Looking to Hire

I have decided I need to hire somebody. Someone to do the stuff that I don't do well. (Now, Keith would probably gleefully supply a task list for said employee, but housework is not what I have in mind here.) I'm thinking of research. There are a lot of topics that interest me (in case you haven't noticed). I like to know a lot of things in a lot of areas. But I don't always know how to find that information.

For example, I was wondering the other day how exactly the poor were taken care of in different societies in history (this question came out of reading one of those Nehemiah Insititute papers). How would one go about finding that out? There may be books written on the subject. In fact, I think they mentioned just such a book in World magazine last month, a book I thought at the time I should buy and read (I really need to get a job to support my literature habit). But consider the people who write these books -- where do they get their information? Scientific research? University libraries? Some unknown secret recesses on the internet?

That's what I'm not good at -- finding information. Once I have the information, I love to devour it, analyze it, synthesize it, evaluate it, reformulate it, spit it all out in a new and enriched format . . . but I need raw material to work with.

So, as I said, I'm hiring. A personal research assistant. I'll email you with a question I need you to get answers to, and you have to get back to me with as many resources as possible within 24-48 hours. Okay, maybe 72. But the time frame there is important. You can't say, "Oh, okay -- I'll have something for you in a month or so." Because in a month or so, my frenetic mind and I will have moved on to something else entirely.

And I'll pay you. Well, in caramel popcorn, anyway. And seriously, folks -- people rave about my caramel popcorn. Or maybe in homemade salsa. I've been getting good reviews for that lately, too.

You may submit your resumes to my comments section (yes, I know, there's supposed to be an accent mark over one of those e's -- if you can tell me how to type that on my keyboard, put that in my comments section, too). And be prepared, if accepted for the position, to begin immediately with that question about the poor in paragraph two.