Mull this one over for awhile……………………Jim Owens

When I was twelve year-old my dentist told me that I must stop chewing gum. I decided to take his advice and all but eliminated Hubba Bubba, Bazooka Joe, Juicy Fruit, and Big Red from my life. Last week I was at the dentist and was surprised at the suggestion that I chew a piece of gum each day. Specifically, sugarless gum with xylitol is all the rage in the dental profession. In fact, several brands of sugarless gum now contain the ADA seal of approval on their packaging.

The thought of chewing gum as a health food yields suspicion in my world. I attempted to do a little research and found evidence of payoffs. For example, the Wrigley Company paid to conduct their own research on the health benefit of chewing gum, gave the ADA $36,000 to submit three gum brands for approval, and annually spend $35,000 to $45,000 for exhibit booth space at the annual ADA meeting. Of course, a few hundred thousand dollars is not actually big money for a company like Wrigley nor is it enough money to buy off individuals in the oral hygiene profession.

To be considered for the ADA’s seal of approval, each gum brand submitted undergoes a battery of tough laboratory and clinical tests to show that it is, indeed, safe and effective at preventing cavities. At the heart of its benefits is an increase in saliva production. In an interview with ABC News, Paul Casamassimo, professor of pediatric dentistry at Ohio State University, said “Sugarless gum dilutes any acids formed in the mouth, it helps wash away sugar and food substances and it contains antibodies and chemicals that reduce the likelihood of tooth decay.”

Product modification and innovation is a basic economic idea associated with long-term survival of a company. I never thought the day would come where health professionals suggest chewing gum and admire the efforts of firms like Wrigley and Trident. I hope that other companies follow suit. I look forward to the day where eating a Reese’s peanut buttercup or a slice of deep-dish pizza helps prevent heart disease.

Neil Terry

Dr. Karyn Friske, Pickens Professor of Business, and Dr. Darlene Pulliam, McCray Professor of Business, took advantage of a chance to visit Paris (France, not Texas) in March. The main purpose of the trip was to attend the AACSB’s seminar on teaching business ethics. Funding was through their professorships – provided by T. Boone. Pickens and James and Mogie McCray.

In addition to attending every minute of every session of the seminar, Drs. Friske and Pulliam managed to enjoy the sights. With train passes in hand, they visited the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Hall of Mirrors in the palace at Versailles, the flying buttresses of Notre Dame, the Champs Elysees, and the Arc de Triomphe.

As any proper tourist would be sure to experience, they also had lunch at two sidewalk cafes. The weather did not cooperate. There were little ice balls falling from the sky on the first day of exploring Paris and plain old rain on the last day.

Both of the accounting professors had a wonderful time and learned a lot. However, after the 11-hour trip home (just the Paris to DFW part), they are not ready for another long trip in the near future.

Enjoy the pictures below.

Darlene Pulliam

Choices – We all make them every day.

A colleague of mine, Dr. David Deviney, from Tarleton State University has written some comments about choices and has agreed to be a guest on the WTAMU Business Blog site.

His comments follow.

Dr. LaVelle “I wish I had Thought of Them First” Mills

———-

Making Choices. This is a topic that great western philosopher…..okay, the great COUNTRY western philosopher, George Jones…….. addressed in a song a number of years ago. The chorus says:

I’ve had choices

Since the day that I was born

There were voices

That told me right from wrong

If I had listened

I wouldn’t be here today

Living and dying

With the choices I’ve made.

In this fast paced world sometimes called the “rat race,” what are the important choices we should make? When I hear the term rat race, it reminds me of what Lilly Tomlin said – “Even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.”

There are at least five Main Things that might help keep us out of the rat category.

Main Thing No. 1 – Our Relationships. It seems we are “just too busy” for building and maintaining relationships. Lao Tzu (lou zu) said “Time is a created thing. To say “I don’t have time” is to say “I don’t want to.” (O Magazine, Jan. 2007).

Solid relationship don’t just happen, they require an investment of time. “What you DO is defined by your work. Who you ARE is defined by your relationships. What are the most important relationships that define you?

