I get my old hometown newspaper, and it's amongst the fifteen odd papers that I tend to read to stay abreast of the world.
So this week....comes the issue noting a robbery attempt (actually two) back on 27 April. A gal walks up to the Subway shop along the main drag leading to the town around 7:30 PM. She enters....wearing a hoodie and sunglasses. She indicates to the guy running the shop that she's there to rob the shop, and she's got a gun (although it's never shown).
Now, here in Arlington....the Subway guy would have tossed open the cash register and thrown the $188 to her in a heartbeat. No argument. No hassle. Just give the lady robber the money.
But this is Bama.
There's apparently a ten-second pause here.....although the newspaper journalist doesn't really indicate that. It's a fairly long pause.
On second one.....the Subway guy is thinking....man, this is like one of those TV show robberies you see on Barnaby Jones or CHIPs. This vision of a 1973 TV show flashes in his mind.
On second two.....he's now thinking about the possible TV interview with the Channel thirty-one blonde gal and how he'll explain the whole situation in simple direct quotes.
On second three....he's now thinking about that Jeopardy episode from last night where he answered all of the New Testament questions in rapid fire.....impressing Grandma and Aunt Jean. Grandma suggested he ought to go off to divinity school....maybe launch a TV minister's career.
On second four....he was thinking if he'd paid back his neighbor for the can of turpentine that he needed for the paint brushes.
On second five....that episode at the Memphis hotel flashed for a second....over that strange lady from Burlington, Vermont and how he lost his billfold that night.
On second six....he was contemplating the wasted time he'd spent watching the whole Lost series, which really crapped out by the final eight episodes.
On second seven....he was thinking maybe learning golf really wasn't a bad idea.
On second eight....he was wondering if Subway would ever give him a regional division chief job.
On second nine....he was wondering if Diet Mountain Dew was really that bad.
And by second ten.....he kinda figured if you were going to rob someone....you'd flash the gun. And she didn't really flash no gun.
So the unnamed Subway guy.....just said "no". He wouldn't hand any money over to the dopey young gal. He had violated every rule in existence in DC, Maryland and Virginia. The gal turned around and left.
A while later....she showed up at the Minnow Bucket....telling this guy that she had a knife and wanted cash from his cash register. In the same fashion....the clerk at the Minnow Bucket paused....did his ten-second thing.....and refused. She ended up walking out again.
Cops indicate that she let in a black Oldsmobile Alero and very distinctive because it had a sunroof....which the vast number of Aleros just never were ordered with that option (I can only assume on this).
The thing about guys from Bama....is that unqiue pause. In ten seconds....we are calculating a fantastic number of things....thinking about episodes of Steinfeld.....comparing 1988 F-150 against a 1998 F-150....and thinking about fresh pancakes with extra syrup. By the tenth second......we usually come around to this stupid question....if you had a gun...you'd show it. So if you aren't that serious about this....then it's not a big deal.
Friday, 11 May 2012
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
My Vote
I was sitting there on Sunday morning....reading through the local news, and suddenly came to realize that there was going to be this localized Arlington election for the city council. One of the members had taken some position and vacated their city council position. The election was going to be held on Tuesday (yesterday). To be honest....it's mostly by my habit of reading the Washington Post on occasion, that I came to notice this election....otherwise, I wouldn't even have known about it.
So we had three candidates....a Republican, a Democrat, and a Green Party individual. The only key factor I could see was that the Green Party individual was standing up against several infrastructure projects which had been rushed up and passed by the council. So I made this decision to vote for the Green individual. Yeah, it's a bit odd....but then it's just a city council slot.
So I walked yesterday morning....about a mile over to the recreation center in the neighborhood, and voted. It was an odd episode because they had three desks set up to handle voters, but as far as I could see....no one was voting. By last night, the total number of votes cast for Arlington was around 16k votes.....which would have been around 12-percent of the registered voters of the county. It was for all practical purposes.....one of the lowest turn-outs in the county's history. The Green individual? Well....they lost in a big sort of way, but still pulled out a 1k votes. The Democratic candidate won, with just 900 votes to spare.
