another smelly clumb of mashed flowers

When is a Sale a Sale? Something I've always wondered. According to Boston.com, in Mass. a item can be advertised as "On Sale" for 69% of the year....

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Malcolm Gladwell, (The Tipping Point, Blink), has an article in the New Yorker that asserts:

"The truly successful businessman"..."is anything but a risk-taker. He is a predator, and predators seek to incur the least risk possible while hunting. Would we so revere risk-taking if we realized that the people who are supposedly taking bold risks in the cause of entrepreneurship are actually doing no such thing?"
I hadn't been in business for long before I realized it was possible to make MUCH more money if you didn't have a conscience. I mean, it didn't even require that you do anything illegal, or ... in many cases...even something that most of the public would consider unethical. You just had to ignore that little voice that said it was "Unfair."

Which I couldn't do.

I've seen a couple of people make big money, and in both cases they did things that I would charitably call "leverage" and "playing the angles."

Whatever. I hope they enjoy their ill gotten gains.

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From Yahoo.finance:

Within the Borders superstore segment, total sales for the period were $649.2 million, a 14.7% decrease from a year ago. Comparable store sales at Borders superstores declined 14.6%.
That's just brutal.

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I probably ought to hold off commenting about the city council race until it's further along. But one thing I do worry about:

After throwing money away on ill-considered, pie-in-the-sky, bad development projects, that we'll compound the problem by throwing money away on 'good' , all for the social 'benefit' projects.

Just saying.

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About 20 years ago, I read a very 'authoritative' article that said video stores would be extinct in about 5 years because of 'streaming' video on demand.

In another 5 years, I think they'll be right!

From today's Oregonian: "The Wall Street Journal reported that Movie Gallery, parent of Hollywood Video, may be about to launch a major restructuring that could include another mass store closure.

It would be the second restructuring for Wilsonville-based Movie Gallery in three years. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2007. "

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Weirdly enough, it looks like losing the Mass. Senate seat might pass the health bill faster. You know, if the House Democrats are panicked enough to accept the Senate bill as it is.

I'll believe when I see it.

Epic fail?

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My favorite bookstore blog, Inkwell, appears to have gone belly-up.

It seems like the more intensive a blog is, the more likely it is to dry up. Not counting what I would consider "professional" blogs, who actually make their living that way. But very few blogs seem to last all that long...

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