Choice No. 1 — Choose to spend quality time nurturing the important relationships in your life.

Main Thing No. 2 – Our Physical and Emotional Health. I once heard that the average person has over 300 negative inputs into their subconscious on a daily basis. Whether that is true or not, I don’t know, but I do believe that negative inputs far out number the positive inputs for most people. These inputs come from the media, friends, co-workers, our own thoughts and many other sources. We must focus on the positive things in our lives. In other words, count your blessings. Make it a priority.

Let me say a few words about the physical side of health. Doctors tell us that there are two major areas in which to improve our physical health - diet and exercise. Someone pointed out to me that diet is a four-letter word. Boy, this is a difficult area for me to manage so I will stop.

Choice No. 2 — Choose to live a healthy life style.

Main Thing No. 3 – Our Careers. Over half of Americans are not satisfied with their job according to a recent study and the trend was not encouraging. Job dissatisfaction can become extreme job dislike. Choosing to stay in a job we intensely dislike can actually be bad for our health. It can also make us a miserable person.

Choice No. 3 — Choose your jobs and careers wisely.

Main Thing No. 4 – Our Money. Earl Wilson, an American newspaper columnist, said “Today, there are three kinds of people: the have’s, the have-not’s, and the have-not-paid-for-what-they-have’s.”

Americans spent 1 in 7 of their take-home dollars on debt payments last year, up from 1 in 9 in 1980. A Gallop poll found that 56 percent of all divorces are a result of financial tension in the home. The Bible has more than 2,350 verses on money and only around 500 verses on prayer and fewer than 500 verses on faith. Apparently, money has always been a Main Thing. Avoiding debt is possible, but not probable in our culture.

Choice No. 4 — Choose your debt obligations wisely.

Main Thing No. 5 – Our Spiritual life. Before I offend someone, let me say that I am not talking about religion. I am talking about a moral code or compass that directs our thoughts and actions. Everyone, whether you attended a church, synagogue, mosque or none of these, has developed a moral code which defines your understanding of right and wrong. It is your value system. Choose to live by your spiritual beliefs and moral compass. All of our choices must take root in our value systems.

Choice No. 5 — Choose not to compromise your values.

When making choices ask yourself these questions:

1. Is the choice in agreement with my value system?

2. Would I want others to know about my choice?

3. Will this choice distract me from the Main Things in my life?

4. Will my choice harm anyone else?

My choices have not always been good or wise. I suspect that some of your choices have not been stellar either. We all are “living and dying with the choices we’ve made.” We cannot change the past choices and the resulting consequences. However, we can choose to look forward rather than backwards. I love this definition of forgiveness, “Forgiveness is finally giving up all hope for a better past.”

We can choose to look forward and not let guilt from past choices interfere with our future. We can choose to forgive ourselves and, in some case, others that have made poor choices for which we suffered. We can choose to make a difference for ourself and for others!

Dr. David “We’re Living and Dying With the Choices We Make” Deviney

Assistant Professor of Management, Tarleton State University

Everyone loves to hate somebody.

And today the latest victim of our disdain is the oil industry. With quarterly profits in the area of $10 billion for Exxon-Mobil and nearly that for its competitors, Americans are venting loudly, and blaming Big Oil much like rock band Steppenwolf condemned the drug pusher nearly 40 years ago.

You know what? The oil companies are not to blame for their stellar profits. No, we are. Period.

The oil companies are merely doing what we pay them to do: keep a steady supply of gas at the ready so we can continue driving…to the store, school, work, church, or just for fun.

Today (14 May 2008) the average price of unleaded gas in the US is $3.76, a price that Amarillo retailers have amazingly matched penny-for-penny the last month. While I betray my age by saying I actually remember gas prices in the twenties (that’s cents, not the decade), I will add that the current price is not out of line at all when one compares demand to supply.

You see, a lot has changed since the late-1960s when I witnessed an old-fashioned price war at gas stations in southwest Missouri while on vacation. We were a one-car family, we took one modest vacation each year, and we drove sparingly in our suburban Chicago residential area. Driving was a privilege.