I'm guessing that of the 14k voters....probably over ten percent were like me....just accidentally finding out about the election at the last minute....which really says alot about democracy, and the fact that you can flip a coin on candidates and just pick someone without much thought about the situation.
So we had three candidates....a Republican, a Democrat, and a Green Party individual. The only key factor I could see was that the Green Party individual was standing up against several infrastructure projects which had been rushed up and passed by the council. So I made this decision to vote for the Green individual. Yeah, it's a bit odd....but then it's just a city council slot.
So I walked yesterday morning....about a mile over to the recreation center in the neighborhood, and voted. It was an odd episode because they had three desks set up to handle voters, but as far as I could see....no one was voting. By last night, the total number of votes cast for Arlington was around 16k votes.....which would have been around 12-percent of the registered voters of the county. It was for all practical purposes.....one of the lowest turn-outs in the county's history. The Green individual? Well....they lost in a big sort of way, but still pulled out a 1k votes. The Democratic candidate won, with just 900 votes to spare.
I'm guessing that of the 14k voters....probably over ten percent were like me....just accidentally finding out about the election at the last minute....which really says alot about democracy, and the fact that you can flip a coin on candidates and just pick someone without much thought about the situation.
Sunday, 8 January 2012
Back in Bama
Back in my home state of Bama, there is a discussion going on in the capital for 2012....over school books. There's this idea of moving over to each kid in Bama having an electronic tablet of sorts, and all school text books being issued digitally to each kid. The state is estimating this shift to cost in the range of $800 million....which is a heck of a lot of money.
The experts say that the current pricing of text books is about $90 each....which makes it pretty difficult to buy new books on a regular schedule.
The problems with a e-book situation? Well.....you can figure that it'd cost $200 for each kid to get his e-book and at least ten percent would damage their e-book each and every year. Most parents would have issues over this replacement situation and some probably would not be able to readily pay for such a replacement.
In the 1970s when I attended school....we still had some books dating back to the late-1950s (our English Literature book for example). I can remember one science-related class where the teacher had to correct the material written into the text book because over a period of eight years....the text book had outdated information in it.
This e-book episode sounds kind of interesting but I just can't see kids being able to make this work. There's always the batter-charge episode.....where the kid might show up for a class and his e-book is 'dead'.....so he just smiles at the teacher because he can't recite some Shakespeare line from his e-book. Or you might have some young gal who figures out how to add more books to the e-book, and is sitting in a math class and reading some French novel.
My guess is that the political folks will talk on the subject and eventually just give up. Real books will stay on for a while in Bama (maybe for forty more years). Heck, my old 1958 English Literature book might still be in use for all I know.
The experts say that the current pricing of text books is about $90 each....which makes it pretty difficult to buy new books on a regular schedule.
The problems with a e-book situation? Well.....you can figure that it'd cost $200 for each kid to get his e-book and at least ten percent would damage their e-book each and every year. Most parents would have issues over this replacement situation and some probably would not be able to readily pay for such a replacement.
In the 1970s when I attended school....we still had some books dating back to the late-1950s (our English Literature book for example). I can remember one science-related class where the teacher had to correct the material written into the text book because over a period of eight years....the text book had outdated information in it.
This e-book episode sounds kind of interesting but I just can't see kids being able to make this work. There's always the batter-charge episode.....where the kid might show up for a class and his e-book is 'dead'.....so he just smiles at the teacher because he can't recite some Shakespeare line from his e-book. Or you might have some young gal who figures out how to add more books to the e-book, and is sitting in a math class and reading some French novel.
My guess is that the political folks will talk on the subject and eventually just give up. Real books will stay on for a while in Bama (maybe for forty more years). Heck, my old 1958 English Literature book might still be in use for all I know.
Saturday, 5 November 2011
Andy Rooney
Andy Rooney has passed.
I have this short list of journalists and news people that I have respected over the past fifty-odd years.
There's Paul Harvey, who knew how to explain a pretty difficult story in 90 seconds or less. He preached to you on Saturdays and gave a dose of Americanism that you needed.
