Management Foul-up Number One
When companies make money, we assume they are well-managed. That perception is reinforced by the CEOs of those companies who are happy to tell you all the clever things they did to make it happen. The problem with relying on this source of information is that CEOs are highly skilled in a special form of lying called leadership. Leadership involves convincing employees and investors that the CEO has something called a vision, a type of optimistic hallucination that can come true only in an environment in which the CEO is massively overcompensated and the employees have learned to be less selfish.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704025304575285000265955016.html
Delivery device for nicotine
At just the tender age of two, Ardi Rizal's health has been so ruined by his habit of smoking 40 cigarettes a day that he now struggles to move by himself. The four-stone toddler's condition is set to rapidly deteriorate. Ardi, who is rarely seen without a cigarette, insists on the same brand, which costs his parents £3.78 a day. Local officials offered to buy the family a new car if the boy quits, but Ardi's parents feel unable to stop him because he throws massive tantrums if they do not indulge him. "He is totally addicted. If he does not get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall," Ardi's mother wept. Ardi's youth is the extreme of a disturbing trend. Data from the Central Statistics Agency showed 25% of Indonesian children aged three to 15 have tried cigarettes, with 3.2% of those active smokers. The percentage of five to nine year olds lighting up increased from 0.4% in 2001 to 2.8% in 2004, the agency reported. Child advocates are speaking out about the health damage to children from second-hand smoke and the pressure to smoke. One-third of Indonesians smoke tobacco. Seto Mulyadi, chairman of Indonesia's child protection commission, blames the increase on aggressive advertising and parents who are smokers.
Rove Rolls Again
Bush strategist Karl Rove is secretly seizing control of the GOP and amassing $135 million to destroy the Democrats. The linchpin of Rove's coup is American Crossroads -- a shadow version of the RNC for the party's richest donors. The group wants to become a fixture in GOP politics: "The idea is that there needs to be an institutional entity that will be there every cycle." The strategic logic is simple: American Crossroads will be where the real money goes to "play." "This is the plutocratic wing of the GOP getting together and deciding that, in the era of unlimited corporate contributions, they don't need a formal Republican Party anymore," says a top Democrat. "It's all about the accumulation of power."
Why We Hate Wal-Mart
It does not matter what Wal-Mart does. We will still hate it. Because our hatred for Wal-Mart is not, in fact, based on anything the company does; it is based on what the company is. It is a big box. A big, bland, concrete warehouse. It hurts us, the very vision of it. We hate Wal-Mart for aesthetic reasons. We hate you because of who you are, Wal-Mart. A big fucking ugly box. Go away and die.
Rotten Tomatoes
Robert Watson, a top ingredient buyer for Kraft Foods, needed $20,000 to pay his taxes. So he called a broker for a California tomato processor that for years had been paying him bribes to get its products into Kraft’s plants. The check would soon be in the mail, the broker promised. “We’ll have to deduct it out of your commissions as we move forward,” he said, using a euphemism for bribes. Days later, federal agents descended on Kraft’s offices and confronted Mr Watson. He admitted his role in a bribery scheme that has laid bare a vein of corruption in the food industry. The scheme also involved millions of pounds of tomato products with high levels of mold or other defects, raising serious questions about how well food manufacturers safeguard the quality of their ingredients.
American health is not a business goal
Rachel Maddow points out that health insurance companies do not care about the well-being of Americans and should not be expected to because they are businesses so their goal is making money. Because American health care is a profit-making system, not a health care system, the incentives are wrong to provide Americans with adequate care.
iPhone credit card reader
iPhone users can turn their phone into a credit card reader thanks to a new gadget about to be launched by Mophie. The reader will feature a hardware device that bolts on to your iPhone and third party app that will enable taking credit card payments on the go.
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/30435/iphone-gets-credit-card-readerSquare, a company created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, also allows iPhone users to take payments on the go. Square's mobile payment accessory plugs into the iPhone's headphone jack. The device will work with a third party app that actually handles the processing. https://squareup.com/
