“There must be some sort of business model that enables this company to make money, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is,” Day said. “You wouldn’t think that people still buy enough strobe lights and extension cords to support an entire nationwide chain, but I guess they must, or I wouldn’t have this desk to sit behind all day.”
He’s not kidding. I went into RadioShack one day not too long ago to get a simple coaxial splitter and was dumbfounded by the insane arrangement of the store and the vertical oceans of connectors, cables, wires and off-brand batteries and telephones they have adorning the walls. Nothing made any sense, the packaging was horrible, the salespeople were indeed persistent in a way that only pure desperation could create. It was bizarre. I felt like I was in my seventh-grade science room’s closet, just without the random skeleton and mini Van de Graaff generator.
Do you have any idea how RadioShack stays alive? What, exactly, keeps a 6000 location chain above water in this day and age?
Finally, here’s the money quote from The Onion:
“Even the name ‘RadioShack’—can you imagine two less appealing words placed next to one another?” Day said. “What is that, some kind of World War II terminology? Are ham radio operators still around, even? Aren’t we in the digital age?”
Wellington Grey nails it — the first ever flowchart that (accurately) details the process by which elite geeks comment on a story and karma whore for superior social standing in the /. universe.
It’s facts like these that make me think we’re living in Rome’s last days.
It used to be that America led the globe in science and math knowledge. Now we’re too busy buying Escalades and following celebrities’ lives to be bothered with such details.
According to a survey conducted by InsightExpress for Telles (what a catchy brand, yes?), Americans are not only unaware the plastic comes from oil, but some 40% believe that plastic will just biodegrade at some point.
Snapshot of Survey Results:
72% of respondents do not know that plastic is made out of oil/petroleum
On average, respondents estimated 38% of plastic is recycled (the reality is less than 6%, according to the EPA)
Nearly 40% (38.1%) of respondents said plastic will biodegrade underground, in home compost, in landfills, or in the ocean (plastic will not biodegrade in any of these environments).
After learning that plastic is made from oil and never biodegrades, half (50.1%) of respondents stated they would be likely or very likely to pay 5-10% more for a natural, biodegradable plastic. Only 24% were unlikely/very unlikely to pay this much more.
62% of respondents rate their own level of environmental knowledge as fair or poor, with only 5.6% rating it as excellent.
Pop culture and cute societal cross-sectioning is amusing and all, but when it reveals we’re largely a nation of morons, it becomes scary. Quickly.
I think the time is upon us where people — children especially — need some level of formal education in environmental science. The problem with that, of course, is the politics that will ensnare the creation of such a curriculum will be paralyzing, to say the least.
I am dying to get my hands on Skitch, by plasq (the same folks who make Comic Life, another great app). It’s a screenshot tool that incorporates editing (including resizing) and sharing into one application, which, if everything pans out as it should, will make it superior to Snapz Pro X in my book.
It won’t take long before you realize that Skitch breaks a few UI conventions, but the result is unmistakable progress — not confusion, gimmickry or form-over-function complexity. It’s hard to explain the Skitch UI and do it justice, so instead I’ll suggest you take a look here for a short video of Skitch being demoed at MWSF 2007.
Just a quick reminder: if you want to subscribe to GF (and you do), use my Feedburner RSS feed. It’s awesome and delivers all sorts of value immediately:
Clears your complexion within 14 days.
Reduces bodyfat by 3%-5%.
Resurrects long-dead favorite pets, and not in a Pet Sematary sort of way.
Never needs its hips replaced.
Again, salvation awaits right here. Subscribe and be happy!
Roadkill collector
Cruise highways looking for dead things.
$$: Minimum wage. What do you expect for a job where you get to work outside all day, nobody bothers you, and job security is excellent?
The upside: You are doing your part to make America beautiful.
The downside: Ironically, the small animals that break apart on contact are the worst.
The dark side: Sometimes you don’t want to get up in the morning.
And don’t forget:
Life coach
Take over hapless people’s entire existence and reshape it in ways that you think are good for them.
$$: Successful practitioners in this relatively new field can earn as much as a psychiatrist - hundreds of dollars an hour. But unburdened by the same ethical constraints, an aggressive bullshit artist could conceivably view his or her compensation as a percentage of the life that is being fully, you know, actualized.
