Maserati's "downmarket" Quattroporte--estimated base price: $125,000--utilizes the same nav system as a $15,995 Dodge Dart.
The Tesla Model S is a marvel of engineering, an electric car that doesn't disappoint driving enthusiasts, but medium-distance drives can result in dead batteries and flatbed tows.
"Carwasheros" is a word. (source)
Renting a car? These are the major options by brand name:
Enterprise
National
Hertz
Alamo
Avis
Budget
Thrifty
Dollar
Zipcar
But this is the corporate landscape, pending FTC approval of two recent deals:
Hertz Global Holdings (Hertz, Thrifty, Dollar)
Avis Budget Group (Avis, Budget, Zipcar)
Enterprise Holdings (Enterprise, Alamo, National)
Nine brands, three car companies. Remember that next time you try threatening the guy at the airport that you'll walk over to the next counter.
This is the first in a series of summaries of industries whose corporate consolidation has led to a small number of players controlling the majority of the market, creating oligopolies in the mass market.
Americans are 6 percent more likely to get in an automobile accident on April 15: "tax day, likely due to driver distraction caused by stress."
Other interesting car crash facts: men are responsible for 57% of all crashes, but if it's due to mashing the wrong pedal, there's a two-thirds chance a woman was behind the wheel; automobile fatalities are now just 15% as frequent as they were sixty years ago; thanks to reduced fatality rates, fewer people died in an accident last year than they did in 1949, when the population of the United States was less than 150 million.
Katie
Kid
Kite
Kitchen
Kangaroo
Kapow
Kit-Kat
Ketchup
Cassie
Cat
Calendar
Quesadilla
Cute
Q-tip
"No, thanks, I'm pretty sure I'm allergic."
"Well, they say the proper body-mass index is..."
A few days ago my last company disappeared.
Well, not exactly disappeared and not exactly a few days ago. But in a press release dated Monday, the ecommerce shop I founded, Canopy Commerce, was rebranded and folded back into its parent company, Alexander Interactive.
Canopy lasted roughly two years and built a successful portfolio of client work. We launched some pretty good stuff, frankly ("incredible success," per the press release) and had a pretty good time doing so. Several Canopy employees rolled into Ai with the name change, ensuring a smooth transition.
Back in 2010, when I was creating Canopy with Ai's owners, I advocated having a business unit and not a standalone company, so I am neither shocked nor disappointed that Canopy is now Ai-branded. My CEO role wasn't filled after I left, so this is a logical step.
I have been thinking a lot about this, though, and about the ephemeral nature of employment in general. I now have worked for three companies whose names no longer exist, not to mention my own currently dormant consulting shop. While one former employer became a client of mine, 13 years later, I'm at the point where I don't even know how to refer to some others.
For better or worse, people identify heavily with the work they do and where they do it. I typically recite with pride the places I've been, which is made harder when they disappear. It's a little soulless, a little confusing, a little disjointed. People's recall lessens. Web searches become less fruitful. LinkedIn profiles get messy. (I rolled up my Canopy title into Ai on my profile, for example.)
This is the nature of the business world, of course. I should be used to it as someone who specializes in Internet projects, where entire companies can disappear in a click; even my own website archives are full of missing files. But employers gone missing resonates in a different way.
Farewell, Canopy. We had an interesting run.
Behold: the Fisher-Price Apptivity Case, a protective baby-friendly cover for your iPhone.
I'm a digital guy, have been since I got an Atari as a second-grader. I now have two kids that can't help but see my TV set, laptop, iPad, iPhone, iPod. They think it's fascinating and fun.
So I did what any responsible parent should do. I downloaded and tested some age-appropriate apps and let my older son explore. The iPad and iPhone are genius devices in their usability, with their clutter-free fascia and immersive interfaces. So now the gadget is teaching the boy animals, colors, shapes, letters, memory retention and matching, spatial relations, you name it. We also set up guidelines: no screens between breakfast and dinner, no YouTube (Thomas the Tank Engine snuff films! who knew?), you have to play out difficult boards and not quit things quickly, etc.
That boy is now 4 and is as digitally savvy as anyone his age. He's also wicked good at memory matching games, he can write his letters in capitals and lowercase, and he plays sophisticated games like Flow, Trainyard and Rush Hour better than many adults. Heck, he figured out how to unlock the home screen at 21 months. And he still loves his real-world toys, crayons and books.
Done right, gadgets are as wondrously useful for young people as they are for adults.
My baby boy is 15 months and dying to play with the iPhone. Right now he only gets glimpses when his big brother is engaged. Soon enough, Eli, soon enough.
Stuff I carried around Hong Kong as I explored on my first trip there, October 2000:
Sean Bonner: Facebook makes me feel like a shitty friend.
Facebook made it easy. So now I have to wonder am I only staying in touch with those people because it requires absolutely zero effort on my part? What kind of a person does that make me? What does that say about how much I value their friendship?Earlier this month I found out about a friend's wife giving birth via Facebook, and only Facebook. It's not the first time this has happened (indeed, not even the first time with this friend). And, to use Bonner's turn of phrase, it made me feel kind of shitty.
Social media sites are wondrous things. I am in touch with more people in infinitely more ways than I ever expected. The problem lies with scale and distance, as the same interactions that feel immediate to the author can feel very different to the reader--both more and less intimate than originally intended, depending on the recipient. What Bronner and I are observing is less technological than sociological: replacing important real-life touchpoints with digital ones can be inherently, and inadvertently, disappointing.
Social interactions have myriad levels of nuance. Facebook is different from Twitter, for example. Email distribution lists remain popular alongside social networks (for my demographic, at least). And each type of action carries its own etiquette. Checking into the hospital on Foursquare and tweeting the delivery of a child can be fascinating and energizing and fun. Extreme example: Matt Haughey live-tweeted his vasectomy! But the same broadcast capabilities that bring levity to such things also defy conventional levels of friendship. When inner-circle, 20-years-of-history friends post the same birth notice to you as to 680 of their digital connections, that inner circle takes on a much flimsier feel. (Let the record show that in each case of "hey, I saw on Facebook that you're a dad now," I replied with a phone call.)
I rediscovered Bonner's post because yesterday he quit Facebook altogether. I don't think I'm in quite that drastic a frame of mind. My own Facebook usage is quite minimal: after all, if you're concerned about privacy on Facebook, limiting what you tell Facebook goes a long way toward mitigating its pervasiveness. My profile there is no more robust than what you find about me on Twitter, LinkedIn, et al. with the exception of a handful of photos and some basic banter with my friends. My privacy settings are finely tuned. I can live with Facebook knowing and using that much about me.
And indeed, I almost need Facebook, because its wall has become many people's primary mode of communication. I only log onto Facebook once a week or so, and when I'm gone for too long, I miss out on news of life-altering events. The privacy concerns are valid, sure, but many people have decided, however unwittingly, that they're willing to live with the trade-offs of privacy and reach. And while I'd probably be fine not residing within the Facebook social graph, I don't terribly want to dictate terms to my friends regarding how they keep in touch with me. So for now, they'll post, I'll call, and we'll all go to bed happy.
Social media is an amazing tool. Even more so on one's own terms.
According to LinkedIn, 1% of my profile views in the last 90 days came from searches--more than one!--for (marketing or product or strategy or cmo or intelligence or ceo) and management and director and not president and not sales and manager and not social and not budget and not plan and not direct and strategy and not solution and business and not product and not develop and online. (Oddly, I get no results from that link. Maybe I don't know anyone like that.)
November 2: Syms and Filene's Basement file for bankruptcy.
