Category Archives: Curiousities

2007 Ig Nobel Winners

The Ig Nobel Prize is given annually by the Journal of Improbable Research to “celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative – and spur people’s interest in science, medicine and technology”. From the BBC, whose favorite award was for the “gay bomb”: 2007 Ig Nobel Winners Medicine – Brain Witcombe, of Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust, […]

A Wee Notice to Readers (Consulting Porn Edition)

Oh, you are such a good reader! You either care about this site enough to look at notices and/or you found “consulting porn” worthy of attention (probably because you found the expression to be an oxymoron). Like it or not, if you are in a large, or even a medium sized organization, you may have […]

"Man dead after online gaming binge"

If this story hadn’t come from the Associated Press, via the Toronto Star, I’d have some doubts as to its veracity: A man in southern China appears to have died of exhaustion after a three-day Internet gaming binge, state media said Monday. The 30-year-old man fainted at a cybercafe in the city of Guangzhou on […]

Product Naming Tip

Tonight we are likely to have a dog’s breakfast of posts. I’m leaving town later today, still haven’t packed, and am at the moment bored with writing about central bankers. This item struck me as useful business trivia. Since almost everyone knows someone who is starting a business, the question of what to call it […]

Real Estate Porn

In a departure from our usual programming, I thought I would introduce a real estate opportunity (yes this is an ad of sorts). But as you can see, it is particularly attractive and also presents an interesting case example of the issues involving the marketing of unique and illiquid assets. The asset in question is […]

The Wall Street Journal Touts Dubious Research (CEO Performance Edition)

Will someone, please, teach the reporters at the Wall Street Journal the basics about scientific research? I know it’s hard finding stuff to write about day in, day out. But the story “Scholars Link Success of Firms To Lives of CEOs” is a travesty. The centerpiece of the article is a study by Morten Bennedsen, […]

"Rare Breeds of Farm Animals Face Extinction"

The title above is the headline of a story in Science Daily, which reports on the recommendations of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which in turn cites a recent report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The FAO report found that over-reliance on a few highly productive livestock breeds, such […]

Australians Eating Feral Cats

Eeeew…..I much prefer the US solution of neuter and release. From the BBC: Australians have come up with a novel solution to the millions of feral cats roaming the outback – eat them. The felines are the descendants of domestic pets and kill millions of small native animals each year. A recent Alice Springs contest […]

Public Sector Management Innovation

The BBC reports that a mayor in Russia has gotten tired of bureaucratic buck passing and to put a stop to it, has banned the use of certain phrases, like “Somebody else has the documents.” While some of the now-verboten excuses are peculiar to civil service (“The working day is over”), others are popular in […]

Press Burnishing of Presidential Image

The media is typically kind to newly-elected leaders, so now it’s Sarkozy who is getting favorable press treatment. And when we say “burnishing image,” we mean it literally. From the BBC: The French magazine Paris Match touched up a photograph of President Nicolas Sarkozy on his US holiday, making his figure more svelte. Leading news […]

Pet Camel Kills Its Australian Owner

This is quite a departure from the usual subject matter of this blog, but it was such a bizarre story that I had to pass it along. And I suppose it can be regarded as a public service warning: if you must have an exotic pet, make sure it’s the sort that doesn’t grow up […]