Weekend Digest: The worries of Janet, people of Walmart and hidden da Vinci edition
by February 12, 2016 10:32 pm 182 views
TV PREVIEW
On this week’s TV edition of Talk Business & Politics, which airs Sundays at 9:30 a.m. on KATV Channel 7 in Central Arkansas and now in Northeast Arkansas on KAIT-NBC, Sundays at 10 a.m.:
KATV’s Janelle Lilley guest hosts. She’ll visit with Cong. Rick Crawford on his efforts to open trade with Cuba. Plus, Cong. French Hill is set to join the program to discuss the latest from Congress.
The Supreme Court Chief Justice race takes center stage and State Treasurer Dennis Milligan makes headlines.
Tune in to Talk Business & Politics in Central Arkansas on KATV Ch. 7, Sundays at 9:30 a.m. and now in Northeast Arkansas on KAIT-NBC, Sundays at 10 a.m.
MAKING VALENTINE’S DAY CHOCOLATE LIKE IT’S 1923
The company is called Li-Lac and “The week of Valentine’s Day is crucial to Li-Lac’s overall profitability,” reports Forbes.”
“Co-owner Chris Taylor, who handles Li-Lac’s business side, expects to sell around $250,000 worth of chocolates that week. That’s 500% or 600% more than during an average week, president and co-owner Anthony Cirone says. Both men were longtime patrons of Li-Lac before buying the company along with the longtime master chocolatier Anwar Khoder.”
The stakes are high on Valentine’s Day. About half of Li-Lac’s sales happen in the 10 or 11 weeks around four holidays: Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Thanksgiving. Li-Lac has just ten truly profitable weeks a year, and six or seven marginally profitable ones. The company pulls in an overall profit, although it loses money or breaks even for the weeks that aren’t leading up to major holidays. Big candy corporations don’t have the same fluctuations in sales. For example, Hershey’s sales have held steady at around $1.9 billion for three of the past four quarters.
The company has been in business since 1923 and really nothing has changed.
“We use the same recipes with the same ingredients,” Cirone says. “This is an old style classic chocolate that’s hard to find nowadays.”
And they even use the founder’s original notes. Go to this link for more on this sweet success story.
WHY THE INTERNET OF THINGS HASN’T GONE CELLULAR YET
Fast Company posts, “In the future that Particle CEO Zach Supalla envisions, you’ll never lose your luggage, or find out too late that your basement is flooded. Production lines will recognize exactly when a single piece of equipment is about to fail, and city workers will automatically get notified when a garbage can needs emptying.”
“That’s because every one of these devices will be connected to the Internet, regardless of whether there’s a functioning Wi-Fi network within range. Particle is in the business of making the tools that enable these “Internet of Things” devices, from circuit boards to software platforms to large-scale manufacturing plans. The company’s latest product, the Electron, is the first to have a cellular radio and data plan built in.”
Getting to this point hasn’t been easy, however. For Supalla, the creation of Electron has been a lesson in how wireless carriers work, including both their networks and their internal politics. With the first Electron units shipping this week, I talked to Supalla about what he learned, and what still needs to change before cellular IoT takes off.
Find out, at this link.
COMPONENTS THAT PARTICULARLY WORRY JANET YELLEN
“Financial conditions in the United States have recently become less supportive of growth.”
That statement – though dry – caught the attention of Marketplace this week as we listened to Fed chair Janet Yellen speak to Congress this week. She went on to explain three components that particularly worry her. Let’s take a closer look at each.
Take that “closer look” by clicking here.
DIRTY POLITICS
Particularly in South Carolina. At least that’s what The Washington Post says.
“This, in a nutshell, is South Carolina a week before the highly contested Republican primary: a cloudy tincture of desperation, paranoia and umbrage, with plausible deniability for everyone. It’s a mad scramble to make every other candidate look bad, either by playing dirty or accusing an opponent of playing dirty.”
And so, the media has flocked South, left taciturn New England behind in search of a quiet spot — the corner booth of a bar, perhaps, or a well-appointed office downtown — hoping to be blessed with those magic words, you didn’t hear this from me, but. South Carolina: home to whisper campaigns, dirty politics, back-alley knife fighters, and other cliches. A land where consultants share shibboleth with bank robbers: No fingerprints, please. It’s a week before the primary, and the Palmetto State is all anonymous fliers and unlisted numbers.
For the full story on this South Carolina “electoral nastiness,” follow this link.
SANDERS INTRIGUES A SOUTH CAROLINA TOWN THAT LOVES HILLARY
It’s called Orangeburg, and in this South Carolina hamlet where just a few months ago African Americans strongly supported Hillary Clinton, many have now begun to look Bernie Sanders way according to The New York Times.
“Mrs. Clinton has long looked forward to the Feb. 27 Democratic contest in South Carolina, the first state where blacks will make up a dominant part of the primary vote. African-Americans accounted for more than half of the voters in the 2008 Democratic primary, and she has been counting on them as a bulwark, not just in South Carolina but also in the so-called SEC primary in six Southern states March 1.
But in recent days, a flurry of endorsements and appearances has made it clear that both candidates are avidly courting black voters and neither can assume their support.”
Voters like Helen Duley.
In Orangeburg, interviews with black voters like Ms. Duley reflect enormous stores of good will that have given Mrs. Clinton an early advantage in this state and a growing awareness that there is an alternative, one that could prove particularly intriguing for young voters.
Connect to this link for the complete post.
CRUZ GOES NEGATIVE ON RUBIO, TRUMP
POLITICO posts, “Ted Cruz is going hard negative against both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio in South Carolina, ridiculing Rubio as a conservative turncoat and likening Trump’s behavior to a child having a temper tantrum.”
“An ad targeting Rubio presents a scene from “Conservatives Anonymous,” depicting a circle of voters lamenting the Rubio’s broken promises. It follows Cruz’s contention on Wednesday that the GOP primary here is a two-man race between Cruz and Trump, but clearly Cruz is still worried about Rubio.”
The attack ad on Trump, meanwhile, shows a trio of children acting out some of Trump’s policies and rhetoric with a Trump action figure that “pretends to be a Republican.” The ad ends with children smashing a house up in the name of “eminent domain.”
More on this story here.
MAN’S OBITUARY ASKS VOTERS NOT TO VOTE FOR TRUMP
A Pittsburgh man had the ultimate “final” say about GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. Or did he? And was it just a joke?
Lay it to rest, at this link.
25 PEOPLE YOU WOULD ONLY FIND AT WALMART
Viral World says, “Attention Walmart shoppers, did you realize the craziest aspect of the store isn’t the clothing selections? Instead, it’s the clientele.”
In case you weren’t aware, there’s a website dedicated to this alternate universe, called PeopleOfWalmart.com. Here are 25 of the best images we could find from the site which truly sum up the … uniqueness of Walmart.
See what they mean here.
HIDDEN SKETCH REVEALED IN da VINCI’S 500-YEAR-OLD NOTEBOOK
AOL reports, “Researchers have made an astonishing new discovery from the approximately 500-year-old notebook of a famous artist.”
The British Library has announced in a recent blog post that, for the first time, a once erased hand-drawn figure has been revealed on a page of one of Leonardo da Vinci’s personal notebooks. While the image appears as only faint lines visible to the naked eye, in-house experts used a non-invasive technique called multispectral imaging to uncover the ink drawing.
Take a look at the before-and-after, at this link.