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Observation StewFor some, this is the start of a 3 day weekend; for others, just the normal weekend craziness. Whichever it is, it’s been a busy week. I’ve been accumulating a lot of articles of interest, but none of them have themed into groups of three, or proved to be the start of a single-subject rant. So let’s toss them into the crock-pot of discussion, and see if we can at least come up with a thread to connect each to the next:

Lastly, I’m sure you think I’m crazy in the head for trying to thread all these disparate articles together. Speaking of crazy in the head: how’s this for a headline: “Doctors dismissed his pain as migraines. Then they said he had 24 hours to live.” Did that get your attention? It got mine. The connected article was about something I mentioned last week: undetected subdural hematomas. Scary.

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userpic=soylent-greenAye, Mateys, we’re getting closer. The foredeck has been cleaned and swabbed. Now to swap the aft deck. The next bilgewater we’re going to throw over the deck concerns some questionable ideas:

Music: Piano Ragtime with The Dukes of Dixieland: “Bugle Call Rag” (The Dukes of Dixieland)

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userpic=lougrantFinally, it’s Saturday. This has been a busy week — I’ve been accumulating articles, but haven’t had time during the week to post them. Before we jump into the stew, Happy Valentine’s Day to those that observe. What are we doing? We’re going to a wonderful organic Shabu Shabu restaurant we’ve discovered, and then seeing a musical story about the Loch Ness monster. And you?

  • Deaths in the News. A few major deaths have happened in the last couple of days that are quite noteworthy — primarily because these are people about which no one says anything bad. Really good people are rare to come by, and we’ve lost three. The first is Stan Chambers, long-time newscaster at KTLA — and by long, I mean 63 years! This is someone beloved in the news industry, a fixture in Los Angeles, who just reported the story and the facts. Forget your Brian Williams and Dan Rathers — this was the real deal, a reporter to look up to. The second is Gary Owens, a long-time radio and TV personality in Los Angeles. Again, this is someone who everyone looked up to, who helped loads of people with their careers, and of whom no one said anything bad. The third is Florence Sackheim, a long time member at Temple Beth Torah — again, this is someone who was there for everyone else, and whom no one had anything bad to say about.
  • Corporate Mergers. There are a number of corporate mergers of interest. Two weeks ago. Staples made an offer to buy Office Depot Office Max. This is a major consolidation in the office supply industry, and I think it is a bad thing. Loads of stores will close, loads of employees will lose jobs, and prices will rise without two equivalent competitors. Where are the regulators. In a similar consolidation, this week Expedia made an offer to by Orbitz. Expedia already owns Travelocity, so this is a major consolidation in the online travel booking industry. Again, I think this is a bad idea, although there’s a little less of a problem here in that the two services were about the same on price.
