Good news came out of Brazil from the AP yesterday. “The destruction of the Amazon rain forest has slowed dramatically this year, the government said, but environmentalists said it was too soon to celebrate and urged caution with the statistics. Preliminary data indicate that 3,551 square miles of rain forest […]
The number of French vacationers has risen continuously, growing from an estimated 30 percent of the population in 1950 to more than 70 percent in the early eighties, Froidure said. CNN Travel had this sad story in today’s editions. “After stagnating for about two decades, these numbers appear on the […]
The New Yorker’s August 22 ‘all Target ads issue’ included among the creative uses of the red and white bullseye, a look at the sour mood in France by Adam Gopnik. He writes. “When the name “London” was announced, a punch-in-the-stomach silence struck Paris. The French Olympians insisted that the […]
David Utter writes in WebProNews about Amazon’s new Short Story Shorts. “For less than the price of a Coke Zero, customers can purchase short stories by a selection of published authors. It’s an experiment in little payments for little stories. 49 cents will gets the buyer a dozen pages by […]
On his first day as a story assistant for the reality TV series “Renovate My Family,” Zachary Isenberg said, his bosses made an unusual request: Fill out your time card for the next three weeks of work. Isenberg was puzzled. How could he estimate his hours before he worked them? […]
Attention is becoming the holy grail of mankind, the thing we most strive for but get the least. I predict that there will be a surge in demand for someone’s full and undivided attention…and a valueing and delineation of this. This special thing will be what advertisers crave but rarely […]
Venice illustrates some of the complicated political and economic issues involved in tourism. The city receives 16.5 million tourists a year, most of whom shuffle down the main route from St Mark’s Square to the Rialto Bridge. The latest plague there is the cruise ships. Forbe’s Anna Somers writes in […]
The Boston Herald editorial staff wrote a doozer today, on their website. “So does anyone think Aramark Concessions went to the Yellow Pages and by chance picked a security firm owned by a Suffolk court official who also happens to have a sister on the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission? No? […]
A smart woman named Cindy emailed me this story from the International Herald Tribune by Thomas Fuller. “Christopher Clarke, the president of a headhunting company cites studies showing that women are better at performing many things at once, or multitasking, and that they have more sophisticated emotional intelligence, like being […]
The Internet has proved to be a moneymaker for traditional newspapers, as they ring up big-time online ad revenue. David Utter reported today in Web Pro News. “Quiet the carillons and stop the procession. Newspapers aren’t quite dead yet. Readership of the printed page may be down, but the online […]
Agents seized $700,000 in fake U.S. postage stamps and blue jeans worth several hundred thousand dollars, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said, in a report on AOL News today. They also got 42 million in viagra, meth amphetamine, and fake cigarettes. Eight of those charged were arrested on their way […]
Philip Wartel is out of business, and after two years he has nothing good to say about the funeral directors in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts who ran him into the ground. Wartel opened Pioneer Valley Casket Co just a year ago, and has faced the wrath of the funeral […]