Payam's Place

BBC NEWS | Business | Ford and GM see US sales decline

When the competition is out-designing, out-marketing and out-hustling you, outcomes like Ford and GM’s are entirely predictable. That the executives at these companies failed to see what consumers and analysts were seeing decades ago is reprehensible. That they managed to award themselves untold millions in bonuses is unconscionable. That they do not react to it is, frankly, criminal.

My old 1.6 L, 16-valve base model Nissan Sentra is running great after 13 years and 120,000 miles. The fact that GM, Chrysler and Ford cannot build a small car with this much endurance explains a lot. And, the fact that these monsters of American industry still do not offer any fuel efficient cars explains the rest:

Ford’s sales of traditional cars fell 24.6% last month.

By contrast, sales of its light trucks, which includes its sports utility vehicles, added 2.9%.

GM’s passenger car sales lost 22.3%, while its light trucks lost 25.6%.

It’s almost as if some very powerful people have a very high stakes bet about which company is going to go bankrupt first, and they are pulling every string they can to win the bet.

BBC NEWS | Business | Blackstone buys Hilton for $26bn

Paris Hilton might donate $50 of her profits from this sale to relieve the misery she encountered in prison.

Starbucks reputation on line in court case | | Guardian Unlimited Business

I can’t say that I am particularly passionate about the unionization of Starbuck’s employees. It would be nice, perhaps, because it might bring greater consistency to the Starbuck’s experience. The Starbucks union organizing web site claims that they wish to have:

• Increased pay and raises
• Guaranteed hours with the option of full-time status
• An end to understaffing
• A healthier and safer workplace

Those all sound like reasonable demands. On those rare occasions when I have entered a Starbucks, I have wished that the cafe were in a slightly greater state of order and cleanliness. It seems as if the staff are always struggling to balance their time between cleaning and fulfilling orders, but they just don’t seem to have enough time to clean because customers are perennially queued to order. Of course, some locations are better than others, and some times of the day are better than others. Nevertheless, it does make sense that a large corporation should have sufficient resources to make every moment that they are open to business fairly consistent.

Despite all this, the reason I hate going to Starbucks is that they do not serve their drinks in real porcelain cups. I am told that certain locations will do so if I request it, but why the hell would I need to request a real cup of coffee?

And, no, playing Paul McCartney for 24 hours non-stop is no incentive for me.

ScienceDaily: New Study Shows How Often Juries Get It Wrong

Bruce Spencer is not the first guy to argue that jury trials have an excessively high error rate, but he may be the first scholar to put a number to this error rate. His calculations arrive at a minimum error rate of 13%, or one out of eight. This finding implies not that American justice is blind or deaf, but, perhaps, dead.

Skeptics of statistics (or statistical skeptics) are welcome to read the original manuscript on the Northwestern University web site (pdf file). They are also forewarned that this article delves into esoteric subjects like definitions of “error rate”, statistical methods, and analysis.

BBC NEWS | Africa | Mass circumcision to fight Aids

It’s apparently true. Circumcision reduces the risk of acquiring HIV (and, hence, AIDS) through heterosexual sex. Consequently, some are pondering mass circumcisions in South Africa as public health policy.”It’s good to be Jewish”, or, far more likely, “it’s good to be Muslim” is what many Africans must be thinking these days. I’m smiling, of course, and the Jews and Muslims in Africa must be breathing a sigh of relief.

My sex in the convent – by Nobel poet | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

Do macho men need to brag about bagging nuns? Is this a point of pride in the framework of machismo?

The bigger question is, perhaps, why on earth would the members of this convent raise a raucus about the obviously flattering musings of a Nobel Laureate, Juan Ramon Jimenez. After the pedophilia debacle that the Catholic Church has endured over the past decade, why would any order of the Church care about a capable poet’s fond recollections of forbidden love? By now the entire world knows that the Church meticulously documented all incidents of pedophilia committed by its priests, avidly hid the crimes from the public and overtly lied and denied access to its archives when the time of reckoning arrived. What harm could possibly come from the revelation that the women who worked in a Madrid convent at the turn of the century erred as human beings?

The Catholic Church promotes an extremely select few to the level of saint. Thus, it freely admits that its followers are human. So, why would it take offense at a revelation that it freely admits through its actions?

BBC NEWS | Europe | Anger over Polish breast montage

The Poles have certainly demonstrated little brains by comparing the current German government with the Nazi regime. And, whether insulting Germany is a demonstration of balls is an open question.

Perhaps this is what earned them the subordinate position in this magazine cover. This cover image is most distasteful, but it is strange that the Germans seem to be angrier than the Poles. After all, the cover is depicting the Polish leaders–and by extension, the Poles themselves–as subordinate to the German step mother.

It is silly to express surprise at the fact that Germany, France and the UK are leveraging their full economic might in the drafting of the EU founding documents. It is sillier to think that insulting the Germans will win the Poles any additional bargaining power.

World War II may never end.