Central Perk

luni, 24 martie 2014

Damn Cool Pics

Never Buy These Fast Food Items
Courtney Stodden Fell Off Her Bike
How to Fake Weight Loss Photos

Never Buy These Fast Food Items

Posted: 24 Mar 2014 11:58 AM PDT

You should never buy these food according to the employees there.

Courtney Stodden Fell Off Her Bike

Posted: 24 Mar 2014 10:52 AM PDT

When Courtney Stodden falls off her bike it looks kind of sexy.

How to Fake Weight Loss Photos

Posted: 24 Mar 2014 10:28 AM PDT

The second photo was made only 30 minutes later.

I need your help

Hey --

We're really getting close.

We've been talking a lot about health care recently. For good reason: The deadline is in just seven days.

After open enrollment ends on March 31, you won't be able to get insurance through the marketplace until 2015.

If you know someone who still hasn't signed up for health care, tell them to go to HealthCare.gov right now and sign up. This is their last chance.

Now is the time for people to get covered.

I know life is busy -- and after all the troubles with the website early on, some folks have been hesitant to give it a second chance. But the website is working great now: We've signed up more than 5 million Americans already, and more are signing up every day.

I've tasked my team with doing everything they can to get us over the finish line.

But here's what we know: People like you having conversations with your friends and family will make all the difference.

That's why I need your help -- pass this message on to one person who still needs to sign up for coverage. Tell them to go to HealthCare.gov right now and check out the options for themselves.

The deadline is in seven days. Our health is way too important to ignore -- nobody can afford to just cross their fingers and hope for the best.

Thank you for all your hard work,

President Barack Obama

P.S. -- I took some time out to answer a couple questions about health care and getting covered. Take a minute to see them here.

This email was sent to e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com.
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Getting Reviews the Right Way for Local Businesses

Posted: 23 Mar 2014 04:14 PM PDT

Posted by katemorris

It's the bane of every business that relies on local traffic: reviews. Reviews are not new to business. We have been dealing with them in business since we had businesses and people could talk. In the last few years, we have been able to participate in the conversations that happen between consumers. Local reviews are just an extension of word of mouth marketing. It's a permanent record of consumer's thoughts of your business much like social media.

The worst part is having no reviews, or having reviews (GLOWING reviews) from real customers, and Yelp doesn't show or count them. Reviews are the links of the local world. They drive new business and are imperative to growth. However, if you ask for one or incentivize their posting, they might not count.

Yelp Review Guidelines:

"You shouldn't ask your customers to post reviews on Yelp."

Google+ Review Guidelines:

"Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased â€¦ Don't offer money or product to others to write reviews for your business or write negative reviews about a competitor. We also discourage specialized review stations or kiosks set up at your place of business for the sole purpose of soliciting reviews."

What's a business owner to do?!

Learn from link building

This is going to come at an odd time as link building (guest posting) is hot in the search media right now, but the link building world has been through this exact situation and local businesses can learn from it.

Don't chase tactics. Look for inspiration from other businesses but modify ideas to your business and your users. Just like link building, if your reviews show up in a pattern, that pattern is detectable by a computer algorithm and will likely be discounted.

Anything that is pattern-based is detectable, including:

IP address of the reviewer: Never ask for reviews from your location(s).
Timeline: This means if a number of reviews come in together over a period of time, think all in one day or one week. It reflects that they were asked to leave a review in one big push.
Same phrases: If many reviews use the same phrasing, it can look orchestrated.

Scale is the enemy. Along the same lines as the patterns discussion above, trying to scale reviews is going to produce detectable trends. Don't try to go out and get reviews en masse. You need them, yes, but a slow trend is the better way to get them. This brings us to the next point: influence.

Influence and integrate

We just covered what not to do; now let's review how to go about getting reviews that are approved, shown, and can help grow your business. Just like links, reviews are best when they are placed there without your interaction, but that doesn't mean you should ignore the matter completely. Businesses can influence people to leave reviews. Influence, not entice or coerce. Influence with communication.

Guaranteed reviews: knock down, drag-out fantastic customer service

This is the one solid way to get reviews without ever having to mention the word review. I'm talking Zappos, Nordstrom, and Amazon level of customer service. You treat your customersâ€"all of themâ€"like they are kings and queens. Give them no choice but to tell people about you. The following is a review for one of my favorite food trucks in Seattle:

This is a long time investment though and I know not everyone has the time or thinks about leaving reviews. You can't make great customer service happen IRL sometimes, it's not always you in control. Regardless, this is still the best long-term solution.

