Selling Tainted, Addictive Products [Editor’s Note: Given the spate of financial corruption stories lately — did they ever really stop? — I thought I’d re-run a post from almost three(!) years ago making clear where my sympathies lie. Not that regular readers of this blog don’t already know.] What’s the difference between drug dealers and...Read More
The Not-an-Error Error (“the 1/2 Error?” “the Should’ve??”) I dare say modern baseball suffers from too many statistics, not too few (try to decipher the almost ridiculously complex scoreboard at Target Field lately?). But watching a Twins-Royals makeup game last weekend, I saw a play that had no “statistic” to go with it — at...Read More
No More Door Dings? “Murphy’s Law for parking lots: never park next to a car in worse condition than yours.” –Ross Kaplan I have no idea if local grocery store chain Byerly’s in fact came up with the idea — but that’s where I first saw it, a few weeks ago: a double stripe between...Read More
Dumb Tax Idea #27, or, “The (In)Convenience Store Tax” Did you know that the city of Minneapolis just slapped a 50% surtax on small purchases such as ice cream, coffee, dry cleaning, pet grooming, etc.? OK, so they’re not calling it that — but that’s effectively what it is. What I’m referring to, of course, are...Read More
Late to the Game — On Purpose Want to get a BIG discount on Twins tickets AND free parking*? Start by picking a holiday weekend (this one) when lots of fans are out-of-town. Then, pick a makeup game added to the schedule for a rain-out earlier in the season — in this case, the Twins...Read More
Beyond “Fair Trade” ** What is beyond “Fair Trade?” Fair Trade products delivered by bicycle. Which Minneapolis-based “Peace Coffee” claims it does. Demo’ing its (very tasty) product at the local Whole Foods over lunch hour, I pressed the company’s sales rep whether that policy applied equally in January as in June. He insisted it did. The...Read More
