At 08:43 AM 2/7/2011, Ron Kita wrote:
Greetings Vortex,
I still cannot believe that Clorox acquired Burts Bees Wax for
925 million. I tried to find some lower numbers, none were found.
Will keep looking..it is so incredible.
<http://www.newser.com/article/d9l66eg00/clorox-2nd-quarter-earnings-fall-on-burts-bees-charge-revenue-declines-post-swine-flu.html>http://www.newser.com/article/d9l66eg00/clorox-2nd-quarter-earnings-fall-on-burts-bees-charge-revenue-declines-post-swine-flu.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/business/06bees.html says $913
million. Close enough for folk music.
the story is pretty simple:
From 2000 to 2007, Burt's Bees' annual revenue soared to $164
million from $23 million.
They bought for less than six year's revenue, but also on an
expectation that it would continue to grow. Apparently it has.
This isn't big money in big business. For perspective, it's only a
few dollars for everyone in the U.S., and even further short if we
consider the worldwide market.
Cold fusion money is waiting for a killer application. A lot of money
has been spent trying to scale the effect up, without success, so
far. Without a demonstrated theory that can be used to predict device
behavior, engineering is very difficult, so the main task ahead of us
is to reverse the general impression among theoretical physicists
that CF is pure bogosity, because what's needed right now is far more
intense theoretical work, leading to experimental predictions that
are then tested.
The biggest loss in 1989-1990 was the possibility of massive
theoretical investigation. To be fair, there wasn't enough evidence
ready at first, that the ash was helium was not known and was not
expected from the lack of gammas. But that situation shifted, and the
Storms review, "Status of cold fusion (2010)," is crucial as a wedge
into the consciousness of physicists. That review follows and seals
an obvious publishing decision by Sprinter-Verlag and Elsevier to
being publishing work in the field, and they are the two largest
scientific publishers in the world.
From my point of view, the battle is over, but the "enemy" hasn't
realized it yet. Shanahan is complaining that he can't get published
any more. No negative reviews have been published in the last six
years, only a single crank letter from Shanahan, that the Journal of
Environmental Monitoring published, my guess, to bash the skeptics
thoroughly and completely with the response that they copublished
from the Most Notable Researchers in Cold Fusion, et al.... which
was, for the editors, the End of the Question. Next case?
