So what does it all mean?

If we need reminding of the pace that life is moving at, take a quick look at this video.

It certainly conjours up some interesting questions. If there are 31 billion searches on Google per month, what did people do for answers in the world BG (before Google)?

During the just under 5 minute duration of the film there are 67 babies being born in the United States, 274 in China and 395 in India whilst there were 694,000 songs downloaded illegally.

So I guess I´ll have a BBQ tomorrow and pop to the beach on Sunday, somethings don´t change.

Why look after your customers?

Another interesting David vs. Goliath story as Dave (not David) Carroll gets his own back on what seems to be the easiest industry to have a stab at these days, represented here by United Airlines.

He was travelling with his band when they saw the ground crew throwing their guitars accross the tarmac through the window of the plane. On arrival his guitar was in pieces and United refused to admit responsibility or pay for repairs even though he tried speaking to a number of people during a year of complaints.

What better way to exert revenge than to write a song, "United break guitars" which has become the 20th downloaded music on iTunes (presumably the first 19 are all Michael Jackson songs)

So now, Dave is rich from selling the songs and United has lost 10% of it´s share value around $180 million, they have now offered to pay for a guitar, post song, but been told to donate the money to charity. Tailor the guitar makers are giving Dave a new guitar so he can use them in his next 2 songs about United.

Forget casual Friday

How do you get your numbers up? Naked Friday.

Well this company in Newcastle had been suffering with the recession and hired a consultant to give them some ideas of how to pull the team together and get them back on a winning track.
The solution was to all go to work with no clothes for the day.

Apparently this breaks down barriers between people and departments and leads to a much better working relationship, which in this case has apparently turned the company´s fortunes around.

A few of the staff were a bit shy, but there was an introduction process leading up to Friday including photocopying body parts one day and sketching a nude model on another.

Perhaps we should think about implementing this strategy, although maybe we could wait for warmer weather and one or two changes to the headcount might be wise.

People we trust the least

Having just participated in a recent poll I found the results interesting, predictable and worth sharing.
A leading newspaper (not the sensacionalist rag I normally peruse) has managed to break away from Susan Boyle and is addressing one of the crucial and timely questions.

Who do we least trust; politicians, bankers or journalists?

Obviously the bankers have been in for a lot of stick recently, particularly Fred "shredder" Goodwin from RBS, who have been seen by many as responsible for most of our current problems - world crash, unemployment, poverty, global warming and the recent cold spell etc. - but in an anonymous poll that doesn´t seem to be the case.

The bankers came in 3rd place with 21.4% of the mistrust vote closely followed by journalists in 2nd at 30.7%, no surprises to see that politicians are there with 47.8% of mistrust.

One of the comments I found most interesting was the conspiration theory (there always seem to be people who credit government with the intelligence and organization to implement clever but naughty stuff) that politicians and journalists have colluded to make the most of the current situation to sort out their finances.

So the theory goes that with the credit problems, governments have been able to take over financial institutions for a fraction of their true worth in order to make a large killing when share prices rise again. Not being much of a believer in conspirations, I always think these things are caused by random luck and coincidence, however this could be a golden lining to the cloud we seem to be in at the moment.

This takes me on to another half baked theory I have been working on after seeing a bunch of companies backed by their national governments buying up other companies.
I am now of the opinion that the US led capitalist bubble has burst and that we will see companies such as Fiat etc. helped by their governments in order to grab share of world commerce.
Seems to make sense that when the world is "on sale" now is the time to extend your boundaries, most empires have historically fallen under similar circumstances.

A taxing experience

The usual story of boy meets girl, Romanian student needs €60.000 to pay for her college tuition, a computer studies course in Germany, and decides to sell her virginity on line to the highest bidder in order to raise the cash.

After the initial setback of the advert being pulled, not for any moral issue regarding selling sex but beacause her old school teacher announced she is not a virgin (no mention of exactly how he should know this) the advert went back up and an Italian won with a bid of €10.000.
Not exactly what she, Alina, was targeting but still a reasonable sum, enough to buy 3.268 big macs in the Euro area according to the famous Big Mac index.

Now the problem, under German law selling sex or prostitution is perfectly legal, even on a student visa, however there is a special 50% tax rate levied, also she could be liable for sales tax currently at 19% and the German inland revenue are obviously anxious not to miss a trick...no pun intended.

Therefore from Alina´s initial €60.000 target she received €10.000 which will be reduced by €5.000 prostitution tax and possibly €1.900 sales tax leaving her with €3.100 for her labours.

Interesting that a Romanian girl has sex in Italy and pays 70% of it to the German government, you have to take your hat off to this kind of legislation.

Perhaps more relevant is that selling sex is illegal in Italy since 2008 although they seem to have a reasonably relaxed attitude on the issue, a top down culture one would imagine.
Less relaxed is the Italian taxation system which on these values charges 25%, if cumulative the poor girl could pay another €2.500 leaving her with a paltry €600 to remember the weekend by.

