to me, marketing is about values. This is a very
complicated world, it's a very noisy world, and we aren't going to get a
chance to get people to remember much about us....no company is. So we
have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us. Our
customers want to know, who is Apple, and what is it that we stand for?
Where do we fit in this world? And, what we're about isn't making boxes
for people to get their jobs done, although we do that well, we do that
better than almost anybody in some cases. But Apple is about something
more than that. Apple at the core, it's core value is that we believe
that people with passion can change the world for the better...- Steve Jobs
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
This Day In History 29 Feb 2012 Mammy Wins an Oscar 1940
Mammy wins Oscar,1940
Gone with the Wind is honored with eight Oscars by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. An epic Southern romance set during the hard times of the Civil War, the movie swept the prestigious Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, Film Editing, and Actress categories. However, the most momentous award that night undoubtedly went to Hattie McDaniel for her portrayal of "Mammy," a housemaid and former slave. McDaniel, who won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award, was the first African American actress or actor ever to be honored with an Oscar.
> On This Day in History: Tuesday, Feb 28, 2012
On this Day in History -- February 28
Famous people born on this day:
--> 1849, First steamship enters San Francisco Bay.
--> 1854, Republican Party is organized, in Ripon, Wisconsin.
--> 1883, First vaudeville theater opens.
--> 1914, Construction begins on The Tower of Jewels for the exposition.
--> 1956, Forrester issued a patent for computer core memory.
--> 1970, Bicycles now permitted to cross Golden Gate Bridge.
--> 1983, The last episode of M.A.S.H airs with over 121 million viewers.
--> 1994, ATF agents unsuccessfully raid the Davidian Compound.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
China Currency my be in big trouble!
Consumption economics
The incredible shrinking surplus
At least one of China’s economic imbalances is narrowing
Feb 18th 2012 | HONG KONG | from the print edition
A LETTER arrived at the White House a day or two ahead of China’s president-in-waiting this week. The letter condemned China for its big trade surplus, which it blamed on the country’s cheap currency, among other economic sins. It was written by Sherrod Brown, a senator from Ohio, who sponsored a bill passed by the Senate in October that would impose tariffs on countries that undervalue their currency.
But is China’s currency still undervalued by the Senate’s own definition? The bill relies on the IMF’s methods (it has three) to identify offending exchange rates. In his letter, Mr Brown referred to one IMF calculation showing that the yuan was undervalued by 23%. That estimate, made in September, was based on the exchange rate required to bring the country’s notorious current-account surplus into line with the “norm” for a country like China. The IMF has not said officially what that norm should be, but one study suggests it is about 2.9% of GDP.
The corollary of a cheap currency is a large current-account surplus. It is therefore notable that China’s surplus narrowed to less than 2.8% of GDP in 2011, according to figures released last week (and to only 2.5% in the fourth quarter of that year). It was the smallest surplus (relative to the size of China’s economy) since 2002. Even in absolute terms, the $201 billion surplus was the smallest since 2005.
China’s surplus may widen again, if its export markets recover and commodity prices fall. But some economists are looking forward to its disappearance. Nomura, a Japanese bank, has forecast a surplus of just 1% next year. Li Daokui of Tsinghua University in Beijing says that China’s trade surplus might turn negative within two years, though the bilateral surplus with America will no doubt persist, to the continued annoyance of rustbelt senators.
It does not mean that China-watchers can stop worrying about the country’s unbalanced economy, with its heavy reliance on investment and exports. The problem is that China’s narrower surplus reflects an unsustainable rise in investment (as a share of GDP) rather than in consumption. Its external imbalance has narrowed, but a big internal imbalance remains.
Even that imbalance may be diminishing, however. China’s official statistics show private consumption growing less quickly than the economy as a whole from 2001 to 2010. But they also show retail sales growing faster than GDP from 2008 to 2010. The discrepancy is partly because China’s retail-sales figures include some things they should not (such as government purchases and sales of chemicals and other wholesale goods), and miss out other things (like health care and other services), that are a big part of consumer spending. But several economists also believe the official figures understate private consumption.
To derive an alternative measure, Yiping Huang and his colleagues at Barclays Capital, an investment bank, have tried to pick out those retail sales that are likely to reflect consumer purchases. He has combined those purchases with sales figures for service firms. By this alternative measure, consumption fell as a share of GDP until 2008, but started growing strongly thereafter. “Rebalancing of the Chinese economy has already started,” the Barclays economists conclude.
Not everyone is convinced. Nicholas Lardy, author of a new book “Sustaining China’s Economic Growth”, agrees that the official figures understate consumption, largely because they fail to capture the value of living in one’s own home. The understatement may also have worsened in the past five years. But this is not enough, he argues, to reverse the dramatic decline in private consumption as a share of GDP over the past decade.
Even official figures, however, suggest that China’s consumption ratio stopped falling last year, at least if government consumption is included. That is a turning point of sorts, which has so far garnered little notice. Perhaps someone should write another letter to the White House.
Monday, January 30, 2012
I write because of the fragility of our existence.
I write because it's my answer to impermanence.
I write because it helps me stay connected to my heart.
I write because we're all different, and so much the same.
I write because the world needs more tenderness.
I write because I'm tired of secrets.
I write because it's my path to redemption.
I write because I've forsaken those that I love.
I write because I want to know myself.
I write because I want to know you.
I write because I'm drawn towards things I shouldn't do.
I write because every flower is meant to bloom.
I write because life is full of paradoxes.
I write because I've had to leave friends behind.
I write because it's my form of prayer.
I write because, when I write, I lose track of time.
I write because I've walked dark streets looking for love.
I write because of the way the sublime slips away from words.
I write because of the twice shy part of once burned.
I write because it helps me learn.
I write because there are plenty of people who have written, famous well-published people, literary figures, literary giants, and I didn't like what they wrote.
I write because I'm always telling myself stories anyhow.
I write because I don't know all of the reasons
I write.
I write.
I write.
I write.
"T. Scott McLeod"
I Write
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