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December 28, 2006
December 27, 2006
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December 25, 2006
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December 24, 2006
World of Work: Fur the Love of God People (for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)
Demonstrators from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) protest against the use of animal furs in Burberry products, outside the Burberry store on Newbury Street in Boston, Massachusetts December 21, 2006.
links for 2006-12-24
December 23, 2006
World of Work: Man of Steel
A labourer marks steel bars at a steel and iron factory in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei province December 21, 2006. China plans to issue new policies that would limit the number of companies allowed to import iron ore, said Chen Xianwen, deputy director general of the China Iron and Steel Association's department of market research.
links for 2006-12-23
December 22, 2006
World of Work: Dirty Work
A worker with dried mud on his feet rests before resuming work at a ship repair dock in Mumbai
December 21, 2006
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December 19, 2006
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December 18, 2006
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December 13, 2006
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December 11, 2006
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December 10, 2006
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December 9, 2006
A Ray of Sunshine
Given all the talk of about the lack of adequate drainage for rainstorms, persistent traffic jams, the rising cost of living, lack of rights for foreign workers, and real-estate bubbles, one might get the impression that Dubai is house built on sand. But you'd only be half right. There is something here built on sand and it is doing plenty of things as they should be done:
Dubai Silicon Oasis (DSO) officials announced today that Europe’s Optical Disc Group and Solar Technologies Group will invest Dh112 million ($31 million) in the technology free zone. The activities include research & development, optical media training and support centre as well as manufacturing of the next generation optical media products, solar cells, solar panels and tempered glass used in photovoltaic and the building industry. This will be the first facility of its kind in the Middle East and will generate skilled jobs for over 200 people, said a statement. The facility is expected to open end-2007.
The plans for solar energy products are particularly ambitious:
Solar Technologies Group will set up a processing centre for production of photovoltaic components, solar cells and panels. Solar energy can be converted directly or indirectly into other forms of energy, such as heat and electricity through the photovoltaic process. “Solar energy is the future of creating clean and environmentally-friendly energy. Many countries around the world have adopted this technology for numerous commercial, industrial, government, and domestic applications. Our agreement with Solar Technologies Group will oversee the development of this important industry in the Middle East,” added Razak.
How interesting that companies in a region brimming with sun and sand and oil set themselves to figuring out how to use the first two to one day substitute for the third.
North of the Border Price War
In an article entitled "Wal-Mart puts heat on rivals by slashing prices", Marina Strauss of Toronto's Globe and Mail links steep and unexpected price cuts by Wal-Mart Canada to the broader battle for supremacy among North of the Border mass merchandisers:
Wal-Mart Canada Corp. has fired an unexpected early salvo in the holiday retail wars by slashing prices -- and inevitably hurting rivals -- while sending a signal that retail sales may be slower than expected in this crucial shopping season. Yesterday it cut prices on a wide range of popular gift items by as much as 50 per cent -- and in a few cases even more. The retailer said Canadians are delaying their holiday shopping, prompting it to act swiftly to stimulate business. ... Competition in the domestic sector has heated up with Wal-Mart aggressively expanding its store base. This fall it opened its first three Supercentres with a full range of products, including fresh foods. "They're going to keep playing hard ball," said one source familiar with Wal-Mart. "We've got into a battle of the superbrands and only the mighty will survive. I think you're just going to see a heightened competitive battlefield. It's not for the squeamish."
Interestingly, rivals are responding in kind rather than attempting to differentiate their way around each other:
Some competing retailers vowed to fight back. Grocer Loblaw Cos. Ltd., which has been quickly expanding into non-foods, was already planning to cut the price of toys by 30 to 50 per cent at its superstores, starting tomorrow, spokesman Geoffrey Wilson said. He said pricing of its Joe Fresh Style apparel line "is extremely well positioned in the marketplace and doing very well. Above all, no matter which of our formats, we are committed to be competitive in the markets in which we compete." Vincent Power, spokesman for Sears Canada Inc., said it regularly looks at what Wal-Mart and other competitors are doing "and we make any adjustments we have to." Best Buy Canada Ltd. has lowered its prices two or three times already on popular items -- particularly flat-screen televisions -- since the summer, said Charles Tobin, vice-president of merchandising. "In consumer electronics retailing, it's always important to make sure we're competitive."
