Consumer Escapes - DQ

In our SMZ Consumer E-scape research study fewer than 13% of respondents said they considered their diet to be very healthy. I work hard to make my diet be healthy. With my family away the past few weeks I've eaten ridiculously healthy. (Little choice when there's no one else around to help do the shopping.) Last night I hit a great escape, the new DQ on Orchard Lake Road for a Blizzard®. I had the small Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Boy, that less-than-healthy stuff really tastes great on a 93 degree summer night. Considering that there was a line out the door, I'm not the only one who felt that way. So ignore the research and do "something different" as DQ's themeline urges. Maybe I'll see you there.

Consumer Escapes - Digital Disconnect

Yesterday I helped my sister activate her new Blackberry. Bye-bye to her pink Razr phone. Just after taking some responsibility for placing her in the "always on" mode I happened to read in the Wall Street Journal David Harsanyi's review of Hamlet's Blackberry by William Powers. I'll let his review and the one from Publisher's Weekly be screen reading for you. Me, I have to escape from the digital devices to find time to read the book. Or I should say, "the rest is silence."

From Publishers Weekly

Our discombobulated Internet Age could learn important new tricks from some very old thinkers, according to this incisive critique of online life and its discontents. Journalist Powers bemoans the reigning dogma of digital maximalism that requires us to divide our attention between ever more e-mails, text messages, cellphone calls, video streams, and blinking banners, resulting, he argues, in lowered productivity and a distracted life devoid of meaning and depth. In a nifty and refreshing turn, he looks to ideas of the past for remedies to this hyper-modern predicament: to Plato, who analyzed the transition from the ancient technology of talking to the cutting-edge gadgetry of written scrolls; to Shakespeare, who gave Hamlet the latest in Elizabethan information apps, an erasable notebook; to Thoreau, who carved out solitary spaces amid the press of telegraphs and railroads. The author sometimes lapses into mysticism—In solitude we meet not just ourselves but all other selves—and his solutions, like the weekend-long Internet Sabbaths he and his wife decreed for their family, are small-bore. But Powers deftly blends an appreciation of the advantages of information technology and a shrewd assessment of its pitfalls into a compelling call to disconnect. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Consumer Escapes - A refreshing shower

It's hot, it's humid and I'm showering twice a day. That's why we all need the Old Spice Guy. Thankfully he's back with another "great smelling" TV spot, asking all sorts of questions that women and men can both answer. Now take a swan dive ...

Consumer Escapes - Ideal Getaways

The Financial Times weekend edition had an article entitled "Summer loving - Leading cultural and business figures reveal their ideal getaways." Read the whole article if you get a chance. As we're in summer vacation season play along as well. Answer the questions that interviewer Victoria Maw asked of folks like Alan Greenspan:

• Where are you going on holiday this year?
• What do you think about during your holiday?
• What will you be reading on holiday?
• What will you be listening to on holiday?
• Who is your ideal travelling companion - dead, alive, historical, fictional?
• Will you switch on your "Out of Office"?
• What do you most, and least, enjoy about travelling?

I look forward to hearing some of your answers. Mine to be posted at a later date.