Category: Big Business

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Missed by that much

I just finished reading Taliban, Ahmed Rashid’s study of the Taliban’s rise in Afghanistan, this weekend. The book was published early in 2001 (pre-9/11, that is), so its perspective about the civil war is untinged by What Would Come. Rashid does paint a very bleak picture about the region and the regime, and offers a ton of insight into how Afghanistan got so messed up.

The book is also a product of its time, of course. One of the “problems” with Taliban is that oil was priced around $13/barrel in the years leading up to its publication. That fact was a key to his understanding of Russian and Iranian policy, and it’s completely understandable; who would even entertain the notion that oil would someday trade for 5x that price?

I found myself marveling over how the country, long seen as the prize in The Great Game, achieved its present-day notoriety only when it fell under the radar and became an utterly failed state. Once “we” stopped paying attention to it, Afghanistan became the engine of the new world.

Which brings me to the end of the book. Usually, I don’t give away endings, but I don’t think I’m doing Rashid any disservice in this case. Here’s the final paragraph:

But if the war in Afghanistan continues to be ignored we can only expect the worst. Pakistan will face a Taliban-style Islamic revolution which will further destabilize it and the entire region. Iran will remain on the periphery of the world community and its eastern borders will continue to be wracked by instability. The Central Asian states will not be able to deliver their energy and mineral exports by the shortest routes and as their economies crash, they will face an Islamic upsurge and instability. Russia will continue to bristle with hegemonic aims in Central Asia even as its own society and economy crumbles. The stakes are extremely high.

I don’t mean to goof on Rashid by writing this, but isn’t it amazing how much worse it got than his most pessimistic projection?

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Watch this space

Back in college, I remarked that the weirdly pointillized head-shots on the front page of the Wall Street Journal looked like they’d been put through the “Drew Friedman-izer”. I’m not sure if it was funnier to make a joke about a cartoonist best known for The Incredible Shrinking Joe Franklin, or to make a reference to the Wall Street Journal at Hampshire College.

Anyway, if there was ever a perfect example of the Journal‘s Drew Friedmanizing process, it’s this pic of Tom Ford from an article in today’s ish:

The article’s about Ford’s post-Gucci career, because he’s about to launch a line of menswear, which will include “classic custom-made suits, shirts, ties, shoes, luggage, jewelry and fragrances.” Here’s some drivel about it:

Mr. Ford says he isn’t aiming only at fashionistas but also at rich businessmen in the U.S. and developing countries who “have been deprived of luxury.” He doesn’t plan any womenswear, “having nothing new to say.”

To me, the only interesting things about the article are that incredible pic and the fact that Ford is launching TWELVE fragrances this month with Estee Lauder. I’m holding out hope that one of them is “Friedman.”

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I wish I could fail this well

There’s a bizarre article in the NYTimes today, about the appointment of two editors at Consumer Reports and the mag’s upcoming redesign. It begins:

As it struggles to recover from a recent flawed article about children’s car seats, Consumer Reports has named two new editors and announced a redesign.

Hmm. Sounds almost like the flawed article has led to the appointments and the redesign. We learn that Kim Kleman has been named editor-in-chief, while retaining her position at the mag’s parent company. Greg Daugherty will cover editorial personnel.

From there, we’re told that the incorrect article about child safety seat tests has damaged the Consumer Reports brand:

In a “Safety Alert” article in its February issue, Consumer Reports said that 10 infant car seats failed its safety test and called for one seat to be recalled.

In an editorial in that issue, the magazine’s president, James Guest, wrote that the images he saw of the tests “filled me with dread: Dummies tumbled like Raggedy Anns, seats flew across the lab, plastic bases cracked.”

Within weeks, the magazine’s executives retracted the article and apologized, saying the tests, which the magazine said were conducted by an outside company, had been botched. The May issue contains an explanation of the mistake.

“When Consumer Reports has to come out and apologize in public and in print, that’s big for a magazine that has been trusted for years,” Mr. Husni said. “This is going to require a big forgiveness.”

Wow! This is terrible! No wonder the magazine has appointed two new positions and undergone a redesign! It must be on the verge of collapse! Wait. . . what’s the very next paragraph say?

Circulation did not drop at Consumer Reports, nor has its subscription growth slowed since it retracted the car seat article, said Ken Weine, a company spokesman.

Newsstand sales have reached 160,000 each month this year, twice those three years ago. The magazine, which does not accept advertising, has 4.3 million print readers, and 2.8 million who pay to read its online version, Mr. Weine said.

The redesign will provide more information about the magazine’s product-testing methods, but Ms. Kleman said that the change was not in response to the car seat episode. Instead, the additional testing information will be provided as a way for the magazine to set itself apart from other sources of product information like consumer review sites, she said.

Oh. So, the magazine’s actually doing fine? The safety seat alert and retraction didn’t cause mass cancellations, and newsstand sales have doubled from 3 years ago? The redesign isn’t in response to the alert? (I’ve worked in magazines for more than 10 years; a redesign isn’t something you frivolously roll out.)

All of which is to say, this article is bullshit.

The writer (or her editor) is trying to shoehorn the child seat controversy into an article about pretty standard day-to-day operations at a magazine. Neither appointment appears to have anything to do with that story (that editor-in-chief slot has been vacant since October), the magazine’s credibility is unaffected (except in the eyes of the chairman of the journalism dept. at U of Mississippi), and the redesign is an attempt to create more brand awareness for CR (to help it stand out from online review-sites).

