The Free Market? It’s Greek to Them
I’ve been thinking about the economic problems in Greece, ever since I brought the topic up with my Greek-American friends Rick and Georgio. They laughed about their home country’s government ineptitude and free spending. A column in today’s WSJ by Bret Stephens provided me with a little more clarity. In […]
Daniel Tosh Will Soon Be a Network TV Star
February snow is falling on Mountain Rd. and it’s time to begin another day. Last night I found a guy on the Comedy Channel who I think will become a huge TV star some day. He is Daniel Tosh, and he hosts a modern-day version of the old Candid Camera, […]
The New MacBook Tempts Even a One-Year Old
All of a sudden my gadgets and I are the most fascinating thing in the world to Sofie, age 1. So I am now fighting to keep my pristine white new Macbook away from her grubby paws. Handing her the iPhone I try to molify her. But her attention goes […]
After a Quarter of a Century, I Switch to a Mac
I am still amazed I actually did it. I crossed over after twenty-five or more years of using a PC and bought a MacBook. I don’t expect to become one of those Apple fanatics who vociferously defend anything the company makes, but I gotta admit my experience with my iPhone […]
Tossing and Turning the Night Before…As Usual
At three am, I tossed in my bed, almost knocking Mamacat off her perch nestled there at my feet. I have had this date seared into my mind for months; now it’s time to drive to Boston and speak to a crowd. I toss and turn worrying about what I’m […]
How Important Is a Soup Label? Very!
How important is a soup can label? Important enough that Campbell’s soup spent two years studying the ‘neuromarketing’ of how people decide to buy soup. A story in yesterday’s WSJ by Ilan Brat dove into the details of how to tweak a label to nudge up sales. Illustrations showed the […]
Water Piped Between High Circuits Makes Holyoke Sense
Phew! I am sitting at the end of the day in the window of the cafe. A familiar spot. My cafe acquaintance Paul told me some of what he knows about the Holyoke High Performance Computing Center that’s coming soon. He said in his government office they use water that […]
Chatroulette: The Anti Facebook Future of the Web
I love to make predictions. I have been reading about a new website that is becoming very popular on college campuses. Some have even wrote that this new idea will someday eclipse the gargantuan that is Facebook. It’s so simple, it’s hard to believe that nobody has thought of it […]
Flight Attendants Don’t Have As Many Free Flights
For our Valentine’s day afternoon, a workout at the Y and a movie were in order. I was feeling a bit under the weather as a result of something I ate on Saturday in Mexico, so we lay low and enjoyed an inside day, with the exception of the Y. […]
Dinner with Journalists, Sharing World Views
I dined last night at a table full of journalists, in an exciting city, with plenty of wine and unusual food–the kind of setting that I yearn for. The reach of the conversation was fascinating; the topic was mainly this fabulous country–Mexico. I’ve learned over the years to cherish these […]
On the Balcony Watching the Moving Chairs
However short this trip is, it was fine with me to spend the day looking out at the Gulf of Mexico from my seventh floor perch here at the NH Hoteles. When I checked in, they strapped a wristband on me that’s provided me with Coronas and food for the […]
The Timeshare Salesman Jokes with New Clients
I sat at the breakfast table with a view of the azure sea, and right beside me sat a man facing a portly couple, both looking at a form he wanted them to fill out. What else was he doing but selling a timeshare, the leading business of this, the […]
Another Silicon Valley Vet Dumps Myspace
Does anyone care that Myspace, the once-high flying website purchased by News Corp more than four years ago, is just about dead? The moribund social networking site was once the hottest place on the web, now it’s just a bunch of ads and no one really cares about it. Think […]
Blog Talk Highlights Selected Posts from Readuponit
The snow I eluded as I sped east late last night finally caught up with us here in Deerfield, with flakes coming down and the cafe full of people enjoying the atmosphere and sipping coffee. I was thrilled to be told this morning about Phoebe Mitchell’s inclusion of some of […]
The Storm Couldn’t Keep Up with Me Speeding East
It’s very late, but this massive caffeine buzz isn’t close to going away. I just escaped a terrible snowstorm by driving fast, eastward, as the storm followed dumping massive snowfalls just behind me. I’m glad I made the trip, considering that I would have been stuck in New York state […]
France Tourism Hopes for Better Times in 2010
It’s a familiar scene. Kent and I drove into Manhattan last night and once again we got that sense that we had come to the right place. The occasion was a media show by France Tourism, a combination of Air France, Rail Europe and tourism officials from Normandy and Rhone […]
Tipped Off to the Google Ad, a Follower Knows All
As I fell asleep after one of the best Superbowls I’ve ever watched, I thought about the connections and the various lines that bind people together. There was a commercial during the game’s third quarter for Google, perhaps spurred on by the early success of rival search engine Bing. I […]
The Guard Economy Keeps Us All Down
Samuel Bowles is an unappreciated yet wise economist who runs the Santa Fe Institute, a radical hotbed where people with big brains meet and talk about issues. I read in the Santa Fe Reporter about one of Bowle’s theories, which intrigued me. He states that in the US, one in […]