra monetary compensation for referring you to join Hubpages. However, this by no means will detract from your own revenue on Hubpages.

Many of the revenue-sharing sites may have similar “referral incentives”. But of all the revenue sharing sites I’ve came across, Hubpages is currently the site that I’m publishing the most on and am dedicating most of my energies on. Although I may write on other revenue-sharing sites as well.

Note that I say “write” on other sites. Do not copy your content from one site to another. This is called “duplicated content”. Search engines do not like duplicated contents and will not place duplicated content high on its search results. Definitely do not copy content from anyone else. Most of the revenue sharing sites require unique and original content of at least 300 to 400 words in length – longer the better. If you write shorter than that, search engines do not rank them as highly.

Many of the revenue sharing sites will have duplicate content filters to detect copied content and will ban you if necessary. You can re-write the same topic again on other sites, but the keyword here is “re-write” so that its sentences and words are unique content.

This article is only opinion at the time of writing as of May 2011. Revenue sharing sites change their policies all the time and the information may be outdated by the time you are reading this. Some of the sites mentioned may not even be there any more, which will sound scary for a writer who have invested a lot of time into the articles and expected to earn income from it for years to come. So always check the revenue sharing site itself for their latest policies.

Speaking of income, this is not to be thought of as an easy way to make money. It is not. To make any significant amount of money is a lot of work. Some people treat it as their full-time work-at-home job. And others treat it as a business. In the early years of publishing, the work on a per-hour basis will likely be less than the minimum wage of many states in the United States. Although, if you are in another country where $10/hour is a lot of money, then it can be more lucrative for you.

Note that I use the word “years” instead of “months”. Do not expect do make any significant amount of money in a couple of months, you simply don’t have enough hours to write enough content to get enough traffic within that time. And your articles do not have enough time to generate organic backlinks to it. Ideally, you need at least hundreds of unique high-quality originally-crafted articles (of at least 400 words in length). But once the foundation of all those articles have been laid, those articles can continue to generate income for you for quite some time.

You need to like to write. An article also needs to be high quality in order for it to get good traffic. Since most articles are “non-fiction” (those are the ones that people want to read and are the ones that gets found), it likely will require research. And you need to proof-read and edit. It can often take hours to write one article.

What to Look for in Revenue Sharing Sites

  • How Google Ranks the site (page rank)
  • What is its Alexa traffic
  • What is the percentage of revenue share percentage
  • Does it allow affiliate links
  • How long it has been around
  • Does it have social networking aspects that enables your article to be found by other members.
  • Does it have a referral incentive

List of Some Revenue Sharing Sites

Some revenue sharing sites are …

The following are not exactly sites where you publish your own article, but still revenue-sharing …

  • tipdrop.com: Like twitter meets wikipedia. Write tipsheets and augment to other’s tipsheets. Length limit. Links allowed only after certain credibility.
  • SheToldMe.com: bookmarking and ranking site (like Digg).
  • WebAnswers.com: answer other people questions.

Note: Author of this article may receive compensation from the display ads and affiliate links within article.

Vegetarian Who Switch Back to Animal Products

Although it is true that many people do well on vegetarianism, it depends on the individual as everyone has different genetics. Some people require more animal products than other.

There have been many cases where people after years of vegetarianism eventually ran into health challenges which was remedy by adding in animal products.

On the Livin La Vida Low Carb Show, Denise Minger talked about her years of being a vegetarian until she encounter health issues. Her health improved when she added back animal products. She then started learning about nutrition and gave the talk “How to Win an Argument with a Vegetarian“. Some people believes that eating purely plant product is healthier. Her talk debunks some of those myths.

Similarly, Chris Masterjohn talked with Dr. Mercola about similar situation of running into health issue when Chris was a vegetarian. Again these problems disappeared after adding back animal products. He believes that everyone can benefit with at least some animal products. Chris Masterjohn is now studying nutritional science as an PhD candidate.

Others that believe in the health benefits of animal products includes the Paleolithic diet advocates and the Weston A Price Foundation.

For those who want to avoid land animal meats, consider eating fish. If not, consider bivalves (such as scallops and muscles) which do not have brains and can not feel pain. If not, at least consider eggs. Eggs are very healthy and consists of complete high quality protein as well as vitamin B12 and other nutrients.

