I've owned fifthestate.net since 1999. The concept of "fifth estate" goes back to the French Revolution and the "Three Estates". The Print press or media were considered the "Fourth Estate". The Fifth Estate was considered the electronic media but also the early alternative media. The electronic media has, to a large extent become the mainstream media so the new "Fifth Estate" is the internet. Here is my old fifthestae.net page that explains this. http://ocrscans.homestead.com/ fi...fifthesate.htmlAs for my new fifthestate.net it's basically a depository for my "musings" such as this.

I caught some on the moderated trashing of "Hillbilly Clinton". members.

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The point is that most people who were on the panel are "Kennedy groupies" (in a non-sexual way) It's interesting that the Kennedy family endorsement seemed to coincide with this. I don't think the Kennedy endorsement will have a significant effect on the primary voters. Instead it may provide a structure from the high end of the MSM for ending their slavish support of the Clintons, which now manifests itself with the HillBilly Clinton co-presidency campaign. The top end MSM people want to change society, leave a legacy. A woman president might be one but instead they get the "Hillbilly Clinton" co-presidency concept. Barack Obama is very impressive in a lot of areas like public speaking. By contrast we see that the "Hill" side of the potential co-presidency was touted as "the world's smartest woman" but her speeches are loaded with "umm!, err! ahh!".
Also posted at my http://fifthestate.net/

Lady Logician wrote: "Greg - the other thing you can do is train dogs (herding dogs work best at this) to clear golf courses of geese. It is seasonal work but border collies love this kind of work because it involves walking around with their people and chasing birds. Life is good!"
I saw a report on this a few years back on KSTP-TV "On the Road". Not a bad idea but it seems a post retirement form of work. Nothing wrong with that and it could be "fun" zipping around golf courses with a herding dog.
To make the "big" money on something it has to be something hard to duplicate or you have to be one of the first. Eventually golf courses will figure out that a lot of retiree types can an will do this. A good potential supplemental income but to make a full living at it you would need to be the equivalent of a "trick shot" that gave demos and training to golf courses. If I was to do this I would first set up a website with a lot of information on "goose herding" (for lack of a better term). I just checked and "Goosehound.com" is taken, apparently the name of a band. My "show" would consist of going to different areas and having training seminars first for local "goose herders" bringing in a few very adept dogs. Have "exhibitions open to golf club members and ones to the public. Out in the ex-urbs a lot of people take those huge lawns very seriously so seminars on how to "herd geese" could be very popular. (try this at home with Fido").
It could be fun and potentially financially rewarding for a retired couple who likes to travel around in motor home. I say this because it would basically be a two person operation. (Note, this is an example of what I referred to before as "bare bones" proposal writing.)
Not for me, I am basically a "homebody". I could basically be an expert or authority on this. As a potential home based business. No one actually invented "goose herding". I grew up on a lake and as a kid we would often have flocks of ducks in the backyard. This was in the 1960's, which was "pree-geese" but we would have great fun "siccing" the dogs on the ducks in the yard. The KSTP story showed someone making some money off of it but as far as i can tell no one has done a business model. On a lark I checked and http://gooseherder.com was available so I just did a $7 "hedge" and registered it for a year. There is a potential business model to be developed here and I could do it almost exclusively from home. On the speculative angle if I did the basic model and the term "goose Herder" take off (being first counts a lot in these things). I could always sell the domain name and the "franchise". (water cooler test: bounce "Goose herder of people, they probably won't get it because a "herder is a protector" then mention the concept of "herding away" geese. See if they "get" that.
I may wake up tomorrow morning and think that registering gooseherder.com was my dumbest idea ever. If so I'm out $7. In my domian "business" I have over 100 domains (ever wonder who owns "cellphonewoman.com","telephonewoman.com", "cellphonegirl.com", "telephonegirl.com" and "hottoddy.com"? One guess!) I register and sell but at the present time I figure this business is $500 in the red each year. I'd prefer a profit but my long term plan is to make up "business models" for each of the domains (It would help if I didn't post here so much) Take "cellphonewoman.com" It could be a plan for marketing a certain cellphone to women. In advertising you have to "distinguish" your product.
Anyway, to use gooseherder.com as a potential first off, look to see if the field is already "well plowed". These are like the "hot stocks" that are usually "cold" by the time news gets public. In the case of "gooseherder.com" I first did a bit of internet research and found that there was no great "body of knowledge" out there. The other night on CNBC I saw a profile of the guy behind this Autumn "corn mazes" It's an variation of the 19th Century British "shrub maze" He grew one with corn and it became popular where people would pay to walk through it like "rat maze". He is now a millionaire from this. You could build one of your own if you wanted to but he offers consulting and promotion for a few percent of ticket revenue. He took an idea that was out there and developed it. A big part is having the right Internet presence and the right promotion. Corn mazes are "fun" Halloween stories. The point is that this guy took an idea out there and made the right Internet era business model.
As for the multi-level marketing BS it is inherently inefficient. Maybe a decade ago I was reading Consumer Reports and where they tested "hand" dishwashing detergents. The "bargain stuff" was "weak" but major brands did fine. Major brands tended to cost around $2.50 per quart. The Amway band matched the major brands but it was $6 per quart. That's the "nub". Most of the multi-level products are very costly compared to what you can get at a "big box" store or online now.
Multi-level isn't always bad. Some people swear by Tupperware but it's pricey. I cherish Tupperware when I can find it at garage or estate sales but I don't buy it new. To pricey. My former next door neighbor used to do day care and Avon. A lot of "working woman" like to "put on their face" , as they state it, and they like makeup consistency. Avon does that well.
It goes downhill quickly after that. Let's just say "Mary Kay".
Anyway, a lot of opportunities out there. You just have to take the initiative and seek "unplowed ground" to "plow".

