UPDATE: See Dubai Does Dallas, II: Independence Day

R&B impressario and Grammy-winner Dallas Austin, producer of tracks for such top-selling-artists as Michael Jackson, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Pink, and Gwen Stefani, arrived in Dubai May 19th. He came here to attend super-model Naomi Campbell's three-day Roman orgy of a 36th birthday bash at one of the world's best and most expensive hotels, the Burj al Arab.

Though Dallas never arrived at the party, six weeks later and he's still here. It's not to scout for local talent or to co-produce new Grammy-winning tracks for the likes of Michael Jackson, a rather notorious frequenter of Dubai. Rather, he's staying against his will and at a place much less luxurious than the Burj: he's at the al Rashidiya police station. Dallas, it seems, brought about 1.26 "grammies" of party favors to the UAE and got nabbed at the Dubai airport. According to CNN:

Dallas Austin is currently facing charges of drug possesion, in Dubai. He was arrested at Dubai International Airport On May 19 for allegedly possessing an unspecified amount of cocaine. The United Arab Emirates has a zero tolerance policy on drugs. According to media reports he was in Dubai to attend model Naomi Campbell's birthday party. If convicted, he could face several years in prison.

Yesterday, 7DAYS, an English-language daily published in Dubai reported that:

Dallas Austin arrested with 1.26g of cocaine could receive an amnesty, Newspaper said American ‘VIPs’ have apparently been in touch with UAE authorities to try to ensure lenient treatment for Dallas Austin, However he will remain in police custody until his trial begins on July 2. A spokesperson at Al- Rashdiya police station earlier on June 27, 2006 confirmed to 7DAYS that the Dallas is still in jail as no bail is allowed in cases such as this one.

Continue reading "Dubai Does Dallas" »

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There are two "oracles" that virtually every business, finance, and technology professional knows about. The first is "the Oracle of Omaha", Warren Buffet, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. The other is Redwood Shores, CA-based Oracle Corporation headed by founder and CEO Larry Ellison. Both "oracles" made the news in the last week. The differences in why and how they made the headlines are stark and revealing of each's character.

The Oracle of Omaha made headlines for his philanthropy specifically, for his intent to give the bulk of his multi-billion dollar fortune to the Gates Foundation:

Investment guru Warren Buffett, whose stake in the company he founded is worth $44 billion, disclosed plans yesterday to give nearly all of it away, mostly to the world's largest charitable organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That revelation in Fortune magazine comes on the heels of Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates's announcement earlier this month that he would transition from running his company to running his foundation...

Continue reading "The Oracle of Omaha and the Oracle of Redwood Shores" »

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The word "cruise" has several meanings. As a noun it means "an ocean trip taken for pleasure" while as a verb it can mean "to sail or travel about for pleasure, relaxation, or sightseeing" and "to look for a sexual partner in a public place."

In a recent AFP article entitlted "P and O Australia to crack down on nudity, public sex" we learn that there is a thread that unites these definitions, albeit an unwelcome thread:

Passengers on P and O Cruises who engage in "excessive behaviour" will be removed from the ship, the company's Australian branch said, after it emerged that nudity, streaking and sex in public were common on one luxury liner. A former night manager on the liner told the inquest on Monday that as many as 20 people would be seen running around the ship naked every night. Asked if nudity, streaking and sex in public were common during her more than 10 years working on board cruise ships, manager Kathleen Ann Taylor said: "All the time".

The problem was not only threadbare passengers, however. Sexual predators also stalked P&O's decks:

Continue reading "Cruises and Cruising" »

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Globalization means different things to different peoples. To its opponents it invokes images of a greedy imperialistic America and its minions spreading the depredatory capitalistic model to every corner of the globe. To its propoents it can mean the extension- not always without local adaption- of the economic, social, technological, and legal arrangements with the goal of increasing "interdependency and interaction" among nations and state actors.

For sober-minded social scientists interested in studying the origins or impacts of "globalization" the first order of the day is to define and operationalize the term. This is, however, often much easier said than done. A recent paper in Global Economy Journal by Almas Heshmati, a paper entitled "Measurement of a Multidimensional Index of Globalization", makes valuable headway. Here's the abstract:

In this article we present two composite indices of globalization. The first is based on the Kearney/Foreign Policy magazine and the second is obtained from principal component analysis. They indicate which countries have become most global and show how globalization has developed over time. The indices are composed of four components: economic integration, personal contact, technology and political engagement, each generated from a number of variables. A breakdown of the index into major components provides possibilities to identify sources of globalization and associate it with economic policy measures. The empirical results show that a low rank in the globalization process is due to political and personal factors with limited possibility for the developing countries to affect. The high ranked developed countries share similar patterns in distribution of various components.