Company CEO Marcy Syms said in statement the two discount chains were burdened by increasing competition from department stores offering the same brands at similar discounts and by a rising number of private label discounters. She also said there was less overstock for her company to buy as businesses continue to manage their inventory carefully during the tough economy.September 22: Century 21 opens a 60,000 square foot store on the Upper West Side.
"The expansion is giving another area of the city a chance for everyone to look good all the time," said Director of Organizational Effectiveness Boyd Howell. ... "Brand-driven guests can come in and find their brand instead of having to dig through hoping they'll find something."
"I believe that if all the truth were known about everything in the world, it would be a better place to live."
--Andy Rooney, 2011
"I set it down as a fact that if all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world."
--Blaise Pascal, 1660
Loved this observation from Felix Salmon regarding New York's new bike sharing program and the reaction from Sean Sweeny of Soho Alliance:
"DOT and Janette Sadik-Khan's problem is they say, 'Here's what we're doing, take it or leave it,'" said Sean Sweeney of the Soho Alliance, a frequent DOT critic. "Instead, it should be, 'Here's 20 racks, where would you like them?'" He expressed concern about whether the stations would be located on too-narrow sidewalks or in valuable parking spaces or other inopportune locations.
Still, he said it would be nice if done right. "I walk a lot, I'll walk from 59th Street downtown," Mr. Sweeney said. "Let's say I don't want to walk or take the subway, then a bike sounds nice. But it's still a matter of giving over public space to a private company, so we have to be careful." He added that no stations should be place in Soho.
I love the way that Sweeney starts by implying that he would be happy to place 20 racks around Soho, underscores that by saying that the scheme "sounds nice" -- and then, at the end, drops the bomb that he's already decided that the optimal number of racks in Soho is precisely zero.When I was a kid in New Jersey my brother once got a toy (long since forgotten) that enraged me to the point of public complaint. I made a sign and posted it for all the family to see. It read, more or less:
I HATE that [new toy]!Felix posits that Sweeney isn't open to the idea. Quite the contrary: he's actually jealous, to the point of distraction, and he can't bring himself to admit it.
I HATE IT HATE IT HATE IT
I don't EVER WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN!
P.S. You'd better let me use it!
A confession: I've spent the past week two weeks willfully avoiding most September 11 commemorations. I certainly know why, although I have had a hard time putting it into words. Am I not ready to recollect? Do I find it too sad, too ugly? Does it feel too obvious to me?
Perhaps all of the above, or something else, subconscious and intangible, that drives me away from the past. Different things evoke different responses. I blithely skipped past The Economist's coverage of the anniversary, but I can't even bring myself to crack open the New York magazine special, and I have been noticeably averting my gaze whenever I spy the billowing smoke on its cover. A decade on, I am not at all inured to the visuals of the event--if anything, I have a more visceral reaction now, in remembrance, than when it actually happened and we all couldn't stop looking.
My wife pointed out, rightly, that we as a society need to remember, to reflect, to refresh our memories, to celebrate the heroes and respect the innocent and the fallen. I had friends who experienced a far more dramatic 9/11 than I did, and friends who lost their lives.
Perhaps that's where I am: I haven't reflected because I haven't forgotten. I can tell, in vivid detail, the story of that day and the entire week around it: where I was, what I did, how I felt, what I smelled. It was my reality and remains my experience. To that end, America's insistent media saturation leading up to Sunday's commemorations are invaluable: no one is being allowed to forget, just as I, and many others, already cannot.
Tomorrow is a somber and important day for all of us, however explicit our reflections may be. My thoughts are with those whose memories are far more painful than mine.
--
On and after September 11, the Internet was both a lifeline and an outlet for me. My blog posts from 9/11 through the 23rd are available in a single-read archive, and I invite my readers to explore them. For historical accuracy, the girlfriend cited in the posts is now my wife; we have long since moved out of Union Square to the Upper West Side, where we will be spending a quiet 9/11/11 at home.
In 2001 I also published my friend Adam Oestreich's first-hand account of the attacks, which remains a compelling read. At this time of year it is always the most popular page on this website. (Adam, it can be noted, now works in midtown.)
Regular readers of this space know that Ideapad rarely touches on politics. But Drew Westen's What Happened to Obama? in the New York Times Sunday Review is a must-read. It's a compelling, gut-wrenching and accurate exposition on how Barack Obama failed at a terrific, and important, opportunity to shape the nation's future.
With [Obama's] deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics -- in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time -- he has broken ["the arc of history", Obama's paraphrasing of Dr. Martin Luther King] and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation. ... The real conundrum is why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won't realize which hand is holding the rabbit.
Behind the rhetoric, some fascinating numbers coming out of Washington this week.
As part of the deal, the 2012 Congressional budget will be reduced by $22 billion. Of course, the 2012 baseline budget is $3,639 billion. Which makes the budget cuts 0.61% of the budget--perhaps less--and basically meaningless besides as a data point for stump speeches. (The article linked above suggests that the entire deal could be fiscally meaningless, although it's politically huge.)
Tea Party representatives took a hard-line stance against taxes, but among voters, 53 percent of Tea Party members supported a combination of tax increases and spending cuts for this deal. And a whopping 66% of voters encouraged the Tea Party representatives in Congress to work toward compromise last month.
Ultimately, the pragmatic center carried the day, with 95 Democrats and 174 Republicans voting in favor of the bill, and 95 Democrats and 66 Republicans voting against. Forging middle ground is almost quaint in 2011 Washington (even if it is heavily tilted toward the Republican ideal).
Steve Jobs' reality distortion takes its toll on truth, on Fortune Tech.
I hate when hyperbole overshadows fact. (It's one of the reasons I have never gotten deeply into following politics.) This article posits to fact-check Steve Jobs' iPad 2 keynote, but Seth Weintraub's corrections are surrounded in so much arm-waving frustration that they undermine the root arguments behind them. They also overstate the corrections.
To wit: Jobs included a bullet point that said the iPad has greater than 90% market share. Weintraub wrote in response, "'>90% market share'. OMG Math," then asserted, "Apple would have needed to sell 3.2 million more to reach 90% of 2010's tablet market share." Which, in itself, isn't accurate either. If the market is essentially the 14.8 million-sold-in iPad and the 2 million-sold-in Galaxy Tab, then Apple's sales in 2010 weren't 90% of the market, they were actually (wait for it) 88.1%. OMG Math.
Then, in trying to compare apples to apples on component pricing, Weintraub starts with, "The XOOM's are simply better." He then chooses to pick at various items on the iPad's spec sheet which don't match up to the Xoom's, and says Apple doesn't measure up. But in doing so, he's playing the same game in reverse: focusing on factors where his preferred device is stronger (RAM, storage, speakers) and ignoring the ones where his is not (processor, size, cameras). It's a winless argument.
Thinly veiled disdain is good for speaking to a base of like-minded individuals. But it won't win any broader discussions.
Space Invaders: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period, in Slate.
"Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule," says the column. "Every major style guide--including the Modern Language Association Style Manual and the Chicago Manual of Style--prescribes a single space after a period."
I've taken Farhad to task before, but I'm behind him here (even though I dislike how he positions his argument). I forcefully converted my own two-space habits sometime in 2004. It's ungainly, and it doesn't even render in HTML, where I spend much of my days. I've taken to performing a find-and-replace on any documents I have to proofread.
In fact, I can trace my period shifting to my first full-time position that required I use Outlook on Windows for email. Faced with seas of Arial, I could suddenly see how disjointed my text looked, after 15 years of Mishawaka in Eudora.
Habits are nice and conventions are nice. But clean, efficient typing is even nicer.