Here is article that explains why eating some animal products in moderation can be beneficial to health.

Why Saturated Fats May Have Gotten a Bad Rap

Perceptions are changing. More and more evidence is showing that sugar is the bad culprit making us unhealthy rather than natural saturated fat.

Natural saturated fats from clean non-hormone and non-antibiotic pasture-raised animals can be healthy in moderation. Because these animal eat their natural diet of grass, they contain essential omega-3 fatty acids which commercial grain-eating animals do not have. Because they are naturally raised, their fats do not accumulate hormones, toxins, and antibotics. This clean fat is a good source of fuel for the body without raising our glucose level in our blood.

Dr. Andrew Weil himself has changed his position to no longer recommending “low-fat” dairy foods. He now recommends “high-quality, organic dairy foods in moderation”. In his article Rethinking Saturated Fats, he writes …

“through their direct effects on insulin and blood sugar, refined starches and sugars are more likely than saturated fat to be the main dietary cause of coronary heart disease and type-2″ diabetes.”

 

He also wrote that …

“It now appears that many studies used to support the low-fat recommendation had serious flaws.”

Many others also feel that our outdated notion of fats and cholesterol may be wrong.  For example, Annette Presley speaks about this on the Livin La Vida Low-Carb Show.

Is Cholesterol as Bad as We Thought?

Similarly, cholesterol from foods may not be as bad as we once thought.  You can read Chris Kresser’s view on this on his site.

Some would argue that cholesterol in and of itself is not bad. One such argument is presented in “The Oiling of America” (video and article).

As typical of in the midst of any movement, the ideas are controversial. And saturated fats are still being debated. FrontLine interviewed several experts in the subjects on both sides of the issue.

If Saturated Fats do not cause heart disease, then what does?

Dr. Dwight Lundell writes article that says it is inflammation of artery wall caused by chronic consumption of sugar, flour, and vegetable oils.

Learn why sugar is unhealthy.

Learn why vegetable oils are bad.

Book Review: “Age-Proof Your Mind”

Dr. Zaldy S Tan’s book Age-Proof Your Mind: Detect, Delay, and Prevent Memory Loss – Before It’s Too Late provides us with steps we can take to help prevent memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease. Zaldy Tan is the director of The Memory Clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Due to factors such as genetics and childhood environment experiences beyond our control, there is no guaranteed method to prevent Alzheimer’s. However many research has shown that there are things we all can do to tip the odds in our favor against the development of Alzheimer’s — or at least delay it.

Dr. Tan cites many such research studies in the book. He explains the reasons why our minds age and how to protect against brain aging in clear everyday language without excessive technical jargon. Although the book is amply footnoted; so those who are interested can seek out the detailed technical literature.

Memory Stress Test and Memory Improvement Program

In chapter 11, there is a memory stress test where you can take at home (with the help of a friend) so that you can determine the state of your memory at present. However, it does mention that the test is not a substitute for a thorough clinical memory evaluation.

Chapter 12 is the memory improvement program where it provides memory techniques such as visualization, association, chunking, and Loci method to help you remember things better. There is also the “Sixty Minute Brain Workout” to exercise your concentration, recall, and executive function.

Chapter 4 “Oxygen Damage and the Brain: To E or Not to E” is especially informative about the role of vitamin E in protecting the brain against oxidative stress.

Appendix A has some food recipes for brain-healthy dishes.

Page 117 has a photograph of Albert Einstein’s brain.

Main Points

To summarize a few points from the book …

Proper diet, adequate exercise, and stress reduction will help keep your brain healthy. Controlling and reducing inflammation is also beneficial. Anti-oxidants (such as vitamin E) is helpful for promoting brain health.
The book also has several case studies of some patients.

Book Review: “Why Our Health Matters”

In 2009, the book Why Our Health Matters by Dr. Andrew Weil is about his views of the what is wrong with the health care system and how to fix it.

Dr. Andrew Weil is a graduate of Harvard Medical School. He has written numerous best-selling books and have been on TV specials. He was on the Time Magazine cover in 1997 and 2005 and had been recognized by Time Magazine as among one of the most influential people.

