So, the CEO of Whole Foods got in a little trouble today - to say the least.
Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey acknowledged today that for seven years he used a pseudonym to bash rival Wild Oats on Yahoo’s popular stock-market forum. Mackey’s alias of “Rahodeb” came to light as part of the Federal Trade Commission’s attempt to block Whole Foods’ proposed $671 million purchase of Boulder-based Wild Oats. The commission cited one of his postings in a filing made public late Tuesday, noting in a footnote that Mackey “often posted to Internet sites pseudonymously, often using the name Rahodeb.” Among the postings, which lasted from a period of 1999 to 2006, Rahodeb wrote that Wild Oats management “clearly doesn’t know what it’s doing” and “OATS has no value and no future.”
So, watch what you say.
Quick example: playing golf in morning, want to know what time chic-fil-a opens: open iphone, click maps, type “chic fila” into browser, asks “did you mean chic-fil-a,” click yes, shows map with seven chic-fil-a’s in denver, click one I pass on way to golf course, gives phone number and address, click phone number, it calls, guy answers, ask what time they open - total time? seventeen seconds. Didn’t get map, but could have - complete with live traffic report. And, yes, the photo was taken with the camera on the phone.
Only thing I didn’t do was post from browser on phone - it’s pretty slow if you’re not connected to wireless. And, while I’d like it to be faster, it ain’t like my Nokia worked that great online, either.
Bloomberg has a great take on terrorism, and by great, I mean on I really did.
That “What, me worry?” attitude pretty much sums up Bloomberg’s advice to New Yorkers on the terror plot. As far as he was concerned, the professionals were on it, so New Yorkers shouldn’t let it tax their brains.
“You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist,” he added.”
Here’s a pretty interesting observation about the events at Virginia Tech. It’s not an argument for or against anything, just a note, and, as such, should generate zero comments.
Among the 32 people killed were natives of Peru, India, Egypt, Vietnam, and Indonesia. And, of course, the murderer himself was a citizen of South Korea.
The events of Sept. 11 produced a similarly international list of victims, but that was no surprise: One would expect that the World Trade Center, given what it was and where it was, would be full of people from all corners of the globe. One would not expect the same of a random lecture hall in Blacksburg, Va. Yet now it turns out that Blacksburg is not merely a member of some metaphoric “global village” like everywhere else, but that Blacksburg is rather a literal global village, with concrete links of kinship and citizenship all over the world. Whatever American community you touch nowadays, for good or for ill, there are international repercussions.
This new level of internationalism is something to consider in our national debates about immigration, education, or even foreign policy—not as an argument for or against anything, but simply as an existing fact that not all of us have properly internalized. It’s also something to consider when we ponder America’s oddly lopsided relationship with the rest of the world. As you read this article, America’s gun-control laws are being debated around the world, America’s mental-health system is being analyzed in a dozen languages. America’s local news is now the world’s local news. But somehow, I don’t think that our knowledge of the rest of the world is growing at a similarly rapid pace.
Even Better Thoughts