Yeah, BUT NOT BEFORE THANKSGIVING.
This is the Grinch posting here. Christmas season, and decorations, and music on the radio should NOT start until AFTER Thanksgiving.
I know the retailers want to get a jump start on the Christmas selling, but there is a limit. If you stretch Christmas shopping season all the way back to March, you don't actually sell more stuff, you just spend more time doing the selling.
Sunday, November 29, 2015
Mouse and Mouse pad beats Win8 touchscreen
Taking Flat Beast (my laptop) on the road for the first time. Some things work good, like Flat Beast detected and logged onto daughter's WIFI router automatically. Email comes thru and everything. What with lack of deskspace and such I am working the laptop from the lap. And I miss the real mouse, which don't work so good on a overstuffed couch. The built in touch pad is flakey and jumpy, and it lacks left and right buttons to click. And the whole touchy feelie screen is ineffectual. The slider thumbnails don't slide under a finger touch, the icons are too small for my full sized fingers, and the whole screen is more touchy flaky than touchy feelie.
Tomorrow I drive home, and day after that I can get back to web surfing from a real desk with a real mouse.
Tomorrow I drive home, and day after that I can get back to web surfing from a real desk with a real mouse.
Thursday, November 26, 2015
War on Coal presses forward
The US Senate just passed two "resolutions" one disapproving EPA regulation about to be applied to working coal fired power plants, and a second one disappoving EPA regulations of new and modified coal fired power plants.
Our noble NH Senators, Shaheen and Ayotte, vote against both resolutions. Thanks guys. I'm paying 25 cents a kilowatt hour and you voted to increase the price of my electricity.
And "resolutions" are pretty weak tea. You want to get EPA's attention? You cut off their taxpayer funding, all of it. A "resolution" of disapproval doesn't mean anything.
Our noble NH Senators, Shaheen and Ayotte, vote against both resolutions. Thanks guys. I'm paying 25 cents a kilowatt hour and you voted to increase the price of my electricity.
And "resolutions" are pretty weak tea. You want to get EPA's attention? You cut off their taxpayer funding, all of it. A "resolution" of disapproval doesn't mean anything.
Monday, November 23, 2015
Why are drug prices so damn high?
Answer: Because the drug companies spend to damn much on marketing. The biggies all have armies of salesmen, with sample kits, company cars, and expense accounts. The salesmen visit every doctor in the land at least once a month. They take the doctor out to lunch, and they buy pizza for his staff. At lunch they push their company's line of pills.
This is the most expensive way to market a product imaginable. It works, and if everyone in the industry does it, everyone has to keep up. Paying all those salesmen takes a big pot of money, and the drug company has to get the money from somewhere. Guess where it comes from?
Economical marketing is to merely offer the product on the Web and get some articles placed in the medical trade journals. A step up from that is to open brick and mortar stores. The special sales call is as expense as it gets.
Not sure what we can do about it, other than taxing it. Right now, sales expenses are a legitimate business expense and can be deducted from income. Not sure if I like the idea of the IRS telling companies how much they can spend on various business activities. Maybe some public interest group could lookup and publicize how much the drug companies spend pushing drugs to doctors.
This is the most expensive way to market a product imaginable. It works, and if everyone in the industry does it, everyone has to keep up. Paying all those salesmen takes a big pot of money, and the drug company has to get the money from somewhere. Guess where it comes from?
Economical marketing is to merely offer the product on the Web and get some articles placed in the medical trade journals. A step up from that is to open brick and mortar stores. The special sales call is as expense as it gets.
Not sure what we can do about it, other than taxing it. Right now, sales expenses are a legitimate business expense and can be deducted from income. Not sure if I like the idea of the IRS telling companies how much they can spend on various business activities. Maybe some public interest group could lookup and publicize how much the drug companies spend pushing drugs to doctors.
Lion's Gate disappointed in box office for Hunger Games Part II
Wall St Journal had this. The opening weekend box office was $101 million, the lowest of any of the Hunger Games movies. The was in the Business & Tech section which just writes about money matters.
Funny, they didn't say a word about the quality of Hunger Games Part 1. It was nothing like as good as the first one back in 2012. And I'm pretty sure every fan who went to Part I was disappointed as well, especially as the first one was one of the best movies Hollywood released that year. So naturally the box office is down. Make a poor movie and you don't make as much money.
