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Ok, so the election has passed and I can now get back to regular blogging, right? Actually, the election’s been over for a while and I’ve just needed a break from real blogging (as if I’ve ever actually done any of that before). At any rate, it’s (about darn) time for another episode of Le Linkage! Today’s episode features all sorts of stuff, random bits I’ve been saving for the past few weeks. Like all Le Linkage episodes, I recommend you bookmark this then visit it whenever you’re bored or (hopefully) when you need something useful.

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A person makes the average of what the 4 or 5 people (s)he spends time with the most make. (In other words, an easy way to increase your income is to spend more time and become friends with people who make more money than the people you hang out with now.)

I read that declaration in a book recently and wasn’t sure whether to believe it at first, so a few nights ago, The Wife and I decided to put it to the test at the local Ale House.

I started by writing the names and approximate incomes of the five people closest to me. (They may have been my best friends or simply people who I spent the most time with and trusted.) I added all of the incomes, divided by 5 and the number I got was pretty close to my current income (including non-monetary compensation, such as health care). I then removed the one I spent time with the least from that list, added all the other incomes, and divided by 5. This time I got almost the exact amount I made per year, not including non-monetary compensation. (I’ll explain why I divided by five and not four later in this article.)

To verify, the Wife did the same thing. The results were right on the mark. Looks like the author was right.

Finally, just to make sure we weren’t fooling ourselves, we asked the waiter if he wouldn’t mind being a bit of a guinea pig for us. Again, we asked him for his five closest friends who he also spent the most time with and their incomes. This guy’s friends made a rather large amount of money per year. I was surprised. I also became skeptical about whether the rule held true in this case. Nevertheless, we got all the names and incomes, we added them up, divided by 4 and 5 (we ran both sets of numbers) and — lo and behold — the formula was right! (I was surprised to find out that this Ale House waiter was pulling in around $60k/yr. I then found out he had another job, as a waiter in another restaurant, and was working around 12 - 16 hours a day between the two.)

So, if you want to try it out yourself (or want to find out about how much a person makes without their knowledge) here’s what you do:

1) Get the names of the five people they spend the most time with whom they also consider friends.

2) Get the incomes for each.

3) Divide by five. The total is around the top range of how much they’ll make.

4) Remove from the list the name and income of the person within that list with which they spend the least amount of time. (Do this especially if they spend time watching a lot of TV, or they spend a lot of time reading trashy publications. In these cases, I’ve discovered, the TV basically becomes a fifth friend who doesn’t make any money. My sin here is spending way too much time online in non-productive activites like Fark and StumbleUpon.)

5) Add up the incomes for all remaining friends and divide by four (or by 5 if they watch a lot of TV, spend too much time online, or read a lot of trashy publications). This number will be at the bottom range of how much they probably make. (For those who watch a lot of TV, I’ve found that this number is almost closer to the truth than the first.)

Go on and try it out for yourself. If this holds true for you (and it’s best to do this with someone you trust, especially if they know your finances, so as to keep yourself honest) drop a line and tell me so. If it doesn’t, drop me a line and tell me by how much it was off (don’t leave your name, though, since this is probably pretty personal info).

Lesson: A good way to make more money is to get friends who make more money, and to watch less TV (and spend less wasteful time online). This doesn’t mean you leave your old friends (unless it’s the television), but it does mean you make it an effort to spend more time with people who are in a better financial position than you.

From Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks:

Criticism.

The easiest thing in the world to avoid is criticism. All you have to do is nothing. Do nothing of your own free will. Do only what is asked of you and nothing more. Chances are you will never be criticized.

For those of us who set goals and want to have an impact (in the business world in particular), criticism is part of the job description. You have to be able to be able to take it…

Ain’t that the truth.

For the first time in what seems like forever, this morning I was finally able to go through and read all my RSS feeds. It seems like today was one of those days when weird news just seemed to come out of nowhere, which means it’s time for another episode of Le Linkage! This one I’ll call the “Just Plain Weird” edition because a good number of the articles here are just plain weird. There are some, however, that make for spectacular reading, and one that will make every anime-lover reading this blog wet his/her pants in joy.

