This & That, Ceci et Cela

People paying good money for classes on how to be like a "celeb": "On a sunny Sunday afternoon in May, more than three dozen women, most in their 20s and early 30s, took turns sashaying across a small conference room on the 49th floor of the tony Roppongi Hills complex. Chins up, broad smiles across their faces, they were clearly having fun "learning" to walk the walk of stars. ...

Graphology (handwriting analysis) is apparently an extremely common employment screening tool in Western Europe. The following quote certainly gives food for thought: "While there are some concepts common to most systems of handwriting analysis, there are equally notable disputes as to what the various "signs" mean. Take, for instance, two books by internationally known graphologists that I reviewed: one considers a certain ...

From Hugh MacLeod (HughTrain manifesto): "I am not in the factory-owning business. If I have something that needs to be made on a large scale, I'll call somebody up in China or Germany (probably the former). Let them worry about the machine operator's pension fund. I have better things to think about. So do Coca-Cola and Nike, which is why most of their ...

"After the article appeared, David Krane, Google's director of public relations, called CNET editors to complain, said Jai Singh, the editor in chief of CNETNews.com. "They were unhappy about the fact we used Schmidt's private information in our story," Singh said. "Our view is what we published was all public information, and we actually used their own product to find it." He said Krane called back to say that ...

Another reason to start keeping your money under your mattress: "Along a crowded stretch of highway just south of central Miami is a shopping area that might be called the data theft capital of the United States. Criminals have obtained the cardholder information of tens of thousands of customers at four major stores there, including the retail chain DSW Shoes. Recent investigations reveal that the thieves targeted stores with strong ...

Zopa demonstrates an interesting use in P2P (peer to peer) technology: lending. Works like eBay, but no banks involved; users lend to other users. I imagine restrictive regulations prevent such implentations in North America? Can't otherwise imagine why nothing like that has been seen/tried here.

A heads up for those of you who have enough money to hide; Switzerland is to start taxing money deposited in its banks by European Union citizens.  The EU wanted Switzerland to pass on data on EU citizens to stop them avoiding tax, but they eventually settled for a withholding tax instead. EU members exchanging ...

F'ed up factoid of the day: foreigners are charged more for certain items by law in the Czech Republic.  WTF?!  Czechs in other countries pay the same for everything else e.g. Czechs in US pay the same for everything as the Americans do, yet most times when foreigners in a Cz resturant get a seperate menu with higher pricing... This is the kind of thing that foreign trade consuls/commissioners ...

In response to growing concern over anorexia and bulimia in local teenagers, the government of Buenos Aires has given fashion retailers six months to stock up on all sizes in its clothing lines for young women, including large sizes. Many chain-stores sell garments that range only from “extra-small” to no larger than “medium”. (The idea that these sizes may be delicately euphemistic was apparently lost on the regulators.) Offending retailers ...

As I commented on the BBC page, I think Apple may as well call it a day and save us the confusion because switching chips is not the point. THE issue is the mounting quality problems that its product lines have been presenting for consumers. I mean, logic board replacements, battery recalls, all within the last 2-3 years? I say something's ...