But businesses have immediate needs, so here is how to address getting more reviews now.

Define your customer lifecycle

The key is laying out the standard lifecycle of a customer. I am going to pick on a favorite local business that inspired this post: Dreamclinic Seattle. The blue is online interaction, purple is in-person interaction. You can get more color coded with medium (email, organic, yellow pages, etc.) but I went with simple.

Dreamclinic

The main point of outlining the customer lifecycle is to see the cycle part of it and realize you have more than one opportunity to influence a review. Most businesses that rely on reviews have a customer lifecycle. If you haven't defined yours, do that now.

Integrate with all email marketing

1. Define email contact points

Once you have the customer lifecycle, add in when you normally contact your customers via email. You want to know when they are already online and thinking about you (this is key to online engagement!). There should be a few opportunities like newsletters, offers, post-purchase, post-visit, and confirmations. It doesn't matter if you are selling a good or a service, there should be communication throughout the customer lifecycle.

2. When will the customer be in the right frame of mind to leave a review?

Now consider when the customer is going to be able to write the best review. Sometimes it'll be almost immediately after the purchase, sometimes a few weeks after. For example: Dreamclinic needs to have a "Drink water!" reminder email an hour after a massage with a mention of social media and scheduling the next appointment (the mentions being side thoughts and the water being the main purpose).

3. Communicate for something other than a review.

Once you know when the best time is, line that up with a communication with the customer that is not about a review. Find another reason to get a hold of them. It can be a customer service survey or just a check in about their purchase. In this email, don't attempt to sell them anything, be genuinely interested in how they are feeling. If you get a reply (an engaged customer), then be sure to mention (one-on-one) that you would appreciate a review.

Notice that this whole process is basically identifying people that want to leave a review, are engaged with your brand, and are conversing with you individually. There is nothing about scale here; it's all about identifying people individually and helping them help your business.

Mention social media in all communication

Beyond email, you should be mentioning your best converting and favorite social media outlets for your business to your customers. Not for reviews, but for engagement. Reviews will come with engagement.

Start with the questions:

Where do you get the most community involvement?
Are you a new business? If so, where do your competitors see more engagement?

List those places, don't just use Facebook and Twitter because you "should." Once you know your top converting communities, mention them to your customers in all parts of the life cycle. Think about your business cards, mailers, receipts, the chalkboard outside, your menu, and more. Check out some inspiration I found from Heidi Cohen.

Remember, mention your online communities and integrate the mentions into the whole lifecycle, and the reviews will roll in naturally.

Speaking of local search issues, have you heard about the new Moz Local?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

First Lady Michelle Obama, Her Daughters, and the Great Wall

Featured

First Lady Michelle Obama, Her Daughters, and the Great Wall

Yesterday, First Lady Michelle Obama visited the Great Wall of China with her daughters. As she wrote in her Travel Journal:

We drove about an hour north of Beijing to a village called Mutianyu to visit a section of the Great Wall of China, which was simply breathtaking. The scenery on the way there was beautiful -- a wide vista of mountains and trees -- so the car ride alone was a treat. But then, running along the highest ridges of the mountains, you see it: The Great Wall -- one of the great marvels of human history.

First Lady Michelle Obama and Malia and Sasha visit the Great Wall of China, March 22, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon)

Seth's Blog : Not even one note

Not even one note

Starting at the age of nine, I played the clarinet for eight years.

Actually, that's not true. I took clarinet lessons for eight years when I was a kid, but I'm not sure I ever actually played it.

Eventually, I heard a symphony orchestra member play a clarinet solo. It began with a sustained middle C, and I am 100% certain that never once did I play a note that sounded even close to the way his sounded.

And yet...

And yet the lessons I was given were all about fingerings and songs and techniques. They were about playing higher or lower or longer notes, or playing more complex rhythms. At no point did someone sit me down and say, "wait, none of this matters if you can't play a single note that actually sounds good."

Instead, the restaurant makes the menu longer instead of figuring out how to make even one dish worth traveling across town for. We add many slides to our presentation before figuring out how to utter a single sentence that will give the people in the room chills or make them think. We confuse variety and range with quality.

Practice is not the answer here. Practice, the 10,000 hours thing, practice alone doesn't produce work that matters. No, that only comes from caring. From caring enough to leap, to bleed for the art, to go out on the ledge, where it's dangerous. When we care enough, we raise the bar, not just for ourselves, but for our customer, our audience and our partners.

