Yes. You read that right. There are STILL places in the U.S. where land is free. And, yes, there is a catch. You have to agree to build a house (or plop a mobile home or, sometimes, a business) on the land. The concept of giving away free land isn’t new, as back in the day the government used it as a means to settle the far corners of the country. So what far corners are we talking about today? Here ya go:
1.Marquette, Kansas will give you a lot if you agree to erect a 1,000 s.f. house upon it. If you dream of having a house with a BIG garden, the city will throw in an adjacent lot if you ask nicely.
2.Atwood, Kansas and the surrounding environs of Herndon and McDonald are offering 4 – 110′ x 130′ lots for free.
3.Elwood, Nebraska have lots available for ‘a minimal fee’.
4.Marne, Iowa is offering up some lovely lots for, yes, free.
5.Muskegon, Michigan is giving way land to businesses who are willing to set up shop in their community. The size of the acreage depends upon how many employees the business foresees hiring.
6.Camden, Maine is offering up 3.5 acres for ‘the right business that can create good jobs’.
There are 18,000 parking lot attendants in the U.S. with college degrees. There are 5,000 janitors in the U.S. with PhDs. In all, some 17 million college-educated Americans have jobs that don’t require their level of education. Why?
The data comes from a the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and can be seen here in handy, depressing chart form:
At the Chronicle, where the below chart was posted, Richard Vedder argues that maybe we place too much importance on higher education, citing a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research:
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Hmmm, does this guy have a point or is he just making excuses for Google? I’ll let you decide.
Look people, it’s simple: If you don’t want other people to see your house or your building or whatever, put up a fence. Close the curtains or choose a place that isn’t visible to the public in the first place. Or how about just get used to it? Once again, the digital genie is out of the digital bottle and no amount of whining about that fact can change it even if it was a big deal in the first place … which it wasn’t.
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If Steve Jobs doesn’t own one of these, he should. I’ll bet Bill Gates has a Microsoft Surface table in his office somewhere.
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Don’t Forget to Adjust Your Clocks On Sunday, November 7, 2010, America leaves Daylight Saving Time and returns to Standard Time. At 2:00 am, clocks must be turned back one hour, marking the end of Daylight Saving Time.
The adjusting of clocks is not some random crazy law, but, instead an attempt to save energy by taking advantage of the sun and light during the 8 month period from March through October. The practice began back during World War I as an effort to save energy for the War effort.
