Everything is Interesting
A pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model that involves promising participants payment primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, rather than from any real investment or sale of products or services to the public. Pyramid schemes are a form of fraud. Pyramid schemes are illegal in many countries and have existed for at least a century, some with variations to hide their true nature.
Multi-level marketing (MLM) is a marketing strategy in which the sales force is compensated not only for sales they personally generate, but also for the sales of others they recruit, creating a downline of distributors and a hierarchy of multiple levels of compensation. Other terms for MLM include network marketing, direct selling, and referral marketing. Although the products and company are supposed to be marketed directly to consumers and potential business partners by means of relationship referrals and word of mouth marketing, critics have charged that most MLMs are pyramid schemes.
MLM companies have been a frequent subject of criticism as well as the target of lawsuits. Criticism has focused on their similarity to illegal pyramid schemes, price-fixing of products, high initial start-up costs, emphasis on recruitment of lower-tiered salespeople over actual sales, encouraging if not requiring salespeople to purchase and use the company’s products, potential exploitation of personal relationships which are used as new sales and recruiting targets, complex and sometimes exaggerated compensation schemes, and cult-like techniques which some groups use to enhance their members’ enthusiasm and devotion. Not all MLM companies operate the same way, and MLM groups have persistently denied that their techniques are anything but legitimate business practices.
Vladimir Grigoryevich Tretchikoff (1913 – 2006) was one of the most commercially successful artists of all time – his painting Chinese Girl (popularly known as ‘The Green Lady’) is one of the best selling art prints ever. Tretchikoff was a self-taught artist who painted realistic figures, portraits, still life and animals, with subjects often inspired by his early life in China and Malaysia, and later life in South Africa. Tretchikoff’s work was immensely popular with the general public, but is often seen by art critics as the epitome of kitsch (indeed, he was nicknamed the ‘King of Kitsch’).
He worked in oil, watercolour, ink, charcoal and pencil but is best known for his reproduction prints which sold worldwide in huge numbers. The reproductions were so popular that it was said Tretchikoff was second only to Picasso in his popularity. Tretchikoff once said that the only difference between himself and Vincent Van Gogh was that Van Gogh had starved whereas he had become rich.
Lee’s Sandwiches is an American fast food restaurant chain specializing in Vietnamese cuisine. While originally famous for selling French baguette bánh mì (Vietnamese sandwiches), the chain has expanded its offering to many other goods, including packaged spring rolls, desserts, and other food to go items.
The first Lee’s opened in San Jose, California in 1980. There are now over three dozen locations in California, Arizona, Texas, and Oklahoma, as well as a new restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The company has plans to expand in the Pacific states of Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.
In finance, an option is a contract between two parties to buy (call) or sell (put) an asset (typically a stock or bond) at a strike price by a specified expiration date after which the option is worthless and the contact is void. The price of an option derives from the value of an underlying asset plus a premium based on the time remaining until the expiration of the option. Other types of options exist, and options can in principle be created for any type of valuable asset. You would buy the stock (go long) or a call option if you anticipated the price of the underlying security was going to rise before the option reached expiration.
You would buy a put option if thought the price was going to fall, or you can short the stock, selling shares borrowed from a third party with the intention of buying identical assets back at a later date to return to the lender. Options are quoted in per share prices, but only sold in 100 share lots. For example, a call option might be quoted at $2, but you would pay $200 because options are always sold in 100-share lots. Options are identified by the month they expire, and the strike price. For example, an ‘XYZ April25 Call’ would be a call option on XYZ stock with a strike price of 25 that expires in April. All options expire on the third Friday of the month unless that Friday is a holiday, then the options expire on Thursday.
The Eames [eemz] Lounge Chair, officially titled Eames Lounge (670) and Ottoman (671), were released in 1956 after years of development by designers Charles and Ray Eames for the Herman Miller furniture company. It was the first chair the Eames designed for a high-end market. They are made of molded plywood and leather, and examples of these furnishings are part of the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. They are prized for comfort, aesthetics, and for the pioneering use of new materials and manufacturing methods.
There is a decent used market for these chairs. Some collectors are willing to pay high prices for earlier chairs made with Brazilian Rosewood veneer, which is no longer available due to a worldwide embargo since 1992. Prices for original rosewood chairs have recently reached as much as $7,000 in auction. A new Eames Lounge Chair and ottoman starts at $3,200 for a Herman Miller model. In 2006, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the chair, Herman Miller released models using a sustainable Palisander Rosewood veneer.
In finance, a derivative is a financial instrument (or, more simply, an agreement between two parties) that has a value, based on the expected future price movements of the asset to which it is linked—called the underlying— such as a share or a currency. There are many kinds of derivatives, with the most common being swaps, futures, and options.
Derivatives are a form of alternative investment, an investment product other than the traditional investments of stocks, bonds, cash or property. A derivative is not a stand-alone asset, since it has no value of its own. However, more common types of derivatives have been traded on markets before their expiration date as if they were assets. Among the oldest of these are rice futures, which have been traded on the Dojima Rice Exchange since the eighteenth century.
To get around captchas spammers hire companies employing human solvers in Bangladesh, China and India at about $0.80 to $1.20 for each 1,000 solved captchas. Another approach involves copying the captcha images and using them on another site, often one offering free pornography in exchange for filling out a captcha.
With enough traffic, the attacker can get the solutions in time to relay it back to the target site. These methods have been used by spammers to set up thousands of accounts on free email services such as Gmail and Yahoo!. Since Gmail and Yahoo! are unlikely to be blacklisted by anti-spam systems, spam sent through these compromised accounts is less likely to be blocked.
Cindy Jackson (b. 1959) is listed in the Guinness World record book for having had more cosmetic surgery procedures than anyone else in the world. She set the record in 2000 and is still the official record holder to date.
Since 1988 she has had 52 cosmetic procedures, including several facelifts, two nose operations, two eye lifts, knee, waist, abdomen and thigh liposuction, jaw surgery, lip and cheek implants, chemical peels, chin bone reduction. Others were non-surgical, including Radiesse injections, hand rejuvenation, Voluma treatments and permanent make-up.
Balloon Dog is a sculpture by American artist, Jeff Koons. It is over ten feet tall, and constructed of high chromium stainless steel with a transparent color coating. It is part of the ‘Celebration’ series, which Koons began working on in 1993. Other forms in the series of sculptures and paintings include Valentine hearts, diamonds, and Easter eggs. Some of the pieces are still being fabricated. Each of the 20 different sculptures in the series comes in five differently colored ‘unique versions.’
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The Business Plot (also the Plot Against FDR and the White House Putsch) was an alleged political conspiracy in 1933. Retired Marine Corps Major General and two time Medal of Honor winner Smedley Butler claimed that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans’ organization and use it in a coup d’état to overthrow United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1934 Butler testified to a Congressional committee on these claims. In the opinion of the committee, these allegations were credible, but no one was prosecuted. While historians have questioned whether or not a coup was actually close to execution, most agree that some sort of ‘wild scheme’ was contemplated and discussed.
PayPal Mafia is an informal term for the community of American businesspeople and investors centered in Silicon Valley, who were early employees of e-commerce service PayPal before founding a series of other technology companies. Paypal was founded by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel in 1998 and was aquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. The PayPal Mafia are often credited with inspiring Web 2.0, and for the re-emergence of consumer-focused Internet companies after the dot com bust of 2001.
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The Daily Omnivore 