  • Going Away. Last week, the news was focused on Radio Shack going away. This week brings news of some other going-aways. First, Costco is celebrating Valentine’s Day by breaking up with American Express.  Well, the breakup will happen in 2016. AmEx has already been hammered as this brings them a lot of business; I know it is the only reason we have a non-corporate Amex card. Costco is reportedly near a deal with a new issuer; it is unclear whether accounts will be transferred, or reapplication will be necessary. In another going-away, the rumors are increasing that the Riviera Hotel may soon be closed and demolished. This makes me sad — there’s not much of 1950’s Vegas left on the strip — some two-story wings at the Tropicana and the original 9-story 1955 Riviera are about it. When the Riviera goes, so goes the history. However, the plan makes sense: the place has become a dump and cannot compete with the newer hotels; it is on the slow end of the strip next to a dead partially completed hotel, across the street from Circus-Circus and… not much else, as Echelon/Genting World is still under construction as well. Supposedly, the Riv is being bought by the Las Vegas Convention Bureau, who want to extend the Convention Center’s reach up from Paradise Blvd to LV Blvd, between Convention Center and Riveria Blvd. Not much is there — the parking lot that was the Landmark, a Dennys, a Walgreens, the Riv, and a 3-story apartment complex and some small businesses. I think we can kiss the Riv — and it’s history — goodbye.
  • Nose and Throat. A week or so ago, on This American Life, I heard a segment on a annoying condition (for some) called Vocal Fry. I’d never heard of it, or could even notice it — so luckily, Mental Floss had a nice article on Vocal Fry.  Now that I know what it is… I still don’t get why people are annoyed. People’s voices are their voices. Get over it. In another interesting article, Vox had a nice exploration of mucus. I actually found this interesting, as I have continual sinus trouble (and I’m also one of those addicted to Afrin).
  • You Know How Foolishly Generous Those Americans Are. So said Stan Freberg in United States of America, and many people believe America gives too much Foreign Aid. However, those beliefs don’t correspond with the facts — and American really doesn’t give that much foreign aid. In fact, less than 1 percent of the $4 trillion federal budget goes to foreign aid. The largest portion of the money goes to health: a third of the U.S. foreign aid budget in 2014, or more than $5.3 billion. The next two biggest portions go toward economic development and humanitarian assistance. Small sums of aid support democratic elections in other countries. A tiny portion goes to protect forests in countries where logging is destroying natural habitats. Some aid funds programs that train local law enforcement to combat drug trafficking. (But no foreign aid goes directly toward another country’s military.) Proof again that most people wouldn’t know the facts if they bit them in the …
  • Dealing with Death. One problem when you die is that you can’t update your Facebook anymore. Fear not. Facebook will soon let you appoint a digital heir.  This is actually a good thing, as  there are more and more memorial Facebook pages, and it would be nice to know they are memorials (so you don’t keep wishing them a happy birthday).
  • Used Bookstores in LA. LAist attempted to do a list of the 10 best used bookstores in LA. Used bookstores are great, and we have lost some significant ones in the last year — both Cliffs and Brand Bookstore are gone. But LAist missed some great ones — in particular, Bargain Books in Van Nuys, and Books 5150 in Chatsworth. But this is no surprise — all those Los Angeles lists are done by westsiders who forget that the valley exists.
  • Women and Work. Last week’s Backstory was on women and work.  As part of this, they did a special segment on women in computing.  Well worth listening to, and something we should encourage. The segment gives me the opportunity to pimp for a project of ACSA: the Scholarship for Women Studying Information Security.

