Archive for the category "Business & Finance"
 by Chip Ainsworth
Long ago on a late September afternoon before there was Red Sox Nation, Wally the Green Monster and little children announcing starting lineups, I hopped in my old Mustang and high-tailed it to Boston for one last glimpse of Luis Tiant on the mound. The whirling dervish won 122 games in eight seasons for the Red Sox but this wasn’t one of those nights. He was in the showers before I’d even hit my seat.
The point is that those were the days when fans could go to a game on a whim and a few bucks in their pockets. Sellouts were few, and in 1978 a grandstand seat along first base cost $4.75. It was an era before ticket agencies, a time when baseball was just a game, not a pompous spectacle with ceremonial first pitches, ear-splitting flyovers and interminably long renditions of the national anthem.
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 Back in 2007, as I was thinking about my little Dr. Sammy in 2008/EdF1rst project, I conceived a heresy. It went like this: What would happen if, as a massive economic stimulus, you forgave all outstanding student loan debt in America?
I knew from experience the impact that loan debt has on consumer spending. You have, at this point, a couple of generations who can’t afford to spend (or save) in service to the debt racked up getting their degrees (degrees, which, by the way, didn’t position them to pay off that debt in anything like a timely manner). My generation is and will continue to be underwater. The Millennials are well and truly fucked in ways that us Xers couldn’t have imagined in the 1980s. Full story »
 Pew reports this:
Nearly three quarters (72%) of adults are quite attached to following local news and information, and local newspapers are by far the source they rely on for much of the local information they need. In fact, local news enthusiasts are substantially more wedded to their local newspapers than others. They are much more likely than others to say that if their local newspaper vanished, it would have a major impact on their ability to get the local information they want. This is especially true of local news followers age 40 and older …
Then Steve Myers at Poynter says this:
The report goes on to say that 32 percent of these people say the disappearance of their local paper would have a major impact on their lives. Among people who aren’t that interested in local news, about half say their lives wouldn’t change at all if they didn’t have a local paper. Good, for newspapers, right?
But look at it another way: That means 68 percent of local news enthusiasts don’t believe the disappearance of their local paper would affect their lives in a major way. And 34 percent of such enthusiasts say the disappearance wouldn’t affect their lives at all.
But neither addresses how the quality of the local newspaper might affect these statistics of who would feel an impact and who would not if the local paper folded.
Full story »
 by James Boyce
You’d think the USDA would see the flaw of logic in letting the people who make the food inspect the food and decide if it is actually safe to eat.
The USDA has decided in its infinite wisdom, despite pink slime and a few other debacles of the food industry, to test a program allowing chicken companies to check their own livestock and decide whether or not the chickens are safe to eat.
The USDA claims this will save them tens of millions of dollars.
Well, USDA, I can save you even more. Full story »
 Alan Mutter, writing at Reflections of a Newsosaur, put it succinctly:
The number of journalists working at U.S. newspapers today is at the lowest point since the American Society of News Editors began its annual newsroom census in 1978.
Newspapers now employ 40,600 editors and reporters vs. a peak of 56,900 in the pre-Internet year of 1990, according to the census released today. Thus, newsroom headcount has fallen by 28.6% from its modern-day high. [See the year-by-year table.]
When an industry charged with holding government accountable — government at all levels, from village council to the presidency — loses about 29 percent of the sheriffs on the beat, we have to wonder: Who’s minding the watchdog store? Fewer reporters with less experience are asking fewer questions about government and corporate decision making (and decision makers). That means the public has less credible information at its disposal to make wiser political and consumer decisions.
Yet all’s good, say newspaper execs. We’re leaner and meaner and still on the job. So, we should think, What, me worry?
But how can management claims of better reporting be true with such high losses in the newsroom?
Full story »
 Recently a friend of mine, Miles Dean, got into an email discussion around healthcare with John Laxmi. I found it so interesting and understandable, that I thought you might as well. Here goes.
Miles: The Supreme Court is considering the Affordable Health Care Act, and much discussion is on the question of individual mandates and how these requirements infringe on our rights. Why is it OK to mandate auto insurance, but not health insurance? What’s the difference between cost shifting on cars and accidents, and cost shifting on health care? Full story »
 [NSFW WARNING: Graphic content. You do NOT want to see the images here, but I think maybe you should.]
