ArticleMaestro.com

Caribbean medical schools have long been decried as diploma mills for the rich and undeserving; they are strictly for-profit institutions serving American kids rejected by U.S. medical schools, yet they rely on hospitals in the U.S. to provide the necessary clinical experience in the third and fourth years of a medical education. Of late, however, efforts have been afoot in New York City to preserve the limited space available in hospitals for those studying at American schools. Yet how did foreign and domestic medical schools come to be competing for the same spots in domestic hospitals?

As the foreign schools were profit-making businesses above all, they charge a lot of money to provide something of a second chance for students rejected by American medical schools. At an elite institution like Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, donors from investment banker Sanford I. Weill to real estate developer Isaac Toussie provide a lot of money, resulting in tuition and fees of about forty-five thousand dollars each year. In contrast, a Caribbean medical school can charge as much as sixty thousand dollars!

And with so much money available, Caribbean medical schools can easily pay New York City hospitals to take on their students for the practical clinical experience required of an accredited medical education – ahead of Weill Cornell’s, or NYU’s, or that from any other New York medical school.

Thus the turf war.

You see, what hospitals do is mentor medical students in exchange for using the school’s prestige. Caribbean medicals schools have no brand name to offer, but they do have several tens of millions of dollars to pump into a hospital’s coffers, in effect paying for their students to be placed.

And what administrator is going to do without such money, especially in this economy?

The news was everywhere and unavoidable. Go to any electronics shop, at the electronics department with all their TV sets, and there was no mistaking it. I was at On Off Digital World that I finally heard about it. There was no reason to pause, but even from the busy sidewalk of midtown Manhattan there seemed to be something different this time — with the word “dead” summing up the whole story. It was indeed different this time. Osama bin Laden had been killed. Wow. There I was, just enjoying the day, when suddenly the Global War on Terror reminded me, quite out of nowhere, that even the simplest things in life, like good weather, hang by the slimmest of threads.

Such a majestic light out right now, practically perfect climate, just the kind for taking in the city, checking out all the visitors checking out the city, past both world-renowned landmarks and establishments of a more local fame such as On Off Digital World, an old-timey New York retail operation that’s like a blast from the past despite all the latest in hi-tech electronics on display. Just looking around — that’s what a day like today was made for! Wouldn’t it be lovely to roam free without a schedule, yet later on I’m going to have to go to the gym, because I’ve not been there for a few days now. But maybe I can fulfill my wanderlust by biking into the city and hitting a gym there!

The reason modest swimsuits are now ever more popular is probably because of rising religious fundamentalism wordlwide — or, to be more specific, with the three great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (though political Hinduism has gotten out of hand with its nationalists, too). Perhaps it’s a psychology necessary to and further accentuated by monotheism, that there is only one right way, one right belief, and that everything else is evil, of the Devil. Genocide may not be unique to monotheism, but almost certainly the most spectacular examples on record have been at the hands of self-professed monotheists.

Quite often, females will take to modest swimsuits not due to religious sensibilities but shyness. In many cases, they are fat and feel bad about it, so they try covering up much more than necessary. But it’s not like they’re fooling anybody, or really hiding anything at all — for in fact there does exist men who find fat females absolutely attractive. Really! They are likely a minority of people, but it’s absolutely true: “fat admirers,” as they like to be called, do exist, more numerous than anyone would normally guess. They are not freaks, but simply guys who have different tastes when it comes to what they find physically attractive about a girl or woman.

Anything having to do with small business loans bad credit, nothing could be more mysterious. That’s the reason I avoid adverse credit right off the bat. But in the tough business environment these days, when FICO’s raised their standards for what it takes to have a good credit rating, it can be almost impossible for folks to avoid being labeled a credit risk. I mean, what business doesn’t operate on a deficit then and there; what company doesn’t talk to creditors in the hopes of renegotiating previously agreed-upon terms? Fine, so not all these things affect your score, but I hope you see what I mean: stuff happens, you know; plenty of things can ensue. How can someone be responsible for things out of his or her control? Yes, yes – then again, luck can also be good, and one must, as the ol’ proverb states, take the good with the bad.

