Canada does not do very well vis-a-vis our Kyoto commitment.
So here we are in Canada, which along with the States and Australia was laughed out of Nairobi for its attitudes to climate change and Kyoto, and we are off to mail a letter and what is on the current stamp from Crown Corporation Canada Post? Wind turbines. With mountains in the background. Where are the smokestacks for the coal burning power plants? Where are the giant trucks digging up the tarsands?
Ad executives everywhere are ripping out hair trying to find new ways not to get fired. Old advertising models are dying.
Those working for KFC did something totally unique and big scale. They built an 87,500 square-foot Colonel Sanders in the desert. It took a team 3,000 hours to create a logo that was big enough to see from space!
(via Amber Mac)
Why?
So guys like me would post it on a blog, spreading good will for deep fried factory chicken. Free viral advertising.
To see a time lapse of the construction click PLAY, or watch it on Google Video.
Note: Google Video really does have a far better feature set than YouTube (which is also now full of trashy advertising). Since Google owns both, it will be interesting to see how they evolve in parallel.
Doh!
Should have bought Apple stock back when it was tanking.
Apple’s market capital stands at over $73 billion.
Eagle-eye reader Steve points out that both Yahoo and Google say the APPL high is actually 86.40.
TUAW Moneywatch: Apple Shares hit high – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
In an innovative new marketing effort, Wells Fargo Bank has launched a pilot of an online multiplayer video game built entirely inside another virtual world: Linden Lab’s “Second Life.”
The pilot project, known as Stagecoach Island, is a digital environment intended to help young people learn financial responsibility. Visitors there can skydive, fly hovercrafts, dance and shop. But woven into the experience, to which Wells Fargo has been inviting groups of people in San Diego and Austin, Texas, is a series of financial messages intended to help them learn something about money management.
Wells Fargo launches game inside ‘Second Life’ | CNET News.com
The only time I got hit badly for a bribe was at the Caracas airport in Venezuela.
It was blatant. Systematic. Though I pride myself on avoiding these encounters, I paid up that time — US$12 or so I could make a connection. Irked was I, but happily I bumped into a friend and we spent the last of his Venezuelan money in the bar.
Other times I have paid baksheesh, of course, but it was part of the normal course of business in those countries.
We “negotiated” a Park pass in Peru I recall. It was a fee that gringos normally did not pay.
In any case, Haiti is the bottom of the barrel. Finland the least corrupt.
Check the full list — CPI table / CPI 2006 / in focus / news room / home – Transparency International
Hungary is another of the dental vacation destinations. Too far away for me, i reckon.
After 10 days in this small border town, Carothers had much to smile about.
She had visited Budapest and Vienna, sampled some of Hungary’s most popular wines and enjoyed people-watching in neighborhood cafes. When she returned home to suburban Washington, D.C., she brought gifts for friends and a few souvenirs of her own, including eight new crowns.
A trip to the dentist may not be everybody’s idea of a vacation, but it paid off for Carothers. Literally. The tab for her dental work came to $2,900 — about a quarter of the $11,150 she estimates she would have paid had she gone to a preferred dentist in her employer’s insurance plan. In all, she spent just under $4,300 on dental care and travel, including a $45-a-night hotel room and last-minute airfare at a pricey $899.
USATODAY.com – The inciDENTAL tourist
I’m assigning my Dubai correspondent Chris to check this out. Rumour is that the tower on the building will eventually be almost 1km high!
With two stories added every week, Burj Dubai is taking shape as the centerpiece of a 20-billion-dollar venture featuring the construction of a new district, “Downtown Burj Dubai,” that will house 30,000 apartments and the world’s largest shopping mall.
Launched in early 2004, the construction of the tower by South Korea’s Samsung should be completed at the end of 2008 and cost one billion dollars, according to Greg Sang, the Emaar official in charge of Burj Dubai.
Burj Dubai already has 79 stories, taking its height to more than 200 meters (656 feet). But even after having gone that far, Emaar is still not revealing the tower’s final height.
BREITBART.COM – World’s tallest tower rising in Dubai
artists drawing – on Wikipedia
Even the NY Times is in trouble.
BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » The dark cloud inside the silver lining of the dark cloud
I’m still shopping for a dentist in a developing country, likely Mexico.
Dental work in Canada is over-priced in my opinion. How many can afford $400 / hour for sitting in a chair?
More than 500,000 Americans traveled out of the country last year for medical or dental work, according to the National Coalition on Health Care. In those numbers are cases of heart bypasses, orthopedic surgeries and expensive dental treatments.
Who’da thunk it?
Baseball (barely a sport) is one of the biggest success stories on the internet.
In 2000, a few visionary executives saw the potential for baseball on the Internet …
Baseball’s 30 teams agreed to each kick in $1-million (U.S.) a season over four years to jump-start the venture at a time when streaming media was in its infancy.
Yet the gamble worked, and much sooner than anticipated.
In just its second year of operation, the site had paid for itself. Users were logging on by the millions, first for audio play-by-play and extensive stats, then for video, and today for the massive amount of content, such as the live pitch tracker.
Revenue from the site, which is divided equally between the 30 teams, soared to $195-million last year, from $36-million in 2001. Visitors have climbed to 1.7 billion from 190 million during that time, while subscribers — who shell out anywhere from $10 a season to $100 for access to video, audio and statistical breakdowns of games — hit 1.3 million last year, up from 125,000 in 2001.
When baseball considered taking MLB Advanced Media public in late 2004, four U.S. investment banks valued the company at between $2-billion and $2.5-billion. Thanks to the rapidly rising popularity of Internet video, that valuation has risen to between $4-billion and $5-billion since, the league says.
… The league’s next leap will come in 2007 when it attempts to offer video content for mobile phones, keeping it well ahead of professional football, hockey and basketball, which are still in the process of getting their games on-line.
globeandmail.com: Baseball’s (on-line) field of dreams
Thanks Rocco. And GO TIGERS!
Rick McCharles 
