Spending from Thanksgiving to Christmas rose just 3.6 percent over last year, the weakest performance in at least four years, according to MasterCard Advisors, a division of the credit card company. By comparison, sales grew 6.6 percent in 2006 and 8.7 percent in 2005.

“There was not a recipe for a pickup in sales growth,” said Michael McNamara, vice president for research and analysis at MasterCard Advisors, citing higher gas prices, a slowing housing market and a tight credit market.

Strong demand at the start of the season for a handful of must-have electronics, like digital frames and portable G.P.S. navigation systems, trailed off in December. And robust sales of luxury products could not make up for sluggish sales of jewelry and women’s clothing.

What did eventually sell was generally marked down — once, if not twice — which could hurt retailers’ profits in the final three months of year. “Stores are buying those sales at a cost,” said Sherif Mityas, a partner at the consulting firm A. T. Kearney, who specializes in retailing.

MasterCard’s SpendingPulse data, scheduled to be released Wednesday, cover the 32-day period from Nov. 23 to Dec. 24. It is based on purchases made by more than 300 million MasterCard debit and credit card users and broader estimates of spending with cash and checks. It encompasses sales at stores and on the Internet, and of gift cards, gasoline and meals at restaurants, but is not adjusted for inflation.

Excluding gas purchases, overall holiday sales rose a lackluster 2.4 percent, the credit card company said.

The final numbers are at the low end of MasterCard’s already modest expectations, which were reduced in the middle of the season. So retail analysts and economists, who scrutinize holiday spending for clues about the health of the American economy, are unlikely to be impressed by the results.

Eboni Jones, 32, of Windsor, Conn., epitomized the problem for stores.

A phone company manager, she waited until Christmas Eve to make a single purchase at a major chain store this season, favoring Web retailers and designer outlet stores offering deep bargains.

“I am on a tighter budget than I’ve ever been,” said Ms. Jones, who walked into the Macy’s at Westfarms Mall in Farmington, Conn., on Monday morning to take advantage of a sale.

In the past, she easily spent $100 each on her six nieces and nephews. This year, it was more like $50. “If it’s not on sale, I won’t buy it,” Ms. Jones said.

MasterCard found that online spending rose 22.4 percent, a strong showing, given fears that Web purchases would slow after a decade of impressive growth.

Clothing sales rose a meager 1.4 percent, but there was a stark split between genders. Sales for women’s apparel dropped 2.4 percent. Sales for men’s apparel rose 2.3 percent. Analysts said women complained of dreary fashions.

“Even when the dust settles, women’s clothing is likely to be one of the weakest categories in retail this season,” said John D. Morris, senior retail analyst at Wachovia Securities.

Luxury purchases rose 7.1 percent, as the well-heeled splurged on $600 Marc Jacobs trench coats and $800 Christian Louboutin shoes. Footwear, at all prices, proved a bright spot for the clothing industry, with sales surging 6 percent.

Weak sales of clothing left retailers jostling for the deepest discounts during the last weekend to drum up interest from consumers. Martin & Osa knocked 50 percent off women’s wool sweaters. Gymboree issued $25 coupons to shoppers who spent $50 on its children’s clothing. Even the markdown-averse Abercrombie & Fitch dusted off its clearance signs, selling down coats with faux fur trim for $79, reduced from $99.

The American consumer has perplexed analysts this season. Retail experts confidently predicted that shoppers, uncertain about the economy, would trade down from midprice chains, like Macy’s and Nordstrom, to discounters with steeper discounts.

To a certain degree, they did, mobbing low-price chains like T. J. Maxx, and Marshalls. But the discount retailer Target has struggled this season. On Monday, it said its sales could fall by 1 percent in December compared with last year, an anomaly for a retailer accustomed to at least 4 percent monthly sales growth over the last three years.

In the end, analysts said, the biggest winners are likely to be Wal-Mart, which emerged as the undisputed low-price leader this season, and Best Buy, which became the destination for competitively priced electronics.

Much of this season’s action appeared to unfold on the Web, which spared consumers a $3-a-gallon drive to the mall. Like MasterCard, ComScore, a research firm, found that online spending rose steadily to $26.3 billion.

ComScore measured spending during the 51 days from Nov. 1 to Dec. 21. The biggest day for online shopping was Monday, Dec. 10 ($881 million), not the Monday after Thanksgiving ($733 million), known as Cyber Monday in the retail world, because consumers typically flock to the Web at work after a holiday weekend of store browsing.

Unsatisfied with sales so far, dozens of retailers, from the high-end to the low, will start slashing prices Wednesday morning. Kohl’s is scheduled to hold a sale with 60 to 70 percent discounts; Macy’s is knocking down prices by 50 to 70 percent, and dangling a $10 coupon for purchases of $25 or more; some clothing will be 50 percent off at Saks Fifth Avenue from 8 a.m. to noon; and Toys “R” Us is offering a buy-one-get-one-half-off promotion.

