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Just about the most important developments in the field of professional continuing education (CPE) is the relatively recent emphasis on ethics, triggering the proliferation now of many an ethics CPE course.
While certainly a good thing when the professions insist on not just what is legal but what is ethical and, even, moral, it’s also quite sad that simple human decency should today be so unheard of as to warrant an explicit prerequisite.

Obviously, malpractice jokes roasting doctors, lawyers, and accountants have long been a staple of humor and given such a context the now-official appreciation for proper behavior is to be applauded.
There are certainly more intense scenarios than having ethics CPE specifications – namely, the lack of them with the world still being the way it is: the very way which primarily made such courses so necessary!
But there’s no questioning the fact that when basic human decency needs to be taught so many years after kindergarten, where they were first encountered (likely an unfortunate fact in itself, as the first place anyone should come by their ethics should be the home!), society is doomed to an evermore unhappy race to the bottom for all.

Why, just take a look at the well-established practice now of companies hiring unpaid interns to do full-time jobs – real jobs, for which these volunteers usually are not even given the safety of common workplace discrimination and harrassment laws.
No, really!
Even multi-billion-dollar corporations, such as General Electric (which managed to pay no taxes for the filing season of 2011), make substantial use of these unpaid workers daily.
What good has all the ethics CPE courses in the world truly achieved when corporate bean-counters still continue to merely invent new ways of posting a profit while improving productivity and lowering costs on the backs of young people without money?

Many Blu Ray releases are but the latest example of the notion captured by the familiar phrase of French origin that translates as “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” As with the case of DVD ten years before, many releases failed to live up to what is possible with the Blu-ray format. Sharper pictures? Digital audio delivered across more than seven discrete channels, including the subwoofer? Not necessarily, even with the twenty-five gigabytes of storage offered on typical single-layer discs. Even if nothing compared to the numbers affected with DVD, when VHS got sent right to disc, some Blu-ray releases have been barely distinguishable from their prior incarnations!

Manhattan is a shopper’s paradise. From old-fashioned stores such as On Off Digital World to modern big box chain stores and franchises, there are a million ways to spend a million dollars! Nearly anything can be found there, which is why New York City feels like the capital city of the world oftentimes: if it isn’t found there, it probably doesn’t even exist! Cars, electronics, clothing, everything. The assortment of goods available is quite apt for a city that brings together people from all over the world. And that’s another reason why The Big Apple is regarded as the world’s capital! There just isn’t any other city like it in the world.

Blu-ray disc – or oftentimes spelled “Blu Ray disk” by people typing into the search engines – has been revolutionizing home entertainment these past couple of years. Even regular single-layer discs provide 25GB of storage capacity, which translates into much sharper video and much better sound. From the under-500 lines of resolution offered by the DVD format, the Blu-ray disc format offers a thousand and eighty lines. That means more than doubling visual clarity and detail! Nothing to write home about? Well, imagine if your vision improved by that same amount – and you could see much more than twice as far away, with much more than twice the detail! It’s home entertainment meant for the 21st Century!

What’s so interesting about On Off Digital World for me is that it evokes a particular period of old New York. Well, the eighties, anyway. Back then you still needed a token to get into the subways, and pizza was a buck a slice and comic books about the same. It was a time before Neflix and video on demand, a time when, in fact, cable was still getting off the ground in terms of widespread adoption. Back then was an innocent time, in a really — when family-owned and run operations like Montgomery Ward were the source for electronics. Such is the nostalgic appeal of On Off Digital.

Blu Ray media are poised to take over home entertainment this year. It promises clarity like never before, many times the definition available on today’s DVDs. While it’s possible to discern between even VHS and DVD images, there is no comparison possible between Blu-ray and standard DVDs! Go to the store and see for yourself. Small surprise, then, that shoppers should run to Blu-ray so enthusiastically, a market has grown around recordable Blu-ray media that allows people to preserve their own special occasions in the clearest most life-like manner possible yet.

Sam Antar was the former CFO of Crazy Eddie’s, his cousin’s electronics retail kingdom.
Sam is a much sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit these days, and his seminars may also earn CPE and CLE credits for the attendees.

That’s because he is a convicted fraudster.

Ethics continuing education courses are generally self-paced correspondence courses one takes at one’s own leisure as a part of maintaining one’s professional good standing.
Reading through Sam’s site on the worldwide web, however, is as educational as any structured academic account can be.

As the former CFO of Crazy Eddie’s, Sam presided over one of the most well-known scandals in the chronicles of corporate crime.
He lays it all out, bare, raw, and unembellished by any of the typical self-serving rationaliziations frequently given to insiders’ accounts – all unadulterated on his website.

This is an ethics CPE course like no other – if it were accredited as such.
As it is, it’s just a website – but oh, what a website!

White-collar law-breaking never sounded so exciting.
That’s because the Crazy Eddie’s scandal was at heart a soap opera displaying all the acquainted human foibles known to a Greek chorus – lust, greed, betrayal, along with family.
Yes, family.

The familial element in this drama makes this instance of corporate crime so – if the pun is going to be pardoned – familiar to lay readers, grabbing and holding their awareness where other accounts might lose them under a hill of technical details.
However, it isn’t that Sam offers no minutiae of his own; his very purpose these days is to combat criminal activity, after all; it’s that these details, which would be so boring otherwise without the benefit of a human drama in which to place them in the proper perspective, come to vibrant life against the circumstance of a family power struggle that resonantes powerfully with everyone who’s ever underwent any semblance of sibling rivalry.

How’s that for an ethics CPE course!

Taking online CPE courses is more convenient than ever, but it’s still something that one would have to take seriously.
Those unfamiliar with continuing professional education may imagine that it’s just some type of blow or they may think it’s like school all over again.
The truth is, however, somewhere in the centre.

Online CPE courses help make it even less like school, and for all the seriousness involved they can be almost fun.
A well-written course can help make things seem less onerous – as anything obligatory usually tends to be – but of course if one is an expert then one will do whatever needs to be done regardless of the fun factor!

Still, it’s good to know that not all online CPE courses need to be as dull as traditional mail correspondence lessons were.
No need to make a chore even more of a chore, after all!
Hopefully, staying on top of developments in one’s field, whether it be the law or medicine or any other profession, could well be exciting enough in and of itself.

Frankly, if undergoing continuing education would be a difficulty, then there is no reason to enter such careers in the first place, no matter the prestige and the higher income.
(And, regarding lawyers, the higher income is nowhere near as guaranteed as for the other professions!)
These days, even personal fitness trainers are required to take continuing education courses.
That’s right – those guys and gals at the gym!

Chalk it all up to an ever increasingly competitive job market, where credentials mean getting a foot in the door.
Obviously, it is not just market pressures, as the scope of knowledge in a area like medicine is always increasing with each new discovery.
However, while something like the law can also be subject to constant change, it basically does not command the same kind of rates lately as it once did.
Law graduates have actually gone on to file class-action lawsuits against their alma maters, putting those legal expertise to the just use they can find in this economy!