It's obvious, then, why I don't play the clarinet any more. I don't care enough, can't work hard enough, don't have the guts to put that work into the world. This is the best reason to stop playing, and it opens the door to go find an art you care enough to make matter instead. Find and make your own music.

The cop-out would be to play the clarinet just a little, to add one more thing to my list of mediocre.

As Jony Ive said, "We did it because we cared, because when you realize how well you can make something, falling short, whether seen or not, feels like failure."

It's much easier to add some features, increase your network, get some itemized tasks done. Who wants to feel failure?

We opt for more instead of better.

Better is better than more.

• Email to a friend •

duminică, 23 martie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Was Russia's Annexation of Crimea Illegal? Who Has the Right to Decide? Transformation of Mainstream Media

Posted: 23 Mar 2014 06:42 PM PDT

In response to Failure is Truly Success! Reader Tata commented ...

"The key question here is Russia's Crimea annexation legal or illegal, aka criminal. If it is legal, then you are absolutely correct. If it is criminal, then a question of reaction level is not moot."

Actually, there are two separate issues here.

Was Russia's annexation of Crimea illegal?
Was the US response justified?

Even if one presumes Russia's annexation of Crimea was illegal, the US response has to be judged in and of itself. If Paul robs your house, you do not have the right to block Bob's driveway. In fact you have no right to undertake any action against Bob.

If the US Congress declared war on Russia, then and only then could could Obama's response be considered appropriate (assuming of course one thinks declaring war on Russia makes sense).

Let's return to the first question: Was Russia's annexation of Crimea illegal?

What gives Obama the right to be judge and jury? If three bullies vote (US allies) and there are only five votes is that legitimate?

I will answer the question, and not with more questions. But first please consider the following.

Transformation of Mainstream Media

I highly encourage everyone to read Paul Craig Roberts on Crimea, US Foreign Policy and the Transformation of Mainstream Media

The Crimean peninsula was controlled by the Russian Empire from the 18th to 20th centuries until it became part of an independent Ukraine following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Even to the most astute observer, the current crisis in the southeastern region of Ukraine is difficult to interpret. The view can be blurred by geographic distance, muddled by inconsistent reporting and blinded by prejudice. Because of treacherously unremitting digital and social media, an understanding of the complex sociopolitical elements is diluted; independent inquiry loses legitimacy and critical voices enter an anarchic fray. How can one make sense of this dilemma?

Paul Craig Roberts is a former assistant secretary of the treasury and associate editor of The Wall Street Journal. He has been following the situation in Ukraine closely and spoke to Truthout about the long history of the crisis, the influence of the mainstream media (in which he worked for decades) and the dangerous provocations of Western leaders. The author of more than ten books, his most recent work is called The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism. This interview took place on March 12, 2014.

Truthout: How do you assess the current situation? What power struggle is currently unraveling?

PCR: Well, I think it would be a mistake to represent the events in Crimea as a power standoff between Russia and the United States. What has happened in Ukraine is the United States organized and financed a coup. And the coup occurred in Kiev, the capital. Either from intention or carelessness, the coup elements include ultra-right-wing nationalists whose roots go back to organizations that fought for Hitler in the Second World War against the Soviet Union.

Crimea was added to the Ukraine in 1954 by Khrushchev, the general secretary of the Communist Party. Both of these Russian areas have been part of Russia for longer than the United States has existed. It didn't make a difference at the time because it was all part of the Soviet Union.

The population in Crimea is predominantly Russian, and so is eastern Ukraine. These people said, "We don't want anything to do with this government in Kiev, which is banning our language and destroying our war monuments and threatening us in many ways." They followed the same legal steps; the same UN procedures, the same international court procedures. So everything that has occurred is strictly legal. And when John Kerry and Obama say the opposite, they're lying through their teeth. It's just blatant, shameful, bald-faced lies. This is not debatable or a question of opinion. It's a matter of law.

So the Parliament in Crimea followed these procedures and has now declared Crimea to be independent. The vote that [was] given to the people on [March 16] . ... So there has been no Russian invasion. That's easily provable. The Russian troops in the Ukraine have been there since the 1990s.

It has to do with the lease arrangements it has on its Black Sea naval base [Sevastopol], because when Ukraine was granted independence, Russia certainly wasn't giving up its warm-water port. The terms of the separation state that Russia has a lease there until 2042. Sixteen thousand troops were there, and under the agreement with the Ukraine they can have up to 25,000 along with a certain number of planes, tanks and artillery. All this is specified and well-known, but it is subject to lies from Washington - and they are repeated endlessly in the so-called American media.

