Deviations From the Mean

Fear is a powerful emotion that is easily exploited by politicians.

German Nazi Party member Joseph Goebbels, who became Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister in 1933, giving him power over all German radio, press, and cinema output, knew very well how to create fear leading to compliance among a large population.

Goebbels stated, and I slightly paraphrase, “it is easy to shape the opinions of the masses. All a leader must do is to create an enemy, tell the people that they are in danger of being attacked, and state that you are the one who will protect them. The public will willingly give up their freedoms for what they perceive as safety.”

The New Culture of Fear

Fear - “Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.” - Bertrand Russell

Fear - “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”-H.P. Lovecraft

Fear - “Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.” - Dorothy Thompson

Deviation From the Mean, Part Three

The focus of this blog is to examine, ideas, events, and personal development issues that are outside of our normal everyday experience. Or at least that should be outside of our daily experience given a logical rational world. Thus the title of the blog, Deviation From the Mean. I am most interested in events and ideas that are extraordinary deviations from normal and how they develop, not everyday happenings.

Am I dreaming? A bad dream at that.

Over the past few days military planners at the Pentagon, top ranking military brass, and senior administration officials have been discussing the implementation of late stage Vietnam policies as a possible solution to the disaster in Iraq.

Excuse me, but didn’t we lose the Vietnam War? Of course, officially we declared victory and withdrew but most historians, except for those employed by the government, would question the validity of the declaration of victory.

No doubt it is exciting to see money coming in from your internet business. That is, as long as the income is greater than your expenses. With PPC advertising campaigns becoming in many cases quite expensive, as the cost of keywords are bid up, using low cost viral marketing techniques is an excellent way to efficiently market products. That is if you know how and have a quality product to promote.

You may ask what is viral marketing anyhow? And why can it be so effective when the right product is promoted?

Once again it is that time of year. The Christmas, Hanukkah, and year end holidays are rapidity approaching and it’s time for Seasons greetings and to make merry.

Unfortunately, for many adults the time for “making merry” brings on symptoms of depression which can ruin the holidays or even worst. In a few conditions become so severe that suicide seems to be the only way out. This degree of severe depression is roughly fours times as common in males as females.

Never in the history of the Internet, or the world for that matter, has there been a population with such rapid growth as Myspace. From one lonely inhabitant when it went online in July 1996 , good old Tom (an extremely wealthy Tom now), to over 131,000,000 as I write, Myspace has attracted members like no other site. Currently something like 220,000 new members join Myspace every day so growth is still accelerating.

Except for Youtube and its ability to serve the new Internet video craze Myspace stands alone in the ability to attract and to hold the interest of what is generally a very fickle crowd, the youth market of folks between 15 and 35.

What is the #1 question I am asked by people who want
to make money online?

What is the single word that is most desired by people
who have web sites?

What is the one thing that you absolutely MUST have in
order to have success with your web site?

Three questions…

One answer…

And that answer is

* Traffic *

You can have the best looking site on the web…

… but without traffic it doesn’t mean squat.

You can have the best content in your niche…

Having good intentions may or may not be a good thing. Often good intentions remain only that; most good intentions are not followed up with action and therefore are of no real value. That seems to be the fate of countless good intentions in this world. Sometimes that works out for the best.

Good intentions that are followed by action may lead to positive outcomes or may be implemented with absolutely disastrous results. There is nothing automatically favorable about good intentions. The best of intentions often lead to the worst results. It really depends on what is intended and the appropriateness of the intention in the first place.

You may wonder why I occasionally write product reviews in a blog that is focused on exploring self improvement and personal development.

The short answer is that for most foks the development of additional income streams from Internet business is quite empowering and is a great way to increase self esteem, thereby enhancing personal development. Nuff said?

It is a super feeling to see money coming in from your internet business. That is, as long as the income is greater than your expenses. Using low cost or almost no cost viral marketing techniques are an excellent way to make that happen.

According to Wikipedia the way those involved in probability analysis and statistical analysis, like scientists and actuaries, for example, explain the mean and standard deviations from the mean is as follows:

“At least 75% of the values in any population are at most two standard deviations away from the mean (see Chebyshev’s inequality). The actual percentage depends on the distribution, for example approximately 95% if the population has a normal distribution.

A large standard deviation indicates that the data points are far from the mean and a small standard deviation indicates that they are clustered closely around the mean.

While the focus of this website is on self improvement and in exploring the at times chaotic nature of human existence, occasionally I get slightly off track and review a new product. The product has to offer a clear advantage to its users or I won’t review it. The rational is that anything that makes our lives easier and can provide some extra income is an aid to our self improvement program.

Making more money almost always gives us a boost, even if without other more important factors in our lives the boost may be only temporary.