Build Your Own Website Easily With WordPress

If you work from home or are trying to get that elusive first project, creating a professional website is an important step. As a home for your business, your website can showcase your skills, provide details of your experience, and give potential clients and customers a convenient way to get in touch.

What's more, being able to create or work with a website is a useful skill in itself. For many people that work at home, the ability to get a website up and running is an additional service that can be sold to your existing clients.

You don't need to spend a fortune getting a website developed for you. You can do it yourself, even if you have never had any experience. Thankfully, there is a secret - WordPress. WordPress is a free system that streamlines and simplifies the process of web development and, as you will find out, can still be flexible enough for just about any website imaginable.

What Does WordPress Do Besides Blogging?

Many people have heard of WordPress, but do not understand the full capabilities of the system. Most people think that WordPress is a platform for blogging when, in fact, it is far more than that.

Today, WordPress has grown into what would be called a content management system, or CMS. A CMS is a tool to store all of the information required for your website and present it to your visitors in a professional, organized way. Other content management systems include Joomla and Drupal, but the reality is that WordPress is the easiest to understand, the easiest to work with, and the most easily adaptable.

Let's look at - in simple terms - how exactly WordPress works once it is installed:

You access a convenient WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface to securely work with all of the content on your website You can create new web pages in a variety of formats The content that you create is stored in a database You can use the same interface to edit your content in the database When visitors access your website, the information in the database is presented to them in a website layout. You can change this layout at any time and your content will automatically adopt the right look

In technical terms, WordPress is fairly advanced. In the nine years since the platform first launched, this advanced functionality has been used in all kinds of exciting ways.

Why Should You Use WordPress?

You may be wondering why people choose WordPress as their CMS. The answer is because WordPress can make just about anything that you want to do easier, quicker and more convenient!

Press agency Reuters uses WordPress to keep journalists up to date with the latest news as it happens. Music streaming service Spotify powers its entire website with WordPress.

WordPress makes creating, editing and organising your content simple and, as a result, less time-consuming. That gives you more time to focus on other areas of your business. WordPress also gives you the chance to get a professional design to make your website look great - often free of charge.

The best way to see how WordPress streamlines setting up your website is to try it for yourself. WordPress is easy to install on your web hosting or, if you sign up on the WordPress website, you can explore its features with no set-up required.

Installing WordPress Made Easy

There are a few different ways to get started with WordPress, depending on your budget, your expertise and whether you use a web hosting service.

If you are just trying out WordPress and do not have your own web hosting, visit signup.wordpress.com and sign up for a free account. You will be guided through the entire process of creating your WordPress site, which will be stored on the WordPress servers for you. It is also possible to pay for a custom domain name (the address of your website) during the sign-up process.

Alternatively, if you already have a web hosting plan that supports PHP and MySQL, you can install your own WordPress on your server. This can be done by visiting WordPress.org and downloading the necessary files. The website also offers a convenient guide to installing WordPress in 5 minutes.

Finally, see if your web hosting provider offers an automatic script installer such as Softaculous. If so, you will be able to log in from your web hosting control panel and install WordPress in just a few clicks.

Finding A Great Theme

Once WordPress is up and running, you will need to log in with the details that you chose during set-up - usually at yourdomain.com/wp-admin. You will see the WordPress dashboard, a control panel that lets you work with your website, and a range of different menu items on the left-hand side. A good place to start is by selecting a theme, under the Appearance menu.

Using the 'Install Themes' tab at the top of your screen, you can explore an extensive database of layouts and designs for your website. From conventional business layouts to distinctive and unusual looks, there are currently 1,607 themes available. After finding one that you like, installing is as easy as clicking the 'Install Now' button.

As well as these free WordPress themes that are available from within your control panel, many websites offer a great selection of themes - some of which are free, and some of which are 'premium' themes that incur a charge. If you are just getting started with WordPress, a free theme is a good choice. Of course, paying for a premium theme guarantees high quality, good performance, and continued support from the theme developers.