Dr. Weil “believes strongly and passionately that every American has a right to good health care that is effective, accessible, and affordable, that serves you from infancy through old age, that allows you to go to practitioners and facilities of your choosing, and that offers a broad range of therapeutic options.”[p4]

Dr. Weil says “The priorities and motives of those who manage for-profit medical enterprises are fundamentally at odds with those of physicians, patients, and good medical practice. … I am convinced that our health insurance system should not be fiercely profit driven.”[p25]

If the main objective of insurance companies is to make money, then of course they will have an incentive to restrict coverage and deny claims while increasing premiums.

Three Myths of the Health Care System

Dr. Weil speaks of three myths:[p11]

Myth #1: It is a myth that because America has the most expensive health care, it is the best.
The reality is that many developed countries rank far better than the United States in many measures.

Myth #2: It is a myth that medical technology is the single greatest assets.
Dr. Weil believes that we over-use our technology which drives up costs.

Myth #3: It is a myth that our medical schools produce the world’s finest physicians.

Dr. Weil believes that there are gaps in the medical educational system such as that they do not focus enough on nutrition and mind-body integrative medicine.

United States Ranks Poorly

In year 2000, the World Health Organization rated the health care system of many countries. They ranked United States at number 37. United State was just behind Costa Rica in the rankings. And United State just ranked one above Slovenia. According to this table, France, Italy, Singapore, Japan, Austria, Germany, Greece, United Kingdom, Ireland, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Chile, Israel, Colombia and many more countries all ranked better than the United States.

United States Spends the Most

However, it is true that United States spends more per capita on health care than any other country.
Dr. Weil attribute this fact to two things …

1) We do not focus enough on prevention. We intervene only when the disease has been established.

2) Over-dependence on high-tech interventions.[p9] Also, doctors often run expensive scans in fear of lawsuits.[p31]

Cost of medical care has become the leading cause of personal bankruptcy.[p7]

In 2007, our total health care spending is $2.3 trillion which amounts to $7,600 for every American. Our health care represent 16% of the the United States GDP and is predicted to be 20% of GDP within 6 or 7 years. For France and Canada, their health care represents only 9% of their GDP.[p18]

Starbucks spends more for the health care of their workers than for the beans to make their coffees. [p22]

Examples of some of the costs…

For those who have not been through America’s health care system, here are some examples of the amount of average cost cited in the book [p17]…
• Prescription medicine: $70
• Hospital room per day: $1700
• Adult visiting emergency room: $700
• Uncomplicated hospital birth: $8000
• Cardiac stress test: $1900
• Heart Attach: $45,000 to $50,000
• Initial treatment for common cancers: $40,000

Examples of Doctor’s Salaries

Page 37 gives some salary figures of doctor’s and you can see why many opt to become specialists instead of family practitioners. These are annual numbers…
• Family practitioners: $175,000
• General Internists: $204,000
• Radiologists: $911,000
• Orthopedic surgeons: $852,000
• Cardiovascular surgeons: $1,352,000

Medicines that Dr. Weil Believes In

Dr. Weil believes in a holistic approach to treatment and prevention that includes …
• Manual medicine — this includes professional massage therapy
• Botanical and Chinese medicine — including herbal formulas and acupuncture
• Mind/Body medicine — including stress reduction
• Nutritional medicine — obesity (which contributes to hypertension, heart disease, stroke, cancer) can be partially addressed by eating right and avoiding pro-inflammatory foods.
• Dietary Supplements — useful insurance against gaps in diet.
• Exercise — it not only burn calories, but raises mood by increasing endorphins and dopamine, decrease chance of age-related dementia, and increase cells sensitivity to insulin and reducing risk of type-2 diabetes.

Obesity

What we eat is just as big of a factor as how much we eat. The rise in obesity is caused by the United State’s food system replacing whole natural foods with refined manufactured food with added things like high fructose corn syrup. The latter is what is cheap and available and so that is what we eat. Dr. Weil says he has a hard time finding “real food” in a convenience store. In a supermarket, he can only find real food in the periphery.
This change in diet is causing metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance. Obesity is linked to more than 30 medical conditions including heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, dementia, and osteoarthritis.
In order to move to preventative care and reduce obesity, Dr. Weil believes that Americans need to improve their health literacy.

Last Chapter

In the last chapter, Dr. Weil writes “Throughout this book I have insisted that a free democratic society must guarantee basic health care to all its citizens and that this must not be thwarted by medicine that operates in a predominantly for-profit mode, with the collusion of a rapacious insurance industry and a passive government.”