The result is that eastern Ukraine returns to Russia, western Ukraine will be captured, subject to an IMF [International Monetary Fund] austerity plan, looted by the Western banks and stuck in NATO while US anti-ballistic missile bases will be put in western Ukraine.

This is intensifying the strategic threat to Russia that Washington has been pursuing since the George H.W. Bush regime when he violated the agreements that Reagan had given not to take NATO into eastern Europe. These same agreements were violated when Washington withdrew from the ABMT [Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty] in 2002 so it could construct an anti-ballistic missile defense. These are extreme provocations, and they are reckless. It's the same kind of behavior that gave us the First World War.

Truthout: In your latest writings you've discussed the failure of the so called mainstream or American media in reporting about Crimea objectively - that is, without displaying a bias toward one side or the other. Can you discuss the role alternative media has played in relation to the crisis in Ukraine?

PCR: A very important part of it has to do with something that happened toward the end of [Bill] Clinton's second term. He permitted five mega companies to consolidate the formerly independent and dispersed US media. What were once independent networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, all became cogs in a larger media empire. The value of these big media companies is their federal broadcast licenses: They can't go against the government and expect them to be renewed. Another big change is these media companies are no longer run by journalists. They're run by corporate advertising executives and former government officials. And their only interests are protecting the net worth of the company and the flow of advertising revenues.

I am a former editor of The Wall Street Journal and a columnist at all the major publications as well, and I personally witnessed the change in the media and the people in it. So I already know what they're going to say; I can write the scripts before they go on and mouth them. It's been going on for some time. A similar thing happened with the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie told over and over. And everyone repeated it. The New York Times didn't even go to the weapons inspector we sent to Iraq, Hans Blix! Instead, Judith Miller repeated a lie endlessly in the pages of the newspaper. It reflects a total lack of integrity.

One of the main reasons for this is that many of them know they cannot tell the truth, otherwise they'll be fired. They know it's pointless to take a story that contradicts the president or the secretary of state or the CIA or the NSA to the editor. He or she will look at you and say What are you crazy? Do you want to get us both fired? So they simply don't bother. It's quite a corrupt milieu, and it must be deadening to the soul. But that's what it is to be a mainstream journalist today.

Truthout: Looking back on your time as assistant secretary of the treasury under Ronald Reagan, how have the global politics of brinkmanship changed?

PCR: Oh, yes, it's changed tremendously, in two critical ways. One is the Soviet Union and Communist China existed, and these were huge constraints on American power. The US couldn't go waltzing in blowing up countries throughout the Middle East, for example. Those constraints on American power no longer exist. The Cold War is gone, and the alliances that were part of it have disappeared. When I was in the Reagan administration, the neoconservatives had not emerged as the ideological force that they are today; they had not written their position papers calling for American world hegemony.

The neoconservatives had nowhere near the same power or influence [under Reagan] that they did under Clinton, George W. Bush and now Obama. In fact they caused so much trouble for [Reagan], he fired every one of them. They were behind the Contras in Nicaragua. Some of them were actually prosecuted and convicted - such as Elliot Abrams, who was assistant secretary of state. He and others were later pardoned by George H.W. Bush, but the Reagan administration itself took very strong action against neoconservatives. They were fired, thrown out of the government. Richard Perle was even thrown off of the [President's Intelligence Advisory Board]. The neoconservatives emerged with the American attacks on Serbia - what we call the NATO attacks - and the theft of Kosovo from Serbia and its setup as an American protectorate. Their influence then exploded in the first years of George W. Bush. The entire national security apparatus, the entire Pentagon, the entire State Department were all staffed-up by neoconservatives.

The agenda was there. It had been set out in papers from the Project for the New American Century, and much of the government was run by its representatives. The Obama administration has many of the same people, but now they're able to go further because they have more resources to fund dissent groups like we've seen in Ukraine.

This is a reckless thing to do. The Russians cannot accept strategic threats of this sort; it's just too high.

End Truthout Interview

Looking for Hitler Comparisons?

Ironically, US media portrays the actions of Putin to Hitler. The reality is right-wing Hitleristic goons now occupy key posts in Ukraine.

Even the generally-liberal Huffington Post recognize that fact. Please consider The Neo-Nazi Question in Ukraine.

