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December 29, 2005

A magazine for you, sir?

That "Publisher's Cleary-Dealy Thingie" is back, this time with a $10M prize. The fine print? The $10M is paid over 30 years at $333,333/yr. What's that worth today? $3,142,305 at a 10% rate. And if you figure this after tax, the prize is worth $2,042,498. This is still a lot to be sneezed at, but the $10M prize is really only worth $2M. A few years ago, dozens of states' Attorneys General cracked down on PCH, but it still seems like a crooked way to sell magazines.

Posted by adrianjo at 06:49 PM

December 26, 2005

Spammers are taking time off, too

It's not just college students like me who are taking a few days off for Christmas. Also taking a break:

I have not received a single spam in 24 hours. This is almost like the good-ole days of the internet like 1995 when spam was confined to unmoderated usenet groups.

Posted by adrianjo at 03:45 PM

December 24, 2005

Why I don't go see motion pictures, part LXXVI

Joe Morgenstern of the Wall St. Journal on why I don't go to movies:

Many movie theaters are no place to a see a movie. (Although it should also be said that some of the newest movie palaces are welcoming environments with luxurious seats, perfect sight lines and flawless projection, even if they do charge an arm and a leg, plus an extra pound of flesh for advance ticket purchase online.)

When I went back to see a few reels of "King Kong" at the Sony Lincoln Center complex in Manhattan recently ... it was a multimedia surround light, as usual. The movie was up there where the movie should be, but smaller screens kept flickering in the audience as people checked their messages, reviewed their portfolios or issued not-so-whispered instructions to babysitters at home. The only bright figuratively speaking, was a young woman sitting next to me who answered a call on the very first ring and then told her caller, "Listen, I'm at a movie. Text-message me." These days that's almost polite.

...

In decades and centuries past, people plunged into novels or plays, and then movies, to escape from reality. Now, restless and frequently anxious, they're reluctant to leave the quasi-reality of the virtual world that's accessed so easily via portable gizmos. It may be significant that my text-messaging seatmate told her caller that she was at a movie, not in one. For better or worse -- and we really don't know how modern minds are being shaped by habitual infosnacking -- movies are becoming less of an immersive experience, as more and more moviegoers seek distractions from their distraction.

Posted by adrianjo at 01:13 PM

December 23, 2005

I'm watching a Simpsons marathon

A Christmas thought from everyone's favorite boss, Charles Montgomery Burns:

Compadres, it is imperative that we crush the freedom fighters before the start of the rainy season. And remember, a shiny new donkey for whoever brings me the head of Colonel Montoya.

chop chop!

Posted by adrianjo at 04:50 PM

December 21, 2005

Update on Valpo people

Being back home again in Indiana, here are three friends from high school who are off doing crazy stuff:

(Sorry, Asoka, I kinda made you sound like a loser there.)

Posted by adrianjo at 08:08 PM

December 20, 2005

A cat & mouse game

VALPARAISO, IND - The family's housecat died back in September, which has led to a large increase in the local population of chipmunks, shrewmouses, frogs, and assorted other critters. This might be a problem given how some of these small critters have taken up residence in the basement (except the frogs, of course).

The neighbor's housecat has decided to come sneak in through the pet door in order to go hunting in the basement. He does this regularly. Tonight, I ventured to the cellar. I found that the mouse that so fascinates Don Gato is running around above the drop-cieling. No wonder the pussycats are so fascinated but have yet to bring a dead mouse upstairs.

Posted by adrianjo at 09:04 PM

I do homework at the last minute, why not gift-buying, too?

A few weeks ago, my girlfriend announced that she was done shopping for Christmas. It's Dec 20, and I have yet to start. I'm not alone:

With their holiday shopping days numbered, many men are still checking off items on their gift lists, according to the latest National Retail Federation survey. The latest installment of the NRF 2005 Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, found that entering last weekend, 17.9% of men had not yet begun their holiday shopping, compared to 12.5% of women. Overall, 30.83 million consumers had not yet started their shopping.