Gene for Bad Driving?

University of California Irvine neurologist Dr. Steven Cramer did a study that showed that bad driving may have a genetic basis. People with a certain gene variant performed more than 20 percent worst in learning a new driving course in a simulator than person without the gene variant.
29 subjects was asked to learn a new driving course by being placed in a driving simulator and drive 15 laps consisting of difficult curves and turns. The subjects re-did the driving test 4 days later. Of the 29 subjects, 22 did not have the gene variant and 7 of them did. The subjects with the gene variant did worst in both tests. Dr. Cramer said “These people make more errors from the get-go, and they forget more of what they learned after time away.”[1]

How a Particular Gene Variant Causes Bad Driving

BDNF is brain-derived neurotropic factor. This protein plays a role in memory and communication between cells. UC Irvine article says “BDNF keeps memory strong by supporting communication among brain cells and keeping them functioning optimally. When a person is engaged in a particular task, BDNF is secreted in the brain area connected with that activity to help the body respond.”
When a person performs a motor-related task such as driving for example, BDNF is secreted to the relevant area of the brain for that activity.

However, people with this particular gene variant known as Val66Met does not secret as much BDNF. They make more errors in the initial learning and they retain less.

The study was published online in Cerebral Cortex on September 10, 2009 was titled “BDNF Val66Met Polymorphism Influences Motor System Function in the Human Brain”.

The study abstract says “A single nucleotide polymorphism for this growth factor, val66met, is common and associated with decreased activity-dependent BDNF release.”[3]

It further says “subjects with the polymorphism showed smaller activation volume within several brain regions as compared with subjects without the polymorphism.” The conclusion is that “subjects with the polymorphism showed greater error during short-term learning and poorer retention over 4 days, relative to subjects without the polymorphism.”[3]

How common is this gene variant? Almost 30% of American have this gene variant. At the time of the study, there are no commercial test for this gene. So it is hard to say who has it.

Limitation of the Study

It is important to note that the study has only a sample size of 29. And the study involves motor-learning skills in driving a new course in simulator. It does not take into account driving experience and attention to driving in real-world automobiles and roads.
In fact Cramer says “I’d be curious to know the genetics of people who get into car crashes … I wonder if the accident rate is higher for drivers with the variant.”[1]

Reference

[1] University of California Irvine: “Bad Driving may have genetic basis“
[2] CNN: “Blame genetics for bad driving“
[3] Cerebral Cortex: “BDNF Val66Met Polymorphism Influences Motor System Function in the Human Brain“

What is “Job Lock”?

Wikipedia defines “job lock” as “the inability of an employee to freely leave a job because doing so will result in the loss of employee benefits (usually health or retirement related).”

This article is dated May 2011.

Many people do not realize, but the current US health care system is limiting our individual freedom which is one of our core values. Here, we are not talking about the freedom to choose our doctors — although that is a different story. Here we are talking about basic freedom as in what jobs to take, what careers to go into, who to marry or stay married to, and even whether to stay in the United States.

Health policy research professor Karen Pollitz says the following in FrontLine’s 2009 documentary film “Sick Around America“:

“I think people do make heroic changes in their lives — take a job or keep a job that they don’t want, decisions about getting married, decisions about retiring — driven by health insurance.“

Job Lock

Because our health insurance system centers around employer-provided health insurance plans, people will choose jobs based on the insurance benefits they offer. In the FrontLine documentary, we saw how a large company such as Microsoft paid the bill for a complicated pre-term pregnancy that costs somewhere between half a million to a million dollars. And for those who works for Microsoft, they are lucky to have such a health plan provided to them.

However not everyone can be that lucky. What about those who work part time and do not qualify for health insurance? What about those who work for a very small company that does not offer health insurance? And what about those who work are self employed doing freelance work or running their own business? The reality is that even for those who are employed with insurance coverage, they can be laid-off and lose their health insurance at any time. Fortunately there is a Federal COBRA law where the individual can continue their coverage provided that they paid the full premiums themselves. But many can not afford these premiums and 90% do not opt for it. Even if one choose COBRA, that will last only for a limited time.