The Obama administration has vehemently denied charges that Ukraine's nascent regime is stock full of neo-fascists despite clear evidence suggesting otherwise. Such categorical repudiations lend credence to the notion the U.S. facilitated the anti-Russian cabal's rise to power as part of a broader strategy to draw Ukraine into the West's sphere of influence. Even more disturbing are apologists, from the American left and right, who seem willing accomplices in this obfuscation of reality, when just a cursory glance at the profiles of Ukraine's new leaders should give pause to the most zealous of Russophobes.

It isn't too surprising that conservative outlets like FOX News would downplay Russian allegations but the so-called "liberal" press has also contributed to the American disinformation campaign.

For starters, Andriy Parubiy, the new secretary of Ukraine's security council, was a co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU), otherwise known as Svoboda. And his deputy, Dmytro Yarosh, is the leader of a party called the Right Sector which, according to historian Timothy Stanley, "flies the old flag of the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators at its rallies."

The highest-ranking right-wing extremist is Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Sych, also a member of Svoboda, who believes that women should "lead the kind of lifestyle to avoid the risk of rape, including refraining from drinking alcohol and being in controversial company."

The Svoboda party has tapped into Nazi symbolism including the "wolf's angel" rune, which resembles a swastika and was worn by members of the Waffen-SS, a panzer division that was declared a criminal organization at Nuremberg. A report from Tel-Aviv University describes the Svoboda party as "an extremist, right-wing, nationalist organization which emphasizes its identification with the ideology of German National Socialism."

Last week Per Anders Rudling from Lund University in Sweden, an expert on Ukrainian extremists, told Britain's Channel 4 News: "A neo-fascist party like Svoboda getting the deputy prime minister position is news in its own right." Well, except in the U.S.

Even more disconcerting has been the emergence of phone intercepts between high-ranking U.S. and Ukrainian officials which make it look as if the U.S. was basically, in the words of Princeton's Stephen Cohen, "plotting a coup d'état against the elected president of Ukraine." In other words, the U.S., in addition to providing moral support, may have paved the way for extremists to seize power in Kiev.

Be they radical mujahideen or neo-fascists, Washington certainly has a penchant for bolstering shadowy forces, usually labeling them with risible euphemisms like "freedom fighters," in order to satiate short-term geopolitical needs, despite said factions being inimical to America's true long-term interests.

Dark Side of Ukraine Revolt

I also invite you to read the Dark Side of Ukraine Revolt on The Nation.

"You'd never know from most of the reporting that far-right nationalists and fascists have been at the heart of the protests and attacks on government buildings," reports Seumas Milne of the British Guardian. The most prominent of the groups has been the ultra-right-wing Svoboda or "Freedom" Party.

Svoboda—which currently has thirty-six deputies in the 450-member Ukrainian parliament—began life in the mid-1990s as the Social National Party of the Ukraine, but its roots lie in World War II, when Ukrainian nationalists and Nazis found common ground in the ideology of anti-communism and anti-Semitism. In April 1943, Dr. Otto von Wachter, the Nazi commander of Galicia—the name for western Ukraine—turned the First Division of the Ukrainian National Army into the 14 Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS, the so-called "Galicia Division."

The Waffen SS was the armed wing of the Nazi Party, and while serving alongside the regular army, or Wehrmacht, the party controlled the SS's thirty-eight-plus divisions. While all Nazi forces took part in massacres and atrocities, the Waffen SS did so with particular efficiency. The postwar Nuremberg trials designated it a "criminal organization."

Take Your Pick: Story A or Story B

Story A: Crimea has historically been a part of Russia for centuries. Russian troops in Crimea were there by agreement. Thus, Russia did not invade Crimea. The US fomented trouble in Ukraine(and got it, but did not like the result). Crimea voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia. There is no legitimate reason to disavow that vote, whether we like the result or not. The US reneged on promises to not let NATO expand into Eastern bloc countries. Obama and US officials lie through their teeth, even to the point of supporting neo-nazis now running Ukraine. The IMF is now poised to wreck what remains of Ukraine.

Story B: Russia invaded Crimea. The vote for independence was illegal. It doesn't matter that the US reneged on promises not to put NATO in Eastern Europe. Any force Obama wants to apply to Russia is valid. Sending US missiles to the Check Republic and Ukraine makes sense. Freedom fighters now run Ukraine.

I Vote for Story A

The US fomented a coup of freely-elected Viktor Yanukovych and now does not like the result. Crimea did not like the result either. Crimea leaders defected and held a vote. Crimea returns to Russia and it never should have been given to Ukraine in the first place.

