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Archive for September, 2007

Late night reminder…

Art Smith September 30th, 2007

Reading Bithead’s (presumably) last blog of the night, reminded me I had meant to comment on the announcement that Newt Gingrich won’t be running for President in 2008.  Here’s what I think about this… hmm… thinking… just a minute…

I’m sorry, I got nothin’.

That is to say, I really don’t care if Newt wants to make a big announcement about the blatantly obvious… it’s bad enough we had Fred Thompson playing sideline candidate up until his formal announcement less than a month ago.  If anyone is going to be serious about being a player 116 days from now here in Iowa they need to be in motion already, especially since so many other states are crowding for early attention as well.  As it is, I’m not very impressed with the Republican field, and despite joining late, I like Fred (as in, at the moment “I think he’s a good pick”, not “I think he’ll win”).  Frankly, I’m not convinced we have a real conservative in the bunch.

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A Little Change is Good for the Soul

Art Smith September 30th, 2007

Slight change tonight to the look of the blog, but more importantly, I’ve slipped in a banner in the sidebar for an organization that I am anxious to support. 

Kiva is a non-profit that is providing a conduit for micro-lending in the third-world.  The site speaks for itself well, but I think it is worth noting that some of the most critical growth in our own country was due to the work of small loan businesses, such as the company that is now Wells Fargo Financial.  Micro-loans will make a much bigger impact on the third world than all the money that could be given through direct charity (although I support that as well, especially for disaster and initial infrastructure startup costs) because it will help people to become self-sufficient.

In the world of Baseball, my Mets are back in first place again (okay, they’re tied with Philadelphia, it’s still first place even if you have to share it).  One more regular season game left.  The Mets HAVE to win this game to be the Eastern Division Champs (if Philadelphia wins, there will be a play-off game).  If they lose, and Philadelphia loses, same situation. We’ll see what happens…

Today (Saturday) there were two excellent columns in the Wall Street Journal on the back of the Weekend Journal section.  Peggy Noonan’s column was a great treatise on why we should not get too bent out of shape about allowing Ahmadinejad to speak here in the U.S.  What was particularly inspiring to me was the last part of the column where she addressed the lack of serious discourse by candidates with those who disagree with them… this is a chronic problem even in the blog-o-sphere… ‘nuf said.

The second column was Terry Teachout’s where he wrote a very enlightening piece on the varying levels of standards for theatre criticism (professional vs. “community theatre”).  I felt his thoughts could be well applied across various disciplines.

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An Apple Whine Can Be Profitable…Maybe

Art Smith September 10th, 2007

I continue to be amazed at people (go figure).  I can never understand why anyone would wait in line for hours so they can have the honor to spend $600 on a gadget (the iPhone) that will do more than they really need that gadget to do (says the guy with the Motorola Q, a Blackberry, three Bluetooth headsets, blah, blah, blah, yeah, I’m a gadget freak too).  Okay, if it’s really worth waiting up all night and spending that kind of money, more power to you.  But, and I’ll say this to anyone participating in our free-market society, if it was worth $600 for you to be one of the first, why are you complaining like someone who tried to low-ball an offer on a car and had the dealer take the offer (that means I could have gone lower!).  Granted, we all hate to miss opportunities, and we hate to be taken advantage of, but let’s face it… IT’S ONLY PRICE GOUGING IF YOU NEED THE PRODUCT, like gasoline or water. 

What’s really scary here is not the fact that Apple succeeded in getting a great markup on a highly desirable product, but rather that Apple, long a no-discount, no-specials, marketer, bowed to pressure from consumers and 1) lowered the price of the product (a sign the product is not selling quite as well as they planned) and 2) provided a rebate to the whiners (which means they’re actually afraid of what the buying public thinks about “fairness”).  Sorry, i think if you are Apple whining, then what you’ve really got is a bad case of buyer’s remorse (how many of the whiners are just upset because they think they look stupid for spending more on the product than it was worth… news flash: the rest of us knew that when you bought the darn thing and showed it off to us)… you made a bad choice, and it’s not Apple’s fault, it’s your own, so live with it.

Just on a note, I bought my wife an iPod Nano a few months ago… so now that Apple has the new video capable model, I’m sure a whiner would want to trade in the old one for the new one.  Not I.  It was what I wanted for the money I paid, and I’m happy with it (I haven’t asked the wife yet, however). 

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