And who is the likely beneficiary of all of the corporate bloodshed? Why the consumer, of course:
December 8, 2006
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December 7, 2006
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December 6, 2006
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December 5, 2006
One Big Sand Trap
According to the BBC, Tiger Woods has found a place to start earning his stripes in the golf course development business: he has chosen Dubai, a city affectionately called "One Big Construction Site" by expat blogger Samurai Sam:
World number one Tiger Woods announced on Sunday that the site for his first golf course design will be in Dubai. The Tiger Woods Dubai development will feature a par-72 course, a golf academy, 300 luxury villas, 20 mansions and an 80-room VIP hotel. "I am excited about the challenge of transforming a desert terrain into a world-class golf course," said Woods. "I have a vision of creating something that is uniquely mine and I want to realise this vision in Dubai."
I'm no duffer, but I'm guessing designing the sand traps should be the least of Tiger's worries. If there is one thing we can be sure of, it's that Tiger won't name the course "One Big Sand Trap."
Links: Carnival of Sports #2
One Sandwich Short of a Picnic
David Adams of the Guardian (UK) writes about Mcdonald's efforts to secure a patent on sandwiches:
(McDonald's) has filed patents in Europe and the US that claim the "method and apparatus for making a sandwich" as its intellectual property. Patent application WO2006068865 relates to the "pre-assembly of sandwich components and simultaneous preparation of different parts of the same sandwich". It covers the "simultaneous toasting of a bread component" and heating a "meat and/or cheese filling". And it says the company has invented a way to add garnishes and condiments using a "sandwich assembly tool". Lawrence Smith-Higgins of the UK Patent Office said: "McDonald's or anyone else can't get retrospective exclusive rights to making a sandwich. They might have a novel device but it could be quite easy for someone to make a sandwich in a similar way without infringing their claims." McDonald's would not comment.
Rifle Right Doesn't Answer the Bell
In his salad days billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian boxed as an amateur under the name "Rifle Right Kerkorian." When it comes to fighting with GM, it appears that Mr. Right has decided to stay in his corner. Apparently his rope-a-dope strategy to gain control of GM wasn't working and he had little desire for a slugfest with the struggling but still strong auto giant.
Billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian sold his stake in General Motors Corp. after deciding that he did not want to participate in a lengthy fight with management for control of the world's biggest car maker, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. "I like to gamble," the newspaper said Kerkorian told his adviser, Terry Christensen. "But I stop gambling when there's no chance to win." Kerkorian had built up a 9.9 percent stake in GM and agitated for an accelerated turnaround at the company. Some analysts had expected him to mount a proxy fight for control of GM rather than cash out of his stake. Kerkorian had been involved with GM for 19 months. "I'm happy with it," the Journal said he told advisers about his investment. "Let's move on."
Okay, so this was the kind of fight where you get paid handsomely if you win or lose the bout. I can understand Rifle Right's decision - why leave the ring all busted up when you can live to fight another day, when you can have a pay-per-view rematch? Still, I have a feeling that the Rocky of investors wouldn't have gone out like this. Adrienne!
Disclosure: I own shares in GM.
Taking the Steps
Tired of having the problem of childhood obesity laid at its doorstep, McDonald's is taking (the) steps to reshape its image: it is going to start offering step classes in its restaurant's playplaces.
Mcdonald's is getting serious about childhood obesity--to the point where it is considering replacing play areas in thousands of its restaurants with kids' gyms where young customers can burn off their Happy Meals. The new R-Gyms--where R stands for Ronald--would replace the slide-centric PlayPlaces with a setup offering sports-oriented activities such as stationary exercise bikes, rope climbing and other aerobic activities for kids up to 12 years of age.
While counter staff and fry cooks are not expected do double as aerobics instructors, they getting training in how to promote the R-gym concept: They are now to ask children under 12, "Do you want exercise with that shake? "
December 4, 2006
Stiff Sentences
China is apparently anxious to show that it is willing to take other people's intellectual property seriously, rather than just outright taking it. As such, its legal system has started giving counterfeiters a hard time and hard time. Most notable among them was the "Chinese Sex Pill King" who recently received a stiff sentence for a massive counterfeit Viagra operation:
A Chinese man was jailed for eight years for making 60 tonnes of fake sex pills, state media reported on Friday as the country cracks down on pirates who copy nearly every product. Xi Yongli and his accomplices sold 21.8 million yuan ($2.78 million) of America Number One, Male Exclusive, Great Big Brother -- the popular Chinese name for Viagra -- and other pills and ingredients promising men vibrant sexual lives, a court in central China's Anhui province found, Xinhua news agency said on Friday. Xi and his gang received sentences spanning from a little over a year to eight years for making and selling medicine without a licence, selling counterfeits, and illegally processing Sildenafil Citrate -- the key ingredient in Viagra, Pfizer Inc.'stop selling male potency pill. They were based in Fuyang, a city in Anhui notorious for selling fakes, including baby milk powder without any nutrition that killed at least 13 babies in 2004.
