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The 8 remaining “Worst Company in America” contenders

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WOO HOO! It’s time for March Madness! We’re down to the Elite 8!

Final Four? No – we’re not talking about Ohio State, Louisville, Kentucky or Kansas. We’re talking about The Consumerist’s “Worst Company In America” contest.

Companies like Wells Fargo and Netflix, UPS and Comcast, even Apple have been voted on at The Consumerist web site all month. There are only eight wide ranging companies left vying for the title – Bank of America, AT&T, Ticketmaster, Paypal, Walmart, Facebook, Comcast and Electronic Arts.

This is a contest none of these companies wants to win.

World’s coolest grandpa and his SR-71

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Do you have a cool grandfather? Do you think you are a cool grandfather? Well, you’ll have to go a long way to beat this guy.

He’s built an absolutely amazing remote controlled plane – a scale model of the SR-71 “Blackbird”. Not only did they build its jet engines and include retractable landing gear, the thing sounds amazing.

My grandfather made aquariums. Nice but not nearly as cool as jet planes!

Harry Potter eBooks now available

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While J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore web site is still in beta, the store to sell you stuff is up and running.

If you have an EPUB reader and a Harry Potter fan in your life, the Pottermore Shop is the only place you can buy the Harry Potter series digitally.

The EPUB format is “the world’s most popular and open eBook standard” and the files are compatible with the vast majority of computers and devices. The eBooks are also in Kindle format for use on Amazon devices and on your iOS devices.

The individual eBooks are between $7.99 and $9.99 but you’ll want to buy “The Complete Harry Potter Collection” for $ 57.54.

The global, socially conscious consumer

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Around the world, companies have invested time, talent and treasure in social and environmental efforts for a range of complementary reasons. For many companies, cause marketing—the use of social and environmental efforts to build a brand and increase profits—has been a secondary if not primary motivation.

Biking

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I’m fascinated with these guys. Lots of talent. […]

Easter egg hunt canceled due to aggressive parents

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TIME:

An annual Easter egg hunt attended by hundreds of children has been canceled because of misbehavior last year. Not by the kids, but by the grown-ups.Too many parents determined to see their children get an egg jumped a rope marking the boundaries of the children-only hunt at Bancroft Park last year. The hunt was over in seconds, to the consternation of eggless tots and the rules-abiding parents.

One four year old’s dad is quoted as saying, “You have all these eggs just lying around, and parents helping out. You better believe I’m going to help my kid get one of those eggs. I promised my kid an Easter egg hunt, and I’d want to give him an even edge.”

“An edge”? It’s an Easer egg, not a college scholarship.

Shuttle Orbiter autopsies

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Smithsonian Air and Space:

After flying 148 million miles and orbiting Earth 5,830 times, Discovery, first flown in August 1984, was being decommissioned and readied for its trip to the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia, where it will arrive in mid-April.The three main engines had been removed from the shuttle’s aft end, which was now covered by a tightly fitted mask with three white discs the size of the engine bells. Clear plastic stretched across the crater in the orbiter’s nose, where the forward reaction control system—small thrusters that maneuvered the spacecraft in orbit—had been removed.And this harvesting of the orbiter’s components was only the beginning.

I always wish I had seen one of these launches in person.

Watch a rare Disney documentary called “The Sweatbox”

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SlashFilm:

Disney is a prolific company with its name on a great many successes, and it likes to hide its missteps and failures. The process of doing so sometimes helps those mistakes become things of legend. Song of the South, with its politically incorrect and racist portrayals of certain characters, is likely the most famous example. Another example might be The Sweatbox, a very rarely-seen documentary about the failed making of an animated film called Kingdom of the Sun, which eventually morphed into The Emperor’s New Groove.The Sweatbox filmmakers John-Paul Davidson and Trudie Styler were given unprecedented access to Disney’s process and the resulting film painted the executives in such a negative light, they more or less made sure the film would never been seen in public.

A harsh look at the process of making movies with some cool behind the scenes footage.

Globalization

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Om Malik:

Unlike the past, when Coca Cola, Levi’s and McDonald’s were icons of globalization, today the brands are very different. They aren’t entirely American, but instead very global.

I remember when seeing a European brand was odd, but not so much anymore. It really is becoming a small world.

‘This Is A Work of Non-Fiction’

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One of the colleagues of “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” creator Mike Daisey disputes his assertion that people don’t expect truth in theater – especially Daisey’s.

PR pro tip to Travis Chambers

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The charming story of a young couple traveling the nation’s Big West, where humiliation is the punchline.

Foxconn will not sue ‘This American Life’

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Foxconn said on Monday it had no plans to take legal action although the programme had hurt its reputation.“Our corporate image has been totally ruined. The point is whatever media that cited the programme should not have reported it without confirming (with us),” said Simon Hsing, Foxconn’s spokesman.