Moin Moin! How are you you? I have a fun toy for Young people searched for your order. Hurrah! I really exactly, what I was looking so long at the following from a dedicated Author operated Web site. The Internet Web Site remote discounted capital ships, harbor tugs and flattop. The remote-controlled boats are gifts, you who at any time should watch! So quickly in order: remote-controlled boat(Translation via Google Translate. Also: I think it's about time I turned off comments for good.)
For reasons still unclear to me, a six-month print subscription to Newsweek in my name began arriving in my mailbox this week. Awesome.
(I should note that not only is this borderline ridiculous, situationally, but also that in my many years of reading magazines I never liked Newsweek. I grew up in a Time household and I subscribe to The Economist. Newsweek felt fluffy. I wonder if I can gift this comp sub somewhere.)
Westside Independent: Numerous UWS Restaurants Closed for Health Violations. The list of May offenders includes Tal Bagel, Hot & Crusty and Popover Cafe.
I had breakfast at Tal over the weekend and nearly posted a review to Yelp and Menupages about it. The place is, in a word, dirty. Tables full of crumbs, grimy floors, a crusty pizza that looked like it had been sitting out since the night before. My bagels were fine enough, but I had them toasted--they were undoubtedly a day old. (Ask a Tal employee on a Saturday morning, "Which bagels are warm?" and he'll tell you, "None, we didn't cook this morning.")
The beauty of living in Manhattan, of course, is that choice is abundant. So instead of Tal, I go to Lenny's a few blocks up for a bagel, or, when it's convenient, to H&H (which has had its share of problems recently, but about money, not cleanliness). I rarely go to my freakishly expensive local supermarkets; I hit Fairway instead. And while Popover Cafe has some good food, my wife (accurately!) says it's too dirty, so we eat elsewhere.
The real problem here is that all the dirty places on the UWS seem to be the ones nearest my apartment. Get it together, people! I want to support your well-run businesses!
The elected members of the New York State Senate and Assembly have been more likely in the past 10 years to leave office by resigning in disgrace than to actually lose an election.
From my post on aiaio:
Contemplating how to service users with 1.5" BlackBerry screens was one thing; dealing with iPad users, with their 1024x768 screens and just-like-a-laptop-only-better expectations, is entirely another. And while the iPad may be just a first step in an evolution, a million unit sales in a month suggests someone found the keys to the steamroller.It's easy to forget that the iPad is both a laptop and a mobile device--a blurry line that is only going to get blurrier. I know of a retailer that converted a few thousand dollars in sales on its circa-2007, Flash-enabled website last year ... in iPod Touch user sessions. Evolution doesn't wait.
I worry that this pervasive and seamless socialization can ooze into our personal relationships and potentially dilute the value of friendship as well. If I order two copies of photos of my kids so I can send some to you, that is one manifestation of my affection; I "like" you. If I email you those same photos, it's less effort for me, but the meaning is similar. But what if I share those same photos on a public blog or with a few hundred folks on Facebook? Hasn't that very personal connection between you and me been watered down?An old friend called me on Saturday.
"How have you been?" I asked.
"Good, good, just on my way to the supermarket, my 10 minutes of quiet now that the baby's home."
"The baby?"
"Yeah, she was born two weeks ago."
"She was? Congrats! I had no idea."
"I posted it on Facebook, didn't you see it? That was basically my one communication to the outside world."
Not long ago big news was delivered via telephone. Then, for a while, email moved in. Now we're onto notifications, posted to third-party locations on the assumption that everyone of consequence is dialed into them. What's the next step? How much between now and then might we miss?
Blog comment spam has gotten direct and chatty lately, to the point where I've had to read things twice to verify whether or not the content is real. Some of it is obvious, like opinions unrelated to the blog post referenced, but even the idea of sharing opinions is a new twist.
At the risk of encouraging more of it, I thought I'd share Saturday's comment spam contents here, for those who haven't seen the likes of it, unedited:
Refreshing site. My co-workers and I were just talking about this the other evening. Also your blog looks great on my old sidekick. Now thats uncommon. Keep it up.Unfortunately, all this does (as with most spam) is waste my time. I've resorted to googling the names, email addresses and/or URLs of my commenters to ensure validity before posting. Ah, what next?I really enjoyed this article, can I copy a paragraph to a new site that I'm building? I'll add a link back to this page and credit you with being the author of course.
Thank you for your great post. I also must say that your blog design is top notch. Keep up the great work.
I did a search on the topic and found most people agree with your blog.
1—me, circa 2002
2—other people named David Wertheimer (at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USC, respectively)
3—images in blog posts I've written on aiaio
4—my son and his cousins
A full look at Google Images brings up numerous croppings of the other Davids as well as my wedding photo and various inanimate objects.
One of the more random occurrences in adult life is discovering the company one keeps in one's office building. Companies rent space, and the neighbors can be all sorts of interesting.
I haven't had all that many exciting office situations over the years, but a few stand out.
1. Viacom. Specifically, MTV, in the Viacom building when I worked in the Viacom building (also in the music industry). Working for a medium-size company in the headquarters of a huge company was all right, because it meant we could sneak into the huge company's cafeteria and get subsidized cheeseburgers with curly fries and eat on a swanky roof terrace in the middle of Times Square. And I worked at 1515 Broadway during the height of TRL's run, so we could hear screaming crowds daily at 3 p.m. For all the noise, though, the MTV crews were surprisingly unintrusive.
2. XM Radio, which had half a floor in The Economist's headquarters when I worked on Economist.com. Having left Billboard to go to The Economist, I was pleased to find myself down the hall from a radio network, and I even auditioned for a job on their alternative radio station. (The program director called me decent but unpolished.) In 2002, XM was where smart, cool, fringe-of-the-industry types worked, so I got to meet folks like Pat Dinizio from time to time. And, of course, Gene Simmons.
3. Butterfly Salon. My current job is on the same floor as a beauty parlor, which means my colleagues and I are subject to any of the following on a given afternoon: lots of strangers on our floor. Embarrassingly dirty bathrooms, often covered in fresh cut hair. Pretty, standoffish young stylists. Chemical smells from permanent wave treatments. Then again, we have a standing discount at the salon, and they periodically ask us for models who get free haircuts and highlights, so it's not all bad. Our CCO has a standing offer from me that for the right price I'll volunteer and dye my hair black, but he hasn't pulled the trigger yet.
(And by unexpected, I mean no listing stuff like the time I had drinks with The Pursuit of Happiness at the bar at Mercury Lounge after their gig. That's too easy.)
1. Gene Simmons, in the XM Radio studios in New York. Unexpected not for the location but for how I wound up hanging out with him. I think he had come in to do some promos. I worked down the hall so at the radio tech's suggestion I stopped by for no particular reason. This was late-period dickwad Gene Simmons, not mid-period cool-as-fuck I-wish-I-were-in-Kiss Gene Simmons, so he was grouchy and bewigged and all sorts of imagination deflating, but still, Gene Simmons.
2. Ira Kaplan, selling his own band's T-shirts before one of the Yo La Tengo Hanukkah gigs at Maxwell's in Hoboken. I was all "hey, whoa, you're Ira! from the band!" and he was all "well, yeah, I am." We hung out for a minute or two, mostly because he was selling me a T-shirt.
3. My Sister's Machine, at the Cheesequake rest stop on the Garden State Parkway at 3 in the morning after their gig opening for King's X at Tradewinds down the Jersey shore, which I had just seen. They never made it, but I still recall the juxtaposition of a band in full metal mode, off stage, buying lukewarm fast food. And milk, if memory serves. We were all "hey, we just saw you! nice gig!" and they were all "yeah, um, we're not here ok?"