Posted by adrianjo at 01:43 PM

December 18, 2005

Martin "Little Magician" van Buren finally gets his due

Among the presidents soon to appear on US coins: James K. Polk, John "Silent Cal" Coolidge Jr, and Grover "Uncle Jumbo" Cleveland. (more) This will be a great opportunity for history nerds to bring out their jokes about our more obscure presidents. My personal favorite goes like this:

A white house dinner guest of President Coolidge bet her friends that she could convince "Silent Cal" to say at least three words. Upon learning of the wager, Coolidge retorted: "You lose."

Then there's this great line from Abraham J. "Grandpa" Simpson:

Why when I was a pup, we got spanked 'till the cows came home. Grover Cleveland spanked me on two non-consecutive occasions.

Posted by adrianjo at 06:52 PM

I'd rather be flying

As long as we're talking about airlines (see below), it's worth mentioning that Zagat has released its latest survey of US domestic and International carriers. Obviously it's no surprise: US carriers sucked across the board, while some foreign carriers (CX, SQ, JL, etc) scored quite highly. The best review--the one that covered most airlines--is the fake sample review provided in the report's key:

A "fly-by-night operation literally as well as figuratively," this "cheapie" charter might suffice "if Greyhound is all booked up," but given planes "older than Moses," seats "salvaged from sunken subway cars" (complete with "subway straps" to accomodate "standing room only crowds" caused by "chronic overooking") and "stale pretzels" flung by "Jurassic"-era flight attendants, critics conclue "I'd rather take a mule"; P.S. "time ot upgrade that web site."

Posted by adrianjo at 06:21 PM

December 17, 2005

Another typical day at O'Hare

It's another typical day at the UAL check-in counters at O'Hare, though perhaps slightly unusual thanks to "family travelers."

Crowd control was called to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on Saturday. Hundreds of travelers waited for hours to check their luggage. Some of the lines reached outside the terminal leaving some people out in the cold. ...

Whatever the reason, for some people, that backup meant to more than three hours in line and many missed flights.

Apparently family travlers checking 7 or 8 bags were gumming up the works, which reminded me of when I watched someone check 18 bags onto an Ethiopian Airlines flight and took well over 30 minutes to do so. Airlines typically treat family travelers the worst--they are the most price sensitive, check more bags, move slower through security, and serve little purpose other than to fill the back of the plane. So a 3 hour wait for a bunch of leisure travelers doesn't really matter.

It's a wonder that airplanes ever were made with first, business, and coach classes all on the same aircraft. How can an airline provide $1000 in value to the F-class passenger but only $100 in value to the steerage passenger 40 rows back on the same jet? Indeed, the fiasco today at O'Hare, and the mini-fiasco that plays out every day at every airport, is increasingly driving greater segmentation in the air travel industry. Private jets are increasingly popular for on-demand charters and "cheap" last-minute repositioning flights. The Bombardier family now quotes last-minute repositioning flight discounts in its Sky Jet service, while Marquis provides on-demand jet service with a promise of just 12 minutes in and out of the airport. Even Lufthansa is into the act, though one has to wonder why a winged-bus operator could be trusted with a private jet fleet. In business class, smaller jets with longer range mean that business-class-only flights are becoming viable, while the ever-changing selection of el-cheapo discounters provide services to the tourist masses. It never made sense to have first, business, and steerage in one plane, and the day may arrive that the business traveler isn't seated next to the screaming baby with the family of 7 visiting grandma.

Posted by adrianjo at 11:04 PM

December 15, 2005

Rev Al in trouble again

Among the items buried in the news today is a note that Rev Al has been ordered to repay the Feds $100,000 of federal matching funds that he fraudently obtained.

Posted by adrianjo at 11:02 PM

December 11, 2005

P-T has published my letter to the editor

The Post-Tribune published my letter today:

Follow Bhutanese in protecting cranes

High in the Himalaya Mountains, the Kingdom of Bhutan’s Phobjikha Valley is home to a quiet village, where monks in maroon robes meditate in a 17th-century Buddhist monastery.

Orange, green and red prayer flags flutter in the frozen winter winds.

