This is the first I’ve heard of it, but apparently CNL Lifestyle Properties, the firm that owns the Mount Washington Hotel (as well as Sunday River and Sugarloaf) is trying to trademark the name “Mount Washington”.
Here’s the BusinessWeek blurb: “NH Mt. Washington Hotel owner amends trademark app.”
Seems like an (wait for it, wait for it) … uphill battle!
I just heard the name of the new Louisville, Kentucky arena where the University of Louisville plays – “KFC Yum! Center“.
Really?!
Yum! Brands, the owner and franchiser KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, was spun off from PepsiCo in the late 1990s and is apparently based in Louisville.
You might think the name is stupid, but originally it was “Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc.”
Today’s Mickey Mouse’s birthday!
Rosa Scarcelli, my initial gubernatorial candidate, takes Eliot Cutler to town in her recent Bangor Daily News article: “Open primaries in case of democracy.”
Attacks on the long tradition of early and absentee voting in Maine ignore the fact that the popularity of absentee voting in gubernatorial elections has significantly increased voter turnout since at least 2002. This time around, more than 140,000 people voted early or absentee. Any move to eliminate the choice and convenience of this option will restrict voter participation, counter to the core principles of our democratic system.
So she wants non-party primaries. Which, granted, could also be seen as sour grapes; she lost the Democratic primary back in the spring.
Eliot Cutler sinks a little lower in my esteem after this Wall Street Journal Opinion piece today: “Who Stole Election Day?”
Kind of sour grapes, especially after Down East confirmed Cutler has voted early often.
Ooh! Just saw that Ben & Jerry’s Hannah Teter’s Maple Blondie is back again!
“What is Hannah Teter’s Maple Blondie,” you might ask? It’s only maple ice cream with blonde brownie chunks and a maple caramel swirl – a/k/a the best ice cream ever invented.
Go scoop some up, for a limited time …
Really Apple? The big reveal today was just The Beatles coming to iTunes?
I mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re nice and all, but no “one more thing”? That’s it?
Wow, you move out of the Middle East and you totally stop hearing about it! Today’s the Hajj, Muslims’ annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
This would have been a big deal in Dubai, here’s it’s relegated to a photo or two on Yahoo! News. Weird.
Interesting blog post over at Harvard Business Review: “Time for a New Five-Dollar Day.”
The basic gist is we need a leader like Henry Ford who had the foresight to give his workers $5 a day so they could afford a Model T.
Key quote:
This is relevant now because we’re dealing with a new crisis in consumer demand. As many have pointed out, average pay in the United States has been stagnant or declining for decades. Consumers could keep buying because of cheap credit, mostly from rising housing prices, but now Americans have no more sources of easy money. From households to governments, everyone has big debts to pay off, so it’s going to be hard to emerge from the recession.
Everyone, that is, except companies. The flip side of stagnant worker pay has been above-average corporate profits. All the talk about highly competitive markets has hidden the fact that most companies have done quite well in the past two decades. Globalization may have heightened pressures in some industries, but it’s been far tougher on capital and especially labor. Companies that performed reasonably well — even if they didn’t move as fast as others in their industries — still thrived because financing and labor was cheap. Management was the relatively scarce resource, and executive pay has jumped accordingly.
Nice idea, but I think it’d be tough to convince companies to give up all of that profit.
Salon has picked up the Cooks Source Magazine story I was telling you about yesterday “Cooks Source: The Internet roasts a plagiarist“.
Here’s a clever how to article from PC World: “How Not to Piss Off the Internet“.
Wow, I just heard about this: “Copyright Infringement and Me“.
The basic gist is that Cooks Source Magazine stole a woman’s article and then their editor told her “the web is considered ‘public domain’” and it’s okay to steal.
Classy.
Oooh, interesting: “Disney XD orders ‘Tron: Legacy’ toon“.
This show is “Tron: Uprising,” which is coming out in the summer of 2012. They’ve also picked up a 10-part “Tron” show for fall of 2011.