4. Taj Mahal, at a summer camp, hanging out with a bunch of us CITs after he performed for the camp as a favor to the owner, who was a friend of his. This meeting forever changed how I listened to music and was reprised 18 years later, but those are stories for another day.
As I walk my dog this morning a man appears ten paces or so in front of me, walking a bit unevenly. He's the kind of person who talks to anyone and anything, unafraid of confrontation or judgment. He reminds me of Chris Tucker.
Walking toward him, I can tell that he's going to talk to me. (How do I know this? Because he is presently talking about the trash bags at 194 Riverside to, well, nobody.) Conversations with loopy strangers are not on my morning to-do list, but I sense he's non-threatening. He is clean-shaven and decently dressed, with a keychain hanging off his waist, so I suspect he's not homeless or a beggar. Then again, he's slurring his speech at 8:30 in the morning, so one never knows.
He spies me and Charley and turns around. "Good morning!" he says with abundant cheer.
I decide to go with it. "Mornin'."
"Walkin' the dog, ah?"
"Yes I am."
He turns away, says something I don't hear, then spins back and approaches me.
"Hey, can I ask you a question? First of all, happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, and I wish you the happiest of holidays."
Great, I think, here it comes. "Sorry, man, I'm not carrying anything."
He pauses for a split-second, breaks into a huge grin, leans toward me, and continues:
"Can I borrow your dog?"
Nathan has this new coat for fall that Amy picked up somewhere. It's a hip brand, and a nice coat, all corduroy and fleece and fluffy soft and cute in its big-people-style-little-people-size way.
Of course, distressed clothing is in these days, and Nate's coat is skidded with white. On both sides of the front of the jacket, and covering most of the back, is a big, pale streak.
This, we've discovered, is the end limit for distressing clothes. Because while we know it's intentional, other people think it's, well, shmutzy. "Did Nate sit in paint?" is a line we've heard more than once. Concerned looks become a different kind of concern when we say, "No, that's the style."
Oh well. He's warm and he's still cute. But now I know why I've never wanted to buy jeans with a hole in the knee.
(As an aside, I love Rafe's thoughts on modern aesthetics, which have stuck with me for a long time.)
The little coffee shop on West 21st Street has, dangling under its potato chip rack, a row of flip-flops.
I pointed to them today as I bought my pretzels. "Sell a lot of flip-flops?" I asked the owner, an affable woman who's always manning the register.
"You know, we open sometimes on Saturday nights, when the weather's cool," she explained to me. "And all the clubs around here, they don't let women in wearing flats. So all these girls come out after wearing their heels all night, and they say to me, 'Do you have flip-flops? I'd pay anything for a pair of flip-flops!'
"So, we got some flip-flops. I know how they feel--I once spent $20 on flip-flops after a night like that. But they're all college girls, you know? I don't want to rip them off, so I just charge five dollars."
Have your customers voiced unexpected needs to you? How are you solving their problems?
This is a cross-post from aiaio.
My fifth headphone review went live on Boing Boing Gadgets Friday, marking the midpoint in the series I'm doing this summer. I'm penning 10 pieces covering 11 models from seven different manufacturers.
And what have I learned? More than I expected, some of it obvious, others less so:
This project has been a ton of fun, and I haven't even written about the fancy models yet. My continued thanks go out to Rob Beschizza and Joel Johnson for giving me the platform.
Gee, I haven't done this in a while.
I'm onto something interesting following Alice, the new ecommerce website that enables CPG companies to sell quasi-direct to consumer. On aiaio, I dissect whether the alice.com business model is really new, and next week I'll be critiquing the site's shopping experience.
On Timely Demise: Crabtree & Evelyn's bankruptcy and a handful of old and local stores this week. And, with a sigh, Joe Jr.'s Restaurant in the Village.
Select recent oh-so-important tweets:
Are high ceilings a sign of wretched architectural excess or just good taste? in Slate.
Having moved from a postwar 1980s apartment to a century-old Manhattan prewar, I can confirm the finding of this article, which is that high ceilings have good architectural effects. A 10-foot ceiling makes a room feel larger, airier, and more comfortable than ones with 8' ceilings. To someone six feet tall or larger, postwar heights create a hint of claustrophobia and shorten light throws.
High ceilings were actually part of our search criteria when we were buying our apartment. Now that we have them, I'll probably never go back.
As Slate's writer notes, "Living and working in older buildings, people discovered that taller rooms simply felt--and looked--better." Amen to that.
One of my great personal skills--and, by extension, a continual pet peeve--is near-perfect grammar, and the ability to spot grammatical errors. I always took proper grammar to be a de facto requirement for smart writing, and I look for the things I read to have an appropriate level of accuracy.
On the Internet, where I'm soaking up thousands of sentences daily, errors inevitably pop up. A few of them happen far more than others, a result of either misinformation, Microsoft Word preformatting or pure naiveté.
But none of those reasons excuses you from making any of the following mistakes, all of which are universal, and easy to get right.
So Nate has this little toy, the LeapFrog Spin and Sing Alphabet Zoo. It's a pretty neat little toy, if a bit mind-numbing: spin a wheel with the alphabet on it, and it starts singing and playing music until the wheel stops, whereupon it announces the letter it's stopped on. Like Wheel of Fortune for babies. I kind of like the tune, too, "spin spin a letter, look all around," etc. although folks like my friend's wife refer to it as "that fucking toy." We just call it "spin spin a letter" and leave it at that. Nate actually just likes the spinning, not the music, so we get away with occasionally leaving the sound off.
Anyway. The wheel is well sensored, so it knows when and how much it's being moved. Music stops promptly when spinning stops, and moving it one letter at a time does get the toy to say each letter in sequence. "B! C! D! C!"
Tonight Amy picked up the spin spin a letter to put it away. Nonbelievers would tell you the wheel had landed on either X or Z, but I took the device more literally, for it cried out, plaintively, as it was being put away:
"Why! Why!"
Don't worry, little buddy, Nate will make a beeline for you in the morning.
Rail travel on aiaio, the business blog.
I am a big fan of trains, apparently dating back to my childhood, when I'd get unreasonably excited about commuter trains passing overhead (whether this was my own obsession or something prompted by my mother, I am unsure). I still enjoy getting around New York by subway--most mornings, anyway--and have happily explored transit systems in scattered cities around the world.
Taking the Acela this year has been a great discovery. It showcases America's potential in high-speed rail and the many advantages that come with it. Unfortunately, it also shows the shortcomings: the breakdowns, the slow top speeds, the inexplicably bumpy ride.
The more we can get ourselves to adopt, and appreciate, trains the better our environment will be. I will continue to take trains whenever they're a viable option. And, yeah, getting excited when they go by. I still do that.
In the wake of Tropicana's disastrous rebranding over the winter, its sales plummeted 20 percent in six weeks. Twenty percent in six weeks!
That's a disaster on a monumental scale for a brand this size--$33 million in lost sales, plus the millions of dollars in designing, packaging and marketing the new designs, and the funds to clean up the mess.
The sales news also sheds new light on the decision to switch the packaging back, which at the time was called a "deep emotional bond" among Tropicana consumers. Indeed, the exact opposite was true: without the logo, people assumed their juice was gone, and simply bought something else. Neil Campbell, call your public relations department. (via kottke.org and df)
How to Get Hired on aiaio, the Ai blog.
I have long been an observer, commentator and course-corrector when it comes to job interviews. Many moons ago I published a series of job-hunt best practices in this space. Titled "Interdon't," many of my pointers are just as relevant today as they were a decade ago.