Funny, they didn't say a word about the quality of Hunger Games Part 1. It was nothing like as good as the first one back in 2012. And I'm pretty sure every fan who went to Part I was disappointed as well, especially as the first one was one of the best movies Hollywood released that year. So naturally the box office is down. Make a poor movie and you don't make as much money.
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Surveillance at Mosques
Dunno if I am ready for mounting video cameras on mosques, but I see nothing wrong with undercover agents going to a mosque, mixing with people, talking to people, finding out what is going down. They are places of public worship after all. Terror plots are discovered and defeated mostly when someone gives the cops a tip. To get tips you have to have connections, you gotta know people, they gotta know who to call or talk to.
BTW, you don't want to close mosques, no matter how rabid they get. As long as the mosque is open, it's easier to keep an eye on suspicious individuals. Close the place and they just go underground, which makes it harder to keep track of 'em.
You deal with rabid imams with informal pressure. You find some community leaders, other clerics, parishioners, local businessmen. If your police force is on the ball they will know who these people are. You explain to this group that the imam is going over the line, that he is stirring up trouble, and you give them some good quotes from the Koran that counter the imam's rants. Put your community leaders group together with the problem imam and have them apply some pressure.
BTW, you don't want to close mosques, no matter how rabid they get. As long as the mosque is open, it's easier to keep an eye on suspicious individuals. Close the place and they just go underground, which makes it harder to keep track of 'em.
You deal with rabid imams with informal pressure. You find some community leaders, other clerics, parishioners, local businessmen. If your police force is on the ball they will know who these people are. You explain to this group that the imam is going over the line, that he is stirring up trouble, and you give them some good quotes from the Koran that counter the imam's rants. Put your community leaders group together with the problem imam and have them apply some pressure.
Saturday, November 21, 2015
What makes the Greenback Green?
The United States enjoys the best currency in the world. You can spend US dollars anywhere. People will buy our debt, US treasury bills, eagerly, even though they don't pay much interest. It's a great deal, they give us hard cash, we give them paper. If things get tight, we can simply print more greenbacks to make expenses, or redeem T-bills, and everyone will accept them. US dollars are a pure fiat currency, we don't promise to redeem them for precious metals.
The Russians would kill to have the ruble treated like the dollar. Right now nobody will accept rubles in payment if there is anyway to avoid them. Reason? The Russians don't have anything to sell. Rubles are only good to buy stuff from Russia, and who wants Russian made goods? Driven a Russian built car lately? The Russian airlines advertise that they fly only Western built airliners (Boeing or Airbus) rather than Russian ones, which have a nasty reputation for crashing.
Whereas the holder of US dollars can buy top quality US made products, as much as they can afford. We have the product to sell. US dollars may not be backed by gold, but they are backed by the productive capacity of the US economy. You need just about anything, you can buy it in the US,
With one exception. There is a US law preventing the sale of crude oil, something which we now have in quantity, thanks to fracking. We ought to repeal that law, just in the interest of keeping the currency strong. The greenies want to keep the prohibition on sale of crude oil, mostly 'cause they want to discourage oil production of any sort. Well, even greenies gotta pay the bills. We import a lot of stuff, and we gotta pay for it somehow. And with Obama borrowing the country into who knows what, we need to keep the greenback green.
The Russians would kill to have the ruble treated like the dollar. Right now nobody will accept rubles in payment if there is anyway to avoid them. Reason? The Russians don't have anything to sell. Rubles are only good to buy stuff from Russia, and who wants Russian made goods? Driven a Russian built car lately? The Russian airlines advertise that they fly only Western built airliners (Boeing or Airbus) rather than Russian ones, which have a nasty reputation for crashing.
Whereas the holder of US dollars can buy top quality US made products, as much as they can afford. We have the product to sell. US dollars may not be backed by gold, but they are backed by the productive capacity of the US economy. You need just about anything, you can buy it in the US,
With one exception. There is a US law preventing the sale of crude oil, something which we now have in quantity, thanks to fracking. We ought to repeal that law, just in the interest of keeping the currency strong. The greenies want to keep the prohibition on sale of crude oil, mostly 'cause they want to discourage oil production of any sort. Well, even greenies gotta pay the bills. We import a lot of stuff, and we gotta pay for it somehow. And with Obama borrowing the country into who knows what, we need to keep the greenback green.
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