Continue reading "Measuring Globalization" »

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• Verizon's Ears Are Burning | Jay | Accidental Verbosity
  Jay and Deb are having service problems with their Verizon FiOS (Fiber Optic Internet Service) and they're giving Verizon an earful about it.
• Free Market System Drives down the Real Cost of Living | Ashish's Niti
  Ashish reports that the "1997 Annual Report of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, (entitled) Time Well Spent: The Declining Real Cost of Living in America, shows how the real cost of living has declined over the century." Kind puts the kabosh on those th
• Marketing by talking around | Wayne | Blog Business World
  Wayne has some tips for people trying to promote and market their websites: "consider talking people into surfing over to your site. All you have to do is get yourself interviewed by the media, as an expert in your field."
• Beware 0% Interest Finance Offers | Jim | Blueprint for Financial Prosperity
  Jim has three pieces advice for people tempted to take up 0% down offers on consumer goods. The first is "My advice is to read the fine print to find out what the hidden interest rate is while the 0% promotional offer is in effect, sometimes it can be rid
• Small Business News from Washington | Anita Campbell | Selling to Small Business
  Anita has a few questions about Fox News' new small business coverage. She notes "At this point, just about every business magazine and major newspaper has a small business section. So my immediate reaction was: What could they possibly cover that is di
• Fly Hungry | Dave Daniels | Business & Technology Reinvention
  Dave has an excellent piece on why businesspeople should occasionally "Fly Hungry." He doesn't mean going without food, he means going without the perks that disconnect you from reality, that make you "cocooned, pampered….and soft."
• DVDs That Teach Children to Eat | Dane Carlson | Business Opportunities Weblog
  Dane's got yet another idea for a million-dollar business: DVD's that encourage young children to eat their vegetables. Noting how much children immediately do whatever is cleverly advertised, Dane thinks that videos with "twenty minutes of catchy music a
• One Hit Wonders Are At Work Too | Rob May | Businesspundit
  Rob May has sage advice on how to avoid becoming "Vanilla Ice" of your chosen profession or company: "If you are a one hit wonder, you need to be honest with yourself. Don't take a promotion that you know you don't deserve, and don't try to leverage the s
• Something you don't hear every day | Byrne Hobart | Byrne's MarketView
  Byrne Hobart has a few comments on a great quote by Ken Heebner of CGM Funds about the booming world economy.

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Clive Crook of National Journal has an excellent analysis of Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's proposed healthcare plan:

It proposes to make health insurance coverage universal (or very nearly so), the Holy Grail of liberal reformers. Massachusetts will be the first state to achieve this. And the law promises to extend coverage without affecting the way health care works for people who already have insurance -- for them, nothing will change. That reassures conservatives who want to keep the health care market system. Yet somehow, to complete this miraculous trifecta, the law requires no new taxes. The plan won overwhelming bipartisan support, passing the state House 154-2 and the state Senate 37-0.

The most notable feature of the plan is the requirement that all individuals have health insurance:

Continue reading "The Health of Nations" »

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Michael Barbaro of the New York Times notes a sudden reversal in the Sak's 5th Avenues retail strategy:

Scolded by short women across the country, Saks Fifth Avenue said yesterday that it would re-establish its petite women's clothing department, which the company had quietly dropped several months ago because of poor sales. The decision, a victory for millions of women shorter than 5-foot-4, came after Saks received scores of letters from smaller shoppers who complained that they could no longer find clothing that fit and that they felt alienated in a store that had dressed them for decades.

On one level the decision to drop petites made perfect sense- women weren't buying the clothes:

Continue reading "No Longer Treated Like Little Women" »

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If you seek a five forces analysis of Wal-Mart, please try this page.

Rick Karlin of the Albany-Times Union reports today on two stinging defeats resulting from recent rounds of hardball. Rick's not a sports reporter, however. His beat is the capitol, the game is political hardball, and the losers are labor and consumer groups.

A controversial measure that would have forced businesses to provide health care insurance or pay an additional tax appears to have died in the Legislature, along with a bill to force drug companies to reveal how much they give physicians who prescribe their medications. Both bills were of keen interest to labor and consumer groups, who say their collapse is a setback in the health care arena. Opponents, however, said the insurance bill was unaffordable and would have killed jobs. They called the drug disclosure bill unneeded and unfair.

