Pi-Consulting

Mercifully, advancing civilization provides legal restraints on the persecution of minorities, whether identified by race, skin colour or belief system. Try telling that to people in Britain’s with red hair, however. Your correspondent is one such, (well, WAS, until his hair turned grey some years ago), and he vividly recalls the epithets heaped scornfully upon him and his kind during childhood. Carrot-top, Duracell (i.e. copper-top, geddit?), Ronald McDonald, Ginger-snap… the list goes on, and so does the “good-natured” (really?) abuse. Redheads are considered glamorous in countries like the USA, which makes their not-like-me reputation and propensity for attracting snide comments all the more peculiar in Britain. The rap goes well beyond mere appearance. Redheads are supposed to have attitudinal issues too, provoking jokes like “What’s the difference between a terrorist and a red-head? At least you can negotiate with a terrorist”. Something to do with the high incidence of red hair among the Celtic races? Scots and Irish citizens are often accused of belligerence…. Small wonder, anyway, that many British redheads prefer to refer to their hair-color as “titian”, “auburn” or “strawberry blond”… anything but “red”. Sources BBC online news magazine, Pi.

Daimler Chrysler has sold off its Chrysler division for $1.35 billion, which sounds like a lot of money until one recalls that the erstwhile “automotive behemoth” sold two million cars last year for a total of $47 billion in revenues. The gaping disparity between the company’s turnover and its price-tag is accounted for by a vast health-care-and-pensions gap in the books. How are the mighty fallen, as employees’ twilight years suck the life out of the employers that hired them in the first place. As a result, Chrysler Corp. is now worth less than The Cheesecake Factory, Foot Locker and Pottery Barn. By some calculations, Chrysler is now worth less than Oprah Winfrey. (more…)

Announcing a move to “Make our economy a little more soulful”, San Francisco’s City Hall has announced a move to outlaw plastic shopping bags. Less than 5% of the 100 billion (big number, isn’t it?) plastic bags that Americans discard each year end up in re-cycling. San Francisco is not only concerned about pollution of the environment – it costs150 bucks a time to send municipal workers to go pull the pesky flapping things out of trees – but also wasted resources. Eliminating plastic bags would save them 800,000 gallons of oil annually, they reckon, since the plastic material is petrochemical-derived. Get ready to carry your groceries home in receptacles made from biodegradable corn- or potato-starch. You may not know the difference, but future generations will. And rejoice with San Francisco’s City Hall that “Karma is with us”. Source: The Economist.