April 2008
27 posts
Food Crisis for Thought
“A silent tsunami which knows no borders is sweeping the world,” says the head of the UN World Food Program. In Haiti, protesters shouting “we’re hungry” forced the prime minister to resign. Cameroon saw 24 deaths during hunger riots. Egypt’s president has ordered the army to bake bread. Hoarding rice in the Philippines is now punishable by life imprisonment. Riots in Côte d’Ivoire...
Common vs. Preferred. Stock, that is..
In brief, preferred stockholders get dividends but can’t vote. Common stockholders can vote but don’t get dividends. Common stock is the most typical type of stock; when people refer to investing and trading stocks, they are usually talking about common stock. Common stock represents ownership in a company; each share gives the owner one vote on anything put to vote in the annual...
swimming in plastic
According to a 2006 UNEP study, there are 46,000 pieces of plastic trash per square mile in the ocean.
oh, just some predictions from the first Earth Day...
“By 1985…air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the earth by one half” – Life magazine, January 1970 “By the year 2000…the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine,” Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970. Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor “…the planet...
sail away sail away sail away
Today I learned that cruise companies don’t pay income tax because they claim they earn their income “on the high sea.” Often, cruise lines are registered as businesses of small countries like Panama (Carnival), Liberia (Royal Caribbean), or the Bahamas, so they avoid a corporate tax as well. Typically, income must be accounted for where it is earned, regardless of the...
“If you do bother, you will set an example for other people. If enough other...”
– Michael Pollan in his NYTMagazine article entitled Why Bother?
Ten Easy Ways to be Kind to Earth Today
1. turn off the tap - while brushing, while lathering, while shaving. 2. walk, bike, or carpool instead of driving. 3. bring your own bag. 4. eat only local food. 5. don’t eat meat. 6. unplug your appliances when not in use - your tv, your lights, your microwave. get a power strip with an easy on/off switch. 7. stop unwanted junk mail. 8. adjust your thermostat. or just turn the...
please take this survey.. →
..if you know a little something about beer. i’m doing a brand consulting project for a brewery and it would really help me out. thanks! Update: Survey closed. Thanks for your help!
Pollution inhibits Pollination?
Remember when people thought it was the end of the world because the bees were mysteriously dying off? As of last year, the west coast is reported to have lost 60% of its commercial bee population and the east coast lost 70% through CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder. CCD is when a hive’s inhabitants disappear, leaving only the queen bees, eggs, and a few immature worker bees. The vanished bees...
“No other company has proven as adept at giving customers what they want before...”
– How Apple Got Everything Right by Doing Everything Wrong, an interesting read in Wired
need a good presentation deck? →
Probably not. But I do. Here’s a great little resource for slideshow themes & ideas.
10 Businesses Facing Extinction in 10 Years
A 2007 article from Entrepreneur.com discusses the odds of survival of ten industries. They are: Record Stores Camera Film Manufacturing Crop Dusters Gay Bars Newspapers Pay Phones Used Bookstores Piggy Banks Telemarketers Coin-Operated Arcades
"They've got 30 years of people winging it." →
So about 30 years ago Wal-Mart hired a video company, Flagler Productions Inc, to help produce PR events. Over those 30 years, the company captured footage of top executives doing, well, very interesting things. After Wal-Mart decided to hire another video company 2 years ago, Flagler decided to sell these videos. Business historians, documentary filmmakers, plaintiffs lawyers, and union...
“Energy independence is a crock. It’s nothing but pandering for votes.”
– John Hofmeister, CEO of Shell Oil, in a talk I attended yesterday.
Second Cheapest Syndrome
Ever order the second cheapest wine on the menu while dining out? Well, one in four diners do (in the UK, at least). In the marketing world, we can define this as a choice set effect with respect to reference pricing - using the cheapest bottle of wine as a standard of comparison against which the other wines are compared. But did you know that the second cheapest bottle is usually the worst...
eco-friendly fur? →
Seems like an oxymoron, but some retailers claim the fur from the brushtail possum, a marsupial native to Australia, provides “all of the luxury, none of the guilt.” Why eco-friendly? Because the 70 million possums are chewing up endangered native flora and chomping on kiwi eggs to devastating effect, adding to “the near extinction of a number of our endemic birds, mistletoes,...