This last line made me wonder, was Xi tried and convicted because of illegal processing of the real thing, for producing something that deliver the results it promised, or for producing something that actually harmed someone, like the baby milk powder? I ask because when I compare his sentence to the one that a movie disc pirate got, it makes me wonder what the Chinese government is trying to prove, and to whom:
Pfizer won a Chinese patent for its key ingredient from a Beijing court in June, overturning an earlier rejection of its patent application. Other countries have also refused to acknowledge Pfizer's claim.The United States and European Union both complain that rampant illegal production in China lies behind counterfeit fashion, movies, films, equipment and medicine surging into global markers. Washington has brandished threats of taking China's counterfeiting to the World Trade Organisation, the Geneva-based global trade umpire. China says it is cracking down. Earlier this month, EU trade chief Peter Mandelson urged China to stamp out piracy of intellectual property, saying its fakes now include birth-control pills. On Thursday, China sentenced a man to life imprisonment for pirating over 30 million movie discs.
Questions abound. How does one explain 8 years for the sex pill king for his 60 tons of fake Viagra, which might poison or harm someone, and life for the pirate for his 30 million DVDs? Did one of these guys neglect to bribe the proper local official? Why is Pfizer getting such a hard time from the Chinese legal system? How did Hollywood become to be taken more seriously in China than sex? I was last in China in 2001 and now wonder, what's the guy who offered to sell me fake North Face gear going to face- a firing squad?
Equality and Justice and Natural Gas for All
The Miami Herald reports that Bolivian President Evo Morales has formally nationalized his nation's natural gas reserves:
President Evo Morales signed into law Sunday contracts giving the government control over foreign energy companies' operations, completing a process begun May 1 with the nationalization of Bolivia's petroleum industry. The deals, signed by the companies last month, also grant Morales' government a majority share of the foreign companies' revenues generated in Bolivia.
Like his comrade to the north, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Evo has plans for Bolivia's vast natural gas reserves; he plans to use to use if to fund a social re-engineering, wealth redistribution, and political realignment:
'We thank the Bolivian people who have struggled to recover their natural resources,'' Morales said in a signing ceremony at the presidential palace in the capital of La Paz. ``We have now completed the first step. This process will continue next year with the recovery of other natural resources benefiting the Bolivian people.'' Morales has said he also plans to nationalize Bolivia's mining sector. Bolivia's first Indian president, Morales has vowed to reverse centuries of dominance by the country's European-descended minority, granting greater political and economic power to the poor indigenous majority. Morales recently returned from a trip to Nigeria, which like Bolivia remains bitterly poor despite its vast petroleum reserves. On Sunday, he said he hoped that nationalization initiatives similar to his own might lift oil-rich African nations from poverty. ''If we want to free ourselves as a people, if we want to resolve our social and economic problems, we must both liberate human beings and liberate their economies -- their natural resources, especially,'' Morales said. ``Only then will there be justice and equality.''
What the Evo should have said was that the reason why Nigeria, and for that matter Mexico, are still poor despite their vast petroleum reserves is because their governments are as close to irredeemably corrupt as they can be and still function. Nationalization will accomplish nothing in and of itself if it is not linked to more transparent governance. The only sure result is that power will be concentrated in fewer hands and history has shown that this is a pretty poor prescription for economic growth, let alone such fanciful notions of economic equality.
Black and White and Read All Over
At New York Times, it appears that color-blindness is a virtue rather than an affliction. In an article entitled "Red Web Sites Versus Blue Web Sites" technology writer Alex Mindlin provides some interesting statistics about Blue and Red readers on some highly visited websites:
Rush Limbaugh Web site has a higher concentration of Republican visitors than any other site on the Web, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, the Internet traffic measurement firm. The Web site of Black Entertainment Television (BET) occupies a corresponding position among Democrats. The numbers represent the percentages of each party registration among people who said they had browsed the sites within the preceding 30 days, as reported to NetRatings this summer. (The data was weighted to reflect the age and gender of all American Internet users.)
In a sidebar graphic we are further told that 78.5% of RushLimbaugh.com visitors are Republicans while 73.9% of BET visitors are Democrats. Then comes this further comparative information:
Scrubs and Scabs
The AP is reporting that nurses in Sin City are preparing to go on strike.
