rage room (aka: “anger room”): a facility that charges customers fees to smash objects: household items, office machines, electronics, furniture, human effigies or any of the customer's personal items. *** TROVELOG *** Donna Alexander, proprietor of the Anger Room in Dallas, can barely keep her business stocked with printers for customers to crush. “Rage rooms,” as they’re [...]
"Authenticity is like authority or charisma: If you have to tell people you have it, then you probably don't." --Andrew Potter "Whenever you find something described as authentic, you know that you are already in the realm of fake authenticity," says Andrew Potter in his recent book "The Authenticity Hoax." It's not unlike [...]
For the last 8,000 years, the wine grape has had very little sex. This unnatural abstinence threatens to sap the grape’s genetic health and the future pleasure of millions of oenophiles. [Italics added.] . . . [M]erlot is intimately related to cabernet franc, which is a parent of cabernet sauvignon, whose other [...]
11.9: The percentage of American workers in unions last year, the lowest proportion in more than 70 years, according to the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of workers in unions fell by 612,000 last year, to 14.7 million. About 20 percent of workers were in unions in 1983; the figure was [...]
acronym for the four large, rapidly growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China Jim O’Neill, the chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management . . . is perhaps best known as the economist who nearly a decade ago coined the acronym BRIC — for Brazil, Russia, India and China — developing economies that, [...]
[Some Apple investors have] deep frustrations over Apple's cash pile, a $50 billion lode that is expected to swell to $70 billion by year-end. The vast sum exceeds the gross domestic product of two-thirds of the world's countries—and all but 36 of the market values of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock [...]
a provision in a commercial real estate loan agreement that holds individual developers personally liable for the loan if their borrower company should file for bankruptcy. The commercial real estate market is being hobbled by billions of dollars in distressed debt, and some experts are pointing to a provision in many loans — [...]
Shortly before the iPad tablet went on sale last year, Steven P. Jobs showed off Apple's latest creation to a small group of journalists. One asked what consumer and market research Apple had done to guide the development of the new product. “None,” Mr. Jobs replied. “It isn’t the consumers’ job to know what [...]
a keyboard error made by a securities trader who pushes the wrong key or keys when entering a trade. In a day short of major U.S. data, the bond market was jolted during the midmorning session as talk circulated in the market that an investor made a mistake—known as a "fat finger" error—on a [...]
The only way to get rich from a self-help book is to write one. --Christopher Buckley Quoted in: NYT 16Jan11: "The Spirit Of the Mensch" (book review of "Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing")
