h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"We have met the enemy, and he is us." -- Walt Kelly

Why fight tofu? Can't Remember.

Truthfully, about all I think when confronted with a pound of tofu, is making it disappear in just four carefully measured bites.

TOFU! I thought he'd said Corfu! and making it disappear in just four carefully measured bites, which would be hard to do IN 4 bites

Corfu, tofu, not all that different after all. They both bite back . In the latter case, my intestines don't feel great after eating .

Corfu: is that cockney martial arts?

A wise man once told me.........

but unfortunately I didn't listen.

They say there's a cure for 'that', whatever it is.?.?

...just happened on this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=648-2RE4XAk&feature=fvwrel

...not the original version I remember, one of the alternative cuts...

When I was a kid, I was sure I'd have all the answers by the time I was old. Now I'm old, and I'm sure they gave out all the answers in class on the day I was home sick.

...when I was in high school, on a foundation of S.I. Hayakawa's "Semantics", for a time I was going all out with effective communications, under a percept that if one's communication skills were up to it,one could get almost anything one wanted that way... ...after a time, I realized there were people that one simply couldn't get through to that way, and began to wonder why that was and what one could do about it if anything... ...at that point I began getting more interested in psychology...

I'm rather fond of the Golden Rule in its various permutations. Getting everything you want is not going to work if you aren't thinking about what other people want.

Yup, ya gotta understand your market demographics
and get to know your clientele. The current example
is JCPenny's shift from family oriented clothing sales
to focus their ads on mixed marriages and the emerging
LGBT market. By seeming to appear* more contemporary
in their values they hope to recover the 3 billion shortfall
they've experienced in the past few years.

BTW your permutations of the Golden Rule is an excellent
suggestion. Hadn't really thought of it that way but yes
as ITIWBS said above it really is best to expand one's
real understanding of other people's ways and feelings.

~jwf~

*sorry to be so cynical about their motivations but there
is a difference between understanding markets and actually
developing an empathetic relationship with others

J C Penneys has been repeatedly faulted in recent years for its confusing store layout. I rather like their merchandize, though.

...practical considerations in marketing, the impeded Gaussian, or "Bean Curve", originally discovered in statistical studies of beans, with the finding that they were skewed in weight to sizes larger than the mean.

Later it was discovered that the same principle obtains quite generally though the biological world, whether its diameters of tree trunks or shoe sizes, which is why if one arrives late for a sale, one may find only a few items in the smaller sizes remaining and the larger gone completely...

Sound marketing depends in part on anticipating skew in demand.