The upside: It feels good when people pay you to yell at them.
The downside: Some days you may not be positive enough to get out there and make people bark that happy song.
The dark side: Every now and then you see one of your success stories sucking the pavement in front of your local tavern.
Where you go from here: High school hockey coach.
Finally,
Blogger
Download contents of your mind, even when there aren’t any.
$$: Relatively small, but prospects for high-paying bullshit job in the future are virtually assured.
The upside: This is one of the bullshit jobs you can do immediately, with no training and no prior experience. You can also become very famous, since the established media, increasingly devoid of excitement and ideas of its own, has taken to siphoning off daily blogging activity as a much better and more interesting alternative to actual news.
The downside: You need a full, daily dose of imagination, guile, bile, and people pouring nonsense into your head that you can repeat.
The dark side: Your skin glows an ethereal white, your eyes become rheumy and bloodshot. Hair erupts in horrendous places. You don’t care. You are now nothing but a conduit through which pass all the rare gases of the universe. You are, in short, a blog.
I heard this movie was good from a number of people, and the general web review collective seemed to (mostly) agree. It’s a story about a teenager who gets placed under house arrest and, in his boredom, starts noticing the subtleties of suburban life around him, until he slowly begins to deduce that his neighbor is a killer.
Yes, it’s a modern-day Rear Window, just without the depth and bursting with modern tech icons (Macs, cell phones, digital video cameras) that serve, in a sense, as signs of the times. But in the end, it’s a poor modernization.
Unfortunately, Disturbia flinches whenever it has a chance to get truly suspenseful, and in its flinching it turns to a weak teen romance subplot in which the main character (Shia LeBouf) falls for his next door neighbor (Sarah Roemer). As a result, it winds up betraying both the thriller aspect and romance underpinnings equally, leaving viewers wanting either pretty dissatisfied.
But here’s what you need to know about this, and nobody seems to be saying it: this is a teen movie. I’m 38 and was easily one of the oldest guys in the theater. The vast majority of our showing and the showing before us was teens in the range of 15-19 years old. That was my first clue that we had chosen our movie poorly, and once the film started, the soundtrack, dialog and jokes cemented it.
This movie is meant for the high school teen demographic. Make no mistake about it.
Nothing in the film ever gets very tense — even the ending, where it rightfully crescendos — has a minor jump or two, but that’s it. I found myself yawning pretty steadily through the entire film.
Overall, Disturbia is terrible. Your opinion might differ if you’re in the target demographic instead of twice its age (I did hear some high school teens coming out of the theater saying, “OMG, that was so scary!”), but overall, I can’t recommend this to anyone — not even as a rental.
About Battery Update 1.2
Battery Update 1.2 updates battery firmware and improves battery functionality.
After Battery Update has been installed, each battery you insert into your MacBook or MacBook Pro will be updated automatically. Your computer’s power cord must be connected and plugged into a working power source.
One of the most enjoyable reads I’ve had in a long, long time.
Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan, both accomplished authors, debate religion and its validity in a long, thought-provoking email debate. Harris is an atheist who is about to receive his doctorate in neuroscience; Sullivan is a homosexual Catholic and conservative political commentator and former editor of The New Republic.
This is a tremendous read and worth every minute it requires. There are two parts; be sure to read part two after you’re finished with the first.
I think Harris does a phenomenal job, more or less besting Sullivan. Agree? Disagree? Talk about it in the comments.
Another passion of mine, second only to technology, is health and nutrition.
I’ve been thinking of ways to incorporate this topic into my blogging, and I’ve come down to two options:
Introduce it here on GracefulFlavor, or
Start a new blog.
Right now, I’m leaning towards #2, because I feel a flurry of posts about nutrition and food would defocus GF. In fact, as I type this, it’s that much more evident to me.
What do you think? Start a new blog? I have a ton to say on the topic, but GF is coming along pretty well as a brand, and I don’t want to muddy its identity.
So, at this point I suppose the question is this: is there any reason to do it here on GF as opposed to another blog?
Kawasaki: Should Microsoft quit the MP3 player market?
Godin: I thought they already did. They’re spending a lot of money, but they’re on a dead end. They always were. They saw the Dip, but instead of embracing it by completely reinventing what it meant to be an MP3 player, they just played it safe and made a piece of me-too.