Today, though, we have about 240 million vehicles in the US (for about 303 million people), we live ever farther from our place(s) of employment, and we drive everywhere. It is no surprise, then, that waist (or is that waste?) lines have expanded correspondingly.

Cheap gas has become the American entitlement, and politicians are playing this card frequently. Candidates McCain and Clinton promise a three-month gas tax holiday in summer 2009, relieving us of 18.4 cents per gallon. Of course, this is folly, because for the average person driving 1200 miles per month in a vehicle that gets 15 mpg, the savings would be a whopping $44.16.

Woohoo. We could almost bail out the housing industry with that.

We don’t need the federal government to intervene and tell us that our gas consumption is really OK, and that they’re the bad guy for having taxed us in the first place. That price reduction could actually lead to increased consumption, leading to further price increases. Artificial market adjustments are hardly what is needed at this point.

No, what we need is to simply drive less. Walk. Ride your bike. Take the bus. Car pool. But don’t just drive aimlessly.

I have been bike commuting for 15 years, back when gas was a buck and folks thought I was crazy. But with over 20,000 commuting miles alone during that time, I have saved a lot of dough. Add in bike trips to the store, Post Office, etc., and it begins to resemble a lifestyle choice.

And a big boon to my wallet.

The problem is not with the oil companies. Penalizing them would be like charging Google for being too popular, and reaping the benefits of a stock price run-up…like blaming Wal-Mart for our woes because they happen to sell what people want at decent prices…like accusing Apple for dominating the MP3 market because they happen to have the coolest music player.

If we don’t like Google, Wal-Mart, or Apple, then we should be sure to stand in the mirror when we point that finger. And we must be sure to finish that sentence with Exxon-Mobil, Valero, BP, et al, for their success is but a reflection of our willingness to patronize them.

Just my 2 gallons.

Dr “That’s about $7.50″ Gerlich

First quarter numbers are out and we did not fall apart enough to categorize the current environment as a recession. It appears that housing prices in California and Florida may have bottomed and are starting a mild recovery although its a long ways back to the heady days of two years ago!

Check out the parking lots at the restaurants along I-40 here in Amarillo on a non-descript night about 6:30 and the quality of cars in the parking lot. Where are all those “life is tough and we have to do without” folks? We have new home construction along with motels going up all over the place and getting an appointment with anyone in the medical profession is now measured in months rather than weeks or days. My point is that the economic downturn has been greatly exaggerated by a news hungry media. With all of the weather related tragedies of the recent days both here in the United States and abroad; watch the talk about the economy slip over to the back burner. We’re just news hungry so we can take a bit of evidence and build an entire doomsday scenario out of it.

Sure, gasoline prices are high but remember I am a cyclist so I think its great that we might actually see “respectable” people doing a bit of bicycle commuting to cut back a bit on that expense. Yes, food prices will rise since demand is rising, world production has hit some weather related glitches and we have decided to burn it in our cars rather than feed it to our animals. Have you looked at the fuel mileage numbers for some of the new cars lately? The change in fuel costs is having an impact but we will figure out an adjustment mechanism that works given a bit of time and effort.

My point is that “reports of our economic death are greatly exaggerated” and we need to become more aware of our everyday surroundings rather than listening to the talking heads who cannot keep our attention without saying something with some shock value. If I were a bit younger, this would represent a pretty neat buying opportunity since it is hard to beat someone going against the trend of the crowd.

Jim Owens

You may very well hate me for what I am going to say. It isn’t a popular thought, but I believe it anyway. So I’ll go ahead and say it.

Recession is not a bad word, and often can do an economy good.

I know…if you lose your job, recession is terrible. I agree with that 100%. I never want to go there, and I have complete sympathy for those who do suffer this indignity (like the 260,000 people this year who have lost their jobs). But recession is a predictable and, I will argue, often necessary component of a free-market economy.

Nothing can go on forever, and a Dow that keeps on increasing without end will reflect only inflated expectations. In order to get that new tree in your back yard to grow nicely, it must be pruned and shaped. And that is exactly the purpose that a recession performs. The Tree of Dow is in economic winter, and has been pruned nearly 10% since its peak. But it will awaken again to yet another spring.

