Just another nerd.
Many male pandas in captivity are generally uninterested in mating and will often spurn advances from female pandas. What to do, then, to increase the population of these endangered animals? Panda porn!
When male pandas reach maturity, zoo officials are showing them videotapes of pandas mating.
(Don’t let Catharine MacKinnon find out — this is probably inherently oppressive to female pandas).
No point in adding to the litany of comments on both sides about the Pledge of Allegiance except to note that when immigrants become naturalized citizens, the ceremony involves saying the Pledge of Allegiance (the “under God” version) as well as the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance which ends, “so help me God.”
Reuters’ coverage of Salon.Com’s demise offers a spin that I suspect will be typical with such stories — this is proof that premium subscription services and ad revenue are inherently flawed models for Internet businesses.
The author of the article focuses exclusively on revenues, never thinking to ask just how the hell Salon.Com had expenses in excess of $10 million for 2002. Or as Pud from FuckedCompany.Com put it,
So Salon.com is $76.6M in the hole. How did these dumbfucks spend $75.6 million on a website that displays articles? No clue.
Salon.Com lasted longer, but it’s businesses practices were just as stupid as the dot.coms that crashed and burned while they spent their money on expensive furniture and wild parties.
Had they adopted sound management practices, they’d probably be profitable by now, but instead the focus early on was expensive offices, outrageously high salaries for David Talbot and company, and one after another side business that was going to make the difference (remember when it decided to get into the CMS market?)
Here’s an interesting SEC analysis of Salon.Com. Some highlights:
Salon has incurred significant net losses and negative cash flows from operations since its inception. As of March 31, 2002, Salon had an accumulated deficit of $76.6 million. These losses have been funded primarily through the issuance of preferred stock and Salon’s initial public offering of common stock in June 1999.
Salon believes that it will incur negative cash flows from operations for the year ending March 31, 2003. Although Salon has targeted positive cash flows from operations for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2003, because of the rapid and unexpected sharp deterioration of the general business climate in the past year and a half, Salon may not achieve either positive cash flows from operations or financial reporting profitability in the future.
It’s difficult to see how Salon.Com is ever going to make a profit. It cut back its expenses to what it says are a bare minimum, but it is spending in excess of $10 million annually.
Meanwhile, its revenues took a drastic turn south. Total revenues declined by half last year to a paultry $3.6 million.
The SEC analysis says that Salon.Com acknowledges it will against lose money in fiscal year 2003, but apparently the company believes it will enjoy a profit in the fourth quarter of 2003. Yeah, and it might still run a sex column worth reading, but I wouldn’t bet on either of those scenarios coming to pass.
What really astounds me is that Salon.Com spends so much money and yet actually generates rather paltry visitor numbers. According to the SEC,
Salon has averaged approximately 3.5-3.8 million unique visitors per month. A unique user is an individual visitor to Salon’s network.
That’s more than $2.60 per “unique visitor”. That is way too high for what Salon.Com is selling (i.e., advertising and premium memberships).
Back in May, Friends of Animals blasted People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for supporting Burger King’s introduction of a veggie burger. In a letter distributed on the Internet, Priscilla Feral noted that the BK Veggie Burger was not vegan since the buns include butter. She concluded,
How much sadder if ethical and religious vegetarians have to sue animal protection groups for misleading the public about the ingredients in Burger King products.
The hilarious thing is that at the same time Feral was writing this, Friends of Animals was promoting a cookbook on its web site that includes recipes that call for shrimp and butter!
Friends of Animals quickly took down the page after it was publicized by critics of the group, but the group had a web page that listed several recipes and noted that were from The Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special Cookbook. Friends of Animals provided a handy link to an online bookstore where people could buy the book and Friends of Animals would get a small cut of the proceeds.
Profiting from a book that sanctions the killing of poor helpless shrimp and the exploitation of cows for butter? How cruel.
Source:
It’s easy to have delicious vegan meals and desserts! Friends of Animals.
In the United States, stories about computers and women typically revolve around how the male-dominated computer culture devalues women’s unique way of knowing. But in Iran, women are turning to Internet web logs to talk openly about topics that otherwise might get a woman in trouble in that conservative Islamic country.
Weblogging in Iran apparently took off after Iranian journalist Hossein Derkhshan wrote a simple guide in Persian about how to create a weblog. Seven months later, there are more than 1,200 Persian weblogs according to the BBC, with many written by women.
The women post anonymously and can talk freely about sex and other topics without the fears of violating some cultural taboo. One female weblogger told The BBC,
Womnen in Iran cannot speak out frankly because of our Eastern culture and there are some taboos just for women, such as talking about sex or the right to choose your partner. I have the opportunity to talk about the things and share my experiences with others.
At least someone appreciates oppressive patriarchal technology.
Source:
Web gives a voice to Iranian women. Alfred Hermida, The BBC, June 17, 2002.