For professional WordPress themes, check out these websites:

ThemeForest WooThemes GetYourThemes

Once you have installed your theme, you will be able to conveniently customize it to suit your specific requirements. You can do this using Widgets.

Using Widgets

Many people choose WordPress because there are so many professional-looking themes available for it. However, it can be useful to tweak your chosen theme to make it more individual.

When a developer creates a theme, he will name specific areas of the layout that you can customize. For example, you may be able to change the menu at the top of your layout, a sidebar that runs down the side of every page, or the footer.

Under the Appearance menu on your WordPress control panel, select the Widgets option. On the right, you will see a list of the different areas of your theme that you can customize. On the left, there is a range of included widgets that you can simply drag and drop into the relevant section.

Standard WordPress widgets include Links to other websites, an automatic list of your Pages, and a calendar of when Posts have been published. You can also install other Widgets free of charge, in the form of Plugins.

Use Widgets to personalize your theme. Once you are happy, it is time to start thinking about the most important thing of all - your content.

Pages And Posts

A common obstacle for people that are new to WordPress is the distinction between two similar types of content - Pages and Posts. Whenever you want to publish something on your website, you will need to decide whether it is a Page or a Post and select the appropriate option.

Originally, WordPress only offered the ability to create Posts - a term that is short for Blog Posts. Posts are content items that are time-specific and, when they are created, they have the current time and date attached to them. Creating a new Post causes two things to happen:

An individual web page is created with the content of your post Your post is added to a single page that collects together each individual post

This is perhaps clearer as an example - let's imagine you have a blog section on your website, at yourdomain.com/blog. When you publish a new blog post, a single page will be created - for example, this could be yourdomain.com/blog/my-post-name. But, at the same time, your blog post will be added to the central page at yourdomain.com/blog, giving your visitors the chance to see all of your most recent posts in one convenient place.

Posts are also added to your website's RSS feed - more on that in our next article on advanced WordPress tips. Pages, on the other hand, are static items that do not have a date attached to them. They are the pages of your website that stand alone, offering general information about your business.

If you're still unsure, ask yourself this question before you create your content - is this something that will stand alone (a Page), or something that is part of a section of the website that I will update regularly (a Post)?

Explore And Learn On The Fly

You now understand the concepts of WordPress, including what it can do, common terminology, and why you should be using WordPress to build your site. So start exploring!

The great thing about WordPress is that it is intuitive and easy to use. Anything that you create can be deleted or edited with ease, so the best advice is to check the menu options included in your control panel and start working on your content right now.

Once you've made a start, be sure to read our next article on making the most of your WordPress installation to create a website that really stands out from the crowd.

Why Weight Train During Pregnancy?

There was once a time that a pregnant woman was thought of as "fragile". Any form of exercise was strictly prohibited by doctors and feared by concerned fathers. We've now come to realize that a pregnant woman is capable of doing nearly everything that every other woman is capable of doing (and even most men).

It is now recommended that women participate in prenatal exercise programs because of the benefits during labor and delivery as well as the postnatal benefits to moms and babies.

Why Weight Train?

Women who weight train throughout their pregnancy benefit from less weight gain during pregnancy and return to their pre-pregnancy weight, strength, and flexibility levels faster than women who remain inactive or who only participate in cardio programs.

Weight training increases a woman's energy levels throughout her pregnancy and helps prevent loss of bone density postpartum.

The babies born to women who weight trained during their pregnancy are born with ideal birth weights. Prenatal weight training is the first step in ensuring that your child has a healthy start in life!

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Decreased Risks Associated with Prenatal Weight Training:

o Decreases in the severity and frequency of low back pain during pregnancy

o Decreased risk of gestational diabetes

o Decreased risk of delivering post term or through caesarean delivery

o Fewer complications during delivery; including fetal distress

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Pregnancy Precautions

Although not feeble, fragile, and frail, pregnant women should be aware of certain precautions that are unique to them and their bodies.

Be sure to consult your doctor before beginning an exercise program or continuing an exercise program after the first trimester. Your goal should be to simply maintain highest level of fitness while ensuring your safety and the safety of your baby.