A union representing 800 nurses edged closer to a strike Sunday when one of the nation's largest hospital companies rejected a call for a new round of contract negotiations. Union officials were meeting Sunday night to determine their next course of action, said Chris Coil, spokesman for the Service Employees International Union. Nurses at Valley and Desert Springs hospitals had been scheduled to go on strike Monday morning.
Not surprisingly, a major bone of contention is staffing levels. For years hospital corporations have been cutting costs by increasing the patient-to-nurse ratio. And by many accounts, patient care has suffered. The union and hospital are also apparently "split over compensation and union-access rights." Anxious to avoid the disruptive effects of a strike on the state's citizens, government officials have tried to mediate the conflict, thus far to no avail:
Arteries Unplugged II: Great Expectations
The last paragraph of an AP story about Pfizer's withdrawal of torcetrapib awakened my inner statistician:
According to Pfizer spokesman Paul Fitzhenry, 82 patients taking the combination of torcetrapib died, compared to 51 deaths in the arm of the study where patients were taking Lipitor alone. Each arm of the study had 7,500 patients. Pfizer said that the study didn't raise any questions about Lipitor's safety.
As a social scientist who is somewhat competent with statistics, but who has no knowledge of clinical trials for pharmaceuticals, I found the above statistics distressing. That's because I honestly don't understand exactly why they present such a problem. Let me elaborate.
As a layperson, my assumption is that people participating in studies like the one above are already unhealthy to begin with, perhaps severely so. I can think of no reason why a person with healthy total cholesterol levels or good HDL-to-LDL ratios would ever be allowed to or asked to participate in such trials, but again, there is a lot I don't know.
So if these people already have serious health issues, then my prior expectation is that some of them will die during the course of drug trials. But exactly how many I don't know. And therein lies the problem. Of course some mortality rate would be expected in any population of 15,000 people over a significant period of time, even among healthy people. For people with serious health issues, it would have to be the case that the baseline mortality rate would be well above 1 per 1000 (0.10%), but how much higher I don't know. I am sure the data is out there somewhere, perhaps within the FDA, but I wouldn't know where or how to find it.
Continue reading "Arteries Unplugged II: Great Expectations" »
December 3, 2006
For Us, Buy Us
David Greising of the Chicago Tribune has an excellent article on the sometimes bitter battle for supremacy between Google and local favorite Baidu in the Chinese internet market. With a reported 62% of market share, Baidu is currently beating the pants off of the men from Mountain View. And though Baidu's better performance can be attributed to many factors, two which are mentioned in the article are especially noteworthy primarily because Google seems unable or unwilling to imitate them. The first, the one Google can not imitate, is Baidu's strategy of using nationalism as a basis of differentiation:
Baidu has built a dominant position. It has astutely designed features that appeal to Chinese users, beat its competitors to market and cast its most lethal opponent, Google, as a foreigner with suspicious ambitions. Baidu's none-too-subtle use of nationalism was on display in a recent online advertising campaign. It didn't slam Google by name, but it featured a group of villagers accosting a foreign couple. "You don't understand us, you don't understand us," one village elder scolded the outsiders. In a country with an ingrained distrust of outsiders, the message resonated. Li, who was educated in the U.S. and helped design the pioneering search engine InfoSeek, has no qualms about playing the nationalism card. "We think search is not just about technology," Li said. "It's also about language. It's also about culture."
The second pertains to another element of Baidu's business model- its pricing structure, particularly its practice of allowing advertisers to buy their way to the top of search engine rankings:
Arteries Unplugged
Pfizer's is pulling the plug on a drug that it had hoped would unplug people's arteries:
Pfizer Inc. said Saturday it has cut off all clinical trials and development for a cholesterol drug that was supposed to be the star of its pipeline because of an unexpected number of deaths and cardiovascular problems in patients who used it. The world's largest drugmaker said it was told Saturday that an independent board monitoring a study for torcetrapib, a drug that raises levels of HDL, or what's commonly known as good cholesterol, recommended that the work end because of "an imbalance of mortality and cardiovascular events."
That last line is an important one. It means that people who took the drug died and/or had heart problems because of it. The pain and suffering for Pfizer can be measured in dollars and cents, cost-cutting and lost jobs:
Casino Embroiled
I have yet to see the new James Bond film Casino Royale but if it is anything like the others, there is a lot of exploding metal, gunfire, car chases, shady characters, and enough dead bodies to fill a medium-sized morgue. This got me to thinking about the relationship between casinos and crime. After a little searching, I found some interesting empirical studies on the website of the American Gaming Association:
Suicide and Gambling: An Analysis of Suicide Rates in U.S. Counties and Metropolitan Areas | Richard McCleary, Ph.D., Kenneth Chew, Ph.D., et. al. | Sept. 1998Economic Impacts of Casino Gaming in the United States (Vol. 1): Macro Study | Dec. 1996
Casinos and Crime: An Analysis of the Evidence | Jeremy Margolis | Dec. 1997
Commentary
While I have read none of these studies, one thing does stand out: they are very dated. Every one of them is either a decade old or relies on data that is. Which makes me wonder two things. First, what are the odds that there is something about recent research or trends that don't show the casinos in a favorable light? Secondly, what does it say about the public perception of your industry if you even have to commission studies like this in the first place?