When you copy something that’s already on the other side of the Dip, you’ve already lost. Microsoft “quit” the MP3 player market when they identified the wrong Dip. They picked the obvious, “safe” one—the one committees of people could live with, but one that is so big and so steep that even Microsoft doesn’t have the money to get through it.
Microsoft has a long history of sticking through Dips, and a long history of quitting dead ends. I have no idea what they’re thinking when it comes to the Zune, but it’s a dead end, through and through.
Kawasaki: Should Apple quit the personal computer market?
Godin: Apple has already crossed that Dip, big time. Not the “personal computer Dip” but the Dip of “style-conscious, designer’s, multimedia, student, family computer.” They’re the best in the world at that. They own it. They profit from it. Sure, if Steve hadn’t been arrogant, they could have been best in the world at a much bigger, much juicier market. But they’re not. Once they deal with that—and I think they mostly have—then they can erect a wall behind them, a bigger dip, one that prevents others from following. Over time, personal computers become a profitless commodity while Apple’s market just gets sexier, more fun, and more profitable.
This is the best movie I’ve ever seen that I never want to see again.
He gives it a 4.5/5.0, which is spot-on. The film is excellent and should be considered mandatory viewing for every American, but it does indeed leave a piece of itself inside you.
Who is Sick? is a new Google Maps mashup that provides local sickness information based on a standard, intuitive web interface. Users can post new sicknesses and search or analyze sickness trends and outbreaks, including illnesses that involve fever, coughs, runny nose, muscle ache, headache and stomach discomfort.
Here’s a search for my zip code. Looks like not much is going on — just some runny noses, essentially. I’d guess many of these could be allergy-based. You can click on any pie chart and get the specifics of the afflicted represented by the pie.
I’m interested to see where this goes and if it ever has anything more than general data, which will trend towards useless over time given the lack of qualification before entering data. Right now, there’s nothing to stop false submissions (as far as I can tell) and it relies on users self-diagnosing themselves.
How good is the news? Here’s all you need to know: as I write this, AAPL is up $7.50 to $102.85 in after-hours trading.
Apple saw earnings rise 88%, underpinned by sales of almost 1.52 million Macs and 10.5 million iPods. Mac sales are increasing, and the iPod market remains robust, contrary to what some analysts speculated in weeks prior. These numbers represent a 36% growth in Macs and 24% in iPods over last year’s same quarter.
Apple bagged a net profit of $770 million, which translates to $.87 per diluted share, on sales of $5.26 billion. Compare these numbers to last year’s March quarter, which saw net profits of $410 million on sales of $4.36 billion.
That’s staggering.
“The Mac is clearly gaining market share, with sales growing 36 percent — more than three times the industry growth rate,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re very excited about the upcoming launch of iPhone in late June, and are also hard at work on some other amazing new products in our pipeline.”
Gross margin for this quarter grew to 35.1%, up from 29.8% last year. Operationally, Apple is doing a wonderful job managing its business the hard way — from the revenue side. You don’t see much cost containment trickery here.
International sales accounted for 43% of revenue.
Projecting to the next fiscal quarter of 2007, Apple said it expects revenue of about $5.1 billion and an EPDS of about $0.66.
Removing all bias from the equation, Apple as a company is exhibiting a confluence of all the right things in the right place at the right time. You don’t see this too often, and it’s quite amazing to behold (full disclosure: especially when I hold several hundred AAPL shares).
The thing we can look forward to now are the number mashups from the usual suspects who will invariably give Apple kudos on yet another fine performance, yet go out of their way to show how Macs really aren’t growing relative to the overall PC market and that Apple is precariously living on the iPod prayer. Those are RDFs unto themselves, and they’re always fun to read.
I would like to point you to an example of the notion that no matter how stupid something may seem, someone out there is doing it.
I present to you the iCarta iPod Toilet Roll. Let your eyes feast on this marvel of modern engineering.
Hold your mocking for one second, if you don’t mind. You should know that there are real features and even a customer testimonial so soaked with lameness and grammar errors that only someone who would actually buy one of these could have written it.
The best feature?