Hmm! 2005 and the guys in the shop said it's time to get rid of it? I bought a new 2005 Ford Ranger 4x2 2.4 liter 5 speed stick. Zero defect, zero repairs. The only problem is that a couple of times a year the radio loses it's memory. It takes me five or ten minutes to reprogram. No big deal. It cost $12K drive away with AC and a bed liner. It gets a solid 20MPG summer and winter and a solid 22MPG fall and spring (when you aren't dealing with cold or AC). I lack Tracy's "conspicuous consumption" wealth so the good mileage is helpful. My gasoline cost is low but I like to drive without thinking about the fuel costs too much.
The first thing to consider is that if you plan to keep a new vehicle is to figure that at over five year ownership the cost of unleaded regular will average at least $4 per gallon. If high when you go to trade it will affect resale negatively and good gas mileage doesn't seem to harm resale even when gas is cheap because the used vehicle buyer. Used car buyers tend to have less money and nowadays you can buy a calculator at a dollar store. Used car buyers have always liked "gas sippers". over "gas guzzlers". Again, figure $4 per gallon gas.
There is a huge glut of new "gas guzzler" vehicles out there compared to demand. When car sale people see a "conspicuous consumption" person like Traci walk in I can imagine them thinking "Thanksgiving is coming early this year." When everyone is struggling with high fuel prices potential clients will see "gas guzzlers" as waste, not affluence.
As for the Japanese Vehicles during last winters bad cold snap I noticed that most of the vehicles with mechanical problems were "rice burners" five years or older. Japanese has a temperate climate and they export most cars after three years. mostly to warmer or coastal climates so I wonder if their engineers really understand the cold.

It's a bad Omen when you start a blog and and can't source the material that you are commening on but here goes: A few days back I read a comment in favor of extensions of unemployment benifits. The logic was that if people realise that thier unemployment benifits are about to end their "consumer confidence" may drop and they will reduce their spending.

To that I say "Like duhh!!!". When I was younger I people around me would lose their jobs from time to time. Some would decide this was a good time to take that vacation. If they got in a jam later and wanted to "borrow" some money my sympathy level was greatly reduced.

Losing a job is a lot like the electricity going out. It usually come back on soon but you assume the worst and strategize carefully before opening the refrigerator or freezer doors. I have since gotten a backup generator (actually two). I have never had to actually use them in a home power outage but they are a lot like "money in the bank". A crude analogy but when you are unemplyed you should immediately try to reduce spending as much as possible.

Welcome to FifthEstate.net first post.

In the French Revolution there were the three estates. I recall they were the religion, nobility and the third was everyone else. The "Forth Estate" came to refer to the "Press", which we would now refer to as the "media" or "mainstream media" or "mass media".

There is no official definition of the "Fifth Estate" but it generally is thought to to refer the modern version of "pamphlateering" (sp). This is not new. Soon after the Gutenberg Press, during down time, "seditious" sheets were printed. In the early American Revolution the key factor was ownership of a press.

Technology and economies of scale tended to favor the larger, more centralised news organisations. That said, "Nature hates a vacuum". This gave way to the "rags' and the "Counterculture" alternative publications. I used to own the domain name "fifthestate.org". I gave it to the oldest anarchist newspaper "The Fifth Estate".

That was "dead tree". Probably the first major "fifth estate" use of the Internet. probably the oldest use of the Internet in a high profile situation was "The vast right wing conspiracy" cited by Hillary Clinton after President Clinton's "issues" with Monica Lewinski and the dress"stain".

What actually happened was that the Clinton administrations discovered that all of the assorted conservative "rags" were also posting their material on Internet newsgroup so they had a permanence and worldwide distribution. The Clinton administration envisioned the British" "Yellow' press plucking stories off the Internet writing stories that legitimised them to the American mass media.

The conservatives using the newsgroups saw it as a "distribution channel". The stories in the "rags" would not "die on the vine" as happens a lot with what might be called "small press".

I wasn't part of this but I believe that I understand the basics of it. I do own "fifthestate.net", which could arguably could arguably be the
logical domain of the electronic "revolution". Perhaps my spiels would be better named http://mytwocentsworth.com/ but that is taken.