A podcast about books, art & life — not necessarily in that order
Actually, it’s not much of a trip: we have a conference in NYC this week, so I’ll be staying at a little hotel near Times Square for the next couple of nights. Since the exhibit hall doesn’t open till 10am, I should have a little time for blogging in the morning. On the other hand, we’ll also be taking clients out for dinner, etc., so I may be in no shape to write in the morning.
Don’t expect so much outta me, okay?
Here’s an article from BW about how Wal-Mart’s flat-panel TV pricing for the 2006 holidays helped destroy a number of electronics stores. Looks like the chain’s decision to sell a 42-inch Panasonic for under $1,000 sent its (partial) competitors off a price-war cliff:
Along with Wal-Mart’s determination to lower prices, two other factors played key roles in last winter’s 40%-to-50% flat-panel price drop and the ensuing turmoil. For one, many more retailers such as Sears and CompUSA were starting to stock a wider selection of flat-panel TVs after seeing demand soar over the previous two years. Also, manufacturers like Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, and Westinghouse had ramped up production last year with new factories in Asia and the U.S. They began flooding the market with new TVs in the latter half of 2006. All these forces combined to make a commodity of what just six months earlier had been a solidly high-end, high-margin entertainment product. “It’s Econ 101: Best Buy and Circuit City had seen fat margins from flat-panel TVs for a while, and as it happens with any product, eventually the margins come down and the music stops,” says David Abella, a portfolio manager at New York-based Rochdale Investment Management, with assets of $2 billion.
Wal-Mart is the second-largest electronics retailer today, behind Best Buy, which has fared relatively well compared to many of its rivals. But it has done so by imitating some of Wal-Mart’s best practices, most notably an efficient supply chain, by the admission of CEO Brad Anderson himself. It also has more diversified merchandise than other specialty-electronics retailers.
I think the collapse of CompUSA — and maybe some of the other retailers — was also triggered by the post-holiday delay of Windows Vista and the ensuing realization that Vista wasn’t a compelling reason to buy a new computer, but that’s just my pet theory. I’m sure the demolition of flat-screen margins was the biggest factor, given the amount of floor space all of these chains devoted to those TVs. I’m fascinated by the way different sectors become commoditized.
The pharma biz, which I cover, has historically been insulated against that (until a drug’s patent life expires, that is), leading to less concern about reducing manufacturing costs. That’s changing nowadays, insofar as major companies are trying to wring excess costs out of manufacturing processes, but the market prices (and the high cost of regulatory compliance) still insulate them.
Happy 64th birthday, LSD!
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.
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:
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!
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
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.
As longtime readers (and friends) know, I can be tremendously boring. Fortunately, my readers (and friends) are plenty funny. Writes my buddy Tina, “Read a news article today. I don’t know if I’d believe this particular advocate. . .”
A self-inserted vaginal ring that protects from pregnancy for three weeks straight goes on sale in Australia from Tuesday.
The ring can be removed for up to three hours at a time but specialists say it’s better that women get into the habit of leaving it in.
“NuvaRing can be left in during sex and most guys won’t even notice that it’s there,” said GP and reproductive health advocate Dr Sally Cockburn.
Sorry, dear readers: no Monday Morning Montaigne for you this week. I’m way too busy with the April ish, this afternoon’s DCAT event in NYC, and tonight’s anniversary-plus-1-week dinner at Cafe Matisse.
But my wife has a couple of weekend wrapup posts for you to check out: Harissa Explains It All, and It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Till, then, take some Insomnalin and get back to work!
Good thing the British National Health Service has been trying to reduce its reimbursement for Herceptin, a very focusedly effective breast cancer treatment*. That way, they can spend money on dowsers, flower therapists, and crystal healers! Yay!
(thanks to Cato-at-Liberty for pointing this one out)
* By which I mean, Herceptin works really well against around 25% of breast cancers, but is not effective against the other types. That said, it’s a major advance in treatment. Pity that, since it doesn’t work for every case, the NHS tried to keep it off the reimbursement list.