4 Integrated high performance moisture-free speakers deliver exceptional clarity and high quality sound
“Moisture-free” speakers? Giddyup! Either the engineering aplomb that has gone into the iCarta is second to none, or they meant to say “waterproof,” which connotes a pretty disgusting usage model for this thing. Makes you wonder why they don’t make an off-yellow model.
Naturally, being a high-end, discriminating consumer who’s well into the Apple fold, you’re wondering about speaker performance and fidelity. No worries — the technical specs have it covered.
Speakers:
2 x tweeters for highs
2 x woofers for lows
Well, that certainly clears things up.
And let’s not forget the elevator pitch, which gets right to the point of the iCarta while managing to use the words “people”, “beats” and “bathroom” in the same sentence — and not in the way you think.
The state of the art device, called an iCarta, makes it easier for people to listen to beats while using the bathroom.
There’s a solution to a problem nobody has. How many times have you said to yourself, “Self, I need to go to the bathroom something fierce, but I just don’t feel like it unless I have some jams!” If your answer is a nonzero number, you have issues.
Finally, not content to let the feature and specs run the show, the customer “testimonial” is the coup de grace:
I’ve got to admit my first reaction was to laugh. But when my wife suggested I sit on my throne and listen to Ravel’s Bolero I knew she was on to something. This iPod Toilet roll is actually FANTASTIC in my bathroom. Those long hot soaks in the tub became a whole lot more soothing with my favorite music playing in the background. Some visits it’s “Splish Splash I Was Taken A Bath” and at other times “The Long And Lonesome Road” seems more appropriate. I’ll let you figure out how I match my activity to the song. Anyway, I’ve really enjoyed this well made, well designed, beautiful iPod docking station. And what a conversation piece. I’m hear [Hear?! Get it? -- ed.]to tell you nothing in my house can top it!
I’ve bolded the bits of advertising and copywriting genius, in case you missed them.
This can be yours for $70 bucks plus tax and shipping and the small part of you that dies when you order.
I would go to great lengths to see the customer data for people who buy this. And buying it for a gag gift doesn’t count.
Beth is a friend who’s a talented writer and is currently traversing the weird, unpredictable road to getting published and recognized. I could tell you the story of her travails so far, how she finds publishing to be an arcane and inhuman pursuit, and just exactly how many times she’s revised her first novel to meet the soul-sucking demands of the editor she hired. I could do all of that but I won’t, because the less you know about it (unless you want to know about it, in which case you probably already do, so it’s a moot point), the better off you are. Some abysses aren’t meant to be gazed into.
However, I am going to ask you to help Beth’s most recent story, entitled “Helping Chrissy”, get noticed by the folks over at Gather. They are running a contest, hosted by Mitch Albom, called “Times Mom Stood Up for Me”.
I know the last thing you want to do is join yet another web site only to go through a weird voting process, but in return for your efforts you will recieve:
Karmic laudations.
A stronger sense of self and purpose.
A soundtrack for your life that plays in the background and gets louder or softer depending on what you’re doing. You hear the music through your teeth.
Endless, undying gratitude from Beth, who has many good stories and is willing to tell them all.
My personal thanks.
If you’d like to help, here’s what you do.
Go here. In the orange box in the left column, click “Join this group”.
Register. It’s quick and easy. Really. Nowhere in the process do you bleed.
Schiphol is Amsterdam’s nexus airport, competing with London’s Heathrow in terms of passenger and cargo throughput.
Despite catering to such massive numbers, the restroom floors underneath men’s urinals aren’t the typical mess you’d find in just about any other airport. Instead, they’re nearly spotless, and it’s not because of nonstop cleaning crew intervention.
Each of Schiphol’s urinals has a small black insect — a fly, to be exact — etched into the porcelain at a strategic location. When a man uses the urinal, he sees it. And when he sees it, he aims at it. When he hits the fly, spillage is reduced by 80% or more.
Not only does the fly preoccupy the user, but it preoccupies him in a way that actually modifies his behavior to benefit another purpose — lavatory cleanliness.
The backdating story continues to pan out: the WSJ says that Fred Anderson, Apple’s ex-CFO, has decided to settle with the SEC.
Under the terms of the settlement, Anderson agreed to a fine of about $150K and to repay stock option gains somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.5 million. He is exonerated from any admission of wrongdoing.
