No joy for the tomato guys

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Poor Jason Buzi. You try to do a nice thing, and what happens? Two hundred addicts and thugs descend upon you, beat you down, and steal all the prizes you were going to give away.

In celebration of Leap Year, cashtomato.com (a YouTube wannabe) decided to give away boxes of tomatoes – each containing $29 – in a publicity stunt scheduled for Leap Day, 29 February.

Instead of greeting an appreciative crowd of amused and grateful citizens, the three guys in the tomato costumes got this.

Buzi, VP for cashtomato.com, later said that “maybe next time, I would plan this better.”

Giving away cash in Union Square in Manhattan? Yeah, I’d think a better plan would be in order.

Brilliant man, sad story.

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Yesterday, I noticed one of my students carrying around a book on Nikola Tesla. I’d read about him many times in the past, and got to thinking how few of us know how amazing he really was.

Wireless communication? Tesla thought of it – in 1914. AC electric current? You guessed it (Edison gets the credit, even though he was wrong). Radio? Not Marconi, friends: Tesla.

And the list goes on, to include:

  • the turbine engine
  • radio-controlled devices
  • x-ray photography
  • the basis for what is now known as quantum physics (the relationship between energy and matter)

And yet, for all this genius…Tesla died forgotten, broke, and alone.

It’s Saturday. A good day for a good read. Get a coffee, relax, and let me know what you thought.

Fink out.

Coffee With a “Wow” Factor?

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Supposedly.

skinny.jpg

At least that’s what Starbucks founder/CEO Howard Schultz told the eleventy million Starbucks employees that they needed at a video training session. I guess the message was important enough to shut down every Starbucks store for 3 hours last night. If nothing else, it was a gutsy move.

“We’ve lost our way,” he began. *sniff*

As I slurp my own version of a Starbucks drink (regular coffee with sugar-free vanilla syrup and whipped cream out of the can), I ponder: can coffee have a “wow” factor? Will watching a barista take her time with the espresso drip and pour the foam onto my latte instead of spoon it, and make eye contact with me and smile make me go, Wow, man…?

Right now, the only thing that makes me go wow is the price. $3 for a cuppa. That ain’t wow…that’s more like shock and awe.

But hey. The ambience and experience of the tragically hip coffee bar figure into it as well, right?

Riiiiiiiight….

They just better by-golly be open when I get there this morning.