Columbia Univeristy assistant business professor Columbia University Francis J. Flynn wanted his students to look at how businesses responded to complaint letters. So, he sent out 240 letters of complaint on Columbia stationery to restaurants in the New York area. The letters alleged that Flynn had suffered food poisoning at the restaurants. Of course as…
January, 2002
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As usual, Steven Denbeste nails what is going on between Israel and Yasser Arafat. The short version: both Israel and the United States want Arafat to conduct a serious crackdown on Hamas and other groups. Arafat has long resisted that, correctly thinking that doing so might put both his life and political position in danger…
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I was reading through the featureset of Blogger Pro and although it does not meet my needs, it certainly does hit most of the things that anyone interested in just maintaining a weblog would need. The thing that really made me take notice was something that Seth Dillingham had originally raised about Radio Userland —…
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I consider myself pretty well-read, and so was shocked the other day when I came across an online discussion about the Newburgh Conspiracy, which I have no recollection of reading or learning about previously. Maybe it is because, frankly, I’ve always found the history of the Revolutionary War a bit boring. Anyway, the Newburgh Conspiracy…
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New York Magazine reports on a number of psychics who claim that the Federal government has contacted them for help in the ongoing terrorist investigation. If this sort of claim had been made say 10 years ago, I’d have dismissed it out of hand, but the reality is that until 1995 the CIA was throwing…
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The BBC ran a story in October about a study of the African brain drain. The study, conducted by the Pollution Research Group at Natal University in South Africa, claimed that a third of all skilled professionals in Africa have left that continent to pursue careers in the West. The study put the total cost…
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CNSNews.com reports that a man on trial for murder in New York plans to argue that he suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome from witnessing the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which combined with alleged statements by the victim, led him to bludgeon and stab to death his business partner. Nathan Powell’s lawyer will argue that he flew…
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It’s the sort of story the nuttier Christian fundamentalists are going to have a field day with — the American Civil Liberties Union is threatening a federal lawsuit against a Florida town that has posted signs forbidding Satan to enter. The signs read, Be it known from this day forward that Satan, ruler of darkness,…
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Now, this is bizarre. Police in Penryn, Pennsylvania have decided they will not help direct traffic at a YMCA-sponsored triathalon. All eight officers in the small police force decided to boycott the event because they are angry that the YMCA uses the Harry Potter books as part of a reading program — and everybody knows…
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Yesterday I skipped over a story in USA Today noting that CNN was hiring Connie Chung at a salary of $2 million a year. No surprise, as news programs are all about entertainment not news reporting (that Paula Zahn add CNN briefly ran was the most honest ad campaign every by a news organization). But…