MasterCard Advisors predicts that shoppers will spend up to $60 billion over the next seven days, as they redeem gift cards and exchange unwanted ties and sweaters for the items they truly want.

[Via -  NYTimes.Com]

Pete Bethune, the New Zealand skipper of Earthrace, said the attempt to circumnavigate the globe would begin from Valencia in Spain on March 1 next year.

Bethune and his wife mortgaged their house and sold everything they own to help make the project happen, while continuing to seek support from sponsors.

Three years later, the Lanes had another baby boy, their seventh and last child. For reasons that no one can quite pin today, Robert decided to name this boy Loser. It doesn’t appear that Robert was unhappy about the new baby; he just seemed to get a kick out of the name’s bookend effect. First a Winner, now a Loser. But if Winner Lane could hardly be expected to fail, how could Looser Lane possibly succeed?

Loser Lane did in fact succeed. He went to prep school on a scholarship, graduated from Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, and joined NYPD (it was his mother’s longtime wish). Although he never hid his name, people were uncomfortable using it. “So I have a bunch of names,” he says today, “from Jimmy to James to whatever they want to call you. But they rarely call you Loser.” Once in a while, he said, “they throw a French twist on it: ‘Losier.’” To his cop friends he is known as Lou.

And what of his brother with the can’t-miss name? The most noteworthy achievement of Winner Lane, how in his mid forties, is the length of his criminal record: almost three dozen arrests for burglary, domestic violence, trespassing, resisting arrest, and other mayhem.

These days Loser and Winner barely speak. The father who named them is no longer alive. Clearly, he had the right idea – that naming is destiny – but he must have gotten the boys mixed up.

Source - Freakonomics, page 163

From: Mark XXXX
Sent: 14 December 2007 11:43
To: . All RED All Users
Subject: Extra Curricular Activities

Good Morning Everyone,

This morning the Office Manager from Sthree (company that occupies the 2nd floor) informed me that last night two people were caught enjoying ‘relations’ on one of their desks. The member of staff from Sthree was working late and heard something going on around the corner, after deciding to investigate he discovered the couple having sex and to his astonishment they noticed that he had noticed, but decided to continue anyway. Once ‘finished’ the lady in high boots asked the member of staff if there was a toilet she could borrow. Classy!

Ok, this does raise a few questions. If a horny couple decided to enter the office from the street they would have had to get past the main street doors without a fob and into Sthree’s offices without a fob, which is a bit tricky. Sthree’s main reception door in situated in the main atrium and is always open. Therefore, there is a good chance that they were already in the building. The member of staff describes them as dressed casually, pretty much like we are dressed most days. Also they appeared to be under the influence of alcohol…oh, that’s right we have a free bar on the 5th floor.

So, the message here is quite clear, please make sure you know who is coming in the door behind you, make sure you can trust your friends when they visit the bar and make sure all office staff have gone home!

Thanks

Mark

P.S. If anyone does know who the copulating couple were, you can drop me a little email to save me the task of trailing through a whole evenings worth of CCTV! Thanks

Classy indeed. For the record, RED is a PR outfit which has in the past punted Nokia’s “Rock Up & Play”, provided Windows Live EMEA PR “blog training” and handled the UK launch of the Xbox.

SThree, meanwhile, is one of the “leading specialist staffing businesses in the UK” boasting “well over 4,000 clients”.

Quite who Mark is we know not, but spare a thought for the poor chap since he probably spent the entire weekend running the offending CCTV footage through a CSI-style digital enhancer the better to finger the embooted strumpet and her shameless partner in crime. We look forward to enjoying the result on YouTube in due course.

[Via - The Register]

A survey of 120 students at St. Lawrence University, a small liberal arts college in northern New York, found that students who have never pulled an all-nighter have average GPAs of 3.2, compared to 2.95 for those who have. The study, by assistant professor of psychology Pamela Thacher, is to be included in the January issue of Behavioral Sleep Medicine.

“It’s not a big difference, but it’s pretty striking,” Thacher said. “I am primarily a sleep researcher and I know nobody thinks clearly at 4 in the morning. You think you do, but you can’t.”

A second study by Thacher, a clinical psychologist, had “extremely similar” results showing lower grades among the sleep skippers.

Many college students, of course, have inadequate or irregular sleep, for reasons ranging from excessive caffeine to poor time management.

Prav Chatani, a St. Lawrence sophomore who wasn’t involved in either study, said the findings made sense. The neuroscience major has been pulling fewer all-nighters, but recently stayed up all night to prepare for an organic chemistry test and a neuroscience presentation, he said.

He had difficulty remembering some of the material he studied around 4 or 5 in the morning.

“A lot of students were under the impression all-nighters were a very useful tool for accomplishing work, that caffeine intake was very useful in meeting deadlines and stuff like that,” said Chatani, who had a 3.4 GPA last semester and doesn’t expect to do too badly this semester, either.

Dr. Howard Weiss, a physician at St. Peter’s Sleep Center in Albany, said the study results make sense.