I’ve been wanting to write something deep, something analytical, something based on solid policy on the subject of the Republican war on everything, especially women and the poor, and just haven’t been able to do it. Why? Simple. There’s just too damned much material. I’m only one writer. I have but so many resources. I know only but so much, don’t have the experience, and have a list of excuses longer than Ron Jeremy’s arm. Besides, there are already millions and millions of dollars being poured into generating tons and tons of perfectly rational, articulate reasons why government needs to fund little things like health care for women and the poor, why government needs to regulate everything from what may be pumped into the air we breathe to the rapacious behaviors of bankers and power brokers.
Words. Words. Words. Full story »
 It has recently come to my attention that you thought it would be really clever to ask prospective employees for their Facebook passwords so that you could peek under the hood and see all the goodies about them that they don’t care to make public. I’m not entirely sure what it is you hoped to gain by this malicious little bit of snoopery, but I can assure you that, were our roles reversed, I would certainly not hire the likes of someone like you who thinks this is a good idea.
First, let’s visit the patently obvious. You seek to hire individuals that, for whatever reason, are willing to give their private, sensitive information to someone they barely know. Is that seriously the kind of security risk you intend to hire? If so, you’re a moron.
Second, let’s take a look at the slightly less obvious, Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. You might remember this document. It’s the one you blithely ignored when you decided it would be a great fucking idea to compromise the security of people’s accounts for your own nefarious purposes. Here’s a few choice bits you should read more closely, or even at all, for that matter. Full story »
 Ugh. I’m no attorney and don’t even play one on TV, but after wading through only two pages of the new terms and scribbling notations like crazy, I’m inclined to just delete my account and never intentionally click through to their website again. Unless I’m horribly mistaken, I can only come up with four possible scenarios to account for their gobbledy-gook:
- Product of infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters that vaguely looks like a TOS;
- Cobbled together by a non-attorney copy/pasting from various random sources willy-nilly, including toilet paper packages, without fully considering the ramifications;
- Cobbled together by a rather lackluster and sleep-deprived law student who had word salad for lunch; or
- Cobbled together by a brilliantly mad Eeeevil intellectual property (IP) attorney in a secret underground laboratory as part of a grand conspiracy to ensnare as many people in an IP infringement net as imaginable because retaining those services was still cheaper than buying a movie studio, a music label or a death ray. Full story »
Image credit: Scientific American In one of the Tech Curmudgeon’s favorite movies, Winston Zeddmore (played by Ernie Hudson) told Ray Stantz (played by Dan Aykroyd) “When someone asks if you’re a god, you say ‘YES!’” In that same spirit, if a prospective employer asks for your Facebook password, you say “NO!” Actually, the Tech Curmudgeon initially thought that “fuck off!” was a better response, but you may not want to get a reputation for having an attitude problem.
Then again, having an attitude about refusing to bare your private life to an employer who has no legitimate interest in said private life isn’t necessarily a bad thing. That’s why it’s called “your private life,” after all.
The Tech Curmudgeon also feels that any company who demands access to your private information via social networking sites as a condition of employment is a company that desperately needs to go out of business yesterday, if not sooner. Full story »
 What was BBH Labs thinking? Michael Sebastien at PR Daily is on the money in saying that “it might go down as one of the biggest PR disasters of the year.”
New York-based marketing firm BBH Labs equipped homeless people on the streets of Austin with devices that made them wireless hot spots. Internet seekers then paid what they wanted—in cash or via PayPal—to access the Web. The homeless men and women kept all of the money.
The media wasn’t amused, and now BBH Labs is licking its wounds. Full story »
 Wow. Here’s one I never imagined I’d see.
King’s College women’s basketball team is traveling north this weekend to play in the NCAA Division III National Tournament Sweet 16 in Amherst, Mass. The Lady Monarchs’ leading scorer, however, opted instead to head south.
Paige Carlin, a senior forward and the sixth man off the King’s bench, left for Cancun, Mexico for spring break on Sunday, a day after King’s posted a stunning 64-63 win over William Paterson to advance to the sectional tournament in Massachusetts. Her name has since been removed from the team roster.
When I saw this story two things occurred to me immediately. The first is obvious: is this the worst teammate in history or what? Full story »
 Okay, maybe not yet. But we’re definitely getting there. Check out today’s two-part gotcha.
Part 1: Back in 2008 I wrote a piece called “The Smartest Shopping Cart That Ever Lived,” a glimpse into the near-future of GPS meets RFID meets customer relationship management meets intelligent supply chain meets nosy retailer shopping experience. I invoked Minority Report in doing so – remember Tom Cruise trying to get through that mall without being skinned alive?
