in re:

I love coffee, I have a cup almost every day in the morning and likely another cup or two depending on the days events. That said I also love cafes, I mean the European style, Parisian sidewalk cafe, but also anything that closely approximates this here on the left bank of the Atlantic. I am for one used to paying the expensive price of coffee that Starbucks has made most Americans accustomed too. I’ve discussed these prices with others before, justifying the cost as it pays for the space for out of work authors, students and others to lounge about all day. So when I read an article on Slate which I enjoyed called “Bitter Brew – I opened a charming neighborhood coffee shop. Then it destroyed my life.” on Slate, which went over the failure of opening a cozy neighborhood cafe, and the impossibility of profit (Makes it sound like you need lots of take out coffee orders to succeed, ah the brilliance of the Starbucks drive thru) But the price break down on coffee, i.e. that it is pure profit seems pretty dead on.

Coffee was a different story —thanks to the trail blazed by Starbucks, the world of coffee retail is now a rogue’s playground of jaw-dropping markups. An espresso that required about 18 cents worth of beans (and we used very good beans) was sold for $2.50 with nary an eyebrow raised on either side of the counter. A dab of milk froth or a splash of hot water transformed the drink into a macchiato or an Americano, respectively, and raised the price to $3. The house brew too cold to be sold for $1 a cup was chilled further and reborn at $2.50 a cup as iced coffee, a drink whose appeal I do not even pretend to grasp. – Bitter Brew

However, I am not deterred, it is a sort of retirement hobby that I’d like to take on, however the big difference in my dream is that I want to have a cafe/bistro, and while I only hope to break even, I plan to serve bistro food and drinks and it is there, inalcoholl where I feel that places can pull in the extra money, who orders multiple coffees, but a few extra Kronenberg 1664s and hopefully I’ll be in business.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

So one would think that being on winter break from school would leave one with lots of time to keep up w/ the posts on here, but not having as busy a schedule, although i’ve still found myself running around, makes it harder, not easier to post.
But while on the subject of blogging, which I admit is kinda a dumb word i think, but non the less in general I get two different responses, one is why would you write on this thing, which I think is a pretty understandable question as people would wonder why waste your time putting up something no one, or hardly anyone reads or would want to read. I think that possibly the answer is that a large percentage of the blog is really for me, its an excuse to keep up on articles and ideas i am interested, and to try and form opinions, and to take the place of the emails i sometimes send out on the subjects when i find articles i like. The other comment i get is to post more often and to this i am of course flattered and will hopefully oblige. So I’ll put some posts up, but about to head to dinner so i’ll pause here.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

So it has been a fairly relaxing Christmas for me, actually a real live Christmakuah for those of you who watch the OC, as today was the first day of Hanukah, so actually for dinner tonight we had some Latkahs (w/ some honey baked ham, so not exactly the best at being kosher) but I guess you could say only in America.
Speaking of America, well not really, but I was changing the subject, to HDTV, which my folks now have, and it is pretty amazing looking, right now watching Grey’s Anatomy which is looking pretty good, but yesterday I caught some football in HD and today a basketball game and I am pretty much blown away by it.
I see folgers has pulled out old commercials to use as new ones, again changing the subj, actually it seems like a savy move, kinda like the coke nostalga, plus you save the money of creating new ones.
speaking of coke, I had wanted to mention an interesting article I saw in the economist on how Pepsi had just surpased Coke for the first time in sales (i think sales, but it may have been some other measure) but the point of the article was actually about how good it is to be number two. I had long noticed this and they pointed out Target, who doesn’t get the negative press that Wal-Mart does (it points to the recent movie and countless boycotts), Burger King, which has actually targeted ‘frequent fast food users’ while McDonalds feeling the pressure from Supersize Me has needed to change themselves. So who knows, maybe Coke will be in a better place, thats what the article seems to think, its easier to be chasing after someone.

