OverMatter

White Cloud toilet paper trademark games

"By the mid-nineties, as P&G was starting to struggle to maintain its sales and earnings momentum, Wal-Mart's business was taking off with the rapid expansion of its supercenters. Wal-Mart was quick to take advantage of a P&G miscalculation. P&G had let the trademark on its White Cloud toilet paper lapse in 1994, in order to concentrate on its pricier Charmin brand. A private entrepreneur snapped up the trademark and sold it to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart started displaying White Cloud with open rolls so shoppers could touch and compare. White Cloud sales quickly increased, hurting P&G's Charmin."

One other interesting tidbit from the same article: "As it introduces new razors, Gillette slowly pulls up the price of its "tail" brands, the older generations. Eventually, the company figures, a Mach3 user will notice that the new Mach3Turbo isn't that much more and will jump to the costlier product."

(Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2005 - "P&G's Gillette Edge: The Playbook It Honed at Wal-Mart")

30,000 DVD movies

Interesting stat: "...thanks to declining disk-drive prices, the cost to store 30,000 DVD movies (close to every feature movie available on DVD) on hard drives is now a very affordable $80,000." (Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2005; Page B1, "Web Allows Fans to See Wide Variety of Movies That Were Hard to Get")

There’s a Hero on Your Desktop

"To most, it’s just a printer. But to tissue engineers, rocket scientists and architects, the good old inkjet is the secret to grand innovation" (Popular Science)

SilentPCReview.com

SilentPCReview.com :: Everything about Silent / Quiet Computers (via Computing's silent revolution | CNET News.com

Exploring the law of unintended consequences

"The law of unintended consequences shows us how many innocent innovations like email, anti-virus and DRM can become something far worse than the inventors had ever imagined... If you've ever wondered just why American currency was redesigned in the 1990s..." (The Register)

Democracy Rising

"In 1775 there were no democracies. Then came the American Revolution and raised the number to one. Some 230 years later there are 117, accounting for 61% of the world's governments.

This historic transformation in the norms of governance has not occurred at a steady pace. Rather, it has accelerated. Just over 30 years ago, the proportion of democracies was about half of what it is today. These years of rapid transition have been dubbed democracy's "third wave" by the political scientist Samuel Huntington. The wave metaphor, however, gives the impression of an inevitable ebb. But each of Mr. Huntington's first two waves left the world considerably more free and democratic than it had been before. And there is no telling how long a democracy wave will last. The first continued for 140-odd years; the second, for just about 15. The world could all go democratic before this "third wave" is spent.

(Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2005; Page A16 - The Democratic Ideal)

George Washington's Plan B

"According to biographer Joseph J. Ellis ("His Excellency," Alfred A. Knopf), Washington set his face against the crown when British nobles tried to deprive him of valuable Ohio Valley land he had earned leading the Virginia militia against the French and Indians on Britain's behalf. His fallback plan if he lost the war was to take the remains of his army to the Ohio valley and tackle the British with Indian-style warfare if they dared come after him" (Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2005; Page A17 - Global View)

Firefox Rising

"Coders have created more than 175 extensions that perform specific, sometimes delightful functions, like incorporating an iTunes controller in the browser's border or a three-day weather forecast that pulls data from Weather.com and displays sun, cloud, and rain icons in the Firefox status bar." (Wired 13.02: The Firefox Explosion)

Maximum Velocity

5.17 mph
Alexander Popov: World’s Fastest Swimmer
"Popov swam the 50-meter freestyle in 21.64 seconds at the summer 2000 Russian national championships. The 6'6" swimmer’s disproportionately large feet enable his tremendous kick. "

11.6 mph
Paula Radcliffe: World’s fastest female marathon runner
"In 2002, English track star Paula Radcliffe won the Chicago Marathon with a world-record-breaking time of two hours, 17 minutes and 18 seconds. Then, less than a year later, she ran the 2003 Flora London Marathon and finished in 2:15:25—beating her own record by nearly two minutes and slicing an unprecedented three minutes off her closest competitor.

In a sport where speed improvements are marked in seconds, not minutes, Radcliffe redefines the rate of human performance gains. Prior to her record-smashing run, it had taken 16 years for women to knock a minute and 20 seconds off the world record.

Radcliffe, 31, combines extreme training with breakthrough technology. Most of her practice sessions are logged at altitude near Font Romeu in the French Pyrenees or in Flagstaff, Arizona, where running in the thin alpine air boosts the oxygen-transporting red blood cells that are crucial to endurance. And two years ago, she began working with Nike engineers to design a marathon shoe. In Nike’s Beaverton, Oregon, design lab, she ran on a specialized treadmill coupled with high-speed 3-D cameras that analyze foot strike, pressure and alignment. The result, the 6.8-ounce Zoom, is also available to mortals ($85)."

37.6 mph
Secretariat: World’s fastest thoroughbred
"In the 1973 Kentucky Derby, Secretariat set a record that has remained unbroken for 30 years. Autopsy records show that the horse’s heart weighed a hefty 21 pounds, three times the average for a thoroughbred his size."

81 mph
Sam Whittingham: World’s fastest self-propelled man
"The self-propelled land-speed record was set in October 2002, when Canadian Sam Whittingham reached 81 mph inside a bullet-shaped recumbent bicycle on a flat course in Battle Mountain, Nevada. Whittingham’s victory was attributed to his low body weight and particularly low-riding bike."

(Popular Science)

Laws, Sausages, and Textbooks...

"When it comes to setting the agenda for textbook publishing, only the 22 states that have a formal adoption process count...

Among the adoption states, Texas, California, and Florida have unrivaled clout. Yes, size does matter. Together, these three have roughly 13 million students in K-12 public schools. The next 18 adoption states put together have about 12.7 million...

Obviously, publishers create products specifically for the adoptions in those three key states. They then sell the same product to everybody else, because [textbooks] are very expensive to produce...

Publishers hope to recoup the costs of a big program from the sudden gush of money in a big adoption state, then turn a profit on the subsequent trickle from the "open territories." Those that fail to make the list in Texas, California, or Florida are stuck recouping costs for the next six years. Strapped for money to spend on projects for the next adoption period, they're likely to fail again. As the cycle grows vicious, they turn into lunch meat...

The big three adoption states are not equal, however. In that elite trio, Texas rules. California has more students (more than 6 million versus just over 4 million in Texas), but Texas spends just as much money (approximately $42 billion) on its public schools. More important, Texas allocates a dedicated chunk of funds specifically for textbooks. That money can't be used for anything else, and all of it must be spent in the adoption year. Furthermore, Texas has particular power when it comes to high school textbooks, since California adopts statewide only for textbooks from kindergarten though 8th grade, while the Lone Star State's adoption process applies to textbooks from kindergarten through 12th grade.

If you're creating a new textbook, therefore, you start by scrutinizing Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). This document is drawn up by a group of curriculum experts, teachers, and political insiders appointed by the 15 members of the Texas Board of Education, currently 5 Democrats and 10 Republicans, about half of whom have a background in education. TEKS describes what Texas wants and what the entire nation will therefore get.

Texas is truly the tail that wags the dog. There is, however, a tail that wags this mighty tail. Every adoption state allows private citizens to review textbooks and raise objections. Publishers must respond to these objections at open hearings...

Of course, publishers prefer to face no objections at all. That's why going through a major adoption, especially a Texas adoption, is like earning a professional certificate in textbook editing. Survivors just know things.

What do they know?

Mainly, they know how to censor themselves....""

The Muddle Machine: Confessions of a Texbook Editor