Four (or Five!) Reasons Why

…We Shouldn’t Underestimate the Importance of Halloween

1. According to the NRF 2007 Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, consumers are expected to spend over $5 billion during the Halloween period, up from $3.3 billion only two years ago. Despite not being a gift-giving or apparel holiday, Halloween ranks firmly as the sixth-largest spending holiday after Winter Holidays, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
2. Halloween is the backbone of the candy industry. Consumers will spend over $2 billion on candy this Halloween, with an average spend of $19.84. Based on a survey by The Nielsen Company, five of the top ten sales days in 2006 occurred during the run-up to Halloween. (Click here for a list of the Top 10; just scroll down the page a bit.)
3. The Halloween Effect. While largely ignored by the academic community, the theory holds that the period from November to April has significantly stronger stock market growth on average than the other months. (It also gives rise to the investment idiom, “Sell in May and go away.”) According to one study, “In more than two-thirds of all sectors and industries this difference in summer and winter returns, know as the Halloween effect, is statistically significant…” Buy, buy, buy!!!
4. Finally, think of the children! Over 93% of kids go trick-or-treating each year, with 84% ranking candy and gum as their favourite treats. Makes you wonder what the other 16% want. Money? (The same survey also notes that over 90% of parents admit to stealing candy from the kids, so maybe it’s not just about the children after all.) Giving kids the chance to use their imagination, dress up, make believe and have some fun should never be underestimated.
For more Halloween fun, check out History.com’s History of Halloween and here for some trivia. And here for safety tips. Happy Halloween, everyone!

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….Baseball Managers are Goofy

1. Why is baseball the only sport where the manager such as the Boston Red Sox’s Terry Francona (left) and coaches wear the same uniforms as their players. Basketball? No. Hockey? No. Football? No. I mean, do you think the always-dapper Sam Mitchell would be seen wearing a leisure suit on the sidelines? Gaslamp Ball wonders about what baseball managers wear as well.

2. Baseball is the only sport where the manager is allowed to venture on to the playing field to argue about a bad/controversial call. You do that during a hockey game, and you’d be lucky if an opposing player didn’t accidently knock the coach to the ice.

3. For a team with 25 players, it’s odd - and expensive - that there’s a manager, a bench coach, a bullpen coach, a pitching coach, a first base coach and a third base coach. Six coaches for 25 players seems completely excessive.

4. Once a baseball manager is fired, it’s not long before he’s hired somewhere else. It’s the same guys getting recycled again and again - and few of them are under the age of 40.

According to the Straight Dope, the tradition of baseball managers wearing a uniform didn’t start until about a 100 years ago when players who had been the captain of their teams started to “manage”. The only notable exception since then was the Philadelphia Phillies’ Connie Mack. In 1957, baseball passed a rule that required coaches to be in uniform, specifically first and third-base coaches.

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…We Should Stop Idolizing Celebrities

1. They are just regular people who happen to be in the spotlight. As Julianne Moore commented in an interview with Reader’s Digest, “There’s no value in it. It’s not worth anything. There’s no personal achievement in celebrity. You don’t learn from it. You don’t grow from it.”

2. Speaking of value, idolizing celebrity brings little value to the idolizer. While it can be entertaining to hear about their latest escapades, why do we rush to do so? Does it help us grow in any way as human beings? Doubtful.

3. What’s really to idolize? Yes, they have fame and fortune, can get a table at a restaurant with ease, and get invited to all the awards shows, but celebrities live under a microscope. It can’t be that much fun to have the paparazzi pry into every aspect of your life and let the world in on every little secret.

4. Idolizing celebrity can be unhealthy, particularly at a young age. In a study of 142 junior high school girls, researchers found that girls who strongly idolized a male celebrity had more experience dating, reported secure and preoccupied attachments to same-age boys and were rated higher in materialism. You also have to ask the question of whether celebrities are generally good role models.

5. We should worry less about achieving celebrity and more about recognizing talent, in ourselves and each other.

For more, check out this tongue-in-cheek article by the BBC. And if you completely disagree and feel the need to celebrity watch, check out I’m Not Obsessed!

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….Mac Geeks Are Excited about Leopard

1. It’s been more than two years - 30 months to be exact - since the last major release of OS X so you can understand why all those fanatic, die-hard, ultra-loyal, dyed-in-the-wool Mac users are so anxious to get their hands on Leopard. This is the fifth major release since OS X was released upon the world in September 2001. Here’s a timeline for the releases.

2. Apple can do no wrong these days judging the by success of the iPod, iPhone, MacBook and iMac - along with Apple’s soaring stock price. As a result, expectations for Leopard are sky-high. Of course, Apple has only fueled the hype-o-metre by promoting how Leopard includes 300 new features. The Wall St. Journal’s Walt Mossberg has it right when it suggests Leopard is an “evolution not a revolution” but don’t tell that to any avid Mac user unless you want to get into a heated discussion.

3. The upgrade is pretty inexpensive - $129 as an upgrade and $199 for a five-license family pack. As well, students get deep discounts. And there’s only one version and it can apparently run on machines going back to 2001. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Vista starts at $99 for the Home Basic version (upgrade), and tops out at $399 for the UItimate version at Best Buy. Despite Leopard’s low cost, BitTorrent sites are apparently extremely busy with people trying to download free version of the operating system, according to Wired’s ThreatLevel.

4. Apple has taken its time getting Leopard ready - even delaying the launch by four months - while Vista was launched before it was really ready for prime-time. As a result, Vista has struggled, which has only made the Mac look that much better.

5. Steve Jobs as the golden touch. When you’re a computing visionary, design god and strategic mastermind, how can a simple operating system upgrade be anything but excellent?

For some in-depth reviews on Leopard, check out Computer World and the New York Times’ David Pogue.

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…Nuclear Power is Making a Comeback

1. We are greedy, greedy energy users. Unless consumption patterns change dramatically, energy production and use will contribute to global warming through large-scale greenhouse gas emissions. According to an MIT study, rebuilding nuclear power plants could be one of the principle means of reducing carbon emissions. Unfortunately, alternative energy, while promising, is too early in its development for broad commercialization.

2. September saw the first application for a new nuclear power plant in the United States. Filed by New Jersey-based utility NRG, the company is aspiring to build a plant in Texas. This comes nearly 50 years after the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvana became the first commercial power plant to go online and the first application since 1979 - the year of the Three Mile Island partial meltdown.

3. Politicians are climbing on board. Former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, a self-declared environmentalist during the first Bush term, states that “the Bureau of Labor Statistics will tell you that the nuclear industry is the safest place to work - safer than real estate and Wall Street.” Nice.

4. Environmentalists are climbing on board. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace and now co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, used to see nuclear energy as “synonymous with nuclear holocaust.” He is now singing a different tune, declaring “nuclear is the cleanest, safest and has the smallest footprint” of any major means of energy production. And he’s not the only one.

5. Demographics. As of 2006, approximately 41% of the U.S. population was under the age of 30. With every passing year, fewer and fewer people remember the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Given that more people spend time cruising Facebook than history books, this should come as no surprise.

For more about the financial requirements surrounding nuclear power, click here. And for a perspective on the other side of the coin, click here.

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