There was Harry Reasoner who gave out straight facts and real news. He wouldn't have touched Brittney Spears with a ten-foot pole or ever even mentioned Bigfoot.
There was Frank Reynolds from ABC, who could sum up a big mess in forty words, and leave you relaxed because it really wasn't as big a mess as the other dimwits were portraying a story.
And then came Andy Rooney. He didn't really cover news....he just picked out topics and gave you the 1948 view of reality over a modern-day topic. For some reason....his 1948-view was precisely what we needed.
To be honest, we are coming to an end-point where there just aren't any more journalists.....just wannabe folks who pretend to be journalists.
I have this short list of journalists and news people that I have respected over the past fifty-odd years.
There's Paul Harvey, who knew how to explain a pretty difficult story in 90 seconds or less. He preached to you on Saturdays and gave a dose of Americanism that you needed.
There was Harry Reasoner who gave out straight facts and real news. He wouldn't have touched Brittney Spears with a ten-foot pole or ever even mentioned Bigfoot.
There was Frank Reynolds from ABC, who could sum up a big mess in forty words, and leave you relaxed because it really wasn't as big a mess as the other dimwits were portraying a story.
And then came Andy Rooney. He didn't really cover news....he just picked out topics and gave you the 1948 view of reality over a modern-day topic. For some reason....his 1948-view was precisely what we needed.
To be honest, we are coming to an end-point where there just aren't any more journalists.....just wannabe folks who pretend to be journalists.
The Missing "Juans"
The Feds came to Bama this week....and said they had a legal interest in knowing possible civil rights violations. The curious thing....this new investigation involves Bama schools. They want to know just about everything you can imagine in statistics....with every single school in Bama. All of this has to deal with the anti-illegal law that Bama put into play earlier this year.
The Bama legal folks stood up and said they would be ok with providing this info....once the federal government lawsuit is finished (one way or another). The Feds, for all general purposes, have said that the state lacks the authority to have a anti-immigration law.
I'm guessing this week....there will be a court-ordered deal where some federal judge says the legal request by the Attorney General is legit, and Bama should comply. Bama will quickly walk up to another Federal judge and likely get a stay on this deal.....until a third federal judge can determine if the request is really valid or not. You would get the impression that federal judges are kept busy these days having read, re-read, and then lay out various interpretations of the law. No more goofing off or playing golf on Thursday afternoon.
I sat down and looked at what data the Attorney General was requesting. It's a pretty big request. They want every single public school in Bama to report with a list of alll enrolled students as of the last week of September. Then they want another list of all kids who left from the school since the school year started. Then they want the reason why the kids quit or left since school started. Then they want a list of all kids who have at least one unexplained absence since the end of September. Then they want the school to list the race of each kid in school Then they want the original country of origin of each kid in school. And then they want the English language ability of each kid on a list (the most difficult one, because some kids don't speak true English).
Having grown up in the Bama school system....allow me to offer some insightful analysis. There were three folks in the head office of my school. There was Mr "Joe" (the principal), Mr "Little Joe" (the vice-principal), and Wanda (the secretary).
Seventy-five percent of Mr "Little Joe's" job was discipline. I think he literally walked from 0730 in the morning from one mess to another. Any kid with a infraction....ended up in his office....and he dealt with them in a pretty precise fashion. If you had to have an investigation....he was the guy running it.
"Mr Joe"? He was generally there to handle teacher complaints or parent complaints. I think he could pretty well fill in half the hours of the day in private meetings and sorting various problems out.
"Wanda"? She was there to sign every note that a kid brought in from the parents to explain why they were out for five days. Her signature was vital....otherwise, it wasn't legit. Wanda just signed them.....she never kept a single copy or reported to anyone. The kid would take that note around to his teachers throughout the day to explain things. Odds were....he only gave the home-room teacher a look, and maybe one teacher throughout the rest of the day.