Next up: the SEC is said to be pursuing a civil lawsuit against Nancy Heinen, Apple’s ex-general counsel. We’ll see what happens there.
It’s all but certain at this point that Steve Jobs will come out of this thing unscathed, as the SEC’s investigation is so far mirroring the results of Apple’s own internal audit.
While reading this email debate between atheist Sam Harris and Catholic Andrew Sullivan, this passage by Harris struck me:
The endurance of religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is not much of a mystery–and it is certainly not so mysterious as to lend credence to ancient miracles. No doubt there are many factors that have contributed to Christianity’s success. The problem of sunk-cost is surely one: just look at how much attentional, emotional, and financial resources people have invested in this religion. No one is eager to realize he has been wasting his time. Realizing that the core claims of Christianity are illegitimate would be tantamount to a Christian admitting, “I have been wrong all these years.” It is no surprise that people keep their shoulder to the door, bracing against such epiphanies. I have received thousands of letters and emails from people describing just how painful it was for them to finally admit that they were duped by Christianity, and that they duped their children in turn. I have heard from many ministers who have ceased to be ministers, and even Christians. More commonly, I hear from people who are terrified to articulate their growing skepticism about the doctrine of Christianity for fear of being shunned by friends and family. I do not doubt how much psychological and social pressure religious people are under. I don’t think you should doubt it either.
Any time one has been resisting truth and honesty and the time comes to turn the corner, it’s a difficult turn. But when self-awareness and growth and freedom are the rewards, I think the pain is well worth enduring. It won’t last forever.
When you see something like this, you begin to realize just how over-full this world is of destructive technology. Our ability to reduce ourselves to ash within the space of several hours is terrifying. As a child, I had nightmares about this stuff. The Day After and Threads didn’t help any, either.
The USSR’s Tsar Bomba, the most powerful weapon ever built by mankind and detonated in 1961, was so much overkill that most of its energy radiated upwards into space. That which didn’t was so excessive that using the weapon against any populated target on the planet would actually negatively impact Russian interests.
Some time after the explosion, a team was dispatched to ground zero to take photographs. One witness reported: “The ground surface of the island has been levelled, swept and licked so that it looks like a skating rink. The same goes for rocks. The snow has melted and their sides and edges are shiny. There is not a trace of unevenness in the ground… Everything in this area has been swept clean, scoured, melted and blown away.” Analysis of the explosion showed that the area of complete destruction had a radius of twenty-five kilometers from ground zero.
This is what the term “glassing” means as it relates to nuclear warfare.
Tsar Bomba was “only” 50 megatons. It was supposed to be 100 until the USSR’s scientists reduced its megatonnage for fear of widespread nuclear fallout. It’s a good thing, too: upon later analysis, a 100 megaton detonation would have resulted in lethal levels of radioactive fallout over an enormous area. Let’s hear it for prudence in sabre-rattling!
If you’re anything like me, you have a hard time remembering all of the cool undocumented OSX keyboard shortcuts built into the OS. And you probably have no idea how many are actually out there, just waiting to be used.
Some of these you may never use, but I’m guessing there are some very useful ones that you never knew existed. I know I recently discovered OPTION-CMD-EJECT puts my MBP to sleep, and I use that one every day.
I saw an Avis/iTunes commercial last night, and now I have this looping in my head, over and over, and it won’t stop.
It. Won’t. Stop.
TURN IT DOWN YOU SAY,
WELL ALL I GOT TO SAY TO YOU IS TIME AND TIME AGAIN I SAY, “NO!”
NO! NO, NO, NO
TELL ME NOT TO PLAY
WELL, ALL I GOT TO SAY TO YOU WHEN YOU TELL ME NOT TO PLAY, I SAY, “NO!”
NO! NO, NO, NO
The top 10 most satisfying jobs and percentage of subjects who claimed they were very happy with the profession, according to the 2006 General Social Survey:
Clergy—87 percent
Firefighters—80 percent
Physical therapists—78 percent
Authors—74 percent
Special education teachers—70 percent
Teachers—69 percent
Education administrators—68 percent
Painters and sculptors—67 percent
Psychologists—67 percent
Security and financial services salespersons—65 percent