So I guess thats about it for today, it wasn’t exactly a white Christmas with the rain coming down a bit, and the snow we had melting, but still a nice day with family, hope you all had a nice one as well.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

So its been a bit since I’ve been able to put up a post, so i’ll appologize to few who have complained (and I stress few), but I have been extremely busy, with exams, take home exams and a trip to New York. So I’ll just briefly mention that I am now officially, half way done w/ law school, pretty unbelievable as it has been flying by. Aside from the occasional stress its been a really good time, some would say I am crazy for saying that, but I’d only say its from being around smart professors and students and studying interesting things. Anyway, enough about that, I am back in Cleveland for the holidays – hopefully it will be a nice time seeing friends and family, I’ll put up some posts, including the monthly book club book – Freakonomics. So stay tuned for that.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Heard an interesting interview on NPR today while driving back from my wonderful international law exam, the interview which I only caught a part of and hopefully can find the rest of later, concerned a study that I think was published in Nature (story here, I haven’t yet read it), concerning the accuracy of Wikipedia (which recently was hit with a scandal) compared to the Encyclopedia Britannica, apparently, they both have a decent number of small errors, but are pretty comparable in terms of accuracy. They asked if this was good news for Wikipedia or bad news for the Prestigious encyclopedia, and he responded it was good news, essentially that this type of collective creation did have value. I’ve been using Wikipedia from time to time and I agree its useful, but sometimes annoying to wade through the different revisions, to make sure your seeing an accurate version. Anyway, it was interesting.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Interesting article I read about media ownership, concerning what one buys when they buy a CD, DVD or back in the day the LP. Some folks have bought the same movie on VHS, DVD and the upcoming HDVD or Blueray, (depending on which wins) Anyway, the article is interesting, at least in probing the idea of content ownership, especially with his business model on CD swapping.

The idea was that consumers would ship their used CDs to us and we would give them credits towards other CDs in our collection. When customers would redeem these credits we would shift “ownership” of the requested CD to them while continuing to store the actual CD in our warehouses. You might be thinking “What good is it to own a CD that sits in a warehouse?” Well, instead of shipping “your” CD to you we would instead rip the CD and allow you to download “your” MP3s.

The idea of leaving the CD in the warehouse isn’t ‘that’ different then stock certificates where when one buys a share of stock, it still sits in your brokerage house’s warehouse, with their name as the street name, and your name only as a beneficial owner (in the middle of studying for Business Associations if you couldn’t tell) So why not CDs? See the article on Engadget blog here

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Just wanted to mention a great op-ed from the NY Times that I only just read (thanks to my Dad for pointing it out) it ran on Dec 4, so if you still have a copy around I recommend reading it. The op-ed by Adam Cohen (on NYTimes subscription req’d) criticizes the current ‘war on Christmas’ and pointing out what a sham it is, going over the history of Christmas in America, and expousing that they are trying to claim we have always had this commericalized Christmas.

What is less obvious, though, is that Christmas’s self-proclaimed defenders are rewriting the holiday’s history. They claim that the ”traditional” American Christmas is under attack by what John Gibson, another Fox anchor, calls ”professional atheists” and ”Christian haters.” But America has a complicated history with Christmas, going back to the Puritans, who despised it. What the boycotters are doing is not defending America’s Christmas traditions, but creating a new version of the holiday that fits a political agenda.

And adding to the whole story, is the funny bit about how Fox itself used holiday “Fox News’s online store was promoting its ”Holiday Collection” for shoppers. Among the items offered to put under a ”holiday tree” was ”The O’Reilly Factor Holiday Ornament.” After bloggers pointed this out, Fox changed the ”holidays” to ”Christmases.” ”

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

At least that is in Brazil. I really loved the story (here at the BBC), about the Arabic fastfood joint Habib’s (for the Portugese speakers, see site),
Habib’s started 17 years ago in Sao Paulo has expanded to 260 stores (McDonald’s has 1100 there). The story is even more fascinating because the Brazilian chain was founded by a Portuguese man. The chain wasn’t aimed at the Arabic population who had more formal restaraunts, and was aimed at low prices. They had even thought about opening some in the US in Florida, but apparently 9/11 halted those plans. I think the model seems like a great one, while possibly in the US this could potentially be a success at a higher price point (going after a Panera/Cosi type market segment, instead of the KFC/McDonalds segment) The article also noted the failure of KFC in Brazil for failing to investigate that Brazilians don’t like eating w/ their hands or out of cardboard (Habib’s has waiters and silverware, even though they comptete w/ street vendors for their market)