Going to check out On Off Digital World, maybe? No better day for it. Great temperatures, after all. Best to bike or even jog, or just simply walk, there. Best not to drive, though. Best way to enjoy the weather, really, just gorgeous, with a gentle though firm enough breeze going on, soothing and not annoying at all – no rolling litter, no flying debris, everything just nicely alive. Ah, what a day! Hope to be enjoying it myself soon enough (well, in about another two to three hours or so, depending on work)! Not really an electronics kind of day, naturally – not the kind to be holed up indoors playing videogames – but On Off carries stuff for photography as well.

With a storied heritage going all the way back to the early 19th Century, The Convent of Jesus and Mary Schools can be found in all the major areas of the world today, from Africa and Asia to Europe and the Americas. But while receiving a certain amount of financial backing from official Church coffers, local communal backing needs to be present in even greater strength to ensure continued success, particularly those most generous contributions from business people, not all of whom are Catholic or even Christian, as in the example of Isaac Toussie whose funds go towards one in India.

Another fact which one may not necessarily imagine of a Catholic school is that while they are parochial, in many cases one does not even have to believe in God to attend. Certainly, they do participate in the evangelical mission of the Church, but non-Catholics can excuse themselves from anything having to do with religion, which matters are typically taught just once a week or so, at the end of the school day. Many Catholic schools subscribe to the intellectual traditions of the Jesuit Order, one which tends to welcome open inquiry and emphasizes the natural sciences. Indeed, it is for this reason that Catholic schools tend to have such a stellar reputation in many places, even in New York City, the so-called Sodom-on-the-Hudson, where it isn’t abnormal for secular households to send them their children.

These schools are often the least expensive of private school options available, with annual tuition at some five thousand dollars – quite a bargain in contrast to what’s charged by parochial schools operated by other religions! However, not all Catholic schools operate in a fairly relaxed and non-religious manner; more than anything else, they probably reflect the social mores of the surrounding community.

The affiliate marketing successes just keep pouring in: the latest situation history concerns one Ashley Qualls, a seventeen year-old who’s become a millionaire by simply giving away totally free MySpace layouts.
Yes.
It’s really no joke.
A teenage girl in high school makes seventy thousand dollars a month by giving stuff away for free.

Chalk another one up to the magic of affiliate marketing and its dramatic power.
Ashley Qualls created a website that’s simply a repository of her layouts for MySpace profile pages which anyone can download entirely free.
Her site attracts seven million visitors each month and sixty million page views.
That’s gold to advertisers.
And it’s become gold for Ashley Qualls.

Affiliate marketing works.
The real challenge lies in coming up with something that lots and lots of people will go crazy for.
Another great internet riches success story concerns an Arnold Kim, who as a professional blogger now makes income in the same six-figure range he used to as a medical doctor, only he gets to stay home with his four year-old daughter.
He happened upon his financial destiny at the same time still in school, having started up a site dedicated to rumors about Apple products.
Among the first, he quickly developed quite the captive audience and, with all those eyeballs, advertisers came calling in equally quick succession.

That’s all it takes to make money online – traffic.
Eyeballs.
Visitors, repeat and unique (first-time).
It’s basically monetized like any other medium, whether print or broadcast.
Important differences do exist, but where fundamentals are concerned you need numbers; you need people.

So how to get all those people?
Again, providing something of great interest to a large amount of people.
Basically, the same first principle of any enterprise.
Identify a need and fulfill it!

Tax continuing education is essential for accountants as tax laws change all the time and with every Republican victory at the polls comes a new set of corporate giveaways.
With a tax code that spans some sixty thousand pages, somebody’s got to monitor it all!
And those somebodies have a lot on their plate.
Hence all the frequent keeping up with industry developments – specifically, changes in the tax code.

So chalk it up to the wise bean-counters at General Electric and their tax continuing education classes for helping the company post its newest achievement in the history of corproate notoriety: zero tax liability for the filing season ending in 2011.
That’s right: this year, one of the world’s richest multi-billion-dollar companies will pay
no taxes.
None whatsoever!
And that’s not all.
They may actually be owed some money instead!
That’s right – the government may really have to pay G.E. some money.