Besides monks, the valley is home mostly to impoverished potato farmers. There are no electricity or telephone lines.

Bits of power are generated by solar panels and a mini-hydro project, which were donated by foreign-aid organizations.

Why haven’t power lines been strung up and down the mountains? The 500 families of Phobjikha have foregone power because lines would mar the landscape and threaten the black-necked cranes that roost here.

About 250 of the world’s 6,000 black-necked cranes bring good fortune upon their arrival from Tibet every year, around Oct. 13. Residents of other Bhutanese valleys, with the king’s support, have voluntarily limited development that might disturb the cranes.

Back in Indiana, a recent Post-Tribune photo showed a bulldozer building a giant industrial pig farm near several roosting cranes near Wheatfield.

People in the Phobjikha Valley are among the world’s poorest, yet they forgo electricity and phones because they would rather protect cranes.

We are among the world’s richest. Can’t we do better than to allow an industrial pig farm to be built immediately beside the roosting area of a sensitive species like our cranes?

Adrian Jones, Valparaiso


Posted by adrianjo at 11:33 AM

December 10, 2005

Intellectual orgasms

Patrick Ruffini (Penn '00, eCampaign Director at the Republican National Committee) found a picture at whitehouse.gov of one of our favorite professors recieving the National Humanities Medal from the President.

Dr. Alan Charles Kors is one of the few great conservatives in academia. His classes focus on 17th and 18th century European intellectual history, including such revolutionaries as Voltaire and Hobbes. Although most of the discussion went way over my head, I came to expect that by the end of the lecture, there would be something of an intellectual orgasm: a sense that after a lot of work, we had proven a major idea that revolutionized humanity. It was oddly satisfying, as opposed to business classes where we prove that Paramount in 1994 was worth $58.50 a share, not the $59.57 offered by some bidder.

Kors's class is one of few where I keep all the books and refer back to them regularly. We studied the 18th century, when Europe's classic liberal philosophers rejected Hobbes's assertion that life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Hobbe's pessimism was replaced by an optimism that culminated in Jefferson's declaration that man has a right to the "pursuit of happiness." Jefferson's declaration was quite radical for its time, as Europe was emerging from a Dark Ages when the Christian church asserted that pleasure was sinful. There are still many churches that believe something similar, a philosophy that roughly says happiness is only possible through a personal relationship with Jesus or God.

Nonetheless, the Enlightment was fun because it was a time of exploration:

A man is not planted in one place, as a tree, to stay there his entire life. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile)

Consider Voltaire's Candide, who travels the world in search of his love Cunegonde and constantly expects to find happiness at the next turn, yet instead finds only wretched people. They include a Christian monk who spends his money womanizing and a one-legged slave who declares that "dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand times less miserable than we." Candide finally finds and marries his love, though by this time, she is horribly ugly and shrewish. Candide never finds happiness until he asks his philosopher companions to "work without theorizing" and to "let us tend our garden."

The 18th century also saw the rise of the practical. Denis Diderot writes a shocking conversation between a doctor and Mdmse de L'Espinasse where the doctor recommends depressed young girls engage in auto-erotic acts, declaring chastity "the greatest of crimes" against nature. The doctor goes on to endorse homosexual and premarital sex, a rarety for the 18th century:

Take two acts, both of which can only give pleasure without usefulness, but one of which only gives pleasure to the person performing it while the other shares pleasure with a fellow creature, male or female (for in this matter the sex makes no difference, nor even who does what with what), and tell me what the verdict of common sense will prevail between the two.

As if this weren't shocking enough, Voltaire also explains why it is good to have people of many religions in one's society:

Go into the London Stock Exchange - a more respectable place than many a court - and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt. Here the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist [predecessor to the Amish], and the Anglican accepts a promise from the Quaker. On leaving these peaceful and free assemblies some go to the Synagogue and others for a drink, this one goes to be baptized in a great bath in the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, that one has his son's foreskin cut and has some Hebrew words he doesn't understand mumbled over the child, others go to their church and await the inspiration of God with their hats on, and everybody is happy.