The Third Way
The "third way" had been endlessly debated. Proponents claim there can be political and economic system which combines the best of capitalism and socialism and afford us all both security and growth. Critics say it's not possible, that it's another utopian pipe dream, that modern economic and political life requires tough choices without easy answers. While the debate rages on within and between the relatively more prosperous West, East (in the form of resource-hungry Communist China) and South (in the person of resource-rich, post-colonial Africa) are going their own way. Point in case is China's budding relationship with Africa and its struggling economies:
At a recent trade summit in Beijing, officials from 48 African nations met with Chinese leaders, who promised to double aid to Africa while offering $5 billion in new loans. Already Chinese firms have built dams, roads, railways, port upgrades, mining facilities and telecommunication systems in Africa.Signs of China's growing prominence on the continent are easy to spot in Kano, a bustling, thousand-year-old city of 3.5 million people that long was a regular stopover for trade flowing through the Sahara, whose sandy southern edge is nearby. Now the city's gaze has shifted to the Far East, with Chinese restaurants spreading across the city, Chinese goods filling shops and a Chinese-owned shoe factory employing more than 2,000 workers, more than any other private employer in northern Nigeria.
But some of that prominence comes at a cost to local businesses:
Paper Airplanes
The Washington Post reports on pre-sales of paper airplanes by Boeing, i.e. planes whose plans exist only on paper and in the heads of their designers:
Boeing's 787 Dreamliner exists largely in the minds and computers of its engineers. But that hasn't tempered the excitement of airline executives eager to get their hands on the plane. Built with high-tech materials, the aircraft promises superb fuel efficiency, a quieter ride and more room for passengers. Boeing executives also are riding high on the Dreamliner. Not long ago, the company was plagued by business missteps and high-profile scandals and had surrendered its dominance to European rival Airbus. Today, thanks to the Dreamliner, Boeing is flexing new muscle on the global stage. In just over two years, the company has sold 432 Dreamliners, helping improve its chances to sell more planes than Airbus for the first time since 2000.
Getting from design paper to production is no mean feat. As I heard many times while working there as an engineer between 1985-90, building a new plane is a high stakes gamble, a bet on the company's future.
"Every time we do a new airplane we essentially bet the company to some extent," said Scott E. Carson, head of Boeing's commercial airplane division. "When you are placing that kind of bet, you want to get it right. You have to get right."
Behind the Music Sales
Reading just the headline of reports that "Warner Music Posts 4Q Profit" one could get the impression that the industry's fortunes have changed. The truth is anything but.
Warner Music Group Corp., home to recording artists such as Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gnarls Barkley and Green day, said Friday it swung to a profit in the fourth-quarter, bolstered by a hefty settlement benefit. But its results fell short of Wall Street's expectations, and its shares fell more than 2 percent. The New York-based recording company said net income totaled $12 million, or 8 cents per share, for the three months ended Sept. 30 compared with a loss of $30 million, or 21 cents per share, a year ago. Excluding restructuring costs and a copyright infringement settlement of $13 million with the operators of the Kazaa online file-sharing service, the loss totaled a penny per share.
In other words, Warner wouldn't have a profit for the last quarter were it not for money they got from a lawsuit of a file-sharing outfit. Moreover, overall revenues are down overall and for physical recorded music, i.e. CDs and albums.
Capital Wants to Be Free
There's a funny thing about capitalism: it rewards success handsomely but punishes too much of it. Like with beauty, just how much is too much lies in the eye of the beholder. The problem is that while capital wants to be held, it does not want to be held back or held down. At least that's what's said by those who have it in abundance and speak on its behalf. Point in case is a recent Chicago Tribune/Bloomberg article entitled "Buyout firms fight back with own lobby"
Buyout firms are preparing to start their own lobby group to fend off increased regulation, Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein said. The trade association will begin work early next year and represent some of the largest leveraged buyout firms in the U.S. and Europe... Rubenstein said Friday in an interview at the Private Equity Int