Every muscle group should be targeted and the following should be emphasized: inner thigh, hamstrings, glutes, upper back, and shoulders.

Pregnant women should avoid lifting the amount of weight that they were capable of lifting pre-pregnancy. Be sure to use low resistance. StrollerFit classes utilize therabands and exertubes to provide the perfect balance of resistance and safety.

Use caution when stretching either before or after an exercise session. Joint laxity is increased during pregnancy due to the increased amounts of the hormones elastin and relaxin that are being produced. Joint laxity is the amount of movement the ligaments allow through the joint and during pregnancy the joints can be easily stressed or strained.

Movements to Avoid

o Avoid exercises that require bending from the hips

o Avoid exercises in the supine position after the first trimester due to increased pressure on the arteries surrounding the heart

o Avoid overhead lifting

o Avoid straining or holding the breath

Getting Started

Before beginning an exercise program or continuing an exercise program past the first trimester, be sure to consult your doctor. You may may want to join a group exercise program specializing in pre- and postnatal fitness such as StrollerFit or you may choose to exercise on your own. Many books are available to help guide you through exercise and pregnancy safely and effectively. A good place to start is 'Exercising Through Your Pregnancy" by James Clapp. Resistance bands and tubing can be purchased at your local sporting goods store or online at http://www.strollerfit.com.

Every woman hopes to have a healthy and safe pregnancy. Through prenatal weight training you can increase the chances that both you and your child remain healthy and safe though pregnancy, labor, and delivery!

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It is recommended that women with the following conditions DO NOT EXERCISE: Consult your doctor!

o Pregnancy induced high blood pressure

o Pre-term rupture of the membrane

o Pre-term labor during the prior or current pregnancy

o Incompetent cervix

o Persistent second to third trimester bleeding

o Intrauterine growth retardation

o Joint laxity due to increased amounts of elastin and relaxin

o Increased basal metabolic temperature

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References:

1. Brown LE. Strength and Conditioning Journal. 2003;24:53-54.

2. Clapp JF. Journal of Pediatrics. 1996;129(6):856-863.

3. Dumas GA, et al. Clinical Biomechanics. 1995;10(2):98-103.

4. Ezmerli NM. Prim Care Update Ob/Gyn. 2000;7: 260-265.

5. Howley ET, Franks BD. Health Fitness Instructors Handbook (3rd edition). Human Kinetics. Champaign, IL. 1997;358-360.

6. Kenney WL, et al. ACSM's Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription (5th edition). Williams and Wilkins. Media, PA. 1995; 235-239.

7. Mottola M, Wolfe L. Forty Ninth Annual Meeting of the ACSM, St. Louis, Missouri, May 2002.

8. Schoenfeld B. American Fitness. 2000;3:26-29.

9. Safran L. Pure Power. 2003;1:44-49,53-54.

Why the Rich Keep Getting Richer

Rich people: fortunate, lucky, selfish, and arrogant? Or highly educated, caring, brilliant individuals? Becoming rich isn't hard, but it does require a bit of time and knowledge. Having time to get rich, educating oneself, and buying assets are the three key factors in attaining untold wealth.

Rich people usually either have or make time to get rich. Most people that now own huge mansions, have wonderful riches, and drive the nicest cars usually begin taking the road to riches in their spare time. One plan, the most common, is to work at a low-risk, steady job until one has enough money to invest in something that will feed one for the rest of their life. But before one can invest in anything, one first has to educate oneself.

Although the best way to educate oneself in a particular investment is to have a mentor, and thereby gaining valuable hands-on experience, another excellent way to do this is to listen to tapes and CDs and to read books on the subject. I have done both, mainly pertaining to real estate, but also I have read a wonderful book about making money on the Internet, called Multiple Streams of Internet Income, by Robert Allen.