Continue reading "A Swing and Amiss" »

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As a rule, corporate acquisitions don't work out.

According to most estimates, about 70 percent of mergers and acquisitions fail to live up to expectations. Layoffs are common, culture clashes are the norm, and workers often abandon ship. One study found that in the first five years after a merger, companies typically lose about 10 percent of their value.

The wonderful thing about business is that every rule has an exception, sometimes many exceptions. Cisco, as Justin Ewers of US News & World Report explains, is one of those expections:

Continue reading "Acquistions and Acquistiveness" »

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If you seek a five forces analysis of Wal-Mart, please try this page.

For the last few years, critics of Wal-Mart and other successful national chains have asserted that the entry of said chains devastates local economies, runs mom and pop businesses out of business or leaves them as mere shadows of their former selves.

In fact, if I had a dollar for every journalist that repeats this illogical meme as fact I'd be a rich man. Better yet, had I a dollar for every blog or webpage "Wal-Mart" and "mom-and-pop" in the same breath, I'd have well over $1 million- enough to buy the Rolls Royce Silver Shadow pictured above.

Apparently I am not the only one who has noticed this unfortunate trend. Jennifer Youssef, in article in an today's Detroit News entitled "Thriving in Wal-Mart's Shadow: Small retailers rival big-box foes by creating customer niche" takes issue with the conventional wisdom concerning the entry of big box stores in local markets:

Continue reading "Silver Shadows" »

Posted by Starling Hunter at 3:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

If you seek a five forces analysis of Wal-Mart, please try this page.

I love movies. I also love factoids and trivia about movies. If I could have any other job in the world other than college professor, it would be as a screen writer. The reason why is that I love good dialog. One of the more interesting factoids I picked up recently was that a study of screenplays of American movies found that the most common line of dialog was an imperative statement: "Let's get out of here!"

Other lines that I know from experience are common in police, or military-themed tv shows, war movies, and the like, are these two: "Stand down!" and "Hold your fire!" The lines are invariably delivered by someone in authority (a captain, a lieutenant, a sergeant) to troops or officers under his command, usually in the midst of some kind of gun battle, firefight, or confrontation where shots are being fired in anger. If you search google for those two lines, along with the word "screenplay", you'll find such notable films as "Full Metal Jacket" (written by Stanley Kubrick) and "The Rock" starring Nicolas Cage.

Continue reading "Hold your fire! Stand down!" »

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• The Judas Phenomenon | The Bloke in The Outer
  Excerptn: "Reflecting on the interest generated by the publicity of the so-called "Gospel of Judas", I suggest that it is easy for us to think of Judas as if he was a valiant in contrast to the "rest of us". In this post, I encourage us to think of the story of Judas as highlighting not just the dark side of humanity but the prevalence of brokenness in all of us, and mostly the power of grace and foregiveness."

• Continue reading "Best of Me Symphony #133" »

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The American Heritage Dictionary defines a coyote as "a small wolflike carnivorous animal (Canis latrans) native to western North America and found in many other regions of the continent." It does have at least one other definition: according to Wikipedia, in the southwestern United States "coyote" is the name given to "people paid to smuggle illegal aliens across the border between Mexico and the United States." Though "coyotes" are often referred to as human traffickers, there are some differences worth noting, at least in the abstract:

"Human trafficking" differs from people smuggling. A people smuggler will facilitate illegal entry into a country for a fee, but on arrival at their destination, the smuggled person is usually free. Trafficking involves a process of using physical force, fraud or deception to obtain and transport people. Women, who form the majority of trafficking victims, are particularly at risk from criminals who exploit lack of opportunities, promise good jobs or opportunities for study, and then force the victims to be prostitutes. To many, the contemporary phenomenon of trafficking in human beings is equivalent to slavery.

Small consolation this distinction must be for these men:

Continue reading "How do you say Wile E. Coyote in Nepalese?" »

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Welcome "Dr. Sanity" and "Carnival of the Insanities" readers. The post you may be looking for is entitled "A Price on His Head: The Economic Impact of Zarqawi's Demise". Just click or scroll down the page a bit. When you're done please feel free to browse the archives. For more about me, click here.

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Iowahawk's blog is not profitable. He thinks he has found the reason- a "flaw" in his business model. A quick look over his income statement for the month suggests that his Research and Development expenses are more than 3 times revenue!

