A common saying is that "money is the root of evil." My people-experience has proven otherwise. Money can't cripple confidence, can't snuff creativity, and can't kill love near as efficiently or quickly as reticence can. If such a money v. reticence race were run, I would place every spare nickel on that "dark horse" and be confident of winning. What's not said destroys more people than money does, I've found.
What's so funny about it, Vasiliki?
Quote from: Luzhi on December 17, 2008, 10:05:22 PMHmm, the motive of the famous Greek sirtaki - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpMW1Z1FiTo&feature=relatedNot really - Sirtaki appears as the first on the left - the actual video URL posted is just some Ourania and Spiro * & ^ %! I really hate it when people try to be smart asses!
Hmm, the motive of the famous Greek sirtaki - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpMW1Z1FiTo&feature=related
People accumulate wealth because they Work, Save, Invest, Plan. Or They respect those who Work, Save, Invest, Plan. People who don't want to Work, Save, Invest, Plan must find other ways to obtain wealth. Lazy People Steal, Lie, Accuse, Sue, Marry for Money. These Lazy People don't want to earn wealth. These Lazy People prefer to take it from people like you. Through the US legal system. The US legal system is their leverage because it's based on conflict. This conflict costs money. Your money. There are many people with a lottery mentality who prefer to use the legal system as a shortcut to manipulate, threaten, intimidate, accuse others. These people are enabled by attorneys who are primarily interested in personal gain. They instigate conflict in Families, Business, Relationships to generate greater legal fees for themselves.
Want to keep your options open? Don't train to be a lawyer. BY CAMERON STRACHER Friday, June 23, 2006They're dropping like flies. Count 'em. Despite the swelling ranks of the new recruits, the steady growth in large corporate firms, and the length, breadth and expense of lawsuits, the legal profession is actually losing lawyers every day, a silent drain of talent to banking, business and premature retirement. Every year, I face a new class of eager law students, ready to take on the world, but after a couple of years of practice, many have lost their youthful glow. Perhaps it's time to rethink the whole "law school as default" mentality that infects so many otherwise sane young minds.On the surface, the legal profession appears to be booming. Although growth has slowed since the 1960s and '70s, each year 40,000 new lawyers join a field that now totals one million, about the same size as the nation's state prison population. Salaries have climbed steadily, and lawyers at the top firms can expect to make about $160,000 upon graduation from law school. But look beneath the statistics and a few facts jump out. First, large law firms, those employing more than 500 lawyers, lose nearly 40% of their associates within four years of hiring them. After six years, the ratio climbs to 60%. Some might suggest that the fault here lies with the firms' policies regarding advancement. A number of recent articles have bemoaned the lack of female partners (only 17% of the partners at major law firms are women, while women compose nearly half of all law-school graduates). The number of males who don't stick around long enough to make partner, however, is only a few percentage points lower. Thus, while it may not be easy to be a woman in law, the guys aren't doing much better. In fact, it could be argued that women are leaving in slightly higher numbers because they can while many men, trapped by their gender-typed "provider" roles, have fewer options. The attrition numbers are even worse in other parts of the profession. According to a recent study by the National Association for Law Placement Foundation, 42% of lawyers in small firms (and 50% in solo practices) have changed jobs within three years of graduation, and two-thirds of them have switched two or more times. One way to interpret the numbers is to conclude that such lawyers have plentiful opportunities and are moving to better jobs. The same group, however, tends to have less stellar credentials and to have graduated lower in their class than their colleagues at big firms, leaving them fewer options, and suggesting that these attorneys are even more dissatisfied than their big-firm contemporaries.What happens to the recently departed? While many go to other law firms, or into other legal jobs, such as in-house counsel at corporations, anecdotal evidence shows that a significant percentage drop out of the legal profession entirely. This doesn't surprise me: Among my own law school classmates, for example, only one of my friends is still practicing at the firm he joined upon graduation. The rest have moved on or dropped out of the profession. My two closest female friends are both stay-at-home moms, forsaking lucrative practices to raise their children. Another friend has gone on to become an actor. Another writes for television. Several are novelists. While there have always been lawyers who choose not to practice, "The buzz now is lawyers getting three years of experience at a big firm, then going off and doing something entirely unrelated to the law," says Allan Whitescarver, director of communications at the commercial firm, Clifford Chance. He mentions one lawyer who opened a bookstore in France and another who works for the World Health Organization in a nonlegal role. They may be among the lucky ones. The legal profession is really two professions: the elite lawyers and everyone else. Most of the former start out at big law firms. Many of the latter never find gainful legal employment. Instead, they work at jobs that might be characterized as "quasi-legal": paralegals, clerks, administrators, doing work for which they probably never needed a J.D.Although hard data about the nature of these jobs are difficult to come by (and rely on