 

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userpic=corporateHere’s another belated lunchtime post (can you tell I’m clearing out a backlog). This time, the subject is selling and marketing:

 

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Observation StewJust because I’m in Portland doesn’t mean I can’t prepare you some tasty news chum stew for breakfast. Let’s dig in, before you all decide to abandon me for Voodoo Donuts… luckily, I’ve been able to come up with a thread for this — no overall theme, only a connection between each article and the next…

  • Twisted in a Pretzel. Before NPR wrote about it on Friday, the LA Business Journal was writing about the invention of the Peanut Butter filled pretzel (which is where I saw it), how a company named Maxim’s pioneered the product 26 years ago, and how TJs picked it up and sold it. The crunchy snack became a major part of Maxim’s business, and Maxim oversaw the production by companies such as ConAgra. Then TJs decided to cut out the middleman… The point of the article being that even companies we perceive as “nice and good” are, at their heart, businesses.
  • Put a Ring on It. Perhaps you saw, a few weeks ago, the video showing how the entire engagement ring custom was designed by DeBeers to sell diamonds. Here’s another bit of news from the jewelry industry. Kay Jewelers is being bought by Signet, the owner of Zales. Signet operates 1,400 U.S. stores, including its higher end Jared chain. Zale has about 800 Zales and Gordon’s Jewelers stores, as well as 630 Piercing Pagoda mall kiosks. In Canada, Zale operates the successful Peoples Jewellers chain. The net translation of this: most of the jewelers you see in malls are all owned by the same parent company. As always: support local business; buy from a local jeweler.
  • All Generics Are Not Equal. Knowing from where you buy is important. In the US, when you buy brand name medicine, you know what you are getting and who made it, but you pay a big price for that knowledge. If you buy generic, you save money — but are you getting the equivalent? The answer… not always. In particular, it appears that medicines manufactured in India are creating safety concerns. This one actually hit home: my wife has one medicine that used to be brand-name only that has finally gone generic. Our 90-supplier recently sent us the generic. My wife checked with her doctor, and the first batch was fine — it was made in England. He told her he only wanted her to take medicines made in first-world countries. The second batch — from India. We had to coordinate getting it returned and replaced.
  • How We Look at the World. The mention of first-world and third-world makes one think about how we view the world. Here’s a question for you: Have you ever thought about why North is always at the top of a map? Al-Jazeera America did. What’s interesting is looking at the alternate maps — your bearings are totally off. By the way, having N at the top is a recent invention; N has been at the top only for about the last 500 years.
  • Whose on Top. It’s always a battle to determine who should be at the top of the heap. Alas, such a battle is happening over Casey Kasem — the DJ who used to be ubiquitous on the radio. Kasem’s children from his first marriage are battling over the right to visit their father. Who are they battling? Jean Kasem, his current wife. Jean, if you recall, played Nick Tortelli’s wife on Cheers. Note that this isn’t a battle over money — only the right to visit their father.
  • Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah. Speaking of mothers and fathers, Mark Evanier writes of a recently released collection of Allan Sherman’s early parody material. For those of us who remember who Allan Sherman was, this is of great interest. Mark notes: “But let me warn you of two things. One is that some of the 13 songs on this CD are kinda short. The whole thing runs around 34 minutes. And the other thing is that the audio quality is not wonderful. If you go to this page to order (and I’m not suggesting you not, especially if you’re a big Sherman fan), play a few samples so you can hear the quality of the recordings you’ll be getting.” Still, new Sherman music is quite tempting.

 

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userpic=corporateToday’s News Chum post brings together a number of articles dealing with corporate America and food. Tomorrow will look more at corporations, and what works and what doesn’t.

Of course, there is some good food news. Steak and Shake is coming to Santa Monica.

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userpic=needlepointContinuing our design theme of yesterday, here are a few more lunch-time articles related to some more artful designs:

 

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userpic=corporateBack in 2005, I quoted some words from Alton Brown that he had posted on a previous incarnation of his blog:

Ronald McDonald doesn’t give a damn about you. Neither does that little minx Wendy or any of the other icons of drivethroughdom. And you know what, they’re not supposed to. They’re businesses doing what businesses do. They don’t love you.

Remember these words. Burn them on your mind. They capture an essential truth in the world today — corporations are not working in the interest of their customers; they are working to maximize profits for their shareholders, and increase the wealth of the corporation. This is key to understanding much of what is happening in the world today: why laws are as they are, why protectionism occurs, and why many rally against “big business” (and why I think corporate privacy issues are much worse than government privacy issues, for at least government has laws to answer to). Here are a number of news articles I’ve noticed this week that touch upon this notion of business being only in business for themselves:

 

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userpic=corporateToday’s (not quite) lunchtime post is a collection of news articles about various corporations that have caught my eye:

P.S.: Debate what you want about global warming and its cause, but weather is getting weird when it reaches 81°F in Anchorage, and 91°F near Mt. McKinley in Alaska!

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userpic=observationsThe “clearin’ of the links” post seems to be increasingly moving from Friday to Saturday, so let’s just go with it. There is some slight connection between these stories, but not enough to make a full themed article:

  • Gluten Free Waste. My wife is gluten-free, for a reason. She’s dealing with Celiac, and there’s a medical basis. But for many people, going GF is the latest food fad. A recent Time article posits that we are wasting billions of dollars on GF food unnecessarily. They cite a new survey from market research firm the NPD Group that found America is cutting gluten out of its diet in a big way, with just under one-third of 1,000 respondents agreeing with the statement: “I’m trying to cut back/avoid Gluten in my diet.” Time notes that is the highest level since the company added gluten consumption to the surveys it does about Americans’ eating habits in 2009. TIME labeled the gluten-free movement #2 on its top 10 list of food trends for 2012. Time’s contention is that many of those paying a premium to avoid gluten are doing so without any legitimate medical reason. From what I’ve seen of fad diets, I’d tend to agree. As always, we’re heading towards a GF bubble here.
  • Foot Pain. Another article that hits close to home deals with Plantar Fasciitis. This is something I dealt with recently — it impacted my ability to exercise tremendously, and it took me almost a year to get rid of it. They recommend shoe fixes, but I haven’t seen that my fancy insoles made a big difference. More important, to me, was a “boot” I wore at night that prevented the Plantar from relaxing, so it didn’t get re-inflamed when I stood up in the morning. That, combined with anti-inflammatory medicine, seemed to make the biggest difference.
  • Remember Market Basket. Curbed LA had an article this week about a sad Pavillions at Wilshire and Stoner being closed, and talking about redevelopment that might occur at the even sadder (but open) Santa Monica and Barrington Vons. This caught my eye because of the location. You see, many many years ago (back in the 1970s and 1980s) the Wilshire and Stoner location housed the Market Basket where we did most of our shopping. My parent’s accounting office was in the Barrington Plaza next door, and I was always picking up stuff there for them (either there or Westward Ho on San Vicente). Wilshire and Stoner was also the location of the Crocker Bank where I got my first credit card (which I still have). In the 1990s, they “redeveloped” the parcel putting in an office building, but with a covenant that they retain a market there for the Seniors living in the Barrington Plaza. They put in a fancy Ralphs… which died. Then came the Pavillions, which died. Meanwhile, the really old Marina style Vons on Santa Monica stays busy.
  • There’s Profit in Everything. We often think about the big parts of business, not the little parts. For example, when we talk GF bread, we think about the bread itself not the bag… or how they close the bag. Well, Businessweek did that thinking. They have a really interesting article on a big battle between the clip-on bag closer and the twist-tie closer manufacturers to gain market share. As I said, big business… and not something you commonly think about.

Music: The Legendary Josh White (Josh White): “Trouble in Mind”

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userpic=corporateMerger mania is back. Today’s lunchtime news chum concerns some mergers that are in the news, as well as some other business news primarily focused on ways to bring in the green:

  • If You See Your Waitress Here, Send Her Over With a Beer. The “mainstream” beer world is devolving, with everything distilling down to two major brewers who make most of the beer in the world (which personally isn’t a big deal for me, as I don’t drink beer). My favorite blog, Planet Money, has a wonderful thing they call a Beer Map: for any country, who makes the swill you drink (Two Giant Brewers, 210 Brands).
  • A Clip Joint. So Office Depot and OfficeMax are merging. I don’t know if this is good or bad, but it probably isn’t that great for prices. Neither has ever been great in the fancy pen department. Of course, some cities are happy about it. Good example: St. Louis, which has no Staples stores, might get some to give Office MaxDepot some competition.
  • An American Conglomeration. Tom Paxton once sung about the horrible baggage service of Republic Airlines. Republic was formed by the merger of North Central and Southern, and then merged with Hughes Airwest. This then merged with Northwest Orient to form Northwest, which then merged into Delta (which itself was the merger of Delta and Western). Then again, there is United Airlines, which is the merger of United and Continental, where Continental absorbed the old People Express and Texas International, and United absorbed most of Pan Am. Well these two Frankenstein monsters now have a third beast to contend with: American (which in the past had absorbed AirCal, Reno Air, and TWA) is merging with US Airways (which itself was the merger of Allegheny, Lake Central, Mohawk, Trump Shuttle, Piedmont, America West, US Airways, Pacific Southwest Airways) to form an even bigger American. Here’s how American and US Airways joined. I should note that coming up forth is the combination of Southwest and AirTran, which to my knowledge haven’t swallowed anything else.