POSSIBLE FLAW IN BUSINESS MODEL DETECTED

May Page Views ........................ 170,419

Revenues

Tip Jar Pity ....................... $10.00
Google ads ......................... $2.19

Total ...................................... $12.19

Overhead

TypePad Pro ...................... $14.95
Flickr Pro ........................... $2.08

Research and Development

10 bottles Night Train
fortified grape beverage ........ $37.90

Total Expenses .......................... $54.93

May consolidated income ............. ($42.74)

Note to IowaHawk: clearly it's the Night Train Express that's sent profits off the rails in May. For what it is worth, "you are not alone." Apparently, somewhere between one in every 14 to one in every five employees -and an untold number of employers- have this same R&D problem. I recommend a switch to Welch's White Grape, the "gentle juice", to get back on the track to financial solvency. And it's good for you, too. Whereas Night Train is "guaranteed to tickle your innards" Welch's White is actually good for your digestive tract.

Posted by Starling Hunter at 1:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

US and Coalition forces in Iraq yesterday announced the death of Al-Qaeda in Iraq head, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:

The U.S. military displayed images of the battered face of Iraq's most feared terrorist Thursday and Iraqis celebrated with gunfire after American bombs killed the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. It was a long-sought victory for U.S. forces, but officials cautioned of violence ahead - and a string of blasts proved that prediction almost immediately. Within minutes of the announcement of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki named three key security ministers - military and political breakthroughs in rapid succession that marked the biggest potential turnaround in Iraq in months.

Something else also happened within minutes, but it was something very predictable- oil prices dropped by more than a dollar a barrrel:

Continue reading "A Price on His Head: The Economic Impact of Zarqawi's Demise" »

Posted by Starling Hunter at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Tim O'Leary, CEO of Respond2 Communications, has a new blog, Warriors and Weasels, and a new book, Warriors, Workers, Whiners, and Weasels. While I have yet to read the book, I did take a look around the blog and related websites and have a few observations about what I saw. First from the "About" page:

Tim O’Leary has a long and distinguished history of creating and managing successful companies. Along the way, he’s seen his share of Warriors, Workers, Whiners and Weasels. Since founding his first enterprise at age 22, he has launched over 20 companies in industries ranging form computer software to real estate, television production and entertainment.

Right there I say to myself, "My kind of people he is." The last 16 years of my life have been spent in around top business schools. In addition, my father is a retired business school professor of marketing. Not surprisingly, I have a fondness for business types. More importantly, however, I have developed an especial respect for two or three types of business people - ones with an entrepreneurial spirit and ones that can distill their experience in a manner that makes it accessible to others.

Continue reading "Caveat Empty" »

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Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, the daughter of actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, has a price on her head. A $4 Million price according to some reports. Her parents took out the contract:

The first photos of baby Brangelina have been sold by the couple to People magazine for a reported $4m, according to the New York Post. Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt was born in Namibia on May 27, and the photos were taken in the southern African nation by picture agency Getty Images. A bidding war then ensued between rival celeb mags with US mag People eventually coming out on top.

The parents motives are noble, however:

All money from the sale – which smashes all previous records for celebrity baby snaps – will go to charity. Although the couple have yet to specify which causes will benefit, it is believed they will be children’s charities. In a statement Brad and Angelina said: "While we celebrate the joy of the birth of our daughter we recognise that two million babies born every year in the developing world die the first day of their lives."

While it is noble that Brangelina wants to help children in the developing world, The Arizona Republic worries about damage that could come to those living in the developed one:

Continue reading "A Price on Her Head" »

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After nearly 13 years of effort, construction of China's massive Three Gorges Dam has been completed- and ahead of schedule.

The behemoth is 185 meters high (607 feet), 2,309 meters long (7,575 feet), and once it starts to operate on the Yangtze River it will be the largest hydroelectric plant in the world. The dam was scheduled for completion in spring of 2007; work finished months ahead of schedule. Now it should go into operation in 2008, one year early. The dam's 26 turbines will have the capacity to generate 85 billion watts of electricity per hour.

While China certainly could benefit from the electric power the dam will generate, there are other benefits as well. According to the People's Daily Online the Three Gorges Project has improved shipping on the Mighty Yangtze:

Continue reading "Environment Be Dammed" »

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A short article from the Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA) describes the pitiful end of an unhappy life, the last three months of which were spent entirely inside of a Taipei cybercafe:

A Taiwanese jobless man died after spending three months in an Internet cafe, a newspaper reported Saturday. Hsu Tai-yang, 37, entered the RS Cyber Cafe at Tamsui outside Taipei on March 8 and never left, the China TImes said. He died in his seat on Monday after complaining he could not breathe, the report said. Doctors said he died from heart failure, probably as a result of fatigue, lack of sleep and inhaling the smoke-filled air. The cafe owner said that in the past three months, Hsu had played video games, ate instant noodles, smoked and chewed betel nuts, the newspaper said. Hsu did not get along with his wife, so he did not want to go home, the report said.