I am continually amazed by the flagrant violations of basic job-search protocol. Among the things I've seen the past two weeks:
Anyway, read the two links above if you're looking for a job, and good luck in your search.
Here's the thing about the latest auto industry bailout pleas: only under extreme duress are General Motors and Chrysler are making changes to their business plans. And only under the guise of getting more cash are they coming up with them.
I don't want to see large-scale industrial failure any more than the next guy. But these companies do not deserve Federal assistance. They have proven for decades that their businesses are myopic and wholly resistant to change. While the rest of the world's automakers adapted and excelled, Detroit was relying on focus groups, creating redundant models, ignoring macroeconomic and environmental trends, and overpaying employees.
The net result is companies that need overhauls and closures. Market forces should create the necessary change. Another $14 billion will only continue the status quo, which is akin to giving a drug addict just a bit more of his drugs in the hope he'll figure out how to get clean if he's given just a little more time. It won't work.
GM in particular has busted its model by overdoing just about everything, starting with a proliferation of models. Take a look at model lineups in 1959, during its heyday:
That's 16 car models in total across their four major brands. Today Chevy has 15 models, Pontiac 7, Cadillac 6 and Buick 3--a total of 31 car lines, nearly twice as many models for less than half the market share. And that's excluding Saturn and GMC, which heavily rebrand GM platforms for even more product lines. You'd think over the past, say, 15 years GM would realize it's doing things wrong and try some fresh tactics. None ever came.
So add me to the list of "let 'em fail" naysayers. I'd like to see Detroit's stalwarts continue to make cars, but only compelling concepts with strong identities that would actually have me consider buying one.
The potential ripple effects are frightening, but more bailout money will only delay the inevitable. Better to swallow hard and work on a Plan B.
Ten-letter words!
Sastrugi
Curvetting
Hagrides
Alforja
Tegular
Queerling
Solonetzic
Atopies
Errhines
Rhamnose
Gisarme
Outhearing
Overholy
Actinas
Stereoed
Pliskies
Grecized
Deforces
Isologue
Markhors
Two days into January and I've already got six words on my list. Either the computer is getting more ridiculous or I'm playing too much.
(A bit delayed; December will post promptly after New Year's.)
Grewsome
Trisemic
Scoriate
Learier
Finfishes
Parerga
Roupily
Vinifera
Althorns
Eyedness
Gleeked
Emeroids
Finings
Thelitis
Stanged
Agravic
Worrited
Frank Bruni writes today how restaurants have shifted from blase to dismayed at his canceled reservations.
I've been warily surveying my own neighborhood, and my actions, too. Our neighborhood Italian joint of choice is still jam-packed, even at 5:30 in the evening. But this is a restaurant that can serve two people a three-course meal with a glass of wine for $70. One might expect it to thrive, which so far, it is.
I've had a couple of fancy dinners the past few weeks where there's been no second seating--by 9 p.m. the restaurant has scattered empty tables. Ruby Foo's in Times Square defied this trend, but countless other restaurants are starting to feel the strain.
At home, I'm ordering in less frequently; the urge to save money is trumping the 20-minute neighborhood quickie once or twice a week more than it used to. (Also, there's no good Chinese food near me. An open letter to the restaurant owners of New York City: please open a decent Chinese place on the Upper West Side! Everything uptown is mediocre at best, and heaven knows all these people should stop eating at Saigon Grill.)
The city in general is going to look far more bleak next spring than it does right now. Come February, I expect a rash of store closings, restaurants and otherwise, which will leave the city pockmarked like my local stretch of Broadway. One can only hope things don't get that bad.
Fun videos and gewgaws from assorted other blogs in my reader:
~ Bio-Bak, one of the more insane (and fun) personal sites I've seen in many years--it reminds me of Superbad (which I kind of miss)
~ This guy sings "Thriller" in 64 a capella parts... it's quite a montage
~ And then there's this guy, who custom built a drum kit to play Guitar Hero 3, then beat the hardest setting. hoo wee!
Washington Post: 5 Myths About an Election of Mythic Proportions. "Exit polling suggests that there was no statistically significant increase in voting among [black or young voters]," and other debunking. Worth remembering that Obama's victory, as noted here previously, is far from the national mandate given to, say, Ronald Reagan.
Related: I watched and enjoyed Obama's "60 Minutes" interview last night. Barack is an intellectual man who is not afraid of the truth; he and Michelle are balanced, quick to smile, and down-to-earth. (Although there was some bemused discussion in my home as to how extensively the "mom in chief" runs the Obama family, and what that suggests about the president-elect.)
Junglier
Puttiers
Ecotage
Miauled
Plastron
Nuncles
Sordine
Vendeuse
Ectozoa
Cresylic
Kurbashes
Elaterin
Linguica
Entamebae
While America celebrates Barack Obama's victory--particularly for what it represents--Americans would be wise to remember that his win, while strong, was far from a landslide.
The media in 2008 like to speak of mandates and sea changes, but in fact, Obama's victory is far less decisive than some other recent elections, and McCain's showing was not half bad.
Via Wikipedia, I compiled a list of victory margins by electoral votes for all the presidential elections since the electoral college expanded to 538 votes in the 1960s. Obama's win is mid-pack:
Year Elected Won Lost 1984 Reagan 525 13 1972 Nixon 520 17 1980 Reagan 489 49 1964 Johnson 486 52 1988 George H. W. Bush 426 111 1996 Clinton 379 159 1992 Clinton 370 168 > 2008 Obama 349 163 < 1968 Richard Nixon 301 191 1976 Carter 297 240 2004 George W. Bush 286 251 2000 George W. Bush 271 266
(Note: two states are still being decided; this post will be updated when the final votes are tallied and declared.)
Obama's victory in terms of the popular vote tells a better story but also comes with a caveat. First, a tip of the cap: his 64,908,616 votes as of this writing are the greatest number of votes ever recorded by a presidential candidate. That is a figure to celebrate.
However, John McCain received more than 57 million votes of his own. Obama's margin of victory by popular vote is 6.3% (which is to say, if the U.S. had a straight democratic vote instead of an electoral college, he'd have won, 53 to 47 percent).
This is a sound victory. But it still leaves 9 out of every 20 people in the other camp. Four elections in the 538-electorate era have had a greater vote margin between winner and loser. Richard Nixon beat George McGovern by 18 million votes out of 77 million; Obama beat McCain by 7.5 million out of 120 million. Yesterday's win was solid but not overwhelming.
Still, this is an academic exercise--Obama earned a far stronger win than either of George W. Bush's campaigns, and his victory forever alters the political landscape in terms of campaigns, backgrounds and style.
As much as anything I am astounded by the emotional reaction Obama supporters, including me, are having to the election result.
Hundreds of thousands of people are in the streets, celebrating, as though our nation has won its independence. People are elated! Full of pride, hope and excitement, invigorated in a way this country has not been in years, if not decades.
Today marks a seismic shift in how America views itself, and how the world views America. We can elect a minority candidate to lead our nation. We can back and accept an intellectual who does not hide his intelligence or pander to the ignorant (to which I refer Clinton as well as Bush). We crave pragmatism, we crave leadership, we crave class. We are ready to grow beyond the baby-boomer ideals and standards that have defined us for decades. We are not afraid of change.
The United States is no longer a country defined by narrowmindedness or simplicity. Our president-elect is wordly, clever, and cool. The nation is excited to follow his lead. Remarkable.
Tonight I am, for the first time in a long while, proud to be an American.
Emily Magazine: The kind of crazy you get from too much choice.