It should be remembered that not everyone does badly in a recession. Wal-Mart is doing quite nicely, thank you, during this economic slump. When the economy soars, Wal-Mart does well. When it sours, it does even better. The May 2008 issue of Inc. Magazine highlights an impressive number of businesses that started during a recession, and prospered because of it, primarily because they created products and businesses that could weather the economy, and met basic needs.

You see, it is during economic hard times that we are forced to discern the difference between needs and wants. While the personal cutbacks can be severe and discomforting, it is good for us to jettison the folly and frivolous in favor of the necessary. Eating at home…cutting back on unnecessary purchases…saving money…driving older vehicles…vacationing in-state rather than internationally…all can help put us back on sure footing.

And just like the tree that is pruned, it will grow stronger limbs able to support more weight. In a strange kind of way, perhaps a little dose of economic reality is the glass of milk we all need to be a little more fiscally responsible.

Just remember to wipe that white mustache.

Dr “Lactose Tolerant” Gerlich

Contrary to what some of my students might think, I really do make mistakes. And one of the biggest mistakes I made was in my assessment of Twitter. I blew it, and stand here with egg on my face.

My initial estimation of Twitter was that it had to be among the silliest things one could ever do online. After all, who really wants to know what you are doing all of the time? But as I pondered the possibilities, and read about how it was used in a mob-Twittering episode at the SXSW keynote speech this last March, my eyes suddenly opened.

And I started to think nice things about it.

So nice, in fact, that a colleague and I decided to use it as a required application in our online summer school courses this year. We and our students are going to be academic guinea pigs as we leverage microblogging in the aysnchronous sphere of distance learning.

You know what? Twitter is much more than just being obsessive-compulsive about reporting the minutiae of our daily lives. No, there is a story being told, and I bet there will be sociology dissertations written on the stories being told by people in their tweets. The zeitgeist has changed once again, and our lives are being told in little 140-space snippets.

The fact that there are Twitter-petitors tells me that this is for real. But add in dozens of third-party apps (TwitPic is one of my faves), and suddenly legitimacy becomes a moot point.

I have Twitter’s text number stored; I have TwitPic’s email saved. I can speed-tweet text and/or images from anywhere now. My head is spinning with ideas now about how to use this…not just in classes, but in daily life. This thing is huge, and I now concede that it is probably the top Web 2.0 app in the last two years. Hey, last night I Tweeted a picture from a concert to TwitPic, and it was all done in about a minute. Not bad for an old geezer who until a month ago had only sent a few text messages in recent time.

Now I know what it feels like to evolve from all-fours to being bipedal. It’s good to have my head up and looking forward. But now I’ve got to get the rest of that egg off my face.

Dr “The Yolk’s On Me” Gerlich

When I was a child, perhaps the question I heard the most from well-meaning people was, “So…what do you want to be when you grow up?”

Since I haven’t grown up yet, I don’t know if I will ever find out. And for what it’s worth, my answer to the question was usually, “Gee…I really don’t want to grow up.”

There’s a certain degree of excitement in not knowing where you are going. Kind of like taking a Destination Unknown vacation, the kind I dragged my wife on back in 1988. Yeah, we were living on a grad student’s meager income, so we couldn’t do much. But I told her to just go to sleep and let me do the driving. We left Indiana…and when she awoke the next morning, we were in South Dakota.

“Honey, why the &%$# did you bring me here?

As humans, though, I suppose it is perfectly normal to want to catch a glimpse of the future, to have a road map with the route already highlighted, to have dinner on the table when you arrive. And I guess that is why pollsters and pundits are all trying to aim their telescope on the future of e-commerce and E-Society. From what I hear, there’s already road construction going on in the next frontier, and since the dotcom world is spinning much faster than earth’s 1000 mph, we could be over those looming hills in a heartbeat.

“Hold yer bonnet, Mama, thar’s change a’coming again!”

