At the ultra-cool “ideas” conference, there’s no recession, Sarah Silverman is tame and all we need is “mind shift”

Cloaked in anonymity, Park Dae-Sung became Korea’s most influential economic pundit. That’s when the trouble started.

This is a really good read on the anonymity of the internet and how the masses apply trust to people.

A formal complaint was filed in California (caged PDF) last week by John Lindstein naming David Miscavige and the Church of Scientology International as defendants. Lindstein claims that for sixteen years (from age 8) he was forced to work as a slave at Gold Base, a secret CoS site run by Golden Era Productions with ‘razor wire, security guard patrols, surveillance posts, and three roll calls each day.’ The pay was $50 a week. The allegations include ‘Violations of wage and hour laws as well as unfair/illegal business practices actionable under California B&P 17200 Et. Seq.’ and a complaint under the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, which abolished slavery. Members of the group Anonymous praised the summons.”

reginaldo writes to clue us that pirates in Somalia have opened up a cooperative in Haradheere, where investors can pay money or guns to help their favorite pirate crew for a share of the piracy…

Best article from The Daily WTF in a long time.

As if the $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers wasn’t enough, Clayton Homes, a Tennessee-based seller of manufactured, modular, and mobile homes, is offering a little something to sweeten the deal: a can of pork and beans.

Nine was forced to drop one of its episodes of The Secret Millionaire after one of its benefactors, Leanne Wesche, accrued debts said to be in the ‘hundreds of thousands.’

Tweet: What does the post-page, post-site, post-media media world look like? @stephenfry, that’s what.

Michael Arrington announced the death of the CrunchPad on Monday morning in a blog post heavily spiced with angst and drama. According to Arrignton, the Cruchpad, a 12-inch Web tablet expected to be priced at about $300, was just days away from launch. At the last minute, however, Arrington received an email from Chandra Rathakrishnan, the chief executive of manufacturing partner Fusion Garage, apparently trying to cut Arrington out of the product on the eve of the launch. Fusion Garage, according to Arrington, wanted to market the device itself under its own name; which obviously was the deal breaker. Arrington claims that the company had overcome obstacles at every stage in the business such as deals with Intel, retail launch, securing venture capital and angel investments. Interesting bit is that some were already speculating that the Crunchpad was not real.”

Four and a half years ago I started a blog filled with nothing but leads to available freelance writing opportunities. As I studied blogging and the various ways to generate traffic and revenue, the blog began to grow beyond my wildest dreams. After two years I was able to hire someone to help find leads and we branched out to also offering daily tips and advice. After three years, I added two more bloggers to the roster and today, it’s a flourishing blog network for freelance writers complete with 8 blogs. It’s now the number one online community for freelance writers. At some point in the past couple of years, it occurred to me I didn’t have merely have a blog. I had a business. In addition to paying other bloggers, I can now draw my own salary and don’t even have to take on clients if I don’t want to.