Tags: taipei | taiwan | cybercafe |

Continue reading "A Socially Irresponsible CyberCafe" »

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The title of Seth Sherwood's recent New York Times pieces poses an oft-aksed question in the Gulf States: Is Qatar the Next Dubai ? For the author, the answer would seem to be yes.

Continue reading "Doha vs. Dubai" »

Posted by Starling Hunter at 8:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (2)

• Why do people get worked up over Wal-Mart? | Jay Evensen | Deseret News
• Wal-Mart Goes Organic | Truthdig.com
• Wal-Mart Says Change Is Helping | Matthew Borghese | All Headline News
• Mass Natural: Walmart's Organic Strategy | Michael Pollan | New York Times
• Live blogging the 2006 annual Wal-Mart shareholders meeting | Brian White | BloggingStocks.com
• Raging Grannies protest outside Mtn. View Wal-Mart | Jessie Mangaliman | MercuryNews.com
• Wal-Mart to Decrease Inventory | Jenny Bryers | The Benton County Daily Record
• Wal-Mart Weighing E-85 | Convenience Store Decisions
• Wal-Mart to test controversial tags | Marina Strauss | Globeandmail.com
• Wal-Mart touts changes at annual meeting | Chuck Bartels | AP , BusinessWeek Online
• Wal-Mart takes cancer causing clothes of the shelves | Progressive U
• Critics Weigh in Before Wal-Mart Meeting | MSN Money
• Get Wal-Mart | Debra Saunders | SF Chronicle

Continue reading "Wal-Mart Links, The Logo Edition" »

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Comments on Does the Media Matter? A Field Experiment Measuring the Effect of Newspapers on Voting Behavior and Political Opinions

Authors: A. Gerber, D. Karlan, D. Bergan, Yale University Department of Economics

Abstract: "This paper reports the results of a natural field experiment to measure the effect of exposure to newspapers on political behavior and opinion. The Washington DC area is served by two major newspapers, the Washington Times and the Washington Post. We randomly assigned individuals either to receive a free subscription to the Washington Post, to receive a free subscription to the Washington Times, or to a control group. We then conducted a public opinion survey after the 2005 Virginia gubernatorial election. We find that those assigned to the Post treatment group were eight percentage points more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate for governor than those assigned to the control group. We find similar but weaker evidence of shifts in public opinion on specific issues and attitudes."

Continue reading "Review: Does the Media Matter?" »

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In his "Page 53" post, Belmont Club proprietor Wretchard examines why stories of some atrocities are buried while others become front page news. My comments was as follows:

Wretchard, Dymphna, et al: Three members of Yale University's Department of Economics have recently published a working paper that addresses an important gap in our understanding of whether, how, and to what degree media influences public opinion, political attitudes, and voting behavior. One of the most important features of this paper, entitled "Does the Media Matter? A Field Experiment Measuring the Effect of Newspapers on Voting Behavior and Political Opinions" is the question that it does not address, i.e. whether or not media bias exists. The reason why they don't is that this questions is already settled:

There is substantial evidence that media sources have identifiable political slants, but there has been relatively little study of the effects of media bias on the views and behavior of media consumers, or of the effect of mere exposure to news (irrespective of the slant, for example).

A key insight from the paper appears to be that awareness of bias may offset its influence while the assumption of neutrality can allow bias to work with greater effect. My review of the paper can be found in a post entitled "Does Media Matter?"

Posted by Starling Hunter at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Review: Terrorism as Economic Warfare
Global Economic Journal, Volume 6, Issue 2, 2006
James M. and Brenda J Lutz

Two American academics, James and Brenda Lutz of Purdue University, have recently published a very thoughtful and insightful analysis of the choice of economic targets of terrorist attacks. Their central argument is that targets are often chosen as much for their economic impact as well as their symbolic significance and ability to sow fear and popular discontent. That said, there notable differences among terrorists groups in the strategies they employ for selecting economic targets. The bulk of paper is devoted first to a discussion of the “general economic effects” of terrorism and then relates it to attacks on several classes of targets- foreign investment, aid programs, tourism, and trade- as well as attacks by and targets of environment activists. Among the general economic effects, opportunity costs are clearly among the most significant:

Continue reading "Review: Terrorism as Economic Warfare" »

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