ScienceBlog.com — Drunks Don’t See the Monkey: “It’s pretty difficult to overlook the proverbial 800-pound gorilla, or even an average-size person dressed in a gorilla suit. But a new study indicates that people who were given a simple visual task while mildly intoxicated were twice as likely to have missed seeing the person in a gorilla suit than were people who were not under the influence of alcohol.” Lesson: never try to spot a man in a gorilla suit while tipsy. Because if you can’t spot the gorilla, what good are you?

Engadget — Korea to test 1,000 remote-controlled domestic robots: “The Ministry of Information and Communication … will begin placing 1,000 wheeled, cell-phone controlled automatons — dubbed URCs, or ubiquitous robotic companions — into households and kindergartens this fall as a trial run for new robot technologies. The URCs will do the usual handling of domestic tasks as we might expect (and some … like cleaning rooms and reading books to children), as well the usual hanging out, taking care of pets, [and more] … The only thing at all disconcerting about any of this is the fact that unlike normal household droids, these URCs will be operated wirelessly from a central computing center ala I, Robot.” Having just watched that movie agan, the thought of a remote controled robot companion isn’t one I’m at all too comfortable with.

Akihabara News — The Wonderbra powered USB keyboard: Ok, uhm… hmm. How do I… err… geez, oh man… heh… I mean… Hmm. So, like, anyways, I uhmm… hmm… How do I put this? Uhm… What?

USB powered keyboard bra with USB powered camera tail that can be switched out with other USB powered items, such a lights and memory sticks. You have to see this for yourself [Angelkitty.jp]. I guess what I’m wondering is where exactly that thing is supposed to be plugged.

KurzweilAI — Frozen Brains Awaiting Resurrection Day in Storage: (From St. Petersburg, Russia) “Kriorus, the world’s first cryonics company outside the United States, located in Alabushevo village in Russia, has two brains in cryonics storage so far. The price: $9,000.” Just what we need, Russian discount cryonics. “You want better brain? Lie down. We do operation, take out brain now. Give you new brain next week. We freeze brain now so if you want back later, you have. ”

My Heart’s in Accra — Book review: “Globalization and its Enemies”: “This is the basic question development economists try to answer. It’s a question with profound practical implications - if we could suggest strategies that consistently helped nations grow wealth, we could address a huge range of problems in education, public health and state stability. It’s also a question that both development economists and political commentators are surprisingly bad at answering.” A very thorough book review and critique by Ethan Zuckerman. Good reading for anyone involved in economics or business.

The New Yorker — How can someone live with only half a brain?: This week’s New Yorker features a particularly interesting article about the hemispherectomy operation. In this procedure, an entire side of the brain is removed as a treatment because of cancer or chronic seizures. The incredible thing is that if the hemispherectomy is done when a patient is very young, the remaining hemisphere does double duty and the child often develops normally. (This one also came by way of My Heart’s in Accra.)

Index of 1,000 Full Length Anime On YouTube: (via Digg) “There are no ads or garbage clips to weed through, just 1000 anime episodes and movies. This index includes The Animatrix, Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, Samurai Champloo, Serial Experiments Lain, Ultimate Avengers, and more.” Not weird and not news, but I’ll be damned if I don’t put this link up.

Ok, back from the trip to Orlando and one of the absolute greatest, most education-filled and growth inspiring weekends in this lifetime. (Tips hat to Junior. “Reset button.”) Although I said I wasn’t going to blog it (and, as you can plainly see, I didn’t), I do want to write down a few of the lessons I learned and thoughts I had while there.

Note that these notes were written as the speakers were giving their spiel, and although I recorded the whole thing, I haven’t yet re-listened to it, so these are in essence first impressions. (I almost always take my iRiver H320 with me to any event where lots of valuable info might be given: seminars, sermons, classes, technical or marketing meetings at the job, etc.)

Finally, I’ll only be writing things which I find to be applicable to a wide-array of situations, instead of a particular field or profession. Industry-specific information will not be included, as the segment of population it helps is best served by gathering that type of information in places OTHER than blogs, no matter how super cool and marvelous they might be.

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