Of course, as is so often the case when it comes to predicting the future these days, I was way too conservative. Check this item, from the Not-Science-Fiction-At-All Files.
An angry man went into a Target outside of Minneapolis, demanding to talk to a manager: Full story »
 I don’t know when the very first boycott of a product or company happened, but I suspect the tactic has been around in some form or another for a long time. I do remember the onset of the modern form of the practice, though. Back in the ’70s and ’80s, social conservatives began going after businesses who advertised on shows they didn’t approve of as a key part of their culture war strategy and they did so with a good deal of effectiveness. So much effectiveness, in fact, that a lot of people today (both conservatives and more progressive types like myself) routinely make purchasing decisions based on a company’s political behavior. (I miss Buy Blue, which made the process a lot simpler.)
A lot of conservatives this week seem to have conveniently forgotten their history. Full story »
 Rush Limbaugh has apologized to Sandra Fluke. Sort of – he uses the opportunity to reiterate everything except the actual insults. If he were concerned about sincerity, he wouldn’t have buried the apology on Saturday afternoon, he have delivered it in the same medium as he did the attack.
Here’s what the move by Limbaugh means:
- His lawyers told him that a libel suit had merit, and
- he was feeling the backlash against his advertisers.
Here’s what it doesn’t mean: Limbaugh’s opponents have won. Full story »
Update from Carbonite @ Facebook/Carbonite Website:
A Statement from David Friend, CEO of Carbonite:
“No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show.
We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.”
That’s a step in the right direction, Mr. Friend. Iff only you hadn’t supported his massive assortment of egregious gaffes with your advertising dollars in the first place. Sadly, you remain silent on those matters. Perhaps if you had a black child you would suddenly get it? What other children would you need to have before you understand the damage Limbaugh does with the nature of his discourse? To top it off, you also perpetuate the myth that Limbaugh’s Saturday comments constitute genuine apology.
Original Story
On Friday, March 2, 2012, David Friend, CEO of Carbonite, an online data backup company that has earned kudos from Inc. and PC World for company growth, ease of use and affordability had this to say: Full story »
Derek Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic, cuts to the chase in his lede:
Call it creative if you want, but this is what economic destruction looks like. Print newspaper ads have fallen by two-thirds from $60 billion in the late-1990s to $20 billion in 2011.
“This” is a graph in a post by Mark Perry, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan.
Full story »
 So, the Susan Komen Foundation has hired a big-hitter PR firm. And not just any PR firm, either.
Now, Komen is assessing the damage, and it’s using a consulting firm founded by two former Democratic strategists. Penn Schoen Berland (PSB), the firm Komen hired to help determine how badly the crisis hurt its reputation, is founded by former Democratic strategists Mark Penn and Doug Schoen.
The goal here seems obvious. Komen’s recent bout of ballistic podiatry cost it massive amounts of support among people who believe that women’s health shouldn’t be held captive to a reactionary, partisan social conservative agenda. The foundation has accurately understood that this means it needs people from the center and points left in order to thrive. Or, at this point, survive. So they go out and hire … Mark Penn.
Wait, what? Full story »
 I began my career as an engineer in a large Illinois manufacturing plant. Chuck, the only African-American engineer in the company, was comically paranoid—he rarely spoke above a whisper, refused to say anything over the phone, and before every meeting would check outside his door to see if anyone was lurking in the hallway. When Chuck was passed over for a promotion, he left the company. A year later I heard the head of engineering explain why Chuck had not gotten the job, “Reinhardt (the plant manager) was never going to promote a n…..r.” The moral of the story, obviously enough, is that Chuck’s paranoia was justified. Gas prices are predicted to go up to $5 in the summer. The timing smells. I may be paranoid, but that doesn’t mean I am wrong.
Full story »
 Dear Manager:
Hi. I just left your restaurant after waiting in line for maybe 45 minutes or so, and unfortunately I left extremely frustrated.
I’m a regular. I’ve probably been in ____’s an average of once a week since I moved to the Highlands last May. I bring friends there, and a couple of weeks ago I even scheduled a business lunch there with a potential colleague. Most of the time I’m alone, though, as I was this morning.
It was busy, as always for Sunday brunch, and I expected to wait. No problem – it’s worth it. I got my name on the list and kept my eye on the bar, which is where I’ll wind up, being a single. As my name neared the top of the list a booth opened up. The hostess calls my name and says she can seat me there now, but she asks if I’d be willing to wait for the counter since the couple on the end looks like they’re getting ready to leave. Full story »
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