, after I read this review in a Swedish newspaper. It gave the record the highest score (6 dots on a dice).Mr Schultz says he wants to slow down the pace of expansion in America and to close struggling locations while accelerating expansion overseas. He also wants to improve the “customer experience” at American stores and streamline management. There is no “silver-bullet” he said, but rather a scaling back of the expectations of a company famously named after the coffee-loving mate of the Pequod in Herman Melville’s novel, “Moby Dick”. Ominously, Frank Starbuck comes to a sticky end when he eventually comes up against the great white whale. (Not enough froth, Economist, 01/08/08)
Analysts and investors welcome Mr Schultz's return because it shows the company is taking action to correct its drift. The main architect of Starbucks' expansion is seen as the best person to lead a return to the firm's roots as a specialist coffee shop with a local touch. McDonald's, by contrast, having just recovered from its own overexpansion, is venturing into a whole new market. May the best latte win. (Coffee Wars, Economist, 01/10/08.)
There is no way I could build Businesspundit from scratch to the traffic levels that it has today if I had not gotten such an early start. As I look at people who are much better writers and have much more interesting things to say than I do, I am reminded how much luck and timing matter in all things. (BusinessPundit, 01/23/08.)
While she hasn’t been quoted as apologizing to Christians, or Jesus himself, it would appear Dana Jacobson has been “forgiven”, as she’s still employed, for now. She’s lucky she only went off on those intolerant Christians, because had she said the same thing about Muslims, she’d be in the Witness Protection Program today.
To think that an organization with as many liberal sports commentators as ESPN would even take such an action, instead of excusing it “free speech”, is notable. (Canada Free Press, 01/23/08.)
The deepening gloom about the economy may well warrant such an aggressive response. But the timing is puzzling. There is more than a whiff of panic about slashing rates little more than week before a scheduled meeting. The Fed statement issued with the decision rationalises the cut as a response to “downside risks to growth”—the phrase is repeated twice in six short paragraphs—and cites recent gloomy data on housing and jobs. Yet the economic news has not grown any worse in the past few days and, given the time needed before monetary policy affects spending, the added urgency seems odd. (The Economist 01/22/08.)
Police arrested two people on Tuesday for allegedly defrauding Stockholm taxpayers of millions of kronor, on the pretext that the money was to be used to finance preschools. The money was allegedly transferred to accounts in Africa and the Middle East, in a case that is reported to have links to a terror financing probe. (The Local, 01/22/08.)
"New England Patriots"
It becomes clear that the only remaining copy of Aristotle's Second Book of Poetics is somehow related to the deaths. William deduces, thanks to a scrap of parchment with hastily written notes, that all of those who died under mysterious circumstances had read the book. His investigations are curtailed by the arrival of Bernardo Gui of the Inquisition, summoned for the conference and keen to investigate the deaths. The two men clashed in the past and the zealous inquisitor has no time for theories outside his own: that The Devil is responsible – and torture will reveal the truth. (Wikipedia The Name of the Rose on Answers.com. Wikipedia Copyright © 2007 by Wikipedia. Published by Wikipedia.)
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Audio and Video
Starting Feb. 1, San Diego-based V2P Communications is offering five-to-eight-second audio ads, called NetAudioAds, that will automatically play when a visitor lands on a blog or Web site. Publishers sign up for the free service and V2P then lines up advertisers, who bid on rates they will pay to have their ads played on a given blog. Bids generally start around $14 per 1,000 plays. Blog publishers get a 25% cut of the ad revenue.
About 25,000 publishers have signed up so far, says Michael Knox, V2P's co-founder, and several large companies and 2008 presidential campaigns have expressed interest in becoming advertisers through the service. A site that gets 2,000 unique visitors per day with an advertiser paying $14 per 1,000 plays might earn $28 a day, or $196 a week. (Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008.)
, in his latest newsletter ("Randy Rants"). As a "poor" capitalist, I have added the book to my wish list.
The Pursuit of Happyness, based on events in Chris Gardner's life, casts Smith as a man attempting a remarkable realignment of his values, his goals and his life.