In any three-year period, one in four American’s will find themselves looking for insurance in the private individual insurance market as they transition between jobs. For all those who have to purchase insurance themselves, things can be tough or impossible as examples in the documentary had shown. That is because insurance companies practices “medical underwriting” — which means that insurance company will look through your entire health history to decide whether you are a good risk on not. If not, they will deny you coverage.

George Halverson says “I could not get insurance. I’ve had heart surgery, and so I am completely uninsurable in the private market. So it’s important that I keep my job.”

Take another example of 23-year-old Matt Johnson who had plans for a career in industrial chemistry. But when he got ulcerative colitis during the last year before college graduation, he had to put his career on hold in order to take a job at a Menards home improvement store simply because it offered the insurance coverage that he needed. He was facing medication costs of about $1000 a month otherwise. By working for a company that offers health benefits, the employee must be covered regardless of health or pre-existing conditions. If he had not taken this job and tried to purchase insurance on his own in the private individual insurance market where insurance company do not have to cover everyone, he would have a hard time finding any insurance company that would cover his pre-existing condition or the premiums would be astronomically high. He is essentially locked into this job.

There are many other cases where a person currently has a job that offers insurance but the person is unable to leave that job. Thomas Murray, President of the Hastings Center, had given the example on Science Friday NPR program where suppose a person has a child with diabetes and the person is currently in a job that offers health insurance that would cover the medical costs. Now if the person wanted to leave the job to start his or her own business, he/she would then lose that insurance coverage and it be impossible to find affordable insurance in the private individual market. Hence, the freedom to follow ones dream and to start one’s own business has been limited.

USNews article says …

“The value of staying with the same employer—and the same health plan—goes beyond cost. Job-lock is most common among people with pre-existing conditions, as they may not be able to get coverage of those conditions in a new plan.” Last year, a survey of finance and accounting workers showed that as much as 78% of them said health care benefits were “most crucial to retaining them“.

A 2008 Kaiser Family Foundation survey showed 23% took a new job or stayed at a job mainly because of better health benefits.

Deciding when to retire depends heavily on whether you will have insurance coverage from another source after retiring early. As noted by Marketwatch, many are delaying retirement in order to retain their current health plans from their employers.

California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in video linked here talks about job lock.  The video also shows a few small business owners talks about their stories and how their decisions have been affected by health care choices.

 

Spouse with Health Insurance

In a similar but parallel situation, suppose that one is married to a spouse that has health insurance coverage (probably through his or her job), then one has to think twice before deciding to divorce that spouse — since that would mean severing that health insurance coverage as well.  Professor Pollitz says “because they just can’t afford to divorce their health insurance.”

Divorce360.com sites a person saying

“I have been dragging my feet on a divorce because my husband has outstanding health insurance, and because I now have what would be considered pre-existing conditions by an insurance company, that would make it difficult if not impossible to get health coverage.“

MSNMoney article describes “nondivorce” as the situation of living together for financial or health-benefit needs instead of getting a divorce.

A 2008 Kaiser Family Foundation survey showed that 7 percent got married for the health-insurance.

Decision to Leave United States

As shown in the Frontline documentary, realtor Jennifer Thompson, having cancer as a pre-existing condition, simply cannot find any insurance company that would cover her. And the insurance company whom she had been accepted and whom she had been paying her premiums to had retroactively rescinded her coverage. It is hard to believe that the United States, one of the richest country in the world, has these kinds of problems. She finally had decided to move to New Zealand, just one of many numerous developed countries that does not have the kind of problems that the United States has.

Why Other Countries Can Do It

Why is it that other developed country can have universal health care, when United States cannot?  They are able to do it because everyone is mandated to have insurance and insurance companies cover everyone, thereby pooling the risk.

The United States have made similar attempts.  Five states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont) require that insurance companies cover everyone and can not deny anyone coverage.  But when individuals only starts buying insurance when they start getting sick, insurance premiums increase to three times higher than in other states that allow medical underwriting.  Some insurance companies stopped doing business in these states that require universal coverage.

So in 2006, Massachusetts mandated that everyone must purchase insurance so that insurance companies can pool the risk by covering both the healthy and the sick.  Even so, the large premiums can still be a problem for many.  The Abramses is a family of four in Massachuesetts with annual income of $63,000.  This is too high to qualify for government subsidies.  And they find it difficult to afford to buy insurance which costs around $12,000 a year.