Too many fingers

They say history repeats itself and certainly my password frustration seems to be doing so. Having suffered many years from an excess of passwords; banks, creditcards, internet stuff, airline programmes, elevator security etc. you name it, I was hoping that modern technology might ease this load.
But no, recently I have uncovered a new frustration just as inconvenient and vexing as this, finger identification.

In a perfect world we could all be recognised by proximity or eyes etc., but the finger identification seems to have been made as complicated as possible.

So there I am trying to get into the office in São Paulo and I forgot that it is standardised, everybody pushes the asterisk and places the right thumb over the laser, the door magically pops open.
As we have a lot of security you have to do this on 2 doors to get to my desk, there is a further door but my thumb doesn´t have the relevant clearance, database companies are up there with MI5 and Mossad for security you know. (Actually ours is better than MI5 as they have reportedly lost 5 laptops and a Blackberry this year so far, although if I had to use a Blackberry I would have chucked it somewhere by now too)

Back to the fingers, I couldn´t get into the office, I simply forgot the sequence and correct finger. At my gym I have a code number followed by a button with no sign, obviously used so much it rubbed off and then the left thumb, also standardised for all. So there I am, trying all the fingers, looking bewildered until a good samaritan buzzed me in.

After a frustrating day forgetting fingers then I get back to the condominio and have to place the correct finger over the laser, if I get this wrong it triggers a kidnap warning and previously smiling men get angry and run around waving guns.
A close relative on the first entry managed to put the wrong finger on the laser, luckily she realised and screamed out false alarm, prior to an international incident occurring.

Perhaps I am the only one troubled by this so far, but am sure that as more places implement these systems there will be an almighty cock-up at some stage, maybe I should tattoo the info on each finger to get it right first time.

How to get your profits up whilst staying cheaper

Interesting to see the Ryan Air marketing strategy.
The "low cost" airline really does charge a low price for the ticket, but they have developed the paid extras into a fine art.

You can no longer get a ticket at the airport and to print a ticket at home you pay around U$D 8 per leg and if you have baggage it´s charged per item and weight, also the food and drink is all separate. These all seem to be fairly obvious value add opportunities, but there are some new ideas that are even more creative.

Among the new ideas are toilet charges (anyone attending an old fashioned English school will remember this from their early days) and a special charge for fat people.
Makes you wonder which other opportunities to charge could be implemented, perhaps one for people wearing too much perfume, people using the steps to get on and off the plane, use of the reading lights, maybe a surcharge based on the beauty of the air hostess could be suggested judging by miss April from the Ryan Air employee calendar.
Yet another Irish contribution to society, other than Guinness and The Corrs.
Any other ideas come to mind??

No sex please we´re in a crisis

Finding and proving different indicators and correlations can be fun, for example the cosmetic boom caused by economic uncertainty.
This is fairly easy to demonstrate as the sales figures are available in real time, but there are some indicators which have a slightly longer lead time in order to validate their accuracy.

One such indicator is the baby index where common sense tells us that people worried about losing their jobs are probably unwilling to create new mouths to feed. Inspite of being in the broad band era, the gestation period is still 9 months, so the results are a trifle delayed in order to prove this theory.

One interesting analysis published by hotwise, monitors the number of searches carried out online for "pregnancy", "maternity clothes" and "baby´s names" and is showing remarkable drops.
Searches for pregnancy are down 37%, baby´s names down 40% and maternity clothes down a staggering 74% over the last 3 years, perhaps showing that women becoming pregnant are anticipating following Demi Moore´s lead and wander around naked, who knows?!?

Whatever the between the lines learning, the results would hint that birth rates in developed countries will be hit, at least it should help with the over population problems and the environment.

We didn´t start the fire

With the G20 meeting on this week it has been interesting to see the various countries taking up their traditional positions.

Obama and Gordan are obviously keen on pumping more cash into the economies, after all everyone knows that the best cure for a bad hangover is to drink a few beers the next morning, so why not increase debt to cure the debt problem.
Angela on the other hand seems to have outflanked them by shooting down this idea, showing the sensible and rational female approach which we all try to ignore, helped by a few other European leaders and even the head of the Bank of England.

When Gordon was travelling around South America trying to curry favour in advance of the meeting it was interesting to see the reactions from our Latin friends.
Most amusingly was Cristine Kerchner who didn´t seem to care what was discussed at the G20 meeting as long as they could take over the Falkland Islands without another embarassing invasion, and of course Lula who, perhaps unknowingly, gave a smarter answer than he might have realised.

His response was that the crisis was all caused by white people with blue eyes, so they could fix it and not involve indians, blacks and other minority groups.
As mentioned, this hypothesis is not too far from the point.
All US presidents since Nixon have had blue eyes, according to the freakonomics blog in the New York Times, including George and Bill, which is quite something considering only 16,7% of US citizens or 1 in every 6 has blue eyes, down from 50% in the year 1900.

Of course Tony Blair also has blue eyes, perhaps this is why a large proportion of the American people were calling for him to be the next US president during the early stages of the Iraque war....or maybe they thought that anything would be an improvement.
The Japanese were excluded from this theory, but then again their economy seems to have been screwed for so long now that perhaps they were given the benefit of the doubt...and of course Madooff who has brown eyes but hey, every theory can have a statistical outlier.