The truth [about living in New York City] is that we try to make it hard for ourselves by creating a lot of tasks and rules and very, very specific needs. The arcane evidence fills the shelves at every big Korean deli in Manhattan and every bodega in gentrified Brooklyn: we need almond butter and organic tempeh and unbleached cotton tampons. We might even need specific brands of these things. We need 24-hour access. We need to never be more than two blocks from an ATM. We need taxis and car services that know how to take us anywhere. We need free wifi and bottled unsweetened iced tea and perfectly decent sushi that costs less than $10. We need fresh lemongrass and thai basil and epazote and coconut milk and three different kinds of artisanal ginger beer and cane-juice-sweetened dark chocolate. We need $40 moisturizer from Kiehl's and perfect $10 bras from Target and Japanese bubble tea and two eggs and cheese on a toasted whole wheat bagel prepared in under a minute.An absolute truism of Manhattan residents is that we define our existence by our cravings. We sacrifice significant comforts of space and money in exchange for convenience and specificity.
I can write a paragraph just like Emily's. My family lives in an utterly charming apartment, filled with light and two minutes from the subway, that also happens to consume an extraordinary percentage of our take-home pay and has no closet in the baby's bedroom. We have several boxes of Mighty Leaf tea (15 packets, $9) alongside the Lipton (48 bags, $4) in our cabinet. We bring our Chinese and Japanese food uptown from the Village because we haven't found restaurants on the Upper West Side that meet our tastes. I have over the years switched drycleaners no fewer than 11 times. My wife craves nice shoes like Sigerson Morrisons, of which she a pair, and also Sigerson Morrisons from Target, of which she also has a pair. Our stroller retails for nine hundred dollars and barely fits in the trunk of our car. That we even have a car is considered a luxury; that we share and street-park the car is considered cheap.
Yet this lifestyle is by choice, and it's one we are pleased to have made. We are in Riverside Park nearly every day with our son and our dog. We do have a 24-hour specialty grocer around the corner, and six places with baked goods within a five-minute walk, and we take full advantage. I ride my bicycle to work twice a week alongside the Hudson River. Our home is full of century-old detail that can only be found in an urban dwelling. We see award-winning theater on a whim, shop in fascinating locally owned stores, eat at world-class restaurants and walk home.
In some ways it is a peculiar living, but it is also a spectacular one. We made a conscious decision to stay in Manhattan, at least in the near term. And I, for one, don't regret it in the least.
Scene: two tall, thin women, one blonde, one brunette. The blonde is carrying lunch.
Brunette: "You go there?"
Blonde: "I like their egg whites. They're really good."
"Really? What do you order?"
"I get the egg whites, some brown rice, and a little bit of fat-free cheese."
"That sounds like it doesn't taste like anything!"
"Well, you can put, like, ketchup on it."
Right, even when he's wrong on the Ai blog.
"I can check, it's no problem, if you don't want this I will see.""Okay," I said, feeling extremely guilty. "Please let the chef know it's my mistake and not yours. I'll eat the lasagna if I have to, since I guess I ordered it."
"Oh, you ordered it," my wife said.
Seth Godin posted a provocative piece (is that redundant? Seth's goal is to be nothing but provocative) Saturday entited Random travel thoughts. In it he challenges the conventional wisdom about a lot of the headaches of airline travel.
As a fellow business traveler I have seen and contemplated many of Seth's observations. Pragmatist that I am, I thought I'd expand and rebut a few of his points. On the whole, I agree with his thesis ("we can do better") but not his overall view.
Why does a banana cost twenty cents at the supermarket and $1.61 at SFO? Are hungry people supposed to subsidize non-hungry travelers?
This is simple economics at work, not airline policy. My $4.06 frappuccino at any other Manhattan Starbucks cost me $5 at the Javits Center last week. A bottle of water that costs 20 cents in bulk and $1.25 at the corner store is $4.50 at Yankee Stadium (this year... next season, at the new park, it'll be $9). Captive audiences demand premium payments.
Why doesn't the airport have sleeping benches?
Sleeping benches encourage loitering. Apparently some airports, like the new American terminal at DFW, bring out springy hammock-like cots when people get stuck at the airport overnight.
After seven years, why is random yelling still the way that TSA screeners communicate their superstitious rules to people in line?
Security in general is a joke to all but the dangerous. Why did the security guards at Yankee Stadium make my brother throw away a perfectly good, safe Bluefly shopping bag and put his things in a clear plastic bag instead? Ridiculous. Unless you're the guy with the gunpowder.
Why does the FAA require the airlines to explain to every passenger how to buckle their seatbelt?
I'm guessing someone sued. I wonder how Seth feels about snarky flight attendants who poke fun at their own requirements, or the Virgin America safety film that assumes you're yawning and disinterested, and assumes the same vibe.
For those not playing the Twitter game:
I don't terribly enjoy re-commemorating 9/11 on an annual basis, but there seems to be a greater focus on it today than last year, and I'd be remiss not to solemnly nod in assent.
This page was and still is a destination for people seeking individual stories about the event. There are two:
My blog posts about the event, September 11-23, 2001
Adam Oestreich's first-person account, September 12, 2001
Adam's story still receives thousands of page views annually.
I am not a particularly political person; politics to me is often slow, dirty, frustrating and interlaced with lies. Personal agendas too often get in the way of wise governing, leading to missed opportunities all too often.
Yet I cannot understate the inspiration and hope that comes from Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. I recently noted the power of presentation skills, and Obama's oratory is nothing short of gifted. This is a man unlike anything the United States has experienced at the executive level in decades: invigorating, compelling, astounding.
That a mixed-race man with a black wife and family can rise to a party nomination for President of the United States amazes me. That the nominee can be so rich with his communication skills, eloquent, smart and embracing, gives me hope for the future.
I remain suspect whether America as a whole is ready to embrace such a sweeping level of change. Obama represents everything Washington is not, from his race to his generation. I'd be disappointed but not surprised if the nation showed its aversion to change and elected John McCain as a safe choice. And mind you, I do believe that McCain is also a decent presidential candidate: not someone with whom I agree, but a man of integrity, maturity, perspective and wit, who would represent a vast improvement over the sad state of affairs of the past few years.
But this country has an amazing opportunity this fall to elect a true leader, a man who inspires people to participate, who turns the heads of the indifferent, who already holds the attention and respect of foreign leaders, who has the appeal to fill football stadiums with people who wish to hear him speak. I hope Obama gets the chance to fulfill his potential. The nation and the world will be a better place for believing in him.
Long Beach Island, NJ, has some of the corniest and punniest business names still in existence on the eastern seaboard. Among those I spotted this weekend:
House of the Rising Bun
Sunsations
Sunglass Menagerie
Chicken or the Egg
Big Dipper Ice Cream
Pottery Barge
Just Beachy
Just Bead It
Barry's Do Me a Flavor
Say Cheese
Also spotted more than once: the phrase "own make candy," which my lovely wife of five years deciphered as "we do it ourselves," but which linguistically we're still trying to comprehend. And then there's the "coin op laundry/ravioli to take out" sign....
The enterprising boys in apartment 1F of my building have, since last summer, run a lemonade stand by the building entrance, on the corner of the street. Last year, the older boy set up shop with his mother's baking, a pitcher of sweet drink, and a folding table. Toward the end of the summer, our handyman built him an honest-to-goodness wooden lemonade stand, tall and cute and beautifully painted, with a countertop and note-perfect "Lemonade" signs on the awning.
This summer, the younger brother has taken over the stand. He and a gregarious friend set up shop every weekday afternoon, bringing out the lemonade stand, which now includes a typed note explaining how Luis built this wonderful stand for them, and an appropriately youthful sign, taped to the side of the building, stating that "all money goes to Alzheimer's research" (properly spelled, and with no mention of "proceeds," which would have entitled them to skim funds).