Songs to download: “We Belong Together” from Toy Story 3, “I See The Light” from Tangled, “Tron Score” from Tron: Legacy by Daft Punk and lastly, “Day & Night Score by Michael Giacchino.
Found an interesting statistic about the United State’s population and makeup yesterday on a blog: “Shifting Voter Demographics: America is a Different Country.”
In 1965 the nation was 89% white and 11% black, about the same as it had been during the previous century. Since then, high levels of Asian and Latin immigration have produced an America today which is 66% white and 33% “people of color,” a tripling of the minority population in only four decades. Remarkably, 10% of Americans are of Mexican descent and about 5% of the electorate speaks primarily Spanish.
They don’t cite their sources, but as soon as the 2010 Census results comes out, we’ll have more concrete facts …
Arrrrggghhh this is not cool.
AP Photo/Pat Wellenbach
I can’t believe this guy is our governor.
And then there’s this: “Tom Cruise hangs from world’s tallest building“.
Tom Cruise risked his life performing stunts for “Mission: Impossible 4″ in Dubai over the weekend: the star, 48, dangled almost 2,717 feet in the air near the top of skyscraper Burj Kahlifa, the tallest building in the world.
It’ll be interesting to see this flick, directed, of course, by the guy who did The Incredibles and Iron Giant (yes, I’m serious).
Check this out: “Cutler wins endorsement of ex-Gov. Angus King.”
“We need someone who can bring people together. It’s going to be almost impossible to get through what we are facing if it’s all going to be partisan,” King said. “He’s a really smart guy. He has thought about these issues as deeply as anyone I have ever encountered in Maine.”
Don’t forget to vote on Tuesday. (Unless you’re voting for LePage).
Two more!
I won’t turn this into a political blog, I promise, I just find it interesting that now both the Lewiston Sun-Journal and Bangor Daily News have endorsed Eliot Cutler for governor: “Maine needs a statesman, not an antagonist” and “Eliot Cutler for Governor“.
The Sun-Journal:
LePage is correct on the issues, but his bare-knuckle style and bully tactics will not produce the change Mainers so desperately need. In fact, his combative stance will further entrench Maine’s woes.
We need a practiced executive in the Blaine House, a person who has the skills and experience to be an administrator of progress. A person determined to improve our schools, reduce our taxes, fix our roads and vastly shrink government spending.
Cutler is that person.
And from the Daily News:
Maine has a rare opportunity to remake its government. State finances demand it. The public, increasingly aware that big changes are needed for the state to prosper, wants it.
Only one candidate for governor – Eliot Cutler – has the skills, vision and detailed plans to lead this work.
So now the Sun-Journal, the Daily News, the Press Herald, the Portland Phoenix, the York Weekly, the York County Coast Star, the Portsmouth Herald, the Times Record and the USM Free Press have all endorsed Cutler.
Wow.
Did you see this article in Time Magazine? “The Rent Too Damn High in Dubai? Not So Much“.
Apparently 825 of the Burj Khalifa’s 900 ultra-luxury apartments remain unoccupied. (I assume that’s since the January opening).
Key quote:
But it’s the units that will be completed that are looming as a problem. The Dubai economy must still digest a flood of housing units coming on line or soon to be opened, which will further dampen prices. Through September, 27,000 residential units have been put on the market, and another 9,000 are expected to be completed by the end of the year, according to real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle. For 2011, the firm forecasts that about 30,000 new units will come on line.
This is a whole new economic crisis!
Check these out: “Photos from the opening of the Chicago Lincoln Park Apple Store“.
Here’s the best one:
It’s Apple’s newest “Significant Store”, and it’s on the site of a former gas station.
Fantastic.
Josh finally lives in Maine again
after four years at Boston University, a stint in Southern California with
Walt Disney Feature Animation,
and two years in Dubai, UAE,
where he created and wrote
Newlywed in Dubai.
