Observations While Sitting Around

Sitting Observation: A few years ago Charmin brand toilet tissue came out with a jumbo roll, so big it didn’t fit in standard-issue bathroom holders. Not to be deterred, Charmin overcame the operational problem by distributing free adaptors to extend the depth of the tissue holder. A thoughtful marketing solution.

Except, no one had the foresight to ask, what happens if we subsequently downsize our toilet tissue rolls? What happens when the adaptors are constant reminders we’re providing less product per roll but charging the same (or more)? (Indeed, at Costco the jumbo Ultra Soft roll is now just 173.2 sq. ft. long, down 7.6% from its previous real jumbo size 187.5 sq. ft. Of course, the price has gone up, 2.6%.)

It’s the type of business problem one ponders while just, er, sitting around...


Bernie Madoff has been getting lots of ink and air time lately (e.g, this profile in New York magazine: http://nymag.com/news/features/berniemadoff-2011-3/). Which prompted two questions in my mind:

First, are the Feds monitoring the stock trades of Bernie’s fellow inmates?

Second, which video clip has been shown more often during the last two years—Osama bin Laden crouching while shooting a Kalashnikov rifle, or Madoff in baseball cap shoving a cameraman while walking in New York?...


Baby Blues: Mike Huckabee recently criticized Academy Award winner Natalie Portman, saying she was a poor role model because she will have a child out of wedlock. Shades of Vice President Dan Quayle attacking Murphy Brown 20 years ago (for those too young to know, or too old to remember, Murphy Brown was a fictional TV newscaster portrayed by Candace Bergen. In the TV sitcom, the unwed Murphy Brown had a baby, prompting Quayle’s admonishment).

Huckabee is entitled to his value system but wouldn't a more appropriate example of adolescent misbehavior be Bristol Palin’s baby-making fling with Levi Johnston? Bristol and Levi were high school students, with no visible sources of income (though she now is a money-machine, and dancer, thanks to our country’s warped reward system. Levi, as well, has cashed in on his notoriety). Natalie Portman, on the other hand, is 29 with a successful career forged while earning a BA degree in psychology from Harvard; her fiancé and father of her future child is a professional dancer. Not exactly the PWT model Bristol and Levi project. But then, Huckabee might be reluctant to call out the daughter of Grizzly Bear mom Sarah Palin...

Speaking of Huckabee, he's either very dumb or very sly like a fox. In erroneously saying President Obama grew up in Kenya near madrasas, Huckabee showed ignorance of his opponent.

Or, as I heard the other day, he pulled a cagey lawyer’s trick by purposely planting misinformation in his audience’s mind. He knew he'd be corrected, but just as a lawyer asks a question he knows will be objected to, Huckabee aired the false information to further the campaign to de-legitimize Obama’s presidential qualifications.

Me? I don't think Huckabee possesses such guile. I think he's just dumb and biased against anyone with a cultural background different than his Arkansasian narrow-mindedness. He can't relate to an Obama. Or Portman. Or to a Bill Clinton who went to Yale and became a Rhodes scholar. It's amazing how many Republicans want to be the leader of the most important country on earth but have almost no exposure to the rest of the world. At least Sarah Palin can see Russia from her front door...


Blow Up Debate: Or, my terrorist is better than yours. At least that’s what one must assume, given U.S. Rep. Peter King’s intention to hold hearings beginning Thursday on home-grown Islamic terrorists, despite his personal support for Irish Republican Army bombers back in the 1980s.

The GOP congressman believes the IRA was not a terrorist organization. It never attacked the U.S., as have Islamic terrorists. But anyone killed by an IRA bomb is just as dead as someone killed by an Islamic terrorist. It really is irrelevant who they were or where they were killed. Dead is dead, in any language or country.