So I looked back at this list of data. Personally, it'll shock me if most schools maintain some kind of data listing like this. Frankly, they might have to go back to the kids and ask some stupid questions. I can imagine this scene of "Mr Little Joe" confronting me and asking me my country of origin, and I respond England. I'd likely stand there and grin.....and he'd likely be at a point of weakness....and just accept that. My other associates? Some might have been more creative and said they were originally from Russia, Mongolia, or maybe even Iceland. By the end of the day...."Mr Little Joe" would have returned and spent four hours putting this all into some spreadsheet, or he might have found some 10th grader that he'd just give them a school project and hope they did it right.
The unexplained absences? Hopefully, the 2011 "Wanda" keeps a copy of these notes. If not, then you have to visit every single teacher. So, you can imagine this listing. Donny stayed out two days.....hauling soybeans to Lawrenceberg for his dad, the farmer. Karl stayed home one day helping his dad dig up the septic tank. Lynn spent half a day out....getting a tattoo removed that Mom never blessed in the first place. Bobby was out for a full week....attending a alcohol rehab session in Montana.
So you can imagine 1526 schools (I checked) across Alabama. You can imagine 1526 spreadsheets being sent to the Attorney General's office. From this list....over 730,000 kids are listed. You can imagine ten lawyers trying to analyze this massive amount of data. They start asking stupid questions....why are so many guys out hauling soybeans? Why are 122 students in some kind of alcohol rehab episode? Why are 16 kids missing and having their tattoos removed? Why are forty-four kids from Mongolia? Where did these 1,226 Icelandic kids come from?
I can imagine these ten idiot lawyers sitting in a DC office for an entire week....and then coming to this conclusion....none of this data makes any sense. So they try to associate every single Latino out of this list. Somewhere down the line....they end up with this list of 2,323 Latinos who fell off the Bama listing. So they search now for the 2,323 Latino kids.
You can imagine these fancy lawyers showing up in some Bama community and asking stupid questions about what happened to Juan. No one trusts the guy. So there's no information flowing. The DC lawyers spend three weeks in Bama trying to track down the 2,323 missing "Juans". By the end of this episode....there's not much to reveal. However, the lawyers will all note that they gained eight pounds during this period.....eating mostly high-on-the-hog. They also met some fine Bama gals, who gave them their phone numbers. They got invited to a Auburn football game. They also ate some fine catfish over at the Catfish Cabin. They were entertained by various guitar pickers and banjo players. They got religion via some revival that they attended. They sipped some great spring water in "dry counties" where alcohol is forbidden. And they were stopped at least twice each and asked by Bama law enforcement what country of origin they are.....and if they could produce an ID.
For some reason, I don't see much coming out of this episode.
Only in Bama.
The Bama legal folks stood up and said they would be ok with providing this info....once the federal government lawsuit is finished (one way or another). The Feds, for all general purposes, have said that the state lacks the authority to have a anti-immigration law.
I'm guessing this week....there will be a court-ordered deal where some federal judge says the legal request by the Attorney General is legit, and Bama should comply. Bama will quickly walk up to another Federal judge and likely get a stay on this deal.....until a third federal judge can determine if the request is really valid or not. You would get the impression that federal judges are kept busy these days having read, re-read, and then lay out various interpretations of the law. No more goofing off or playing golf on Thursday afternoon.
I sat down and looked at what data the Attorney General was requesting. It's a pretty big request. They want every single public school in Bama to report with a list of alll enrolled students as of the last week of September. Then they want another list of all kids who left from the school since the school year started. Then they want the reason why the kids quit or left since school started. Then they want a list of all kids who have at least one unexplained absence since the end of September. Then they want the school to list the race of each kid in school Then they want the original country of origin of each kid in school. And then they want the English language ability of each kid on a list (the most difficult one, because some kids don't speak true English).
Having grown up in the Bama school system....allow me to offer some insightful analysis. There were three folks in the head office of my school. There was Mr "Joe" (the principal), Mr "Little Joe" (the vice-principal), and Wanda (the secretary).
Seventy-five percent of Mr "Little Joe's" job was discipline. I think he literally walked from 0730 in the morning from one mess to another. Any kid with a infraction....ended up in his office....and he dealt with them in a pretty precise fashion. If you had to have an investigation....he was the guy running it.