In a time before cellular phones and voice mail, struggling father and aspiring businessman Gardner (with Smith's son, Christopher, as his kid) aims to think his way out of poverty, adopting the optimism inspired by a Founding Father's noble phrase from the Declaration of Independence. "How did Thomas Jefferson know to put pursuit in?" the destitute Gardner wonders, embracing the idea that happiness is earned. (Box Office Mojo, 03/16/07.)
I have stored a framed poster of Bryan Larsen's painting, A New Height, at a friend's place in Ohio. I look forward to the day when I once again could place the poster on a wall in my future home, somewhere in the Land of Opportunity - America... (EGO, July 17, 2004.)
Just a reminder about the New Year, New You promotion.
20.08% off all orders from December 31 - January 14. Valid on all orders over $10. Use coupon code newyear08 (Candaian code: CADnewyear08). Shipping charges not included in discount. (SpreadShirt Blog, January 5, 2008.)
I rarely bother to beat dead horses. God is a dead horse, although religion is not quite as dead as most atheists believe, because it is alive and snorting and being harnessed to contemporary American politics. That is religion’s special danger; churches of all stripes and sects are enlisting their congregations in the army for various welfare state, environmentalist, and collectivist crusades. Their primary object is to resurrect the country’s alleged “Christian” values and rid that “Holy Land” of the infidel, the atheist, and incidentally clean up the earth, stop global warming, and herd everyone into a welfare state corral. It is God’s will, they say, to take care of the lame, halt and poor by impoverishing the healthy, the independent, and the industrious. (Rule of Reason, January 3, 2008.)
With the opening of the primary season—tonight's Iowa caucus isn't a real primary, but it is the first test of candidates' support among grass-roots activists, and thus it will have an impact on the primaries to come—now is the time to give TIA's official endorsement for the Republican primary.
I say that this is my official endorsement, because it has been clear where I've been leaning, unofficially, for most of the past year: I support Rudy Giuliani as by far the best candidate for the Republican nomination. He is the only candidate who will promote the influence of what I call the "secular right": support for free markets, a strong national defense, and strict separation of church and state. (TIA Daily, January 3, 2008.)
The big winner in the Iowan caucuses is Jesus Christ. Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama are the two most religious -- politically religious -- candidates of their parties. I'm surprised that those candidates came in first. However, I don't believe that they'll win the nominations (though I think it likely that Obama joins somebody else's ticket). Indeed, I would be stunned if either candidate made it to the general election. If both make it, that will demonstrate that this country is in worse shape than I thought, and that we are likely headed toward more expansive religious-based politics. (Ari Armstrong, January 4, 2008.)
Related: My posts, WHAT KIND OF BLOGGER ARE YOU? and FUTURE BLOGGING.
I have updated the EGO template with some new features. [Editor's note: A nice upgrade of the layout will occur during next year. It will be a top of the line thing and the perfect "icing on the cake". For a "mysterious" clue, read my post, WARCRAFT...]
Martin Lindeskog hired me to do his blog banner for his site, http://egoist.blogspot.com/. I thought it might be interesting to show the steps in its production.
This is the sketch I came up with after having read his suggestions. (John Cox Art, January 1, 2008.)
I establish where the black tones (cityscape and other details) are in relation to the "finished" color pencil outline of the figures. (John Cox Art, January 2, 2008.)
Done. Added Martin Lindeskog's blog name for a touch of pizzaz. Me likey. (John Cox Art, January 5, 2008.)
Part political thriller, part war story, and part “classic” action comic book, Matamoros follows one of America’s heroes in the “Long War” - an ordinary guy who discovers that only extraordinary situations exist when the enemy is a protean entity which refuses to adhere to the laws of war or the laws of civilized nations.
Written by Sleet and Darius LaMonica, and illustrated by John Cox of the Cox & Forkum political cartoon team, Matamoros is the first comic book focusing on the U.S. military’s fight against radical Islamists. (Matamoros Comic, December 11, 2007.)
The irony of trying to plan accidents, and orchestrate their frequent occurrence, is not lost on Mr Williams. So he tries mental tricks. One is to ask “what can we take away to create something new?” A decade ago, you could have started with Yahoo! and taken away all the clutter around the search box to get Google. When he took Blogger and took away everything except one 140-character line, he had Twitter. Radical constraints, he believes, can lead to breakthroughs in simplicity and entirely new things. (The Economist, December 19, 2007.)