So it is not a easy problem to solve.  As of the time of this writing in November 2009 the United States government is still busy working on a the health care reform bill.   Its citizens are waiting to see if a bill for health care reform gets past this year.

References

 

Rescued by Facebook and Twitter

You know that social networks have become a dominant part of our society when requests for emergency help are being sent through Facebook and Twitter. In one case, two Australian girls aged 10 and 12 was trapped in a storm drain. They had a mobile phone where updated their Facebook status of their situation. Fortunately one of their “Facebook friend” was online at the time and called for help. If they had a mobile phone why didn’t they called for help themselves?

In another case a man use Twitter to report “Need a paramedic on corner of John Wesley Dobbs and Jackson st. Woman on the ground unconscious. Pls ReTweet.” [see reference] Some of his twitter followers saw his tweet and called emergency help. Why hadn’t he used his phone and make the call instead of tweeting? The man’s reasoning was that his cell phone’s battery was running low and he didn’t want the call dropped while on hold.

Although both cases turned out well, it is not standard nor recommended practice to use social media to request emergency help.  As stated by the firefighter in the first story, “It seems absolutely crazy that they updated their status rather than call us directly.  We could have come to their rescue much faster than relying on someone else being online, then replying to them, then calling us.” [see reference to news article]

It is unclear as to how dangerous the girl situation was. Perhaps they were not in eminent danger.  And it is also unclear whether the girls knew the telephone number for emergency services.   That would have been a phone call to 000 in Australia — the equivalent of 911 emergency call in the United States.  If the girls had a netbook instead of a mobile phone, then perhaps they would not have been able to make the call.  However it does appears that they did have a mobile phone.

Both incidents occurred in 2009 and at the present time of this writing, using social network to request help is not what most people would typically do — at least not yet.  That is why the two stories are still considered newsworthy.

On a lighter note…

In another incident, a person found himself in a public restroom stall without toilet paper.  He tweeted his predicament and got toilet paper in 20 minutes from a twitter user.[ref]

“Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” – book review

In the book “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs“, Judi Barrett wrote about a fictitious town called ChewAndSwallow that rained food. It is quite an inventive story with wonderful illustrations by Ron Barrett.

In the town of ChewAndSwallow, the weather sometimes rained soup and juice.  And had hamburger storms. The weather came three times a day, bringing its citizen their food. There were weather forecasts informing the people of what possible food might come for their next meal. The title of the book “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” is one such forecast.

Therefore, there were no grocery stores in the town; they were not needed. People would eat their fill and whatever is left over is saved for in-between-meal snacks. Although it was quite a chore for the sanitation department to clean up the food on the streets after each meal, things worked out well and everyone was satisfied. Until….

All was good until the weather started to turn sour. One day it rained smelly Gorgonzola cheese all day. The next day brought only overcooked broccoli. And the next day came Brussels sprouts and peanut butter with mayonnaise (yuck!)

Storms became violent with hurricanes of bread and thick pea soup fog. There was a tomato tornado with high salt and pepper winds. Food portions that dropped from the sky became bigger and bigger such that it damaged roofs. In fact, a pancake fell that covered a entire school with a down pours of maple syrup. No school for the kids that day (yeah!).

The citizens finally had to abandon the town by building boats out of bread and sailed to a land on another shore where there were normal weather with normal grocery stores. The end.

The Movie – Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

The book “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” was the inspiration for the 2009 animated movie of the same title by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller. The story line of the movie is different from the book with Bill Hader playing the voice of Flint Lockwood, the protagonist.

What follows may contain movie plot spoilers.

Whereas the book did not explain why the sky rained food, the movie fills in this plot-line by creating the character Flint Lockwood, who is a boy inventor who comes up with weird inventions that does not quite turn out right. One of his invention was spray-on shoes so that you don’t have to tie shoelaces. The problem is that you can not get the shoe off. Another invention is the monkey-thought translator that enables his pet monkey Steve to talk. But it was his latest invention that inadvertently caused the sky to rain food.

Because the town of Swallow Falls is sick of eating sardines all the time, Flint creates a device called the Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator (FLDSMDFR for short) that would turn water into food. Whereas the book has the town as ChewAndSwallow, the movie named the town Swallow Falls and located this tiny island right underneath the “A” in “Atlantic Ocean” on the map.

