Viktor Bout + more news

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Viktor Bout

For Arms Sales Suspect, Secrets Are Bargaining Chips – NYTimes.com – continuing story of Viktor Bout. Viktor Bout was a Russian arms dealer. Viktor Bout graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in the Soviet Union. Viktor Bout first appeared in Angola supporting Soviet proxy the MPLA. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union Viktor Bout set up an air freight business based in Angola. As well as legitimate cargo Viktor Bout built up a reputation breaking UN arms embargoes across sub Saharan Africa, the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia.

Consumer behaviour

Are You Working With Energizers or Rotten Apples? | Fast Company – interesting article on consumer behaviour in the workplace

Culture

The prescient cultural criticism of Max Headroom. – Slate Magazine – I love Max Headroom, though when watching it, I find its funny how dated it feels; particularly the portrayal of TV as a dominant figure in society

William Gibson: I’m agnostic about technology. But I want a robotic penguin | The Observer – I love the phrase agnostic in relation to technology, its often how I feel

Economics

Are Counterfeit Drugs Really 10% of All Drugs? – The Numbers Guy – WSJ – interesting article on the pharmaceuticals industry, worryingly the BMJ gets called out for citing make-believe data

Ideas

SSRN-Convexity, Robustness, and Model Error by Nassim Taleb – interesting whitepaper about economic | financial risk from the guy who wrote that Black Swan book

innovation

Computer Chips Seem Poised to Shrink Again – NYTimes.com

Japan

Tokyo Girls Collection 2010 A/W – JAPAN Style – Japan Style reports on the autumn | winter show of the Tokyo Girls Collection. Over 30,000 women in a stadium where models (just like them) show wares that they can order using their mobile phone in real-time. Those that can’t make it, watch the show online and can order via the website. . A bit of entertainment and show business is thrown in as well. It cirumvents the complex retail distribution channels that are prevalent in Japan. TGC will be run in Beijing next year as well. Here is a post that I wrote in more depth about the TGC phenomenon and two more posts about brand extensions to the TGC formula

Online

Yahoo Revamps Mail Service – WSJ.com – just waiting for when Carol Bartz comes out and says that Yahoo! was never an email company… What has surprised me on this was that Yahoo! has been steadlly been losing share to Google. Yahoo! slew the 1GB mail box size issue years ago with some fancy work which meant consumers got unlimited storage but had to load up through normal use rather than dumping stuff in. The Oddpost derived interface is up to scratch as well. So this seems to be more about the perception of the Yahoo! domain and associated services?

Retailing

Evolving convenience stores | The Japan Times Online – I couldn’t imagine APAC without 7-Eleven and Lawson yet they have only been in Asia for just over 25 years and come to be a key player. Yah! for slush puppies