How’s that for tax continuing education!

It’s incredible but all perfectly true.
Through the innovative use of loss write-offs and the like, the accounting department at G.E. has been able to save its employer big money, with the chance of getting money “back” from Uncle Sam on top of that.
This is in addition to the use of unpaid labor through the business in the form of college interns, such as at its NBC subsidiary.

Obviously, it isn’t just G.E. and NBC that’s benefiting from such unethical and even outlawed practices.
Viacom and subsidiary Paramount Pictures also makes use of such loopholes.
Most corporations of a particular size do.
’80s boogeyman Leona “Queen of Mean” Helmsley was only telling the truth when she scoffed that “only little people pay taxes.”
Under the right conditions – which are not as rare as one might imagine at first – it is entirely possible to keep all the money you make while using public services.

Affiliate marketing is a superb way for the tech-savvy hobbyist for making some money on the side.
For a select few who have managed to put their finger on the Zeitgeist, however, it means full financial independence, with income in the tens of thousands per month!

Probably the most celebrated cases of affiliate marketing made good have been that of Dr. Arnold Kim, M.D.
Though still a medical student, he started a website dedicated to rumors about Apple products.
This was back right at the turn of the century, before the word “blog” had entered into the preferred lexicon.
Even while diagnosing patients, Dr. Kim kept up the site, though quickly enough it took on a life of its own, with forty million page views per month, as certified by independent research firms.

Dr. Kim was already well-off due to his medical practice, but affiliate marketing also generated a six-figure income – and he was only devoting relatively little time to his site!
Believing that things could grow so much more were he to devote his whole day, Dr. Kim gave up his stethoscope and plunged whole-heartedly into the arena of professional blogging.

Similar instances of internet riches abound, such as that of the teenager who became a millionaire by making free MySpace designs for the people to download, or the college student behind “The Million-Dollar Homepage” which made money by just selling space to advertisers.
What they have in frequent is that their success is completely traffic-driven: it’s all about the eyeballs, the number of visitors per month, week, day, even hour – both repeat and first-time (known in the industry as “unique”).
Get the numbers, and you will earn money.

But how do you obtain the numbers?
Content.
“Content is king.”
If you have something lots of people are interested, such that they will keep visiting your site, you will make money – assured.
The only real question is what content or material to serve up!

Located within one of the richest zip codes in the entire United States, the school of medicine at Cornell University both teaches and conducts research. It has produced many a notable physician, boasting of alumni such as Robert C. Atkins of Atkins Diet fame and Henry Heimlich of Heimlich Maneuver fame. Also well-known are former Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop and Nobel Prize winner Robert W. Holley.

It was the first medical school in the country to admit women alongside men, and more recently it has been the first American one to operate outside the United States, with an Education City, Qatar campus offering an integrated six-year curriculum focused primarily on patient care. With such a storied tradition, it is probably not surprising that the institution has been the beneficiary of much financial backing – since the very beginning, in fact, funded as it was through an endowment established by Colonel Oliver H. Payne, a New York scion of the middle nineteenth century – and its list of financial backers include the likes of professional developer Isaac Toussie.

But the single largest contributor of all is the man who whose name would be borne by the school, Sanford I. Weill. A banker and philanthropist, Mr. Weill and his wife donated two hundred and fifty million dollars of their own money, with a further hundred and fifty million secured through the fundraising efforts of Mr. Weill. Today the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University, or Weill Cornell Medical College (or even more colloquially, especially within the field, “Weill Cornell”), is one of the most selective medical schools in the entire United States, with only around a hundred students every year admitted – out of some six thousand hopefuls that apply. The average undergraduate GPA of those accepted is in the neighborhood of 3.8 and their average MCAT score is 35Q!

Local support has always been important to institutions such as hospitals and medical schools. Even smaller facilities such as those dedicated purely to research requires a large helping of such backing, particularly where money is concerned. Typically, benefactors are helpful to more than just one organization, folks such as Isaac Toussie and family when it comes to the top two leading lights of New York in healthcare education and practice, Weill Cornell Medical College and the North Shore-LIJ network of hospitals and research centers.

