A fire early Saturday morning in an apartment building on Aberdeen Street killed two Boston University students and a third person suffered serious injuries from smoke inhalation, according to The Boston Globe.

It is not yet known what caused the fire. A similar fire in a building next to our backyard a couple of years ago was set off by a candle that had been left burning overnight. Nobody was killed in that fire, luckily. [Update: The Fire Department's investigation suggests it indeed was a candle that started the fire.]

Below are a few pictures from the aftermath of the fire. The immediate area around the building had been roped off, so they are what they are.

I snapped the picture below with my awful cellphone camera. It shows a crew from New England Cable News setting up on a Beacon Street sidewalk a block from Aberdeen Street. It was kind of funny to watch as the two off-camera crew members looked almost like homeless bums while the young female on-air reporter was dressed like a fashion model.

Foreigners are funny:

This is reality for many in Bulgaria, unpleasant as it is. Stray docs flock around kiosk where poor people buy unhealthy ’snacks’ as they are called, made of flour, water, salt and sunflower oil.

I bet the stray docs are pestering people to eat healthier food.

Judging from the picture in article Bulgaria looks a lot like America. It’s even abandoned the metric system in favor of feet and inches.

Professor Media Critic Dan Kennedy links a New York Times article on Norwegian publisher Schibsted’s unusuallly successful Internet ventures.

Writes the Times about Schibsted:

Its earnings rose 28 percent in the fourth quarter. Online operations will generate about 20 percent of the company’s revenue this year, according to analysts at Kaupthing, a bank based in Reykjavik, Iceland, even as many other big newspaper publishers struggle to reach the 10 percent mark.

Perhaps more important, at least for investors, online businesses will provide nearly 60 percent of the company’s operating earnings by next year, the Kaupthing analysts predict.

Schibsted owns the two biggest newspaper’s in Norway, VG and Aftenposten, and Sweden’s biggest, Aftonbladet, which is also the biggest in all of the Nordic countries (I know, you’re incredibly impressed).

As the article points out, Schibsted has been an aggressive investor in online properties and has also invested heavily in its newspapers web sites. Aftonbladet actually beat Schibsted to the punch: It launched its website in 1994 and was acquired by the Norwegian company in 1996. Mr. Kennedy is apparently surprised by the ugliness of VG.no’s web site design. I agree it’s quite ugly (Aftonbladet’s is similar but better), however I think the greatness of the design in question is that you get all the news simply by scrolling, plus tons of pictures, polls, links to video and what not. The websites are staffed around the clock and are thus able to break news at any time. Aftonbladet.se and it’s Swedish-owned Swedish competitor Expressen.se break news just as quickly as any other news site in the world.

In addition to well-developed and content-rich web sites, Schibsted has also invested in several non-news online ventures, including classified ads, mobile services, and a search engine. Reported the International Herald Tribune in December last year:

For Schibsted, the Scandinavian media group, search is seen as a competitive necessity. “We defined Google as our main competitor some years ago,” said Kjell Aamot, president and chief executive of the group. “It was obvious when we followed the money trail of our classified advertising revenue over to Google.”

The newspaper group still stands a chance against Google in Norway, since search-based advertising has remained a relatively small part of the Scandinavian online advertising budget, Aamot said. Search-related advertising accounts for 10 percent of online ad spending in Scandinavia, compared with 30 percent in Europe and 50 percent in the United States, Aamot said.

(Schibsted’s search-engine Sesam.no is powered by FAST, the Norwegian search company that also provides Boston.com with its local search engine).

I recently talked to a an old college buddy of mine who has parlayed a stint as new media sales rep at Aftonbladet into a nice sales management gig at a regional media group. He credited Aftonbladet’s online success with its (and Schibsted’s) willingess to invest in its websites and snap up promising start-ups that were strategically meaningful. In other words, Schibsted has done the same thing as most successful American online companies.

Let’s be frank and honest here. This post really has no purpose other than to gratuitously display scantily clad women, so I won’t try to dress it up with witty or sarcastic remarks in an attempt to pretend otherwise.

Selling Halloween is a magazine that keeps retailers up to speed on Halloween-related offerings. There is a lot of really drab Halloween products out there, but fortunately the February issue focuses on Halloween costumes, the most non-drab aspect of Halloween merchandise. For Halloween 2007, sexy costumes are in!