I'm a big fan of the stand, and almost as big a fan of the mom's baking skills, so I buy chocolate chip cookies from them (two for $1) a few times a week. They're not the best salesmen, but they are reliable, diligent and raising money for charity. Seeing them at their stand is one of the purest joys I have experienced since moving uptown.
As of yesterday, the stand has competition. A different set of kids set up shop on the other side of the building, midblock but closer to the front door. They had lemonade and iced tea, but no food: "We have these brownies," said one, "but we're eating them for dinner." So I bought an iced tea from them, which prompted an honest-to-goodness customer service inquiry: "Would you like it mixed with lemonade?" And suddenly I'm getting an Arnold Palmer from a 10-year-old on the sidewalk. The new kids are chatty and numerous--I think I saw 6 of them selling or playing nearby--but they don't have signage yet.
I'm waiting to see how this shakes out. Will there be turf wars? Price cuts? Variety on the lemonade stands, all competing for my business?
In the meantime, I am all smiles when I finally get home. And a few bucks lighter.
A large banner hangs across Route 202 in New Jersey, a few miles from where it crosses Route 23:
WELCOME TO LINCOLN PARK
Voted FIFTH-BEST town to live in NJ!
America: land of the free, home of the myopic.
California Supreme Court Overturns Gay Marriage Ban. This is tremendous, forward-thinking, constitutionally appropriate news. The United States is where people are supposed to be free from oppression, and this kind of decision is a thoughtful interpretation of that.
So what do gay marriage opponents want to do? Change the Constitution. I won't go deeply into the pro argument and my views on the subject (now apparent); I am here instead to pass along this quote:
“The court was wrong from top to bottom on this one,” said Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage. “The court brushed aside the entire history and meaning of marriage in our tradition.”In our tradition. Whose tradition? Religious Christians? Fundamentalist California residents? Maggie Gallagher's family?
That statement lays bare all that is wrong with the anti-gay-marriage argument. American law is not just about tradition; proper interpretations are not a this-is-how-we've-always-done-it discussion. No, the law is about, or should be about, what is fair and just and sensible and appropriate, as thoughtful, wise people would approach society, had they a clean slate to properly adjust society's ways.
The gay marriage law isn't about doing things "traditionally," nor is it about making Maggie Gallagher and her peers comfortable with homosexuality, which is their own problem. No, the law is about doing right by individuals who have done no wrong. And someday, at least theoretically, a majority of Americans will view this subject as they do issues of race and religion, as a differentiator that by and large defines our society in a positive light.
Perhaps it is too much to ask, but one can hope.
Friday night. We're at Almost an Evening, the Ethan Coen play, at an intimate theater on Bleecker Street. Thirty-four-weeks along, Amy is experiencing the usual late-stage pregnancy issues, so we situate ourselves fairly close to the restroom, which, due to the layout of the theater, requires walking past the stage in front of the audience.
The play is three one-acts without an intermission. Amy excuses herself between the second and third. Unfortunately for her, the stagehands work fast, and the third act kicks in while she's away.
F. Murray Abraham and Mark-Linn Baker are on stage, engaged in debate as two gods. Abraham is in Moses garb: white tunic, moccasins, long flowing gray hair, beard. He is deep into a tongue-in-cheek monologue full of swearing.
Amy has to get back to her seat, so over she comes, stage right, past the front row and up to her third-row aisle seat. She wants to be invisible, but no luck.
F. Murray Abraham's monologue stops short. A glimmer in his eye, he glowers at Amy's back as she climbs the stairs. The room collapses in laughter.
There's a pregnant pause in the show, long enough for her to turn to me, nervously, and ask, "What's so funny?"
"He just glared at you," I say.
We look back at the stage, and a second later, Abraham is making eye contact with Amy.
"Was it something I said?" he bellows. The room cracks up again.
"No, really, I love pregnant women," he says. "You go anytime you want."
Abraham is still in voice but the play is fully derailed by now. Peals of laughter fill the theater. People are applauding. Abraham buries his face in his hands to hide his own smile.
He steps back to the podium, looks down, then around the room, and commandingly says: "Where was I!"
More laughter. Amy is about ready to die by now, but Abraham laughingly says, "I lost my place," then regains his rhythm and the show goes on.
The rest of the play was decent; the first act was the best, but the inadvertent cameo stole the show.
On the subway platform afterward, a woman with a light British accent approached us on the play, and asked with a smile, "So outside of your scene, what did you think?"
"For better or worse," I replied, "her scene was the funniest of the night."
So much new knowledge:
~ The Close Door elevator button doesn't do anything except pacify impatient riders.
~ Clarins, my former employer, who has sworn for years that it wants to remain independent, is installing a new CEO as the son of the founder steps down, throwing his and his brother's majority family ownership into long-term question.
~ Lancome, Orlane and Sisley, three major beauty brands, were all founded by different generations of the same family. (Side learning: reading T Magazine online is abhorrent.)
~ The infamous waiting list for Hermes Birkin bags doesn't exist.
~ And, not least, this taste-test of dogs' preferences for gourmet treats versus good ol' Milk-Bones. No spoilers here.
In my Facebook news feed today:
What a great quote from AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson: "If I had a business that half the product we turned out was defective or you couldn't put into the marketplace, I would shut that business down."
Swallow hard, then think about what Stephenson is citing: American high school graduation rates. He says the labor pool is so thin that AT&T has been unable to fill job vacancies with Americans, forcing the businesses to remain in India for staffing purposes.
The facts seem borderline absurd, but a few minutes of research reveals it's even worse than it seems. Some studies quote America's nationwide high school graduation rate at just 71 percent, and the state of Georgia barely graduates half its students, like Stephenson says. Statewide! One town falling below 50% is bad; this is an entire state at 54%. Several cities, like Cleveland, barely get above 25%.
Even if this isn't fully accurate, it's awfully dire. Americans underappreciating eduation is nothing new. But when American companies have to outsource their labor to maintain quality, not just save costs, the signs point to a far more serious situation.
Daylight Saving Wastes Energy, Study Says, on WSJ.com.
We knew this. We just didn't want to listen.
Previously on the Ideapad:
"Extending DST won't 'save energy' just by keeping the sun up later. Lights will still need to run overnight on highways, city streets, and 24-hour facilities, and most stores won't change their operating hours." —July 19, 2005 (I missed air conditioning, but I'll take it)
See also Endless Summer in the New York Times, August 9, 2005 (previously linked here).
As an American, I am proud of the democratic system we have in place, which despite its flaws does a reasonably good job of preserving basic rights. As a Lebanese friend of mine (born there, now a U.S. resident) has said, "American democracy is flawed, but compared with the rest of the world, it's the best we've got." I'm a bit too jaded and disinterested in glad-handing to get too closely involved in politics, but I follow it regularly as a concerned citizen. I am a registered independent who did not vote in the primaries.
I read with interest Geraldine Ferraro's op-ed in Monday's New York Times, "Got a Problem? Ask the Super." In it, Ferraro takes up the issue of superdelegates in the Democratic party. She explains the reasons for their creation and notes that she was part of the team that created them.
Ferraro goes on and, in one fell swoop, completely dismisses the primary process and its voters.
Her argument for superdelegates is sensible enough: "Superdelegates were created to lead, not to follow. They were, and are, expected to determine what is best for our party and best for the country. I would hope that is why many superdelegates have already chosen a candidate to support."
All well and good, until the next paragraph.
