Last Week's Subway Erudition

My cover to cover marathon through the latest BusinessWeek magazine provoke some interest in the following:

Wal-Mart Bank? -- Wal-Mart has introduced a no-fee Discover card that offers 1% back, and in the past few years, has quietly made alliances with some financial service providers. In the past, they've expressed an interest in getting into the bank business. Their plan is most likely to do what they've done in the retail business -- target lower-income consumers and drive prices down.

Girls in the Lab -- American kids lag behind other nations kids in science and engineering, then Harvard University's President declares that girls just don't have the innate ability. Dismissing half of the population is not the smartest thing to do -- that's throwing out half the brains of the nation. But how can girls be encouraged to get into the sciences? How can the sciences be made cool? Well, one way is to start having more role models. Women still aren't hired equally as men in the science and engineering fields, and there's one simple reason -- discrimination.

Fakes -- BusinessWeek's cover article is about the big business the manufacturing of fakes has become. It's estimated that worldwide trade in counterfeit products is about 5-7% that of global trade -- or as much as $512 billion. What used to be a small time illegal business has grown to mean big business for organized crime and terrorist groups. Not only is that a danger, but counterfeiting has enter the pharmaceutical business and is pumping out fake and sometimes deadly copies of real drugs.

Procter & Gadget -- here's a trick question: how do you get people to buy more of the same old crap? Procter & Gamble, Gillette and S.C. Johnson & Son have it all figured out. Take your old crap, but it into a nifty little disposal gadget (might as well fuck the environment while you're at it), multiple the price by a hundred-fold -- and voila! You've got a hot seller on your hands! Gillette has done it with the Mach3 razors. They stuck a battery into their disposal blade shavers (since they own the batteries anyway) to make it vibrate so they could sell more. Does it make for a better shave? What does it matter? Procter & Gamble has done it with their SK-II product that sprays makeup on -- forget the cheap sponge -- you want to cover your faces properly ladies! I suppose ripping consumers off is good business -- so good in fact that Procter & Gamble and Gillette have decided to merge.