When you get down to it, I bet its retraction of that child seat article was a lot more comprehensive than the corrections that the Times is in the habit of running. Of course, Consumer Reports depends on the trust and goodwill of its readers, since it doesn’t accept advertising.

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Pinky and the — oh, never mind

Here at my illustrious day job, I get a lot of invites to pharma-conferences. Some have good presenters whom I can work with to write articles for the mag. Others are hardcore technical science conferences, which are beyond the scope of what we cover.

Now, the 10th Annual International Conference on Drug Metabolism/Applied Pharmacokinetics, is definitely in the latter class but, on a whim, I looked through the event schedule just now to see if there were any presentations that might be adaptable for the mag. What did I find?

11:00am – Brain Transporters – Jashvant (Jash) Unadkat, Ph.D., Professor, School of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmaceutics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

And it’s followed by a tour of Wollersheim Winery!

Now I’m kicking myself for not being a scientist.

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U.S. Pharmacopeia

A month ago, I mentioned the amazing tox breakdown from Gerald Levert’s autopsy. I felt like Steve Howe really let us down by only having meth in his system when he flipped his truck last year.

Fortunately, the Anna Nicole Smith tox report came out yesterday, and it’s restored my faith in drug-abusing celebrities:

  • Chloral hydrate: A drug typically used in hospitals for pre- and postsurgery patients struggling to sleep or in great pain
  • Diphendydramine: Over-the-counter Benadryl cures itching, sneezing and other allergy-related symptoms.
  • Clonazepam: Prescription Klonopin is used to treat seizures and panic- and anxiety-related disorders.
  • Diazepam: Prescription Valium is used as a sedative for panic- and anxiety-related disorders.
  • Nordiazepam: Metabolized Valium
  • Temazepam: Prescription Restoril is a sleep aide commonly used in hospitals.
  • Oxazepam: Prescription Serax is used as a sedative for panic- and anxiety-related disorders.
  • Lorazepam: Prescription Ativan is used as a sedative for panic- and anxiety-related disorders.

Evidently, some of this stuff was being injested because of a painful abscess in her butt, the result of . . . intramuscular injection of HGH or B12 for “longevity” treatments! Well played!

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Will I never learn?

Oh, sure, I know you all think it’s easy being me. I know how you envy the dashing, romantic, debonair life of a pharmaceutical trade magazine editor who lives in a quiet, no-restaurant town a little beyond the suburbs. But it’s not all wine and roses, I tellya!

Take today, for example. Last night, I crashed at a friend’s apartment on 13th St. so I could get to an 8:30am presentation at the Waldorf. No problem, except that the presentation went on till noon with a short coffee break. That ran out of coffee. So I grabbed some scorched Starbucks in the lobby and figured I’d get something to eat on the way back down to the garage where I’d parked the night before.

Unfortunately, it was awfully cold out, and I’d forgotten that there aren’t any restaurants up around the Waldorf. I figured I’d pass on the street-meat kiosk, since I wouldn’t have anywhere to sit down and eat, and caught a cab down to 13th St.

Perhaps I was getting a little punchy with hunger, but I thought, “Well, as long as I’m in the area, I may as well stop in at the Strand on the way back to the car.”

And that’s where my troubles began.

See, dear reader, it’s one thing for me to go without food (and with crappy coffee) for a while. It’s another to be in a low blood sugar mode while walking around a giant used bookstore.

Now, I’ve never been a huge fan of the Strand, in part because it’s not a very serendipitous bookstore for me. For some reason, I can’t just meander around, pick something up, and start unspooling creative threads all around the labyrinth of the mythocreative mind. Maybe the shelves are too tall in the sides of the store, or the selections are too extensive. I’m not sure. But I have far greater luck when I go to a place like the Montclair Book Center.

That said, I usually find books to buy at the Strand. I just don’t find inspiration.

So I picked up a bunch of books today, including a collection of journalism about Chechnya by Anna Politkovskaya, some gifts for friends, and a couple of discounted comic collections. I began my trek to the checkout line, resigned to carry both a bag of books and my work-bag (laptop inside) a few blocks along 13th to my friend’s place, where I would pick up my overstuffed overnight bag (Amy stayed last night too, which cut her morning commute from 2 hours to 10 minutes) before walking back down the block to the car.

And that’s when I saw it:

Yep: 11 volumes of the 20-volume Complete Works of George Orwell edited by Peter Davison (reviews here). Never released in the U.S., and exorbitantly expensive to order from the UK.

So, minutes later, I found myself slinging my work-bag over my shoulder and hauling 2 enormous bags of books down 13th St. Where the overstuffed overnight bag awaited. Somehow, I got back down the block with all 4 bags; my slanted shoulders were not happy and kept shrugging the non-Strand bags off. But I got to the garage, picked up my car, and figured I’d just get out of NYC and get something to eat back in NJ.

I spent the next 45 minutes sitting in various stages of traffic and regretting that decision. Only two things got me through the trip home: the promise of White Manna and Howard Stern playing an audio clip of David O. Russell flipping out on Lily Tomlin. And $125 in Orwell books. Okay, so maybe it is pretty easy being me. I’ll shut up now.