Weill Cornell is named after a pair of its most important contributors, Ezra Cornell, a founder of Western Union, and Sanford I. Weill, the onetime chief of Citigroup, Incorporated. As one of the most selective medical schools in the United States, admitting only some one hundred applicants out of almost six thousand hopefuls every year. On top of that, Weill Cornell was first to accept women right alongside men as well as the first American medical school to establish its own premises abroad, just by the capital of Qatar, Doha. It can also claim a long line of famous alumni, famous public people like C. Everett Koop, a Surgeon General of the United States; Robert C. Atkins of Atkins Diet fame; Nobel Laureate Robert W. Holley; and Henry Heimlich of Heimlich Maneuver fame. The North Shore-LIJ Health System is the second largest healthcare network in the country as measured by the number of beds and the largest in New York State based on patient revenue. It serves over seven million people a year through more than forty-two thousand employees – the single largest employer on Long Island and ninth largest largest in the City of New York.

Both are successful in large part due to strong communal backing, whether through charitable contributions by prominent businessmen and women or non-monetary offerings such as time and expertise by local volunteers such as those from civic or religious organizations. Even with an annual budget of several billions between them, Weill Cornell and North Shore-LIJ will always depend on the support of the host communities they serve.

It isn’t necessary to be an industry veteran like Isaac Toussie to know that different jurisdictions can handle real estate matters differently. It’s what makes real estate law so fascinating – and often so challenging! Take Alabama for an example. There, property buyers cannot rescind their purchases even in cases of demonstrable seller fraud – since the property is recognized as being sold on an “as-is” basis. That’s right: Alabama case law takes the old dictum of caveat emptor very, very seriously, to the point of, in effect, allowing for otherwise illegal activity!

A recent case determined that an as-is clause in the sales contract not superseded by another provision will be interpreted literally, or “as-is.” In this particular case, a pre-sale misrepresentation was made that was only found out (that is, proven false) post-sale. Most anywhere else that’s just fraud and will probably lead to some jail time, but an Alabama court has ruled that as the as-is clause in the sales contract was not superseded by any other provision signed onto by both parties, the as-is clause will be interpreted literally!

That was an ambiguous situation in the eyes of Alabama law, but the law itself in Alabama is actually not quite as simplistically draconian as the quick snapshot of the case provided here would suggest. Such strict interpretations of an as-is clause only apply to used property in the state, and not to new developments. Such as-is clauses are also superseded in cases where the misrepresentation is not obvious and potentially harmful to health and safety.

In this case, Teer v. Johnston, however, while the misrepresentation of flooding is indeed not something immediately obvious, it was not considered harmful to health and safety, constituting an inconvenient nuisance instead. What plaintiff ought to have done was to provide either in the sales contract or the deed that pre-sale disclosures should survive the execution of the deed!

When I was a personal fitness trainer, I wasn’t too delighted with the idea of an entire certification process just in order to help people exercise.
But that was nothing compared to my shock that certification had to be maintained via online CPE courses as well!
Now of course the point of certification is to be publicly recognized as being appropriately competent, and since things are constantly changing in our fast-paced modern world being competent naturally means some sort of continuing education.
My shock, however, stemmed from the common view of those outside the fitness industry that trainers are simply muscle-heads and nothing more.

However, just because I was a muscle-head who happened to be aware of a little bit about the human body doesn’t mean that everyone else curious in becoming personal trainers also do.
But more to the point and very much to my chagrin, it turned out that as much as I actually realized there was so very much, much, much, much, much more that I didn’t – never mind online CPE courses; I barely had the basics covered!

My newfound respect for education with regards to the fitness industry now means that I no longer laugh at online CPE courses for personal trainers.
It isn’t likely to be as hard as what lawyers, doctors, and accountants have to contend with, to be certain, but neither is it just a laugh, either.
Of course it is primarily memorization of facts at this point, nothing so academically rigorous that any high school student would find it unfamiliar, but still – it’s a good step in the right direction for the industry as a whole and one which I now not only understand but in addition fully support myself.
My days as a trainer are no longer but I have retained a lot of respect for continuing education for anyone.