Barbara Walters Price

Which Economies Have Fared Best and Worst During Global Financial Crisis

This chart, from The Economist, reflects GDP per person as a measure of relative performance. For further background, see here.

Testing New Item for the Blog

At left, you'll see a box entitled "Barbara's Shared Items." These are items I find interesting from my Google Reader account that I want to share with you. Hope you find the links useful.

This One is for Pet Lovers

Inc. recently published "11 Pet-Friendly Workplaces" in honor of Take Your Dog to Work Day.

A wonderful resource for pet lovers that want to travel with their pets is Go Pet Friendly. I can personally vouch for the service and the owners since I know them. Amy and Rod Burkert started Go Pet Friendly along with their dogs, Ty and Buster. Per Amy and Rod:

We're on a mission to make it easy for you to enjoy fantastic travel experiences with your pets! It all started when we decided to take a road trip to Canada. We experienced pure frustration - and spent more than two days - planning the trip. It was a hassle finding pet friendly hotels, tracking down their policies, and locating restaurants and activites that we could all enjoy together. That's when we had our "aha" moment. 

If you want to travel with your pets, check out Go Pet Friendly. 

Who Needs a Resume When You've Got This for a Cover Letter

via Huffington Post via Buzzfeed

My 5 year old would agree

Source: Indexed

Something To Make You Smile

If you like good photography, clever staging, and a whimsical style (along with two of the cutest kids ever), then you'll like Sisters (Kristen and Kayla - a photo journal of 2 sisters).  

Jason Lee, a professional photographer, has been taking clever shots of his two girls for years.  Here is a sampling of his whimsical work.

If you like it and are interested in how he does what he does, follow him on Facebook for his "behind the scenes stuff (lighting, setup, before/after shots)."

"What happens when you take some of the most thought provoking quotes and pair them with fresh photography?"

I love this site.  PixPlacebo.  It inspires ideas and design.  Take a look and see for yourself (click on one of the quotes and scroll from there).

From the site:

What happens when you take some of the most thought provoking quotes and pair them with fresh photography and works of art?

PixPlacebo is a group art project dedicated to this task.We've collected and sourced great quotes from antiquity to the present day.

Contributors supply images and then select and format the quote to fit with their work. The end result, we hope, is a fresh take on an old idea.

This is an active project with photographers and artists from around the world contributing daily. Please join us and participate. Open enrollment in the project is still currently closed.

 

The 10 Coolest New Toys at This Year’s Toy Fair

Mashable reviewed this year's Toy Fair in New York.  As a mom with two young daughters, this part of the post rang true but is rather scary just the same:

As usual, the big trend in toys is KGOY or “Kids getting older younger,” or more simply, “age-compression.” In short, kids want to play with stuff their older siblings and parents play with, which is why we’re seeing so many iPhone-based offshoots this time around.

Take a look at the toys featured.  The toy that kinda gives me the creeps is Baby iCan Play iPhone case, Fisher-Price. The one that makes me laugh is the "Brick" iPhone case.

 

Happy Valentine's Day

I always suspected that Hallmark originated Valentine's Day, but it appears I was wrong.

Saint Valentine's Day, commonly shortened to Valentine's Day, is an annual commemoration held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions.

The day is named after one or more early Christian martyrs, Saint Valentine, and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496 AD.

It was deleted from the Roman calendar of saints in 1969 by Pope Paul VI, but its religious observance is still permitted.

It is traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offeringconfectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as "valentines"). The day first became associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished. [Wikipedia]

Happy Valentine's Day.

When Parents Text

For those of you who haven't found the website, whenparentstext.com, check it out. It's fun and funny. Enjoy!