Lastly, after creating time to get rich, and educating oneself, one simply MUST buy assets that will create money for one, and not liabilities and toys such as a new car every other year, and boats. These come only after one can prove that he is capable of handling and keeping money. Simply put, according to multi-millionaire Robert Kiyosaki: "Assets will feed you, and liabilities will eat you." An example of an asset is a rent-house, or stocks and bonds in a certain company. Only, that is, if the company is good and the stocks are ultimately going up in value.

In conclusion, we see that the three most important ways the rich keep getting richer are: having or making time, subject education, and buying assets. These are the key factors influencing wealth. I personally plan on educating myself in real estate, as it seems the simplest and safest way of getting rich.**

**Note: If you'd like to use this article, feel free to do so, but please remember to include this message, and my resource box in every copy. Thank you!

Low-Down on Podcasting - Part One

I have just finished producing a series of podcasts from the Dubai Airshow, but I thought this would be a great opportunity to talk through the equipment you need to record audio podcasts.

Before you can do anything you need a recorder. While tape-based systems were de riguer a few years ago, I'm afraid that everything has now gone digital. The advantage is obvious - you record your sound, connect the recorder to your computer and transfer the recording across instantly for editing.

While you can get away with a fairly cheap recorder, such as the Olympus WS300S, you must make sure that you record using the mono hi-quality (HQ) setting - typically 64 kbps MP3. That's OK and just about good enough for Podcasts. If you really take your podcasting seriously then a higher-end recorder like the Tascam DR-07 is essential. This is the model I use and apart from chewing batteries it is fantastic.

The purists will record using the uncompressed WAV format, but this gives you enormous files that can't easily be e-mailed. Setting the recorder to 128 or 192kbps MP3 gives you files that are about 1Mb per minute, virtually indistinguishable from WAVs and can be e-mailed easily.

So you have your recorder, you've set it up to record 192kbps MP3 files. Now what? Make sure that you set the sample rate to 44.1KHz. Again, the sample rate determines the quality of the output and 44.1kHz is fine. In fact, if you set it to a rate that is not an exact multiple of 22.05kHz some MP3 players will make your recordings sound like Mickey Mouse - you have been warned.

So now you have your recorder set up, with fresh batteries and a clean memory card inserted of around 1-2Gb.

The next step is to plug in a good quality microphone. While some recorders have built-in microphones they are usually pretty poor and result in lots of handling noise as you move the recorder around.

A good microphone like the Sony ECM-MS907 is worth its weight in gold. Firstly, it is very small and compact, but more importantly it is switchable from a 90-degree acceptance angle to 120 degrees. This means that you can stand with your back to a noisy environment and the mic will reject the noise coming from behind you. Or, you can switch it to 120 degrees, stand it on the table and record two or three people at once, as long as they are in front of the microphone.

If you are on a real budget Hama makes a microphone called the DM-20, which costs less than $10 from Amazon.

If you intend recording your own voice, perhaps while reading news bulletins, it may also pay you to buy a pop filter.

This is a round disk of material on the end of a flexible arm which stops you getting popping sounds as you talk into the microphone. This is caused by the rush of air from your mouth - try putting your hand about six inches from your mouth and say "pah" and you'll see what I mean.

When out interviewing people it pays to stand next to them and hold the microphone below their chin level and pointing at their mouth. That way the microphone is out of the way of their breath stream and you shouldn't get popping.

So now you have the recorder and microphone set up the world is your oyster.

When recording material try not to script it too much, otherwise it will sound stilted. And use very open-ended questions that demand a lot more than "yes" or "no" answers. Questions that start "can you describe..." or "can you explain..." usually work well, but do make sure you listen to the answers.

Also, make sure that you shut up between asking questions - simply nod at the interviewee and smile sweetly. If the whole interview is interspersed with "uh-huhs" from you it makes it annoying and hard to edit.

So that's the low-down on recording Podcasts. Next time, we can look at what you do with the raw material.

Online to Offline Marketing

It would be interesting to know how many successful internet marketers there are who began their direct sales career offline. I'm sure we would find that most of them started offline. Most of them probably have similar reasons as to why they went online to begin with, e.g. burnt-out on home meeting, hotel meetings or they were on the phone ten hours a day!