And as we’re talking about business, here are a few more business related items to clear out the bookmarks:

  • Flyaway Expanding… and Raising Fares. Yet another Flyaway bus line is being added to get people to LAX because the light rail doesn’t go there. This time, the bus will be running from the Expo Line La Brea Station starting in the Spring (at a price of $6, moving up to $7). More importantly to me, the article noted that one-way fares between Van Nuys bus terminal and LAX will rise to $8 July 2. The increase is expected to reduce an annual deficit of $531,000 for operating and maintaining the Van Nuys terminal to $168,000.
  • Paying to Play. We’re all used to it. The hours and hours of previews before a movie. (That’s one nice thing about live theatre — no previews to sit through!). That may be changing, as a number of theatres are either charging to run the previews, or are limiting the number that can be run for free. I’m curious whether this means there will be less previews. The theatres need to be looking less for revenue and more for what will draw patrons in (as Michael Jonathan noted in a blog post I noted yesterday); their problem is that the movies they advertise might not even be running in their theatre, or certainly not exclusively in their theatre.
  • In Bed With Martha Stewart. It appears Macys and Pennys are sparring over the queen of domestic advice, Martha Stewart. Yup, the two retailers are arguing over who has the sole right to see the convicted women’s branded stuff. Neither is asking, however, whether people actually care about the name in the first place.
  • Customers Demand More Fees. Caesars Entertainment has announced that they are going to start charging resort fees in all of their Las Vegas properties. Specifically, Caesars will begin adding fees ranging from $10-$25 on March 1 that will provide package coverage for amenities including Wi-Fi, local calls and fitness centers. Caesars operates nine hotels in Las Vegas, including Caesars Palace, Harrah’s, Bally’s, the Flamingo, the Quad, Paris Las Vegas and Planet Hollywood on the Strip. Why are they doing this? According to Caesars, it is something guests asked for. Specifically, Caesars indicated guests asked for a pckage fee, as opposed to what Caesars did in the past: charging separately for such amenities.

 

 

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userpic=corporateToday’s collection of lunchtime news chum articles all have to do with names in the news:

  • Darjeeling. It’s one of my favorite types of tea, and it has recently regained its name. Specifically, the tea growers in the foothills of the Himalayas in India have won legal protection for the Darjeeling label under laws that limit the use of certain geographic names to products that come from those places. In a recent decision, the European Union agreed to phase out the use of “Darjeeling” on blended teas. Now, just as a bottle of Cognac must come from the region around the French town of Cognac, a cup of Darjeeling tea will have to be made only from tea grown around Darjeeling.
  • Budweiser. Another name that has been the subject of a long battle is Budweiser. The Czech brewer Budejovicky Budvar and AB InBev (Anheuser-Busch) have been negotiating for a century over the name. Budejovicky Budvar was founded in 1895 in the southern city of Ceske Budejovice — called Budweis at the time by the local German-speaking people. Beer has been brewed here since 1265 and has been known for centuries as Budweiser. We all know about the St. Louis company. AB wants the right to use the name globally, not only in selected areas as it is now. So does Budvar.
  • Reading Rainbow. LeVar Burton has reacquired control of the Reading Rainbow name, and is now marketing it as an app for tablets. He’s having quite a bit of success. With almost no marketing, it quickly became the No. 1 educational app at the Apple iTunes store. In the first 4 1/2 months since its launch, children used the app to read more than 700,000 books.
  • Infiniti. Infiniti is changing the name of its entire lineup of cars, moving from the easy to remember EX, FX, G, M, and JX nameplates with ones starting with the letter Q. I’ve never understood the desire to use letter and number codes to “name” cars; I remember the old days when names were real names.
  • Restaurant Names. USA Today has a nice article on a number of restaurant chains that are disappearing due to changing tastes and the recession (although referencing Tony Romas and “taste” in the same sentence is questionable). I’ll note that Bobs is still active in SoCal, although we have some of the original stores.
  • Potatoes. And lastly, we have SPUDS. Specifically, Boeing is testing aircraft Wi-Fi to ensure the signals are consistent through the cabin without interrupting the navigation and communication systems. How do they do this without paying people for hours to sit? They use sacks of potatoes, which replicate the way human passengers reflect and absorb electronic signals. The testing idea has been dubbed Synthetic Personnel Using Dialectric Substitution, or SPUDS.

 

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