Allow me to quote the magazine’s editor, Mary Ford, pondering impressions from the last Halloween season:

Retailer Ken Epperly’s tale of how, with some trepidation, he went heavily into sexy costumes in 2006 and ended the season with lines of young women, their arms full with skimpy costumes, waiting patiently outside his dressing rooms. When he finally had time to sit down and analyze the season’s receipts he was delighted to discover that whereas his average VISA sale is typically about $50, his 2006 sexy costumes sales averaged upwards to $100, with nearly every sale including shoes and hoes.

I wonder what Mr. Epperly’s trepidation was? Perhaps it was “is our slutty mortician dress slutty enough?”
Continues Ms. Ford:

Together these stories suggest that the Halloween industry is enjoying a golden age - a period of prosperity, consumer enthusiasm and creative productivity.

(Bostonians take note: One of the other stories recounted by Ms. Ford is decidedly non-sex one about “a high-rise Boston University dorm with window after window adorned with Halloween lights and decorations.”)

In the article “Halloween Fashions in 2007″ we learn that 2006 saw an upswing for “’softer’ sexy motifs, like fairies and and princesses as opposed to harder-edged police and military styles, were much in favor with sexy-costume shoppers.” Nonetheless:

“I believe that the sexy trend is continuing and women want to be very pretty and feminine,” notes Michele Oumano Powell, vicepresident, Franco American Novelty Company LLC.”

Like Ms. Ford says, it’s a golden age.

Relevant links:

Magic Makers Costumes

DreamGirl Direct (pretty risque. Click with caution).

Coquette International (pretty risque. Click with caution).

Franco American Novelty Company

Selling Halloween

Little India Magazine has terrific article, Conveniently Yours, on the Indian dominance of the convenience store market and how they have leveraged hard work, business acumen and America’s business-friendly laws and regulations (well, friendly relative to those in India) into paths to prosperity. The article describes why immigrants from India were attracted to the industry and the circumstances of the market in the 1970’s.

The National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) estimates there are over 140,655 convenience stores in the United States with annual sales of $495 billion. This half-trillion-dollar retail channel comprises of many small entrepreneurs, besides the well-known multi-state and nationwide chains, such as 7-Eleven.

While there are no tabulated figures for South Asians, industry watchers estimate the number of South Asian owned stores nationwide between 50,000 to 70,000, almost a third to half of the total. Satya Shaw, president of Asian American Convenience Store Association, (AACSA) which was formed in 2005, estimates there are about 70,000 South Asian owned stores, raking in over $100 billion in revenues.

The article quotes Dinesh Gandhi, a founding member of Asian American Convenience Store Association, who owns two convenience stores and two motels (another industry where Indians are big players):

“My wife and my brother were helping me and we were working round the clock. Americans work 40 hours; we hardly slept 40 hours a week! There were so many different jobs to do. As one man running the store you are working as a cashier, as janitorial guy, you are also doing the ordering and the banking.

“In the evening you fill up the cooler, mop and clean the restroom. We would hardly sleep till midnight and we would have to get up at 5 am. So it’s not a fun job. As they say in Hindi, ‘dukh ke din nahin par bahut sankat ke din the. (They were not days of sorrow, but days of great difficulties.) Your goal is to grow fast and have your own store. You borrow the money and you want to return it fast.”

If you tell me a business plan I’ll tell you how lawyers and politicians will take your money. The Indian/Indian-American convenience store prowess carries some inherent risks:

While the share in lottery sales is just five percent, it is big volume and C-store owners can make almost $1,000 every week in commissions.

C-stores are increasingly organizing around tobacco and oil taxes and lottery ticket sales, which are often governed by local and state laws, resulting in a proliferation of organizations. Twelve of these associations have bandied together into the National Alliance of Trade Associations (NATA).

It should be noted that the article repeatedly mentions how established Indian immigrants help more recent arrivals from the sub-continent to get started and going in the industry, and the article suggests that they are to some extent organized along sectarian lines (ie Hindus and Muslims).

The article respectfully mentions Apu from The Simpsons, but not Senator Joseph Biden.

Like I said, it’s a terrific article. Take the time to read it.

The magazine’s editorial complains about Indian-Americans jockeying to get an award handed out by the Indian government to prominent overseas Indians for, well, excellence in excellence, to quote another character from The Simpsons. Indians are literally everywhere: In Africa, the Caribbean, the Gulf, Micronesia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and elsewhere, yet Indians in America have received an inordinate share of the award, in part, the magazines suspects, becuse of unseemly lobbying by Indian-Americans. Oh, come on. That’s not fair, especially for a magazine that only a few issues ago had a cover story in the competitive nature of Indians. Couple that with some old-fashioned American boosterism and it’s almost disappointing that Indian-Americans aren’t sweeping the awards.

Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center in Boston has stirred up some controversy in hospital circles by posting the hospital’s “central line infection rates.” He writes in a followup post that some of his colleagues are somewhat displeased with with his announcing the data publicly. In defending his decision, Mr Levy writes:

But I believe that the more important issue for all of us running hospitals, and especially academic medical centers, is that our standing as institutions in American society is in jeopardy.

A couple of years ago I participated in a mock-jury that weighed a malpractice lawsuit involving a delivery or somesuch that had gone bad. The operation was successful, the patient died. Something like that. I argued against finding against the doctor/hospital on the ground that one reasonably can’t expect to survive a trip to the hospital. No matter how well-trained, well-rested, well-paid, well-procedured, and well-what-not a doctor is, or a hospital staff is, things are going to go wrong and patients are going to die.

Granted, I was the only one in the mock-jury who felt that way. All the other mock-jurors were about ready to hand over half of New England to the plaintiff. Still, I think the most appropriate advertising tagline for any hospital is “You might survive!”

(Links via Universal Hub)

If you use Google to search for “Boston” on Swedish-language websites you’ll find that three of the top ten links (actually eleven, since one site gets two links) are to articles about those dadgum mooninite ad pieces. For good measure the corporate tchotskes get another four links on the second page.

The following snippet from a Motley Fool column on McDonald’s is interesting with regards to the minimum wage hikes that are sweeping the nation:

One important note that came up during the Q&A is on menu-price increases. Historically, the company has raised prices annually just below the “food-away-from-home” inflation index, which has been “running at about 3% a year the last couple of years,” said CFO Matthew Paul. In 2007, he estimates, it will probably come in a little higher, perhaps around 3.5%, as restaurant operations gear up for minimum-wage increases.

A reasonably set minimum wage isn’t going to monkeywrench the economy. However, the minimum wage can never be made into a so-called living wage. If it were, it would severly hamper the economy and shut huge classes of workers out of the labor market.

Leftist professor Henry Farrell and The Economist writer Megan McAdrle clash over the minimum wage on Bloggingheads.tv.

The garment industry in Bangladesh suffers from a shortage of skilled workers/supervisors/managers, reports The Daily Star (”Journalism without fear or favour”):

Dr Nazrul Islam, principal, BIFT, said the shortage is of two types; one is the shortage of skilled workers. The other is the shortage of mid-level managers like skilled machine operators, quality controllers, merchandisers and production managers.

The readymade garment sector of Bangladesh earns around $8 billion foreign currency per year, but the productivity of the 22 lakh workers is much lower than in Sri Lanka and China.

The reasons are lack of skill, poor management, poor working environment, poor health, low motivation and job satisfaction.

There is no study in Bangladesh on job ethics and the reasons behind the lack of motivation and job satisfaction of the garment workers, he said. But poor salary might be one of the reasons, he added.

Lakh is my favorite foreign word. One lakh is equal to 100,000.

Dr. Islam goes on to make the kind of observation that has somehow become almost obsolete in America:

“Many owners are hiring managers from countries like Sri Lanka, India, Korea and China. But the lifeline of our economy cannot depend on foreign recruits. It is not safe also because there can be a conflict of interest when a Bangladeshi company with an Indian manager and an Indian company vie for the same customer,” he said.

Many years ago I attended a seminar arranged by enterprising business students at my college in Sweden. The seminar focused on the importance of understanding cultural differences when doing business abroad, a useful topic since many Swedish business students aim for employment with one of Sweden’s multinational companies (Ericsson, Ikea, SKF, Electrolux etc). One of the presenters was a grizzled gentleman with extensive experience in south Asia. He cautioned the attending students that one has to be careful when hiring in countries like India, where employees were often more loyal to relatives than to the employer. Shocked gasps could be heard from the audience. I probably gasped myself. Betray one’s employer for the sake of enriching one’s relatives? Outrageous.

Sweden is a pretty odd country.

I’ll freely admit that my sample data is small, but my experience with the MBTA commuter trains has been quite pleasant. With only a couple of exceptions, the train has arrived and departed on what can reasonably be called on time. I suppose I shall eventually be hit with some massive delay that will make me go totally nuts, but so far, so good. Friendly staff, too.