While surfing some of my favorite blogs the other day, I saw an ad whose tag line was, "Life's short. Have an affair." Both curious and a little disgusted, I clicked through. On the other side, I became fully disgusted. The site is called AshleyMadison.com, and it exists to help people commit adultery.

To a victim of adultery, this is sort of like what a rape victim might feel like if they saw a banner that said,

"Life's short. Rape somebody."

The LA Times reports that the "contractors" (i.e., mercenaries) paid multi-billions of dollars to fight the war in Afghanistan so that the military can keep its casualty figures down (deaths of "contractors" are not reported), are apparently such a bunch of pussies that, rather than fight the Taliban, they pay them millions of dollars a week to keep the supply lines clear.

It's gonna be a whole new kind of revolution, though.

This is the worst economy in our nation's history. It makes the Great Depression look like a walk in the park.

Here are a few numbers to back up this claim:

• 50 million people don't have enough to eat. 17 million of these hungry people are children.

Could we be headed for war?

I don't think so because the Chinese won't allow it, and even the North Koreans aren't that crazy, but you never know.

This is one subject on which I am qualified to write as an expert. I spent two years in South Korea earning an MA in International Cooperation. My thesis dealt extensively with North Korean bargaining behavior. I posited that they beat their chests every once in a while primarily because they needed energy, either in the form of food, fossil fuels, or electricity. If we gave them energy, we could avoid war. If we gave them energy in a strategic way, we could even win them over eventually.

Solution: None

Face it, the planet is terminally ill, and it's our fault.

Far be it from me to pretend to be some fancy-pants scientist, engineer, or political mover and shaker, but... well, that's not necessarily a point in my disfavor. None of those three groups of people has a very good track record on the whole.

Take science, for example. Scientific discovery is all well and good. We live in a world that worships at the altar of science. To say that you don't like science is blasphemy of the highest order. It makes you look like a hick or -- worse yet -- some sort of ooga booga indigenous person running around in the jungle naked. Much as we perpetuate the "noble savage" myth, by and large we "advanced" and "civilized" people look down our noses at them. What kind of life is a life without gizmos and megaburgers, after all! Hah! We have asphalt and lawns. What do they have, besides bones stuck in their noses? Some stupid jungle. Big whoop.

I am so pissed off at our president right now that I probably shouldn't write anything for public consumption...

... but that never stopped me before.

Basically, there are two ways to be cool, one difficult, the other easy.

The easy way to be cool...

So you wanna make money, huh?

If you watched Lesson One: "Give the People What they Want," you know that you have to figure out how you can serve others before you can even think about starting a business. Once you have answered the question, "How can I help people?" you have taken the first step toward success.

You will want to watch until the very end if you wish to harvest a bounty. To make a dollar, you must give someone something that they value more highly than a dollar, something they want.

Every part of this educational series on business will be embedded on this site so get the feed. You don't want to miss this.

When the Shoe Bomber did his thing, it led to the ridiculous situation of everyone having to take off their shoes before boarding a plane. Now that there is an underwear bomber, are we all going to have to take off our underwear? (Actually, that could be kind of interesting -- lots of new members of the "Five Mile High Club" due to the added convenience...)