At least with Obama we seem to have broken this trend (unless he is using colored contact lenses which doesn´t seem likely) and can look forward to a brown eyed economy for the next 8 years at least.

A bargain at $27,995,000

If you thought the housing market in the US was dropping faster then Obamas popularity figures, think again.
Hugh Hefner has just put his personal residence adjoining the Playboy mansion on the market for a mere $28million.

The house is fantastic with 5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, swimming pool and lots of lawns to trim but perhaps the location has something to do with the price.
Presumably the new owners will find themselves running out of sugar on a regular basis and need to borrow a cup or two, when they are not pressed up against the windows or inviting the neighbours round for barbeques!

The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid.

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.

Where´s the goodwill?

Today I came to grips with a new term that seems to be having quite an effect at the moment, "Goodwill Write Down" or "Goodwill Impairment Charge" as it is more correctly reported.

It seems that HSBC, the bank that we thought might escape the major crash with just a few scratches and bumps, finally got hit by the proverbial truck and lost a packet, mainly with the 2003 Countrywide acquisition.
The adjustment of goodwill is obviously understandable as the brand is worth less now than it was when things were all sheets to the wind, although the terminology seems to reek of irony.
In the investopedia site they describe it as writing off worthless goodwill, rather than goodwill that they thought they had, was never tangible and now is judged to no longer exist, intangibly speaking.

Reminds me of the term "friendly fire" which we don´t hear about so much since the last US led invasion. That was also a strange one, soldiers who had been massacred by their own side (generally Americans) are described as killed by friendly fire.
I don´t know what your definition of "friendly" is, but getting shot and killed by someone is not the sort of thing I would expect as friendly. Inviting round for a cup of tea or BBQ might be more in line, but who am I to judge international terminology.

As far as goodwill goes, I would assume none of it is worthless, although one can understand that the intangible value of banks is severely knocked for six at the moment.
As HSBC is arguably among the stronger banks, makes you wonder if other, less solid financial institutions are making their own goodwill write downs, or how this might affect their assets when they do.

The Madof warning to Brazilians

Nothing like sitting by the sea in Angra sipping a caipirinha with friends to be able to see certain crisis orientated facts in a new light.
One pal who was an ex Madof investor explained how he had spent some time on a waiting list for the opportunity to get into the fund and had felt privileged for the chance when he finally entered.

Then lightening struck, obviously Madof was fond of Brazilians and wanted to give a warning, it´s spookier than the Da Vinci code and a touch easier to spot.
If you write Madof backwards you get Fodam......as all Brazilians know this is a derivative of the verb F****R which in this state (and placing a qualifying SE afterwards) means to screw someone in the plural.

Therefore give a bit of credit to Madof, he tried to tell the Brazilians that they would all be screwed!

Every mans dream, wives beware

Creative thinking to dodge the crisis

With the plummeting property values in Europe and America, a rather creative homeowner has come up with a legally valid way to "sell" his $1million home without taking a hit on the price.
Anyone entering his website http://www.win-free-home.com/ is able to complete a very easy sodoku puzzle, in order to conform with competition regulations, and pay 50GBP ou $70 for an entry into a draw.
The winner wins the house, assuming 14.000 people enter, allowing the owner, Dave, to retire to one of his other homes in warmer climes as he is almost 50.
The draw starts on the 1st of february, anyone is eligible.

Who wants to live forever?

If you thought that Highlander was science fiction and that the theory of eternal life is a fantasy, think again (assuming you´re a jellyfish).
The "Turritopsis nutricula" can upon ageing, apparently return to it´s young "polyp" state and repeat this feat indefinately, rendering it effectively immortal.

Scientists are now studying the elements responsible for this with the intention of creating the same phenomenon in other creatures.
Apparently among the interested parties lining up for the waiting list are Robert Mugabe and Hugo Chaves, both of whom obviously need this in order to fulfill their current leadership mandates.

The problem with the jellyfish is that they seem to be spreading exponentially and could soon dominate the seas, for more info take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_nutricula
Rumour has it the pension industry is concerned about the possible impact on annuity rates.

It all ends in caps

They have a saying in Brazil that whenever there is a situation or investigation, it all ends in pizza, meaning nothing much will come of it.
Judging by the US Ebay site, it all seems to end with baseball caps, particularly where large financial institutions are concerned.

If you happen to be looking for some natty headgear to remind you of the bullish 80´s, then go no further.
For a mere $17.99 you can pick up a nice Lehman Brothers corporate cap and Bear Stearns Asset management is a definate snip at just $5.99.
For those wanting to spend a disproportionately large sum, the special Madoff hat is for sale at $260.00, plus $6.00 US shipping. Judging by this, they only need to sell around 200 million hats in order to pay back their former speculators, assuming they cost zero to produce, which I imagine with their former accountants must be easy to prove.

Interesting that the feedback on the seller is rated as 100% positive, hurry though, already had 13 bids and the offer closes in 5 hours or so.