Does Online to Offline Make Sense

It's ironic to think someone would go back to an offline strategy after escaping the offline world of building a business. So why would you go from online to offline? The reason may not surprise you and it makes incredible sense when it's explained.

The reality is people like to buy stuff the way they prefer. Don't try and fight against it, people want to be sold to in a way that's most comfortable for them, it's just the way it is! Just know that there is a target market who are reading postcards, listening to voice broadcast calls and buying from telemarketers.

The traditional offline strategies of wandering around stores, coffee shops or the local mall do not resemble the strategies employed by marketers going from online to offline. Using mediums that have the potential to reach a massive target market is the mode of daily operation for the online direct response marketer. So naturally, for them, getting mass exposure is primary when going offline to market.

What Strategies to use Advertising Offline

There are many effective ways to market offline and reach a large group of people. Some strategies like placing an ad in your local news paper, small circulars or advertising in business directories are straight forward and you could have an ad placed tomorrow that can bring you 5 leads a day.

Some other strategies are a bit more involved but the skill required is not beyond those of the serious network marketer. Some ideas would be,

Magazine Ads Postcards Voice broadcasting Sales letters Newsletters

Voice Broadcasting Your Business

Voice broadcasting is a popular and effective online to offline marketing strategy to promote your business. One way you can utilize this powerful tool to build a list would be to employ a print ad, as we discussed above, and drive traffic to a 5-10 minute "sizzle" call with a prerecorded message from an up-line leader or just record it yourself.

If you already have a mailing list of subscribers, another way to recruit or gain customers with voice broadcasting would be to do a postcard mailing or just use email to invite people to the call. Open rates with email are typically low, hence the reason for a postcard mailing. Most people will look at a postcard in their mailbox resulting in the "open" rate being very high.

The last suggestion for voice broadcasting as an "online to offline" strategy actually employs a good deal of online activity. If done correctly your team will create massive duplication in your organization. The key is to be able to contact people quickly, even on a moments notice and get them to a sales call. Using social media platforms like Facebook and Skype your team can use the power of groups to promote special offers, discount on products, trainings and of course hear a message that sells your business.

Listen to the Expert

Whatever the online to offline strategy you use to promote your business, you can also do it inexpensively. Seek out the marketers who are actively promoting their online businesses offline. You will find that some of them are open and transparent in sharing their resources and expertise to help you have success as well.

Economics - Psychology's Neglected Branch

"It is impossible to describe any human action if one does not refer to the meaning the actor sees in the stimulus as well as in the end his response is aiming at." --Ludwig von Mises

Economics - to the great dismay of economists - is merely a branch of psychology. It deals with individual behaviour and with mass behaviour. Many of its practitioners sought to disguise its nature as a social science by applying complex mathematics where common sense and direct experimentation would have yielded far better results.

The outcome has been an embarrassing divorce between economic theory and its subjects.

The economic actor is assumed to be constantly engaged in the rational pursuit of self interest. This is not a realistic model - merely a useful approximation. According to this latter day - rational - version of the dismal science, people refrain from repeating their mistakes systematically. They seek to optimize their preferences. Altruism can be such a preference, as well.

Still, many people are non-rational or only nearly rational in certain situations. And the definition of "self-interest" as the pursuit of the fulfillment of preferences is a tautology.

The theory fails to predict important phenomena such as "strong reciprocity" - the propensity to "irrationally" sacrifice resources to reward forthcoming collaborators and punish free-riders. It even fails to account for simpler forms of apparent selflessness, such as reciprocal altruism (motivated by hopes of reciprocal benevolent treatment in the future).

Even the authoritative and mainstream 1995 "Handbook of Experimental Economics", by John Hagel and Alvin Roth (eds.) admits that people do not behave in accordance with the predictions of basic economic theories, such as the standard theory of utility and the theory of general equilibrium. Irritatingly for economists, people change their preferences mysteriously and irrationally. This is called "preference reversals".