"Mr Joe"? He was generally there to handle teacher complaints or parent complaints. I think he could pretty well fill in half the hours of the day in private meetings and sorting various problems out.
"Wanda"? She was there to sign every note that a kid brought in from the parents to explain why they were out for five days. Her signature was vital....otherwise, it wasn't legit. Wanda just signed them.....she never kept a single copy or reported to anyone. The kid would take that note around to his teachers throughout the day to explain things. Odds were....he only gave the home-room teacher a look, and maybe one teacher throughout the rest of the day.
So I looked back at this list of data. Personally, it'll shock me if most schools maintain some kind of data listing like this. Frankly, they might have to go back to the kids and ask some stupid questions. I can imagine this scene of "Mr Little Joe" confronting me and asking me my country of origin, and I respond England. I'd likely stand there and grin.....and he'd likely be at a point of weakness....and just accept that. My other associates? Some might have been more creative and said they were originally from Russia, Mongolia, or maybe even Iceland. By the end of the day...."Mr Little Joe" would have returned and spent four hours putting this all into some spreadsheet, or he might have found some 10th grader that he'd just give them a school project and hope they did it right.
The unexplained absences? Hopefully, the 2011 "Wanda" keeps a copy of these notes. If not, then you have to visit every single teacher. So, you can imagine this listing. Donny stayed out two days.....hauling soybeans to Lawrenceberg for his dad, the farmer. Karl stayed home one day helping his dad dig up the septic tank. Lynn spent half a day out....getting a tattoo removed that Mom never blessed in the first place. Bobby was out for a full week....attending a alcohol rehab session in Montana.
So you can imagine 1526 schools (I checked) across Alabama. You can imagine 1526 spreadsheets being sent to the Attorney General's office. From this list....over 730,000 kids are listed. You can imagine ten lawyers trying to analyze this massive amount of data. They start asking stupid questions....why are so many guys out hauling soybeans? Why are 122 students in some kind of alcohol rehab episode? Why are 16 kids missing and having their tattoos removed? Why are forty-four kids from Mongolia? Where did these 1,226 Icelandic kids come from?
I can imagine these ten idiot lawyers sitting in a DC office for an entire week....and then coming to this conclusion....none of this data makes any sense. So they try to associate every single Latino out of this list. Somewhere down the line....they end up with this list of 2,323 Latinos who fell off the Bama listing. So they search now for the 2,323 Latino kids.
You can imagine these fancy lawyers showing up in some Bama community and asking stupid questions about what happened to Juan. No one trusts the guy. So there's no information flowing. The DC lawyers spend three weeks in Bama trying to track down the 2,323 missing "Juans". By the end of this episode....there's not much to reveal. However, the lawyers will all note that they gained eight pounds during this period.....eating mostly high-on-the-hog. They also met some fine Bama gals, who gave them their phone numbers. They got invited to a Auburn football game. They also ate some fine catfish over at the Catfish Cabin. They were entertained by various guitar pickers and banjo players. They got religion via some revival that they attended. They sipped some great spring water in "dry counties" where alcohol is forbidden. And they were stopped at least twice each and asked by Bama law enforcement what country of origin they are.....and if they could produce an ID.
For some reason, I don't see much coming out of this episode.
Only in Bama.
Friday, 9 September 2011
The "Pass The Bill" Bill
I ended up watching the President's speech. It's probably sixth speech of the year that I've watched him give. It needed to be a five-star speech. By the end....I was feeling mostly it fell into the 2-star marginal speech category. The jobs potential? It's hard to say. It kinda felt like a guy was having a heart attack and we needed to use the defibrillator but in this case....we just had a K-Mart defibrillator with four AAA-batteries in it. The "jolt" might just be a tingle, and I'd be in NCAA-heaven with Bama playing Auburn everyday (it's the best a guy from Bama could hope for....Iron Bowl in heaven daily).
