Jade Queen

Corporate America's Identity Crisis

Labeling is so unfortunate because of the tangents it generates. Sticking to the issues might get us toward improvement faster.

On healthcare, a huge issue is iatrogenic death and disability, which is acknowledged to be underestimated even by the academics who study it and often even by the legislators who protect current recipients of massive tax dollars through subsidies.

Pouring more money into side effects that then obtain more prescriptions to deal with the side effects and side effects of side effects is perceived by some to be less expensive than asking for lifestyle changes and connecting clients/patients to opportunities to change lifestyle.

To their credit, some insurance companies do have agreements with gyms, and many hospitals have gyms. No one really disputes that appropriate exercise is what the human body is generally designed to do.

Research is trickling in to lifestyle research as so many clients/patients (conventional western medicine) have been paying outside the system for other forms of medicine, many with thousands of years of research, as opposed to conventional.

Everyone agrees that if you need sewing, accomplished sewers are advised. Many M.D.'s now have N.D.'s and other certifications. Arthritis tends not to spare M.D.'s., and they look for what works like everybody else.

The latest research, according to my son's MIT magazine, is N=1, which is to say to look at and listen to an individual as an individual when devising a treatment plan. One of the reasons listed in the articles was that it saves money. Imagine that (lives and suffering too, but money seems to get more attention).

Discussion like this seems uninteresting to much of the media. Even if I get off-topic dissed for this, I am glad for the place to vent.

Google: How One Wedding Video Shows YouTube's Potential

I got junk on my computer also. I had to get my son to get it off. But I'm not going to rain on the parade of this. I found it very interesting. Nobody was likely to faint dead away at this wedding, and I found it refreshing. These young people weren't worried about tripping. So few marriages last, they might as well have fun on the day itself. If they agreed to do it this way, at least they both like music and dance. Maybe that will keep it together.

I also like that Sony understood the buzz value and did not demand that it be pulled, but rather understood the potential.

My hope is that this will allow local artists and indy labels to get their stuff out there too.

One of my friends noted that wedding paraphernalia is somewhat recession-resistant. People still get married and die.

Could we have a Bollywood one next? Frankly, I considering instructing my kids that I want a memorial service like that than the usual long-face affair.

Microsoft vs. Apple: Monopolist vs. Innovator

My son's grant at MIT just specified Mac. His new machine does everything. He's in geophysics, not art.

He needs reliable crunch power, and he got switched to Mac after many years of something else. He loves it.

The fellow posting about toys needs to update himself.

My guess is some schools have also gotten tired of the Microsoft police at their bookstores.

Microsoft's model seems to be customer-as-serf. It isn't a big surprise that a company that likes customers is doing better.

Bill Gates just spent millions on grants to Monsanto et al. I don't understand what is charitable about that. He is heavily invested in companies with interesting plans for controlling and owning life forms.

It may be that human life forms will figure out how not to be controlled once the controllers cross a tipping point in hubris.

Apple vs. Dell: Capturing the Over 50 Crowd

I'm coming up on 59, and I just sprang for a low-end Apple laptop, after MIT's tech department switched my number-crunching son to one. My forty-something neighbor and her good friend just embarked on Mac too. Her good friend works for Intel. Caveat: this is just anecdotal info.

Apple's Q1 Blowout

I much enjoyed this comment, constantnormal. I would say that an Apple laptop could be included in a basket of goods that a somewhat ordinary U.S. person might want to include for coping with contemporary situations. With beans, corn, squash, a wireless-equipped laptop, and a few feet to crash in, your laid-off couch-surfer with sufficient urban friends can probably survive for quite a while. I find this happening in the place where I live. Young, carless, militant vegans are camping out in what urban planners call high-density. If you've ever practiced martial arts in close quarters, you will have observed the changes in heat and humidity this close-living engenders. Fewer btu's are required to heat such places. The ubiquity of Apple laptops in wire-less enabled coffee shops bodes well for the medium distance on Apple. I don't know about 70 as the buy-in point, but if Apple sends tentacles out toward renewable-energy initiatives, I would really want to get in. I'm still just watching the stock for now.


On Jan 22 09:31 AM constantnormal wrote:

> @ SkateNY -- I presume you're doing a preemptive flaming of the inevitable
> "Apple is a fad" comments, as I could detect nothing of this sort
> in the article. In fact, the word "fad" appears only in your comment,
> and no where in the article.
>
> The article was a good summary of the conference call, but if you're
> interested enough to read the article, you really should download
> the call from iTunes (a free download, search on "Apple earnings")
> and listen to it in its entirety.
>
> Nice job with the summary, John. What I'd really like to see is
> an article that looks at the incredible depth and breadth of management
> talent in Apple, vis-a-vis other companies, not just in the consumer
> electronics realm, but ALL other companies. The incredible wealth
> of talent and experience inside Apple is unmatched by any other company
> I am aware of, bar none. Steve Jobs as the greatest pitchman alive
> today is merely the cherry atop the whipped cream. The company would
> continue to be unstoppable even if Steve were to leave.
>
> It's a testimony to his leadership that he has managed to inculcate
> his modus operandi throughout the company. It will take a long,
> long while before Apple begins to misfire.
>
> That's not to say that they're not going to slide downward during
> this depression -- they are, after all, in the consumer electronics
> field, and are undeniably makers of discretionary purchases, not
> water or food or medicine. But due to their strong management team,
> top-notch talent, and huge cash position (still increasing, by the
> way), they will slide lower a lot slower than their competition,
> gaining competitive ground all the while.
>
> I can't wait until the stock gets down below 70 so I can back up
> the truck and go all-in on AAPL.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Thank you very much for posting, Daniel H. My computer set-up would not let me E-Mail you. My son was given Zyprexa in 1996. The weight gain is truly frightening, as are other side effects. The tide is turning I believe. Most of the pharmaceutical companies sell neuroleptics, and they are all at risk as doctors taper off these medications. Some doctors take seriously the saying about doing no harm. Waiting in the wings with strategies that work, with side benefits, are gyms. Depression medications are also going to lose, as research continues on other treatments. I just finished an exercise clinical trial for breast- and prostate-cancer survivors. We harvested friendship and good stories as well as better bone health from our participation. I pray this is the way of the future. I know the pharmaceutical companies have good friends in Congress, but there comes a time when that game is up. Disclosure: I do not own any pharmaceuticals. I would like to invest in gyms, but I'm not sure how to do the due diligence on them.

Firefox Browser Share Tops 20% in November; Microsoft Still Number One

My son is in a Ph.D. program at MIT, supported by work he got after he did his one year's master's there. When his old windows laptop, bought for him by his subsidy, gave out, it was decided he would have a new all-bells-and-whistles Apple laptop. He loves it, and he is in geophysics, so he is a serious number-cruncher. He is not an artsy-craftsy person for which Apple used to be, and still is, so famous.

I have also to say that Free Geek, in Portland, OR, installs pretty good Linux on everything that goes out their doors. True geeks around here tend to like Linux a lot, and my son's math genius friend (800 boards) from his undergraduate days, has always used Linux.

Microsoft, more than Apple, seems to consider its customers to be its slaves. Apple and Linux are not like that, in my experience, which I admit, is limited.

Disclosure: Seriously contemplating AAPL purchase.