Recession-proof jobs Jun 15, 2009
I was talking to a guy a few weeks ago who was attending community college and thinking about getting a degree in "the funeral sciences" and later working in the funeral industry.  His logic:  People are always dying, so he'll always have a job.  As much as the idea of touching corpses gives me the heebee jeebees, I couldn't argue with his rationale.  There are really only a handful of truly recession-proof jobs, and using this guy's logic, I would add:  People are always having babies, people are always eating food, and people are always getting sick.  Jobs that have to do with death, birth, food, and health are probably a safe bet regardless of economic conditions. #business
Recent money news Jun 15, 2009
Some recent money-related news and thoughts (ok, some of them aren't recent per se, but they're recent for me): 
  • Six Flags declared bankruptcy over the weekend.  Declaring bankruptcy doesn't mean going out of business.  It means getting rid of debt and reorganizing in order to become a financially successful company again.
  • Back in March, it was announced that pharmaceutical companies Merck and Schering-Plough are merging, and they'll be keeping the Merck name and ditching S-P.  I used to work for Schering.  Good money, boring paperwork.
  • As of right now, Twitter doesn't have a business model.  Even though everyone talks about them and they get tons of traffic, they don't actually make any money aside from the venture capital money they raised from investors.  If anything, like pretty much every technology company, all they do is spend money on things like engineers and web servers, while they try to figure out how to actually earn some income.
That is all.  Carry on. #money
Tiger and Hootie Jun 15, 2009
Hootie and the Blowfish played the music for Tiger Woods' 2004 wedding.  How appropriate.  The whitest black man on earth, serenaded by the second whitest black man on earth.  No offense, of course.  Just an observation.  (via twitter/mental_floss) #sociology