Before the machine was successfully tested, a mishap caused the machine to be shot up into the sky. And on that day, the sky rained cheeseburgers (which was what Flint had set up the machine to produce as the first test run). So the machine had in fact worked.

Flint now starts taking “orders” and “requests” for particular food from the town’s residents. This includes a request from the policeman Earl. And on Earl’s son birthday, Flint made his machine rain ice-cream (making for a beautiful scene of the town).

Sam, the weather-woman reporter whom Flint likes, never made any food request. So Flint made a request for her by creating a jello-mold castle in which they jumped and played in. It was also in there that Sam confused to Flint that she too was a “nerd” but had learned to cover it up. Flint encouraged her to be her true self and so she started wearing her glasses and tying her hair into a ponytail.

The town’s greedy mayor asked Flint to make it rain food three times a day. The Mayor ate so much that he is morbidly obese and can not walk. He rides in a motorized cart. This is reminiscent of another animated film Wall-E of 2008 where the obese population of the future rides in hover chairs.

The Mayor built a new tourist attraction called “Chew and Swallow” and had sneaked into Flint’s lab to order the sky to rain a Las Vegas style All-You-Can-Eat buffet.

By ordering too much food, the machine goes into the danger “yellow zone” and bad things are started to happen. The sky dropped larger and larger portions of food. A spaghetti tornado destroys half the town. The residents has to evacuate by building boats out of toast. Near the end of the movie we see the Mayor eating his own boat.

Flint tries to shut the machine down. The Mayor tries to stop Flint by throwing a radish at Flint. It missed Flint but broke the communication device to the machine in the sky. Now there is no way to tell the machine in the sky to stop.

Flint feels so bad that he ruined everything that he felt like trash and threw himself into a trashcan along with all his other previous useless inventions. Flint’s father found him there and gave handed him Flint’s white lab coat. Flint pulled himself up and was now determined to save the world by shutting down the machine for good. He built a flying car and the crew consisting of Flint, Sam, Steve the monkey, Sam’s cameraman, and Brent flew up to the machine which was now surrounded by a giant meatball. With some adventures up there, Flint finally manages to shut the machine down by spraying his spray-on-shoe onto the machines output nozzle sealing it forever.

The movie has some good laughs as well as well-developed plot-lines. We see Flint’s romantic relationship with Sam. We see Flint’s strained relationship with his father. And we see Flint’s relationship with himself in terms of his self-esteem.  We also see what happens when one gets too greedy and eats too much.

Wii Video Game

With the release of the movie, videos games with the same name followed — where the player can control Flint. Game available for the Wii, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, and PC.

Don’t Get Twitter? Get the Twitter Book

Twitter Basics

“The Twitter Book” covers the basic mechanics and conventions of Twitter from signing up and setting up a profile. It explains what is meant to “follow” someone. Then it talks about the # hash tag, the use of the @ at-symbol for replies. It explains how to re-tweet using both the “RT” and the “via” conventions. It covers Twitter jargon as to what is a “failed whale” and “tweetup”.

Although all messages in Twitter is public by default, it is possible to send private direct messages to someone. The book explains how as well as how to bookmark your favorite messages.

For those new to Twitter, they may have trouble getting their message to fit within Twitter’s 140-character limit. That where 140it.com and bit.ly comes in handy.

Twitter Searches

Next, the book looks at Twitter searches. search.twitter.com is where the power of Twitter comes into play because you can see what are the hot social topics and what people are talking about at the moment. Other examples are hashtags.org and whatthetrend.com which are two places that can show you what topics are being most talked about on Twitter.

In fact, there is a page in the book that has the question “What’s Twitter good for?” and its answer is “Mind reading”. Quoting from the book: “search service is an amazing mind-reading tool, letting you see not just what individuals are thinking about, but what groups are focusing on, too.”

 

Twitter Tools

Now that you know how to use Twitter, the next part of the book explores the use of third party tools that makes your Tweeting more convenient and efficient.

Because of Twitter’s open Application Programming Interface (API), there are many third-party websites that have developed Twitter related tools and services that harnesses the power of Twitter. The book points a couple of these websites out. For example, TweetDeck.com, Monitter.com, and TweetGrid.com.