And that change is known as Web 3.0. Now wait a minute…didn’t we just start using the phrase Web 2.0? And they’re already wanting to change it? Can’t we enjoy the marvels of the read/write web for a little longer?

Apparently not, for there’s a Promised Land just over that range and around that bend. The read-only web (that’s Web 1.0) was to the internet what acne is to teens: an uncomfortable transition period. The ability to interact with the web, though, signalled a certain maturity, but it is only a taste of full-blown internet adulthood.

Or maybe just wishful thinking.

It seems like everyone’s talking about Web 3.0 now. And while Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt has said that Web 2.0 is just a marketing term, the buzz is about tomorrow, not today. There’s just a little irony in Schmidt’s voice, though, because he works for the biggest “marketing term” on the internet.

Technically, Web 3.0 takes everything that’s in Version 2, combining what we have discussed this semester, and adding more personalization and vertical search. It is basically the era of the Database Web, or as some call it, the Semantic Web. A high level of machine intelligence will be inherent in the system. Comprehensive web sites will be able to not only sell us things, offer community, provide content, etc., but also create the ultimate personalized experience, serving up products and similar users that are a match with our specific needs. And this new web will be available everywhere, as we live under data clouds and the umbrella of free (or cheap) wifi.

I have heard it said that Web 3.0 could be here as early as 2010. Which means that Web 2.0, first coined in 2005, will be just a blip on our historical radar screen.

I already see evidence of this future state, for it won’t be like someone throws a switch (unlike the FCC next February) and everyone must get on board the new train. Amazon.com is well along the path to the new web, for its site is the database. It is a multidimensional shopping experience, tagged and categorized by millions of users, yet orderly in the disorderly messiness of Weinberger’s Everything Is Miscellaneous.

But while all this talk and speculation of Web 3.0 is interesting and almost reads like a sci-fi novel, I’m not sure we should be in such a hurry. South Dakota may have some neat places, but like my wife, it’s probably not my first choice right now. I think I’ll stay in Indiana a little while longer.

Dr “Hoosier Daddy?” Gerlich

“murder simulator” - New York City Mayor Micheal Bloomberg

“the king of violent video” - Fox News

The perfect video game?

Grand Theft Auto IV has been released and apparently we are all powerless to stop the onslaught of mindless, criminal zombies in training.

I felt, as an video game educator and a newly minted blogger, that I needed to be at the very epicenter of this culture bearing and possible culture destroying event. I went to a midnight release party at the local Hasting’s store. The site was gruesome indeed: men and women ranging in age from 18 to 40-ish milling about the store, calmly standing inline waiting for the clock to strike 12:00, joking about how late they were gonna stay up and play, enjoying free pizza, and saying ‘excuse me’ as they passed. Coverage of the eventual riot was provided by major local media (Rock 108, anyway) but they left around 12:10 after it became evident that no one was going to be carjacked, ran over or beat-up. I feel very fortunate to be out of there alive with my XBOX 360 version of the game that is sure to ruin my life.

Yes, I bought the game. In fact, I am proud to say I have nearly every version of the game ever produced for the PlayStation and PS2: GTA , GTA: London 1961) GTA II, GTA III and finally, GTA IV. I find the series to be very entertaining. Yes, I know not all people enjoy the series but to the knowladgable video game fan this series offers everything:

• A compelling, open ended story - check
• an open world - check
• ultra-violence (if you so desire it) - a big check
• entertaining ‘mini-games’ - check
• extensive music from all genres (even classical) - check
• entertaining TV programs and an in-game internet - check

According to the in-game statistics I am almost 7% finished with the story mode which should take around 30 hours to beat. The rest of the game will take 4-5 times that amount to really get into and master.

I don’t want to get into the popular brouhaha about this game causing violence and crime.  There is simply no credible link between playing videogame and being a criminal.  What I will say is this:  This is a game for adults and is rated ‘M for Mature - 17+’.  Not all video games are for children, in fact, most games are for adults.  The ‘average’ video gamer is now 33 years old.  The industry has changed and it is not time for public perception to change as well.

Jeremy “I am not a criminal but I play one on the 360″ Pauli