self-reporting, which is inherently unreliable), the mean salary for graduates of top 10 law schools is $135,000 while it is $60,000 for "tier three" schools. It's certainly possible that tier-three graduates tend to gravitate toward lower-paying public-interest and government jobs, but this lower salary may also reflect the nonlegal nature of many of these jobs and the fact that these graduates are settling for anything that will pay the bills. At $38,000 a year for law school, plus living expenses, law-school graduates certainly have a lot of debt ($60,000 on average, upon graduation). For this price, college students and their parents should be thinking harder about their choices. When I went to law school, nearly everyone tried to convince me that doing so would "keep my options open." All this really means is: "You can still be a lawyer."If I wanted to be a screenwriter, waiting tables would have kept my options open, too. In fact, many wannabe screenwriters find themselves going to law school, misled by adults into thinking that it will help them get into the movie business. It won't. Sure, you can be a talent agent or a movie producer with a law degree, but you can be one without a degree, too. Most of the skills you learn in law school (and legal practice) won't help you make a movie, and the few that will may not be worth the cost (more than $120,000, including tuition, living expenses, as well as three years of forgone experience and salary). Rather than keeping options open, the crushing debt of law school often slams doors shut, pushing law students to find the highest-paying job they can and forever deferring dreams of anything else.It's time those of us inside the profession did a better job of telling others outside the profession that most of us don't earn $160,000 a year, that we can't afford expensive suits, flashy cars, sexy apartments. We don't lunch with rock stars or produce movies. Every year I'm surprised by the number of my students who think a J.D. degree is a ticket to fame, fortune and the envy of one's peers -- a sure ticket to the upper middle class. Even for the select few for whom it is, not many last long enough at their law firms to really enjoy it. There's something wrong with a system that makes a whole lot of people pay a whole lot of money for jobs that are not worth it, or that have no future. If we wanted to be honest, we would inform students that law school doesn't keep their options open. Instead, we should say that if they work hard and do well, they can become lawyers._____________________________ _____________________________ ____________________________Mr. Stracher is publisher of the New York Law School Law Review and the author of "Double Billing: A Young Lawyer's Tale of Greed, Sex, Lies and the Pursuit of a Swivel Chair."
"The Visit of the Old Lady" is a 1956 tragicomedy by the Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The location of the drama is Gúllen, a once flourishing small town that lost its ancient bloom when its industrial plants closed down and business took a plunge. The forgotten, poverty-stricken inhabitants of Gúllen are by now used to a modest life, spending the major part of their days reminiscing about better times, until one day the arrival of the "Old Lady" alters the Gúlleners' existence at a stroke. Claire Zachanassian, a native of Gúllen whose profitable marriages to oil magnates, artists and industrialists have made her extremely rich, and her strange court consisting of two blind servants, two former gangsters, a butler and Husband Number 7, are met with sincere enthusiasm by the citizens of Gúllen at the railway station. And they are not disappointed. Claire promises to donate a billion to the township on one condition - Ill, a merchant of Gúllen, must be killed. In years gone by, Ill had a love affair with Claire. Claire became pregnant and claimed that Ill was the father. But with the help of two friends - now her two blind servants - Ill was able to escape responsibility. Claire had to leave Gúllen and live as a prostitute, until she met her first rich husband. The stipulated murder is a planned revenge against Ill and the Gúllen inhabitants. In the course of time, Claire has acquired the industrial plants and the entire town, in order to ruin them. The first reaction of the Gúllen citizens is water-tight solidarity with Ill, but gradually it begins to spring leaks. Their opinions change from "poor soul, guilty of a childhood misdemeanor" to "irresponsible, immoral evil-doer". At the same time, the people of Gúllen indulge in new, luxury goods — on credit — represented by new, yellow shoes, which are soon worn by all citizens, including even police officers and the mayor. Even his own family are not spared the attraction of increasing lucre. His wife buys a fur coat, his son a car, and his daughter takes lessons in tennis. Only the teacher evokes the humanist tradition, and attempts, at first timidly, to interpose himself before the death sentence that has, by now, come to be seen as immutable. In the end, even Ill accepts his fate. In a climactic town gathering, Ill receives his sentence, which is immediately carried out by the people of Gúllen. The fundamental underlying point of the play is that money can allure people's minds, especially those weakly determined. It also notices how money creates the power to control the world around. As the arrival of Claire Zachanassian shows, the promise of money can lead people to hate and even murder. It can pervert the course of justice, and even turn the local teacher, who is one of the few who manage to warn Alfred Ill of his impending doom. The teacher is a self-declared humanist, and his moral collapse, as well as that of the priest, demonstrates the power of money to overcome both religious and secular morality. It suggests that greed can turn anyone.The usage of this theme also develops around the main idea of "money-hungry".
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