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.
Category: Observed (Page 11 of 24)
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.”