The $450 billion? Well....it'll come out of some imaginary pocket like the $800 billion that we found for stimulus a while back. If it did turn around the jobs market, then we'd actually have more folks paying taxes, and maybe make the money back. But if you only created 100k jobs over twelve months with the $450 billion, then it's mostly a waste of time and money.
At some point....I had this deja vu feeling over "pass the bill". Later on, some journalist commented....it got mentioned seventeen times during this speech. I kept thinking it was a psychological thing.....like when Luke Skywalker used his Jeda powers to make some dopey guy do something that he wouldn't normally do. Luke usually had his hand out and was focusing hard on his victim. To be honest, I never saw any mortal character in Star Wars defeat the Jeda mindmelt deal. It's hard to say if that Boehner guy or Cantor kid from Virginia can stand up against the President's Jeda powers. Mortal men just can't fight it....usually.
So will it pass? I'm thinking that the House ought to split this up into individual bills....for each single item. Up and down vote. Seventy percent of the bills would easily pass by the Republicans in the House, and likely stop in the Senate because they just won't dare stand for twenty-odd bills. Frankly, they'd likely say it's all or none....making Boehner and Cantor mostly grin that the old guys in the Senate just weren't up to one-page bills (too much to read).
The plan to fix roads and schools? Which ones? Even split amongst all fifty states? You can imagine everyone wanting a chunk of the money to do something with Route 16 highway, the old gym at the school, and replacing a 64-year old bridge considered unsafe. The issue is that you don't have a list sitting there with projects ready to go (remember, don't utter "shovel ready" in any national audience or folks start laughing). I'm guessing over 900 principals are pulling out their dream plans tomorrow morning and trying to convince Senator Tubby that they truly need eight million to build this great school annex building. You figure four months to argue over this priority list of projects, another six months to get the contracts fixed up and signed, and another eighteen months before the school is finished. There's limits to this concept.
Then I came to the end of this speech. It felt like a political huddle with a coach giving you his strategy. Confidence wasn't really overflowing on this matter. It might have some effect, but not as much as you'd like. Would it convince a company to grow it's jobs base? No. Would it convince a boss to hire up forty more employees? Maybe, but the President left out the various regulations that he'd dump (momentarily). So that wasn't going to help much.
The $450 billion? Well....it'll come out of some imaginary pocket like the $800 billion that we found for stimulus a while back. If it did turn around the jobs market, then we'd actually have more folks paying taxes, and maybe make the money back. But if you only created 100k jobs over twelve months with the $450 billion, then it's mostly a waste of time and money.
At some point....I had this deja vu feeling over "pass the bill". Later on, some journalist commented....it got mentioned seventeen times during this speech. I kept thinking it was a psychological thing.....like when Luke Skywalker used his Jeda powers to make some dopey guy do something that he wouldn't normally do. Luke usually had his hand out and was focusing hard on his victim. To be honest, I never saw any mortal character in Star Wars defeat the Jeda mindmelt deal. It's hard to say if that Boehner guy or Cantor kid from Virginia can stand up against the President's Jeda powers. Mortal men just can't fight it....usually.
So will it pass? I'm thinking that the House ought to split this up into individual bills....for each single item. Up and down vote. Seventy percent of the bills would easily pass by the Republicans in the House, and likely stop in the Senate because they just won't dare stand for twenty-odd bills. Frankly, they'd likely say it's all or none....making Boehner and Cantor mostly grin that the old guys in the Senate just weren't up to one-page bills (too much to read).
The plan to fix roads and schools? Which ones? Even split amongst all fifty states? You can imagine everyone wanting a chunk of the money to do something with Route 16 highway, the old gym at the school, and replacing a 64-year old bridge considered unsafe. The issue is that you don't have a list sitting there with projects ready to go (remember, don't utter "shovel ready" in any national audience or folks start laughing). I'm guessing over 900 principals are pulling out their dream plans tomorrow morning and trying to convince Senator Tubby that they truly need eight million to build this great school annex building. You figure four months to argue over this priority list of projects, another six months to get the contracts fixed up and signed, and another eighteen months before the school is finished. There's limits to this concept.
