Tony Brewer View

I want to learn so many things, and I have had the wonderful opportunity to learn so much already. Some of the costs of learning are financial – the cost of books and tuition fees, which apparently are rising somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 percent or so this year in my neck of the woods. There are also the costs of time, and time is a factor that really costs me these days.

There are the hours in classes and seminars, and travel time that comes to mind. With the price of gas and me free time almost non existent these costs are getting out of hand. Add to that the rising cost of tuition and the fact that more and more books and other materials are certainly going to need to be purchased, and I realize that my utopian dream of free education for the masses is getting further away, even as some technology and institutions are offering free learning via video seminars. The free open courseware from MIT, Stanford and the like is a giant leap towards the education that I have dreamed about for so long.

Costs are kept down, as there is no need to travel , saving that valuable time and money spent on fuel and travel, and the education is from top notch professors. The big question in my mind is how we are going to get the books to be as good and cheaper or free. There is much debate about this in some circles and not enough debate in the bigger circles as far as I am concerned. I would love to see students have access to free text books with the best knowledge. Of course there are writers who want to get paid, and less importantly, but more vocally the publishing houses will try to subvert this. I’m sure there will be (or maybe already has been) PR from them about the quality of books going down with this, but the opposite may be true if you look at what wikipedia can become.

More on this later.

I was reading an article on the Time.com website about how a lot of companies are participating in what is termed “Greenwashing.”  I had never heard of the term “Greenwashing” before, so I was curious and read the article.  It seems that “Greenwashing” is the term used to describe the action of promoting a product or service claiming that it is better for the environment than it really is.  The article included links to other articles that showed instances and examples of greenwashing by real companies.  I found the article to be informative, and have bookmarked the links for future reference.  It is disappointing to see how many companies are so shameless in their false promotions!

For years I have satisfied my dreams of investing in my own education. A wise person once said that an education is one investment that can not be taken from you. A majority of my education the past few years has been from books, online materials and seminars. You don’t get college credits by reading books, but the knowledge gained can be more powerful than some of the courses you do get credit for.

The biggest cost for me is time, the time spent learning could be spent working and earning money, it could also be spent with the family, or relaxing, all valuable things to do in life, so the vast amount of time I spend at conferences and seminars costs much more than the admission fee. The time I spend reading forums and online manuals could be spent doing other things to earn money.

With so much out there that I want to learn, and with so many opportunities to earn, it’s tough to decide sometimes where to invest the time.

Of course education is my favorite investment with time or money.

I have heard a lot of pros and cons about labor unions.  I understand and agree that there are some labor unions that are corrupt and need to be “cleaned up” but for the most part I think that the concept of a labor union, to benefit the workers of a large company are a good idea.  I know a lot of people who work for large companies that are NOT unionized, and I listen to their grievances and I have to think that if they had a labor union these problems would not exist!

Do you remember ever seeing a sign that says “Wet Paint” and touching it, to see if it really IS wet? I did, once, as a kid, and in my case I guess I was lucky because the paint had dried by the time I had touched it! But I might not have been so lucky if I had happened by a few hours earlier!

Isn’t it curious how inquisitive we, as a species, tend to be! Always trying to find out as much as we can about any subject that interests us. I know that when I start to get interested in a subject I spend many hours reading books, magazines, newspapers, and browsing the Internet for as much information as I can possibly get on the subject. Sometimes I would get frustrated trying to find the information that I was trying to find. Well, all of that just might be in the past, thanks to a website called wetpaint.com.

The wetpaint.com website allows users to create Wikis to share information about a common interest. Do you know what a wiki is? I didn’t know what Wikis are so I looked it up. To paraphrase Wikipedia, (where else would YOU go to get a definition of a wiki?) a wiki is a collection of web pages or one web page that is designed to be modified by or contributed to by the users.

So if you want to see (or share) Wiki Information about a topic that interests YOU, try out the wetpaint.com website! Chances are pretty good you’ll find some good information there, or can start your OWN page!