Friday, August 13, 2010

Odds and ends

Did you know that Barnes and Noble is for sale? If the new owner (if there is one) can't come up with a gimmick to lure people away from Amazon, it's all over. And speaking of Amazon...a big time agent for a stable of writers has begun negotiating directly with Amazon as a way to market their books electronically (via the Amazon Kindle) and cutting out the publisher altogether. The story is...publishers are scared! For ourselves, we are not going to be using the Amazon Kindle anytime soon; at $9.99 per book we would have a $300 a month book bill. We'll stick with the library as long as they exist.

Did you know that almost a million Chinese citizens have emigrated to Africa? They are bringing their culture and their expertise to a continent that needs it.

Have you read about the 'pink slime' that is still being used in most American hamburgers? The story itself is almost a year old but I just heard about it. Slaughterhouse floor scraps that have the fat removed and then are treated with ammonia to kill the pathogens...except the full strength ammonia was created a terrible odor so they went to a lesser strength. Yes, Burger King, McDonald's and most other big chains use it. Also most large chain markets and the federal government are using it.

Did you know that Volvo was sold to Geely, the most ambitious of the Chinese automakers. Li Shufu is the owner and CEO of Geely and his bio is quite interesting. Look it up on Wikipedia...

Did you know that the sugar and fat laden diet of Western children may be making them subsceptible to Asthma and other allergies as well as inflammatory diseases. A study compared the gut bacteria between Western (Italy) and African (Burkina Faso) children and the difference was amazing. The African children had a much more diverse population of bacteria which leads to more healthy lives.

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