This is what happens when you meddle in the internal affairs of other countries. S*** happens, and the US is to blame.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Failure is Truly Success!

Posted: 23 Mar 2014 12:39 PM PDT

In a political gambit that at best is likely to result in some face-saving statements of support for the president, Obama Heads to Hague Hoping to Strengthen Europe's Resolve.

US President Barack Obama arrives in Europe after Russia's annexation of Crimea grappling with conflicting advice, anxious allies and unsure about Russian President Vladimir Putin's next move in Ukraine.

After the rebalancing of US diplomacy towards Asia, Mr Obama is also facing the challenge of sustained re-engagement with the continent's leaders, who often felt neglected in his first term and, more recently, bruised by allegations of US espionage.

Mr Obama will spend three days in The Hague and Brussels, at a summit of G7 leaders in the Dutch city, followed by a visit to Nato headquarters and a meeting with the EU. The overriding focus will be how to fashion and hold together a tough line against a Russian leader whose lightning incursion into Ukraine has startled the west.

So far, the US has responded with a series of sanctions against some of Mr Putin's closest associates ahead of the meeting at The Hague, taking place alongside an already scheduled nuclear security summit.

But Mr Obama's pushback against Moscow has been too little and too late, according to former administration advisers, and has failed to match the tough rhetoric from the White House about the Crimean takeover.

Too Little Too Late?

It is interesting to see warmongering Financial Times see this as "too little, too late", while the Fiscal Times proclaims, Obama Crippled a Russian Bank with a Stroke of a Pen. (For discussion, please see Criminal Actions by Obama; Two Wrongs Make a Right).

My own view is the Fiscal Times overstated the effects on St. Petersburg-based Bank Rossiya, yet the US has already done too much because no amount of sanctions will force Russia to return Crimea to Ukraine.

The Financial Times continues ...

Economic officials have broadly cautioned against tough sanctions because of the potential blowback against a US economy still struggling to regain solid growth, while Mr Obama's political advisers have pushed for tougher action, because of the diplomatic principles at stake.

Principles or Egos?

Are principles at stake or egos? Perhaps both, but any principles involved in this are misguided at best. For discussion, please see Buffoon Bluffery; What are Sanctions Really About?

The neocons would love to have another war. Indeed, they would be happy to have perpetual war on multiple fronts (which is precisely why we seem to have perpetual war, frequently on multiple fronts).

Everyone Should Hope Obama Fails

All further sanctions can do is provoke military or economic war. There will be no winners in either outcome. Sanctions, war, and economic war are a Negative Sum Game.

Thus, a failure by Obama to secure any additional sanctions is the best possible outcome. The second best result is some face-saving but meaningless statements.

As is typical of misguided politics coupled with bigger than life egos, the bigger the political failure to achieve stated goals, the better off we will all be.

Failure is truly success!

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Seth's Blog : Compromise, design and the literal edges

Compromise, design and the literal edges

Let's say you wanted to improve the katana, the legendary fighting sword.

You could ask your team to come up with a sword that's lighter, sharper and more durable.

Built into that charge is the requirement to compromise. And just about everyone who has come before you has tried to come up with the same sort of compromise, and your chances of a breakthrough are slim indeed.

Compromise gives us an out, because, with multiple goals, it's easy to play it safe.

But what if you picked just one?

What if you sought to make the sharpest katana ever? Or merely the most durable one? By optimizing for just one attribute, you've eliminated most of the compromise from the design discussion. As a result, you're far more likely to encounter something extraordinary. It might not be practical, but there's plenty of time to compromise later.

It's almost always easier to roll something back a little than it is to push it forward.

• Email to a friend •

luni, 24 martie 2014

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

I need your help

Getting Reviews the Right Way for Local Businesses

Getting Reviews the Right Way for Local Businesses

Learn from link building

Influence and integrate

Guaranteed reviews: knock down, drag-out fantastic customer service

Define your customer lifecycle

Integrate with all email marketing

Mention social media in all communication

First Lady Michelle Obama, Her Daughters, and the Great Wall

Seth's Blog : Not even one note

Not even one note

More Recent Articles

duminică, 23 martie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Seth's Blog : Compromise, design and the literal edges

Compromise, design and the literal edges

More Recent Articles

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

luni, 24 martie 2014

Learn from link building

Influence and integrate

Guaranteed reviews: knock down, drag-out fantastic customer service

Define your customer lifecycle

Integrate with all email marketing

Mention social media in all communication

duminică, 23 martie 2014

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

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