Daily Dose of Optimism

DDO Roundup - Soap, Global Warming, BrickBreaker, and Oil

* The brands "Dove" and "Axe" are both made by Unilever; one postures as though it respects women, the other objectifies them. This analysis by a clever marketer should get you thinking:

Dove is a Unilever brand.  But guess what?  So is Axe. Uniliver's Dove celebrates women by encouraging them to take pleasure in their individual beauty. Unilever's Axe portrays women as a ditsy, sex crazed collective. Same company. Two worldviews. Or at least, that's how they present themselves to us through their marketing. Truth be told, as consumers, we really have no clue. So pardon the cynicism, but Unilever, therefore, is not being authentic. But here's the question: Do we care?

As long as consumers remain oblivious to the man behind the curtain, I'd say the answer is no, but time and the spread of information would likely cause the Dove buyers to shun the product. Ask a woman in your life what she thinks; anecdotal evidence via email is welcome. I make the bold prediction that Axe buyers won't care no matter what the details are.

* I watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth a few weeks back. He reflects on losing the presidency, growing up on a farm, and lots of artfully presented graphs. The way I see it, whether we elect a Democrat or Republican to the presidency in 2008, the country is almost destined to have a dangerous nut pursuing some quasi-religious crusade, for "democracy" or the "environment," so buckle up. Canada is starting to sound like a great idea. I am reminded of this as several friends recently pointed out this caption to me, from IBD:

A tractor clears snow Wednesday on the White House grounds. The snow was from a massive storm that shut down parts of the country, including where a House hearing on global warming was postponed due to €œinclement weather.€ A Tuesday screening of Al Gore'™s global warming movie "€œAn Inconvenient Truth" at Washington Maryville University in St. Louis was also canceled on account of snow.

* I used to think I was a loser for the amount of time I spent playing BrickBreaker on my BlackBerry; now I realize I'm just CEO material. For the uninitiated, BrickBreaker is the mindlessly addictive game that comes pre-installed on RIM Blackberries. The WSJ reports several cases of CEO addiction:

When Richard Fuld, chief executive of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., couldn't control his addiction, he took drastic measures. In October, he had the game BrickBreaker taken off his BlackBerry. [...]

Richard Handler, a former bond trader and now CEO of brokerage company Jefferies Group Inc., says he is constantly trying to beat his high score. He plays in elevators and on the way to meetings, or even in meetings.

* I was glad to hear in GWB's State of the Union address that the energy conservation message has finally hit home. If you recall, I ranted about his trope, "America's Addiction to Oil" in June of 2006, where I called it "misapplied victimology that is completely inappropriate as an official position towards energy consumption." So, Bush now asks for the US to cut gasoline use up to 20% by 2017. It's a start.

* Oil plunges below $50 in January, Jim Rogers calls $150 per barrel "someday." Here are the details from Bloomberg:

Oil will resume its march toward $100 a barrel after a "correction," said Jim Rogers, who predicted the start of the commodities rally in 1999. "I'm just not smart enough to know how far down it will go and how long it will stay, but I do know that within the context of the bull market, oil will go over $100," Rogers said in a Tokyo interview. "It will go over $150. Whether that is in 2009 or 2013, I don't have a clue, but I know it's going to happen." [...]

Rogers, author of "Hot Commodities", has said oil will keep rising because there hasn't been a major discovery for 30 years and economic growth in China and across Asia is driving up demand. [...] The Rogers International Commodity Index, which more than doubled in the past five years, has dropped 13 percent in six months on a total return basis. "When you have big bull markets, 50 percent corrections, or retractions, are normal," he said in an interview yesterday.

The red line in the graph below is on 1/18/07, the day this news appeared on Bloomberg:

Mr. Rogers certainly has an uncanny sense of timing. I'm sure the comments were actually made a day or two prior to their appearance on the wire. - Ed

What a Dinner at Gallagher's Inspired

In mid-January, I had a celebratory dinner of sorts at Gallagher's Steakhouse, which was recommended to me as one of the last restaurants in the country that still serves dry aged beef. I'd been curious as to exactly what dry aged beef was for several months, ever since I was misinformed that the steaks at my favorite steakhouse, Mastro's, were dry-aged.

Dry-aged beef is a method by which top drawer steaks were prepared for consumption in the days prior to vacumn technology. Beef is kept in a meat locker just above freezing temperatures for anywhere up to 30 days, so its natural enzymes can break down connective tissues, tenderizing the steak. The steak loses moisture during this process, causing a concentration of flavors. Mold forms on the outside of the meat, so the outer layer has to be discarded, making dry aging wasteful and expensive. Because "wet aging" using vacumn bags can be completed in a few days and is said to produce a better result with less waste, dry aging is now rarely practiced.

I was unsurprised to learn that Gallagher's only serves one dry aged cut of steak, which was my choice; my girlfriend had the filet (not dry aged). See the full menu here. Anyway, to cut to the chase: Gallagher's pretty much sucks. The steaks weren't terrible, but they were prepared with a real lack of care. And, as you might expect for NYC, the meal, with tip, cost about $200. The best aspects of the meal were (a) enjoying it with someone I love, (b) the wine, a Penfolds Thomas Hylands 2004 Syrah ($43), which retails for $12, and (c) an idea.

A week later, after some reflection on this meal, I decided that instead of trying out other steakhouses in the city, I would learn how to prepare a mean steak dinner myself, and to boot, I would find a great wine store and get top shelf wines at retail prices. I figured that if I wasn't totally hopeless, I should be able to prepare a decent steak, and I couldn't go wrong buying wine at less than a 300% markup over retail.

I'm happy to report that the experiment has been an ongoing success, and my steak technique improves each week, as does my appreciation for great wines. So, if you're wondering why this blog posting has been light of late, it is basically a result of a lot of cooking, eating and drinking, all of which require preparation time (shopping and cooking) as well as relaxation time (eating and talking).

I've discovered some great resources for learning about wine, one of which was this great episode on decanting wine by Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library. I now decant every wine I drink for anywhere from 20 minutes to five hours using this decanter from Crate & Barrel:

Caption: Ed decants some red wine

So, if I'm not posting here on the weekends, well, don't worry about me. I look forward to the possible creation of some wine blog in the near future. In the meanwhile, back to business. - Ed