Is the greenback collapsing?

Here’s something that’s relatively easy to miss in these hard economic times where importing things from the US had become a luxury once again — there has been a sharp but sustained drop in the value of the US dollar recently. It’s fairly dramatic, too — in the past 3 months the value of the Canadian dollar has gone from $.77 to$ .92 US. That’s almost a 20% rise in the space of a quarter.

There isn’t really anything currently going on in Canada to warrant this sort of price movement, and indeed much the same story is revealed when looking up the relative values of the Euro and the Pound; even the Japanese yen is appreciating despite the plethora of political and economic bad news coming from Tokyo.

Nope — this is not about other currencies appreciating. This is about the USD tanking, and a low dollar means that Americans will spend more for the imports on which their economy depends. This heralds the onset of inflation in the American market. If Americans think they’ve had it tough since October, they’re in for a rude awakening.

Words fail me…

Maybe I wasn’t following the news at the time because I really would have remembered this, but earlier in the 2000s it seems that German industrial giant Siemens had plans to use the name “Zyklon” for a range of products that was slated to include gas ovens, which is incredibly tasteless considering the history of the company. Think about that for a moment. Were they going to use the swastika as a logo for this brand?..

White Bag Doritos

Has anyone else picked up those new Doritos in the white bag with the dollar sign on it and thinks that they taste about the same as the original nacho-cheese flavor? Honestly, there’s either no difference at all and that contest they have is a big joke, or the difference is so subtle that it would be completely lost on the usual late-night-munchies crowd.

How NOT to do public relations.

First, spot a blogger who finds a relatively minor, non-critical bug in your web site. Second, make sure some of your staff insult him personally and call him a liar, and make sure they do so from their office computers (read the comments on that first link). Third, have your PR department make a statement that bloggers are idiots and lunatics. Fourth… profit?

Ryanair seems like one place left in this world where PR men still enjoy their three-martini lunch!

A way to find Osama bin Laden

  1. Post simulated video of Osama bin Laden abusing a cat
  2. …
  3. Profit!

The age of “no comments” has come…

Unfortunately I seem to be under attack by spamming scum using a botnet, so I’ve had to turn off comments altogether… that’s my explanation in case someone notices (LOL).

A fresh look?

I thought it would be amusing to shake things up with a skin change — also a WordPress upgrade broke the plugin I was using to generate the excerpt for my stories on the front page, so this was a move of necessity more than whimsy. This little number is called Head 1.5 and it’s by Priss. It’s quite pleasant once your eyeballs stop hurting (it is a rather bright template).

Like 1994 all over again!

Ah, the good old days of dialup internet and restricted university access, a time when people started wanting to know what this “internet” thing was about… may they never come again, except perhaps in parody form: Mastering the Internet and Mastering the Internet Part 2.

Talk about fiddling while Rome burned!

Bank of America executives have recently expressed shock at the bad state of recent acquisition Merrill Lynch. Maybe they would not be so surprised if they had considered Lynch CEO John Thain’s $1.22M renovation bill for his office last year, which featured an $87,000 rug and $15,000 sofa — even as he cut expenses for others and laid off staff. After all, the CEO sets the tone for the rest of company, right?

Time for a Chrysler Death Watch?

I just went to the Montreal Auto Show this evening. All in all it was a fairly staid affair, but one shocker is the Chrysler display which, frankly, might as well have smelled of impending protracted death. Seriously, they have huge space, but couldn’t actually be bothered filling it, so that you have a few well-spaced-out cars, few visitors, and an atmosphere that fit a funeral better than a marketing event. Maybe Fiat can use that space to show off the 500 and their Alfa-Romeo line next year…