April 10, 2007

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071116/lf_nm_life/initials_performance_dc

I have read before that for every inch of height that a male adds, he can expect an income $4000 higher (on average.) I think this is borne out in life - successful people are very often tall people. John Howard is considered to be short, but is actually as tall as an average male of his age. His colleagues make him look short by virtue of their own height.

Another thing I have read is that if you test different levels of an organisation on various areas(education, home environment etc), the most common dividing factor between the hierarchy is vocabulary.

This article is something else. Students with last names starting with C or D are statistically more likely to get low marks at school. Also, baseballers with last names starting with the letter K - the symbol for a strike - are more likely to strikeout than their colleagues. A lot of my favorite children’s names start with A. Maybe I’ll stick to that, and give them an A middle name as well.

The study also showed that people’s favorite letter generally tends to be one of their own initials (true of me as well, favorite letter being J and my middle name is John. Although I do like B.)

There’s so many little, subconscious factors in life that build into one’s success. I find all these little studies really fascinating.

Tyler Cruz recently ran an April Fools prank where he said that he was getting sued for trademark violation.

It took me back just a few months to December where I received legal threats for comments made on my website Jonk’s Bargains.

Under my grouping of discount cards I had listed 22 percent off, a card that offered discounts at Australian locations. It was the only website listed across the whole of Jonk’s Bargains that I criticised. I said the deals were crap (they were, and still are) and they had wasted a whole lot of money advertising a useless product.

Within a week of me releasing the site onto the internet I got a call from them threatening to sue for defamation unless I removed the information on the site pronto. I didn’t accept that, told the guy that it clearly wasn’t defamation and that if his lawyer said that it was, he needed a new lawyer.

As soon as I hung up I called my elder sister, who is a lawyer, and asked her advice. She said I was on the money.

Mark at My Opinions Are Important took an interest and wrote a huge post about Defamation law in Australia. In summary, corporations can only sue if they have nine or less employees. While 22 percent off probably fits this mold, they didn’t have a case as I was making a fair comment in the public service.

A month later I removed the comment from the website as it wasn’t really in the spirit of Jonk’s Bargains.