This leads me to a point I meant to write about a while ago, the Starbucks phenomenom, or basically chains in general. In general I don’t like to go to chains, as I prefer (rightly or wrongly) local places, or at least local chains. However I do have an appreciation for Starbucks where coffee houses wouldn’t be otherwise, but I’d prefer a local place and I’d hate to see Starbucks drive out the local place, but I love that now on the Turnpike or highway I can pull over and get a good coffee, instead of a gas station coffee. I guess for the same reason I like Panera type places, in that they are fast, and can take the place of where you might have gotten stuck w/ fast food but can get something of potentially greater quality (or percieved quality at least). So to tie it all back to Habib’s, I’d love an Arabic fast food chain, although I’d hate to have it push out local places, but I feel there is always room for both.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

So just the other day the Supreme Court heard a case conerning the military recruitment at law schools. The schools had wanted to be able to keep the military out, but retain their federal funding, is essentially what the situation was, but it was portrayed as a free speech issue. The case Rumsfeld v. FAIR (Forum for Academic and Istitutional Rights) (See article concerning the case on the SCOTUSblog) is a bit more complex in that the reason the schools don’t want to allow the military to recruit is that the military discriminates against homosexuals, a criteria that the schools won’t normally allow in a prospective employer who comes to campus.
For a detailed examination see the SCOTUSblog, I only wanted to add in the fact that I am not sure if it is a free speech issue as the schools are free to reject the military and lose the federal funding. Losing this funding though would cripple most schools and thus they aren’t really ‘free’ to pursue this path. At least here at OSU they make it clear that the school doesn’t support the militaries policy of discrimination, and I feel that this is a fairly reasonable middle road. At the same time I also in general don’t like federal gov’t coercison with ‘their money’, just as they do with highway money as it is coming from state residents in the first place, why should they have to beg for it back. (Okay we won’t get into that argument right now, as there are great arguments for the massive federal highway system, but one only needs to look to the most recent transportation bill (READ bridge in Alaska) to see the downsides too, that and I am opposed to the 21 year old drinking age, being set essentially at the federal level) So i’ve digressed far from the original point, but I think thats okay, I would only add as a closing point that we should also be arguing about the military’s policy as well. Right now we have had recruiting shortfalls, with I believe only getting 80% of the numbers they needed (that might be the reserves recruiting number, so don’t quote me) but in any event, even with the lowered standards we aren’t meeting our numbers. This would seem to me the perfect reason to justify taking qualified homosexuals, instead of what is a silly don’t ask/don’t tell policy.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

So I’ve come to watch Bill O’Reilly from time to time, mostly for a chuckle as its hard for me to take him so seriously these days, with his ‘War on Christmas’ theme, where he feels that the liberals are destorying Christmas by banning its usage in public, stores not putting up Christmas signs. Anyway, I haven’t gotten to catch his show (un)fortunatly recently, as its not a top priority (I do have it and some other shows set to record on SageTV on my computer, which is a great program if I haven’t plugged it yet on here, essentially like Tivo) Anyway, I was watching the Daily Show last night as I was going to bed and they had a clip of the O’Reilly Factor, playing a clip of the Daily Show and then claiming that they were helping lead the assault on Christmas, refering to it as ‘Secular Central’ at one point . (See transcript of both here) The Daily Show made a clever retort, including pointing out the clip they were using was a year old, and calling the channel ‘godless central’

I was then looking at some other accounts by O’Reilly on his Christmas crusade, including an interview with Nulman, an author on customer service, who said stores had switched to saying Happy Holiday’s because they wanted to include non-Christians (more sales? new idea) and that Happy Holiday’s didn’t offend Christians. However acording to Bill, it does offend Christmas, just as according to him Merry Christmas doesn’t offend non-Christians. Go figure? (See here)wonder where this research is coming from.

NULMAN: “Season’s Greetings” and “Happy Holidays,” Bill, does not offend Christians.

O’REILLY: Yes, it does. It absolutely does. And I know that for a fact. But the smart way to do it is “Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Season’s Greetings, Happy Kwanzaa.”

NULMAN: It’s a long list.

O’REILLY: It’s OK, you’ve got a big store. You’ve got a big store.

Anyway, to me Christmas was more about family, I could care less what stores put up in their windows, and the whole commercialization of Christmas has more to do with killing Christmas (if its been killed, but I have to think your pretty weak if you can let Target’s lack of Merry Christmas advertising ruin your Christmas) then any liberal conspiracy, but hey, what do I know.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »