DB's Pixnet

 
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2003 J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Inc.
What is the Order of the Phoenix? We can take an investigating look into J.K. Rowling's novel in the Chapter Five, "The Order of The Phoenix."
First is the words said by Sirius, "...at least you've been able to get out and about, stretch your legs, get into a few fights...I've been stuck inside for a month...There's not much I can do for the Order of the Phoenix."
-(A)---Obviously the Order is some kind of static activities which Sirius doesn't like.

 
Harvard Business Review, May 2012
Page 142, Case Study
Do Social Deal Sites Really Work?
The Experts Respond
Gideon Lask
Allie James is right that Flanagan needs to provide a better customer experience to sustain the business for the long term. What she doesn't see is that social-media discounts might be the perfect way to help the company work toward that goal. But those discounts must be handled with care.
A part of a broad promotional mix, price is a powerful way to drive sales--it always has been and always will be. Social-media discounts extend and refine the benefits of pricing by allowing merchants to reach beyond their usual pools of potential consumers and turn newly acquired customers into online advocates for a product or brand. The advocacy raises brand awareness.
But discounts can destroy margins. At BuyaPowa, we have a sign on the wall that says "Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity." Many business owners forget that and focus more on the total dollars coming in than on how profitable each customer is. That makes it too easy for merchants--and their customers--to get addicted to discounts...
DB, SSN057-86-4042,
May 9, 2012, Wednesday,
National Central Library,
Taipei City

  
The Hunger Games, novel reading;
 

 
The Economist, April 14TH-20TH, 2012
Page 69, E-book publishing
A too-cosy world?
New York
Readers may not be the ultimate winners in an e-book antitrust case
The price-fixing complaint that America's Department of Justice(DOJ) filed this week against Apple and five of the world's "Big Six" book publishers has a triumphalist tone, describing secret meetings in "upscale Manhattan restaurants". But it seems to take a rather narrow view of what is going on in the e-book industry.
Until two years ago Amazon, the dominant player in the market thanks to its Kindle e-reader, kept publishers on the "wholesale model" for e-books. This let them set the wholesale price but let Amazon sell the books at a loss, making it harder for newer e-reader makers such as Barnes & Noble to challenge its near-monopoly. That made for cheap e-books, competing against the print versions. Publishers and authors also feared that if Amazon remained dominant, it would eventually impose wholesale prices on them too, forcing weaker publishers and other book booksellers out of business. They were therefore delighted when Apple, on launching the iPad in 2010, offered them an "agency model", whereby they set the retail prices and give the retailer a fixed cut...
David CK Chang, SSN057-86-4042,
April 26, 2012,
National Central Library,
Taipei City

Time, April 23, 2012 
Page 30, United States
Inside the Presidents Club
By Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy
...No matter what may separate American Presidents when it comes to politics, personalities or petty grievances, they are members of unique and exclusive fraternity, and they are bound together by experiences that no one else can understand...The Presidents club may not be in the Constitution or any book or bylaw, but neither is it a metaphor or figure of speech. It was created in 1953 at Dwight Eisenhower's Inauguration...
"You will be our President when you read this note," George H.W. Bush wrote to Clinton, the man who had just defeated him...Bush who had to contend with four former Presidents during his time in office, consented to meet. And so in October, Obama flew to Texas A&M in College Station, home of Bush's presidential library, to toast Bush in a speech about public service...
...His work helped earned him the Nobel Prize in 2002; Carter even admits he is a better former President than he was a President...Even Carter points to what he calls "a quiet, fraternal feeling" that exists among the men who have sat at the big desk...
...But, Clinton added, "When my President summons me, then I come, and I would play golf in a driving snowstorm." Which is just another duty that comes with membership in the Presidents Club.
David CK Chang, SSN057-86-4042,
April 24, 2012,
New Taipei City Library,
Panchiao, New Taipei City

Page 48, The Culture
James' Bondage
The shy British mum whose naughty book set U.S. hearts afire
By Belinda Luscombe
...Until recently James was posting her stories online for free, and she readily acknowledges that they are heavily based on another person's work. Yet her trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed is set to be published by Vintage, a division of Random House, in a reported seven-figure deal...Grey dearly wishes that Ms. Steele, as he often calls her, would sign a nondisclosure agreement as well as a contract in which she agrees to let him control everything she eats and wears and to let him "flog, spank, whip or corporally punish" her as he sees fit. And she can't ever touch him. Also she's a virgin.
Despite the field-size red flags all this raises, she's torn: "No man has ever affected me the way Christian Grey has, and I cannot fathom why. Is it his looks? His civility? Wealth? Power?" Nothing, after all, says civility like a guy who, when he trusses you up, uses an expensive necktie.
In some hands, exploration of the erotic hinterlands where danger and desire coexist can be thought-provoking and perceptive. Story of O. Last Tango in Paris, Beauty and the Breast...
David CK Chang, SSN057-86-4042,
April 23, 2012,
New Taipei City Library,
Panchiao, New Taipei City

  
Bill Clinton, An American Journey, Great Expectations, Nigel Hamilton, 2003
Chapter 39, The Perils of Running for President;
1. p.568, section: The Money Factor;
..Jim McDougal's wife later recalled how at college she had been asked by Bill for a campaign contribution the first time he met her--and when she'd protested she was only twenty and a student, he had told Jim to give her the money to contribute!

 
the psychologist march 2012
Page 250, Looking Back
George Kelly and the Garden of Eden
Trever Butt finds an interesting recurring theme in the later work of the famous personality theorist
...Following the publication of The Psychology of Personal Constructs, Kelly became a key figure in the development of clinical psychology in the USA. He was invited to speak all over the country and embarked on a world tour in 1961. Many of his essays, articles and talks were drawn together after his death and published by one of his ex-students, Professor Brendan Maher(1969). In these collected papers, Kelly moved to correct the growing misapprehension that construing was synonymous with thinking, and therefore the cause of behavior. There is an emphasis on construing as action and not in some strange way behind it. Personal constructs are not yet another way of constituting the ghost in the machine.
Although Kelly always insisted that a construct was not a concept, his 1955 definition focused on things: 'A way in which some things are construed as being alike and yet different from others'(1955, p.105). This allows(and perhaps even encourages) the reader to think in terms of concepts...
David CK Chang, SSN057-86-4042,
April 18, 2012, Wednesday,
National Central Library,
Taipei City

 
Harvard Business Review, April 2012
Page 137, Case Study
A supplier contemplates cutting off one of its biggest accounts,
by Robert S. Kaplan
When to Drop an Unprofitable Customer
…"And what about that industry conference last month?" Jane prompted.
"Yes, the conference. In London. Well, lots of talk about Chinese suppliers there. Impressive group, actually. Lots of buzz about them. But our CEO gave the keynote, focusing on the benefits of our relationships with local suppliers. He's passionate about supporting UK businesses, you know, and the press ate it up."
"We so often overlook the intangibles that we get from our loyal customers," Jane said. "The showrooms, too." She picked up a glossy booklet from Steve's desk and handed to Tommy. He flipped through it, glancing at the photos of Westmid's new chain of decorator showrooms at high-end sites around London. She pointed to a picture. "Our doors," she said.
"This is a small part of Westmid's business now," she went on, "but it's bound to grow once the economy picks up. Our products have to be in these showrooms. Am I right?" This time Steve refrained from speaking, because the question was clearly aimed at Tommy.
The only sound in Steve's office was that of Tommy turning the heavy pages. The booklet showed many images of Egan's doors--beautiful, top-of-the-line, thermally insulating products with fan lights and other expensive features. He looked at Jane...
DB, SSN057-86-4042,
April 13, 2012, Friday,
National Central Library,
Taipei City

 
International Herald Tribune, Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Page 7, Health + Science
The giant iceberg was only part of the story
by William J Broad
What doomed the Titanic is well known, at least in outline. On a moonless night in the North Atlantic, the liner hit an iceberg and disaster ensued, with 1,500 lives lost.
The theories on the sinking vary widely, placing the blame on everything from inept sailors to flawed rivets.
Now, a century after the liner went down in the early hours of April 15, 1912, two new studies argue that rare states of nature played major roles in the catastrophe.
The first says Earth's nearness to the Moon and the Sun--a proximity not matched in more than 1,000 years--resulted in record tides that help explain why the Titanic encountered so much ice, including the fatal iceberg.
And a second, put forward by a Titanic historian from Britain, contends that the icy waters created ideal conditions for an unusual type of mirage that hid icebergs from lookouts and confused a nearby ship as to the liner's identity, delaying rescue efforts for hours.
The author, Tim Maltin, said his explanation helps remove the stain of blunder from what he regards as a tragedy...
David CK Chang, SSN057-86-4042,
April 11, 2012, Wednesday,
National Central Library,
Taipei City