Moreover, people's preferences, as evidenced by their choices and decisions in carefully controlled experiments, are inconsistent. They tend to lose control of their actions or procrastinate because they place greater importance (i.e., greater "weight") on the present and the near future than on the far future. This makes most people both irrational and unpredictable.

Either one cannot design an experiment to rigorously and validly test theorems and conjectures in economics - or something is very flawed with the intellectual pillars and models of this field.

Neo-classical economics has failed on several fronts simultaneously. This multiple failure led to despair and the re-examination of basic precepts and tenets.

Consider this sample of outstanding issues:

Unlike other economic actors and agents, governments are accorded a special status and receive special treatment in economic theory. Government is alternately cast as a saint, seeking to selflessly maximize social welfare - or as the villain, seeking to perpetuate and increase its power ruthlessly, as per public choice theories.

Both views are caricatures of reality. Governments indeed seek to perpetuate their clout and increase it - but they do so mostly in order to redistribute income and rarely for self-enrichment.

Economics also failed until recently to account for the role of innovation in growth and development. The discipline often ignored the specific nature of knowledge industries (where returns increase rather than diminish and network effects prevail). Thus, current economic thinking is woefully inadequate to deal with information monopolies (such as Microsoft), path dependence, and pervasive externalities.

Classic cost/benefit analyses fail to tackle very long term investment horizons (i.e., periods). Their underlying assumption - the opportunity cost of delayed consumption - fails when applied beyond the investor's useful economic life expectancy. People care less about their grandchildren's future than about their own. This is because predictions concerned with the far future are highly uncertain and investors refuse to base current decisions on fuzzy "what ifs".

This is a problem because many current investments, such as the fight against global warming, are likely to yield results only decades hence. There is no effective method of cost/benefit analysis applicable to such time horizons.

How are consumer choices influenced by advertising and by pricing? No one seems to have a clear answer. Advertising is concerned with the dissemination of information. Yet it is also a signal sent to consumers that a certain product is useful and qualitative and that the advertiser's stability, longevity, and profitability are secure. Advertising communicates a long term commitment to a winning product by a firm with deep pockets. This is why patrons react to the level of visual exposure to advertising - regardless of its content.

Humans may be too multi-dimensional and hyper-complex to be usefully captured by econometric models. These either lack predictive powers or lapse into logical fallacies, such as the "omitted variable bias" or "reverse causality". The former is concerned with important variables unaccounted for - the latter with reciprocal causation, when every cause is also caused by its own effect.

These are symptoms of an all-pervasive malaise. Economists are simply not sure what precisely constitutes their subject matter. Is economics about the construction and testing of models in accordance with certain basic assumptions? Or should it revolve around the mining of data for emerging patterns, rules, and "laws"?

On the one hand, patterns based on limited - or, worse, non-recurrent - sets of data form a questionable foundation for any kind of "science". On the other hand, models based on assumptions are also in doubt because they are bound to be replaced by new models with new, hopefully improved, assumptions.

One way around this apparent quagmire is to put human cognition (i.e., psychology) at the heart of economics. Assuming that being human is an immutable and knowable constant - it should be amenable to scientific treatment. "Prospect theory", "bounded rationality theories", and the study of "hindsight bias" as well as other cognitive deficiencies are the outcomes of this approach.

To qualify as science, economic theory must satisfy the following cumulative conditions:

All-inclusiveness (anamnetic) - It must encompass, integrate, and incorporate all the facts known about economic behaviour.

Coherence - It must be chronological, structured and causal. It must explain, for instance, why a certain economic policy leads to specific economic outcomes - and why.

Consistency - It must be self-consistent. Its sub-"units" cannot contradict one another or go against the grain of the main "theory". It must also be consistent with the observed phenomena, both those related to economics and those pertaining to non-economic human behaviour. It must adequately cope with irrationality and cognitive deficits.

Logical compatibility - It must not violate the laws of its internal logic and the rules of logic "out there", in the real world.

Insightfulness - It must cast the familiar in a new light, mine patterns and rules from big bodies of data ("data mining"). Its insights must be the inevitable conclusion of the logic, the language, and the evolution of the theory.