If there were only one religion in England, there would be danger of tyranny; if there were two, they would cut each other's throats; but there are thirty, and they live happily together in peace.

The 18th century was such a rich time for intellectuals that perhaps the biggest disappointment from leaving Kors's class every day was returing to the real world 300 years later where people still debate many of the principles so persuasively put to paper by the Enlightenment philosophers.

Posted by adrianjo at 11:02 PM

December 08, 2005

Mickey for the 20-somethings

One of the latest guerilla marketing tactics among apparel retailers have been to combine private shopping with recruiting. The company shuts down a store early, invites a bunch of MBAs, brings in some recruiters, and pays for lots of free alcohol. Yesterday J. Crew did them all one better by bringing in the CEO, Millard "Mickey" Drexler.

Mickey is 60, looks like he's 40, acts 35, and has the energy of a big teenager. He's also one of the rare people who give that "I would be a great boss" vibe. (Jon Costas and the CFO of my client in Europe are others.)

I'm going to update this entry later with some information on what Mickey said. For now, it's time for Follies.

Posted by adrianjo at 06:30 PM

December 06, 2005

From Cluster Y

David Taylor writes:

...Not that anyone else is reading it, but why has C3PO’s blog been about nothing but sex...

I guess it is two posts in a row about sex. But keep in mind, it wasn't *me* having sex in front of that window.

Posted by adrianjo at 09:52 PM

December 04, 2005

I'm Sold

As a friend said, "only a New Yorker would stay in a hotel in his own city." This past weekend was Sell Weekend, when the firm gathers the people who just got job offers in New York starting next fall to try to convince them to sign the offer. I signed my offer a while ago, but I was still there. Sell Weekends have become urban legends on campus, with stories of limos, fancy dinners, trendy hotels, and unlimited $350 bottles of Grey Goose. I won't confirm if any of these are true. And in the case of the Grey Goose, I don't remember that part of last night.

I realized that I'm really coming to like Philippe Starck as an avant-garde designer. Starck designed Felix, the penthouse bar at the Peninsula Hong Kong, which features sweeping views over Hong Kong harbour. Friday, we had drinks at one of Starck's early designs (1988), the Royalton Hotel in midtown. The lobby bar is a block long and evokes thoughts of early steamship travel. The maritime theme was continued Saturday with dinner and late-night partying at the Maritime Hotel's Hiro Lounge. With so many well-designed places in town, why do people get near the Marriott?

Here's a picture from the weekend...


SellWknd2005sm.jpg

UPDATE: Another fellow at the weekend writes:

SUBJECT: Man I knew you were crazy

I just didn’t know how much.
Now that I’ve read your blog, I do.

When I saw you flirting with the cute girl across the table yesterday at breakfast I didn't realize you haven’t just met her.
Now that I’ve read your blog, I do.

Posted by adrianjo at 04:10 PM

December 01, 2005

I may be having sex in front of an open window, but please respect my privacy

If you had sex in front of your open windows in a highrise in broad daylight, and the guy in the highrise across the street took an ordinary camera and snapped a picture, is he committing sexual harassment? Penn apparently thought so. An Engineering junior snapped the blurry photo and posted it on his website, which got him dragged in on sexual harassment charges. According to the university, the pictures were posted "without that student's authorization and in a manner highly invasive of the student's privacy." Hmm... if one doesn't want her privacy invaded while having sex, perhaps she should close the blinds.

This isn't the first time Penn got creative with "harassment" charges. In 1993, a Jewish student in one of the highrises called some loud sorority sisters a group of "water buffalo". Water buffalo is the English translation of a Yiddish term meaning "loud" or "obnoxious." The sorority sisters happened to be black, and even though water buffalos don't live in Africa (they're Asian), the poor Jewish boy got strung up on racial harassment charges. It resulted in a book on free speech on campus, the first chapter of which is available online.

One day after the college paper published an account of the prosecution, the university dropped all the charges before the situation spun out of control and embarassed the school. At least they're learning... slowly.

Posted by adrianjo at 10:47 PM