"Besides," Ferraro writes, "the delegate totals from primaries and caucuses do not necessarily reflect the will of rank-and-file Democrats. Most Democrats have not been heard from at the polls. We have all been impressed by the turnout for this year’s primaries — clearly both candidates have excited and engaged the party’s membership — but, even so, turnout for primaries and caucuses is notoriously low." [Emphasis added.]
Two days after I first read this I'm still taken aback. Geraldine Ferraro, former Vice Presidential candidate and long-time Democratic Party bastion, doesn't think the Democratic primaries mean anything! This from a woman who ran the organization that determined the winners of primary contests.
The essay proceeds to defend this position from multiple angles: low voter turnout, independent voters allowed to cast votes in select primaries, etc. But Ferraro's theories just blow my mind.
"I am watching, with great disappointment, people whom I respect in the Congress who endorsed Hillary Clinton — I assume because she was the leader they felt could best represent the party and lead the country — now switching to Barack Obama with the excuse that their constituents have spoken." [Emphasis added.]
Democrats in good standing would do well to dissociate themselves from these thoughts, lest their party come to resemble the leave-me-alone-while-I-run-our-country attitude of the GOP.
Scene: a crowded N train, just before Christmas. A panhandler enters the car--old, dirty, hunched. As the doors close he breaks into song to encourage handouts. "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...."
He finishes before the train reaches its next stop, and surveying the situation, he continues. "Sing it with me now.
"If you want my body and you think I'm sexy...."
I got spam today from something claiming to be the Alzheimer's Organization.
My first thought, unfiltered: "I don't remember signing up for an Alzheimer's email...."
Scene: Thanksgiving dinner, in between courses. Seven-year-old Noah is roughhousing with his cousins on the floor. At one point he takes a hard hit on his thumb and cries out in pain.
"Fuck!"
Noah's mother, sitting nearby, scowls. "Noah! Don't say that."
"Shit, then!"
One of the pleasures of my week of offline leisure is that I'm watching "The Price Is Right" every day. (Honest! It's like I'm a sixth grader with the flu. Awesome.) And now that I'm old enough to pay attention to the products, I got a real wake-up call with the items "up for bids" this week.
Twice in the past three days the show has asked the four folks on Contestant Row to bid on "a pair of iPhones." Out come two models, each carrying an iPhone, pressing the home button and not the touch-screen to demonstrate the functionality.
None of the contestants was particularly wowed by the iPhone. And none of them knew the price.
In the circles I, and probably you, inhabit, Apple is a topic of conversation, and the iPhone's pricing structure has been a particularly hot topic. Go ahead, try it: what's an iPhone cost right now? Right, $399, down from $499-599 at the time of introduction.
Easy, right? Then how come no one on TPIR knew it offhand? Two iPhones, $798, bingo bango, and a $100 bonus for getting the exact retail price. Obvious to me, to you, but not to middle-class, game-show-contestant America.
Which, of course, is why Apple is so excited: the market opportunity for mobile telecom devices is vast, and they've only just started.
Speaking of "The Price Is Right," some other things have caught my eye. New host Drew Carey is still finding his comfort zone and comments on the crowd too much, although he does a great job poking fun at the awkward product-placement juxtapositions. ("Get this right and you're off to Greece! ...with a bunch of pens in your pocket.") Also, the show reuses prizes frequently--I've seen the iPhones, a Corvette, and a candy-apple-red washer/dryer twice each--but the games have yet to repeat. The populist bent and combination of things you know and things you don't makes it fun to watch at any age. Although the yodeling mountain climber game might not amuse me as much as it did in '85.
Me, commenting on the GM/UAW strike, Tuesday: "Won't a short strike help GM in one respect by reducing existing inventory? Obviously not long-term, and the PR is bad, but ignoring the variables, there's a bottom-line opportunity here".
The Economist, Thursday: "From GM's point of view the short strike may even have been a blessing: the halt in production gave it a chance to reduce its stockpile of unsold vehicles."
As a longtime Internet veteran and as someone with a keen interest in privacy protection, I have a unique password for almost every site that requires a login.
After 12 years of spending 50 hours a week online, I probably have hundreds of accounts floating around.
Of them, I know the password to startlingly few.
I do not have a central password file.
When I had a handwritten day planner, I used to jot down half a dozen or so of my most vital and easily forgotten accounts, but I haven't put any of that data on my iPhone, so I only have access to the passwords my memory can hold onto.
My memory, like yours, does not excel at remembering passwords.
I use the "remember me" checkbox on many websites, but when I'm at work, for example, or guesting on an unknown computer, chances are I'm going to get stalled at the firewall.
I am eternally grateful for passsword-recovery options that email me the curious alphanumeric strings that I initially thought were hooky and clever.
Despite my lack of ability to remember the memorable passwords I devise, I am nonetheless irked when a website sends me a reset password link rather than a reminder or, more preferably, the password itself.
The convenience and security of having information mailed to me pleases me every time it works.
The two words I click on most on the Internet are, "Forgot password?"
Mom: "She reads haftorah like nobody's business."
--
Amy: do you know how freaky our friends are? their year-old son has an email address!!
Me: hey Amy? our dog has an email address
Amy: my friend emailed me that she was just kidding
Me: Charley has two, actually
(Names omitted to protect the innocent. Charley, on the other hand: guilty as charged.)
PLAYERS: Seated from left, wife, advertising producer, pop-culture aficionado; mother; and sister-in-law, Love and Sex editor for a major media website.
SCENE: Mom and Dad's fortieth anniversary dinner at Provence in Soho. "Josie" is playing on the house stereo.
SISTER-IN-LAW: This song is called "Josie!" It's a Steely Dan song about a prostitute.
WIFE: So I just found out what a Steely Dan is!
MOTHER: Yeah? What is it?
WIFE pauses, considers, then explains: It's—a vibrator. Or a dildo.
MOTHER turns, points at SISTER-IN-LAW. That's something you're supposed to know!
(see also)
I walk into the Banana Republic Men on 17th and 5th and notice my shoe is untied. I stop near the entrance and lean over to tie it. Elapsed time in store: five seconds.
As I am bent over, a sales clerk swiftly approaches me, and asks: "Are you finding everything okay?"
Subject line from an email marketing piece from Telecharge, the ticket vendor:
"XANADU on Broadway - The Critics LOVE It. Seriously."
Compared with my previous cell phone and my BlackBerry, the iPhone's touch-screen UI greatly increases the chance that at some point I am going to get hit by a car.
We bought a striped Chilewich welcome mat for the front door of our new apartment. Since the hall floors are tile, the building permits them, and since our door is directly opposite the elevator, the Chilewich is on display.
The other morning we came out of our apartment as our neighbors were waiting for the elevator. Little Ellie, age 4, made eye contact with Amy and beamed.
"I like your new mat," Ellie declared.
"Thank you very much," Amy replied.
"My babysitter doesn't like it, but I do!"We bought a striped Chilewich welcome mat for the front door of our new apartment. Since the hall floors are tile, the building permits them, and since our door is directly opposite the elevator, the Chilewich is on display.
The other morning we came out of our apartment as our neighbors were waiting for the elevator. Little Ellie, age 4, made eye contact with Amy and beamed.
"I like your new mat," Ellie declared.
"Thank you very much," Amy replied.
"My babysitter doesn't like it, but I do!"
Leave it to me to make a courtroom laugh.
Judge, addressing the jury panel: "Since this is a criminal case, we'd like to know if any of you have ever been the victim of a crime."
I raise my hand.
"Yes, Mr. Wertheimer."
"This is going to sound a little silly, but I once had my pants stolen...."