“Certainly that data is out there showing that short sleep duration absolutely interferes with concentration, interferes with performance on objective testing,” he said.

Some night owls do get good grades, of course, which may be explained by circadian rhythms, Weiss said. Circadian rhythms can be tracked through body temperature and hormonal transmissions.

Some people have different 24-hour body clocks than others, and may do better depending on class and testing times, Weiss said.

ChloJe LaFrance, a St. Lawrence junior from Elizabethtown majoring in psychology and English, said she’s never studied all night. “If I get less than six hours of sleep I just do not function at all,” she said.

LaFrance, who has about a 3.7 GPA, said she’s never had a situation where she couldn’t get all her work done.

“I’m in a crunch period right now,” she said. “I just find I work better when I get sleep. I’m actually more productive.”

In Thacher’s first study, 65 students said they had pulled one or more all-nighters, and 45 said they hadn’t done any. The survey was conducted in Psychology 101 classes, and included students in a variety of majors.

[Via - CBS]

While hiding behind technology might appear a cowardly way of splitting up, it contrasts with the four percent who simply drop all communication with their lovers without notice.

“Most of us send emails and texts everyday, so it comes as no surprise they are now being used to ditch someone — however distasteful this is,” said Rob Barnes from moneysupermarket.com, which carried out the survey.

“The results show one per cent of the population would use a social networking site to dump a partner. It would be interesting to see how this changes as sites such as Facebook and MySpace become more apparent in our everyday lives.”

One of the most high-profile victims of dumping by text was Kevin Federline, who reportedly received news that pop singer Spears was filing for divorce while being filmed for a television show.

The survey said 15 percent of the 2,194 people questioned had been dumped by text or email, although a quarter of those in the most tech-savvy 18 to 24-year-old age group would choose the traditional method — a letter.

Source - Latest Tech News

The Ottawa Citizen said at least 10 nasty letters had been delivered to little girls and boys in Ottawa who wrote to Santa this year care of the North Pole, which has a special H0H 0H0 Canadian postal code. Return letters from Santa are in fact written by an 11,000-strong army of Canada Post employees and volunteers.

“We firmly believe there is just one rogue elf out there,” a Canada Post spokeswoman told the paper.

Canada Post’s popular “Write to Santa” program — which last year delivered more than a million letters to children in Canada and around the world — has been shut down in Ottawa until the offender is caught.

Leatherman told police that the man, Cody Nunn, 25, had assaulted him in the past, so he grabbed his gun and went outside.

Leatherman told police that he accidentally dropped the gun while hiding it behind his back and shot himself in the derriere.

Nunn and Leatherman’s friends took him to a local hospital. When police arrived, Clark said Nunn was drunk and disruptive. He was arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct.

Leatherman was released from the hospital later Thursday. There were no phone listings for Leatherman or Nunn.

The sale took place after the father spent two weeks searching for the video game for the Nintendo Wii gameboard.

“So I was so relieved in that I had finally got the Holy Grail of Christmas presents pretty much just in the nick of time. I couldn’t wait to spread the jubilance to my son,” the father wrote on the eBay website.

“Then, yesterday, I came home from work early and what do I find? My innocent little boy smoking pot in the back yard with two of his delinquent friends.”

The man, a school teacher, who kept his identity private, said he sold the coveted video game to punish his son and discourage him from smoking dope.

The sale was a boon for the family’s bank account, since the game the father purchased for 90 dollars (US) was finally sold to an Australian who plunked down 9,100 dollars for it.

The naughty son, however, will not go without a present on Christmas.

“I am still considering getting him a game for his Nintendo. Maybe something like Barbie as the Island Princess or Dancing with the Stars … I know he will just love them,” the father said, tongue-in-cheek.

Three years later, the Lanes had another baby boy, their seventh and last child. For reasons that no one can quite pin today, Robert decided to name this boy Loser. It doesn’t appear that Robert was unhappy about the new baby; he just seemed to get a kick out of the name’s bookend effect. First a Winner, now a Loser. But if Winner Lane could hardly be expected to fail, how could Looser Lane possibly succeed?

Loser Lane did in fact succeed. He went to prep school on a scholarship, graduated from Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, and joined NYPD (it was his mother’s longtime wish). Although he never hid his name, people were uncomfortable using it. “So I have a bunch of names,” he says today, “from Jimmy to James to whatever they want to call you. But they rarely call you Loser.” Once in a while, he said, “they throw a French twist on it: ‘Losier.’” To his cop friends he is known as Lou.

And what of his brother with the can’t-miss name? The most noteworthy achievement of Winner Lane, how in his mid forties, is the length of his criminal record: almost three dozen arrests for burglary, domestic violence, trespassing, resisting arrest, and other mayhem.

These days Loser and Winner barely speak. The father who named them is no longer alive. Clearly, he had the right idea – that naming is destiny – but he must have gotten the boys mixed up.

Source - Freakonomics, page 163