Aesthetic - Economic theory must be both plausible and "right", beautiful (aesthetic), not cumbersome, not awkward, not discontinuous, smooth, and so on.

Parsimony - The theory must employ a minimum number of assumptions and entities to explain the maximum number of observed economic behaviours.

Explanatory Powers - It must explain the behaviour of economic actors, their decisions, and why economic events develop the way they do.

Predictive (prognostic) Powers - Economic theory must be able to predict future economic events and trends as well as the future behaviour of economic actors.

Prescriptive Powers - The theory must yield policy prescriptions, much like physics yields technology. Economists must develop "economic technology" - a set of tools, blueprints, rules of thumb, and mechanisms with the power to change the " economic world".

Imposing - It must be regarded by society as the preferable and guiding organizing principle in the economic sphere of human behaviour.

Elasticity - Economic theory must possess the intrinsic abilities to self organize, reorganize, give room to emerging order, accommodate new data comfortably, and avoid rigid reactions to attacks from within and from without.

Many current economic theories do not meet these cumulative criteria and are, thus, merely glorified narratives.

But meeting the above conditions is not enough. Scientific theories must also pass the crucial hurdles of testability, verifiability, refutability, falsifiability, and repeatability. Yet, many economists go as far as to argue that no experiments can be designed to test the statements of economic theories.

It is difficult - perhaps impossible - to test hypotheses in economics for four reasons.

Ethical - Experiments would have to involve human subjects, ignorant of the reasons for the experiments and their aims. Sometimes even the very existence of an experiment will have to remain a secret (as with double blind experiments). Some experiments may involve unpleasant experiences. This is ethically unacceptable.

Design Problems - The design of experiments in economics is awkward and difficult. Mistakes are often inevitable, however careful and meticulous the designer of the experiment is.

The Psychological Uncertainty Principle - The current mental state of a human subject can be (theoretically) fully known. But the passage of time and, sometimes, the experiment itself, influence the subject and alter his or her mental state - a problem known in economic literature as "time inconsistencies". The very processes of measurement and observation influence the subject and change it.

Uniqueness - Experiments in economics, therefore, tend to be unique. They cannot be repeated even when the SAME subjects are involved, simply because no human subject remains the same for long. Repeating the experiments with other subjects casts in doubt the scientific value of the results.

The undergeneration of testable hypotheses - Economic theories do not generate a sufficient number of hypotheses, which can be subjected to scientific testing. This has to do with the fabulous (i.e., storytelling) nature of the discipline.

In a way, economics has an affinity with some private languages. It is a form of art and, as such, it is self-sufficient and self-contained. If certain structural, internal constraints and requirements are met - a statement in economics is deemed to be true even if it does not satisfy external (scientific) requirements. Thus, the standard theory of utility is considered valid in economics despite overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary - simply because it is aesthetic and mathematically convenient.

So, what are economic "theories" good for?

Economic "theories" and narratives offer an organizing principle, a sense of order, predictability, and justice. They postulate an inexorable drive toward greater welfare and utility (i.e., the idea of progress). They render our chaotic world meaningful and make us feel part of a larger whole. Economics strives to answer the "why's" and "how's" of our daily life. It is dialogic and prescriptive (i.e., provides behavioural prescriptions). In certain ways, it is akin to religion.

In its catechism, the believer (let's say, a politician) asks: "Why... (and here follows an economic problem or behaviour)".

The economist answers:

"The situation is like this not because the world is whimsically cruel, irrational, and arbitrary - but because ... (and here follows a causal explanation based on an economic model). If you were to do this or that the situation is bound to improve".

The believer feels reassured by this explanation and by the explicit affirmation that there is hope providing he follows the prescriptions. His belief in the existence of linear order and justice administered by some supreme, transcendental principle is restored.

This sense of "law and order" is further enhanced when the theory yields predictions which come true, either because they are self-fulfilling or because some real "law", or pattern, has emerged. Alas, this happens rarely. As "The Economist" notes gloomily, economists have the most disheartening record of failed predictions - and prescriptions.