Then I came to the end of this speech. It felt like a political huddle with a coach giving you his strategy. Confidence wasn't really overflowing on this matter. It might have some effect, but not as much as you'd like. Would it convince a company to grow it's jobs base? No. Would it convince a boss to hire up forty more employees? Maybe, but the President left out the various regulations that he'd dump (momentarily). So that wasn't going to help much.
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
Simply Business
There are two interesting business episodes unfolding, which I kinda have an interest in.
First, Borders Books are bankrupt, period. They thought someone would come out of the shadows and buy them....but the amount of debt and unsustainable profit is an issue. To be honest, between Amazon and these digital books available....it's hard to be a local neighborhood book store (even in a massive mall). It is a sign of the times.
A trend here? Digital books are growing and I would suspect by 2020 that seventy-five percent of all books will be digital, as sales go. I won't say it's a positive trend, but at least people are still reading.
Borders was this place you go and hang out....picking up an odd book for five minutes and sitting at some easy chair. If you felt right with the book, you bought it. Coffee? Yes. It was a good atmosphere, I will admit.
The other big story? Readers Digest wants to sell itself. Amusingly enough....they want a billion dollars. Last year, they had around 1.4 billion in revenue, but that equaled around thirty million dollars in losses. To me.....that's a huge signal that you've got big problems.....over a billion in sales, and you still can't show revenue.
Who buys Readers Digest? Mostly older folks and medical establishments. If you go to a routine dentist or doctor's appointment....you typically find it still laid out and offered as reading material while you wait.
As a kid, I remember reading it. The last time I picked up and read one? About six years ago. I actually bought one. What I found laid out in the one I bought.....one extremely political story in favor of John Kerry, and two stories over the environment and global warming, which tried to sound factual but were loaded with unproven points. I sat there shaking my head because it'd turned into the National Geographic....just another trend magazine run mostly by a bunch of agenda writers and editors.
Will anyone come up to pay a billion for Readers Digest? I suspect few if any takers. They might eventually unload for around $750 million and end up in the hands of some Brazilian or Saudi billionaire. They would likely hire out a number of cheap writers to contribute and try to remake the magazine into something totally different. Eventually, it'll fail completely and disappear from the shelves.
So in the end....two more dinosaurs dying out.
First, Borders Books are bankrupt, period. They thought someone would come out of the shadows and buy them....but the amount of debt and unsustainable profit is an issue. To be honest, between Amazon and these digital books available....it's hard to be a local neighborhood book store (even in a massive mall). It is a sign of the times.
A trend here? Digital books are growing and I would suspect by 2020 that seventy-five percent of all books will be digital, as sales go. I won't say it's a positive trend, but at least people are still reading.
Borders was this place you go and hang out....picking up an odd book for five minutes and sitting at some easy chair. If you felt right with the book, you bought it. Coffee? Yes. It was a good atmosphere, I will admit.
The other big story? Readers Digest wants to sell itself. Amusingly enough....they want a billion dollars. Last year, they had around 1.4 billion in revenue, but that equaled around thirty million dollars in losses. To me.....that's a huge signal that you've got big problems.....over a billion in sales, and you still can't show revenue.
Who buys Readers Digest? Mostly older folks and medical establishments. If you go to a routine dentist or doctor's appointment....you typically find it still laid out and offered as reading material while you wait.
As a kid, I remember reading it. The last time I picked up and read one? About six years ago. I actually bought one. What I found laid out in the one I bought.....one extremely political story in favor of John Kerry, and two stories over the environment and global warming, which tried to sound factual but were loaded with unproven points. I sat there shaking my head because it'd turned into the National Geographic....just another trend magazine run mostly by a bunch of agenda writers and editors.
Will anyone come up to pay a billion for Readers Digest? I suspect few if any takers. They might eventually unload for around $750 million and end up in the hands of some Brazilian or Saudi billionaire. They would likely hire out a number of cheap writers to contribute and try to remake the magazine into something totally different. Eventually, it'll fail completely and disappear from the shelves.
So in the end....two more dinosaurs dying out.
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