Look for the printed edition at your favorite location starting Wednesday.
Sunday, January 31, 2016
VALENTINES @ ISLAND BREEZE GRILL! ELIZABETH CITY RESTAURANT & BAR
It's that time of year again!Love is in the air at Island Breeze Grill!
Treat your loved one like the Queen or King they truly are! (not that you haven't been all year long )
Show them just how much you appreciate them!
Come join us for an elegant valentines day and dine on linen draped tables adorned with fresh flowers as your'e served a 5 Course Meal selected just for the occasion!
Tables are almost gone!
Make your reservation today and show your special someone a time to remember at Island Breeze Grill on Sunday February 14, 2016,Valentine's Day.
Specialty desserts and Drink specials will be available that are sure to ignite the passion!
Full service bar will be available!
*Three Seating times 12 P.M. , 3 P.M. , and 6 P.M. *
-Please specify which time when reserving-
Secure your reservations now!
*First Course*
Homemade Yellow Split-Pea Soup seasoned with garlic and olive-oil and garnished with homemade croutons served with Cornbread and Rolls
*Second Course*
House salad of mixed greens, walnuts and crumbled blue cheese drizzled with sweet raspberry vinaigrette
*Third Course*
Choose from
Tender chicken strips served with homemade dipping sauce,
Classic Jerk chicken wings
or Cocktail beef patties served with a sweet dipping sauce
*Fourth Course*
Entree, Choose from the following
Louisiana Cajun Chicken over angel hair pasta served with Collard Greens
Roasted Stuffed Wild-Caught Salmon served with Rice Pilaf and Spinach
Whole Red Snapper garnished with fresh vegetables and sweet fried plantains served with rice and beans and Cabbage
Slow-Braised Beef Short-Ribs served with a baked sweet potato and steamed cabbage
*Final Course*
A Mouth watering Dessert to share with your loved one!
all for just $ 29.95 per person!
*Coke beverages and sweet tea are included*
Reservations can be made at 252-338-0048 or shoot us a message!Join This Event and Call Now to Reserve your Table!
7 Ways 3D Printing Is Already Disrupting Global Manufacturing by Rick Smith Contributor 3D Printing Entrepreneur, Keynote Speaker, Author (Forbes Magazine)
3D printing production is still in its infancy, but it is already inevitable. And if you look closely, you will find numerous indications that this historic shift is already well underway.
For the last decade, 3D printing has been the playground of the maker community, while commercial applications have been limited to prototyping. But now, industrial 3D printing has reached its tipping point, and is about to go mainstream in a way that will revolutionize the economy.
3D production of functional end-use parts is already one of the fastest growing areas in the manufacturing sector. In 2014, a PWC survey found that 11% of manufacturing companies had already switched to volume production of 3D printed parts or products. As costs continue to drop and quality rises, it will be impossible to put this genie back in the bottle.
Here are seven ways that 3D printing production is already in use today and disrupting business as we know it.
1. True Rapid Prototyping. 3D printing has been used for nearly 20 years to create physical replicas of new part or product designs. Often referred to as rapid prototyping, this process has typically been anything but rapid, with service providers often taking a week or more to deliver a single piece. But recent breakthroughs in automation coupled with the entry of global distribution companies like UPS have changed everything, in some cases leading to same-day production and shipping. These changes are dramatically collapsing design cycles. A product that would need a month to go through three or four design changes in the prototyping phase now takes a week. Products are getting to market faster, and companies are saving significant time and money.
2. Rapid Design Iteration (A/B testing of physical products). 3D printing has moved beyond prototyping into first-run production, allowing for true market testing and rapid design iteration. Witness Ford: For most of the company’s existence, engineers had to create a brand new mold if they wanted to test a prototype engine. The process would typically take six months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Today, Ford is 3D-printing these molds in four days at a cost of $4,000. Taking advantage of this enormous reduction in time and cost, Ford recently decided to make not just a single engine prototype for a new car, but numerous versions to be tested simultaneously. No longer bound by the constraints of the old industrial process, engineers can explore dozens of variations and rigorously test them all, fine-tuning the engine’s performance.
The result of advances in 3D printing production will be an eventual blurring of the lines between prototype and product. Smaller companies will reap great benefit from this technology, introducing innovative products without huge inventory expense. Multiple versions of industrial parts or even consumer goods can be tested for use in the marketplace—the ultimate focus group. The sort of A/B testing that is constantly done in the digital world is now possible in the physical world.
3. Low volume production. With conventional manufacturing, a company has to commit to creating tooling or molds before a single end use part can be produced. If creating a mold costs $50,000 and each incremental part costs $.50, then the very first part will cost $50,000.50! This works out fine if you are producing millions of parts. But what if you only need 500? With 3D printing, there are no set-up costs whatsoever. Today, for production runs of less than 1,000 items, most companies will consider 3D production as a cost effective alternative. (Fast forward to the inevitable and not-so-distant future when prices for 3D printing production have dropped 95% or more, and “Made in China” tags are a collector’s item.)
4. Mass Customization. Until recently, if you needed to have your knee replaced, a nurse would bring a box directly into the operating room and the doctor would select one of the five possible knee designs that she felt most resembled your knee. Today, your actual knee is scanned and a perfect replica is printed and ready for you prior to surgery. This is an example of mass customization – where large quantities of an item are produced, each one customized. Invisalign has built a multi-million dollar business producing teeth alignment devices using 3D printing to completely customize every single device. With customization comes premium pricing (aka the Starbucks skinny mocha latte frappuccino vinni vicci). Nearly every company I talk with is exploring how to introduce product customization to better serve customers and increase profits.
5. Virtual Inventory. Manufacturing companies making a new product typically also manufacture a multi-year supply of spare parts, producing large quantities that are expected to meet demand for 10 years or more. But holding inventory is very expensive. Costs include the capital to produce the inventory, shrinkage (where parts are simply lost or stolen), obsolescence, warehousing, insurance, tracking and distribution. What is your company warehousing? How many times per year are those parts needed? Why not simply print them on demand instead? With 3D printing production, you make what you need, when and where you need it. Virtual inventory improves the efficiency of every business that uses anything manufactured. Inventories around the world will soon shrink dramatically as virtual inventory goes mainstream.
6. The Long Tail of Parts. 3D printing not only disrupts the initial stages of production where years’ worth of inventory is created; it fundamentally changes how companies view the end of a product’s life. Today, a ten-year-old refrigerator that works fine mechanically but is missing two shelves or a door seal would most likely be scrapped. After a decade of service, all the spare parts produced for it are depleted. The manufacturer will consider the product “dead,” and will no longer service it. But with 3D production, you now have “the long tail of parts.” Hold on to the digital design files, and you can print any part for as long as it is needed. Older but still-useful products don’t become waste; their lifespan need not be pre-determined by scale production limitations. The “long tail” fundamentally changes the way designers and engineers are thinking about and planning for a products existence well into the future.
7. Product Innovation Renaissance. 3D printing’s lower entry barriers and ability to enable radically more complex and useful objects are initiating a new era of product innovation. The rush of design possibilities will eventually compel existing companies to rethink nearly all of their current products. Companies are already replacing traditionally-manufactured items with 3D printing production, taking advantage its superior design capacities and flexible production schedule. As highlighted in the first article of this series, GE is using 3D metal printers to produce its fully redesigned new fuel injection system for jet engines, reducing components from 21 parts to 1 and incorporating geometries that are simply impossible to create using any other manufacturing method, resulting in astonishing increases in efficiency. This innovation renaissance will only accelerate as companies move beyond redesigning existing products to creating new products that today are unimaginable.
We find ourselves at a key inflection point in history. The possibilities of growth and innovation are endless, and companies have already begun to seize on what is possible today. But the current uses for 3D printing in production are what email was to the Internet in 1994: an example of the incredible utility of a new technology, but also, merely a glimpse of the sweeping changes to come. In the next and final article in this series, we will all take an eye-opening step forward and see what it might be like to live in a 3D printed future. Hold onto your seats!
For the last decade, 3D printing has been the playground of the maker community, while commercial applications have been limited to prototyping. But now, industrial 3D printing has reached its tipping point, and is about to go mainstream in a way that will revolutionize the economy.
3D production of functional end-use parts is already one of the fastest growing areas in the manufacturing sector. In 2014, a PWC survey found that 11% of manufacturing companies had already switched to volume production of 3D printed parts or products. As costs continue to drop and quality rises, it will be impossible to put this genie back in the bottle.
Here are seven ways that 3D printing production is already in use today and disrupting business as we know it.
1. True Rapid Prototyping. 3D printing has been used for nearly 20 years to create physical replicas of new part or product designs. Often referred to as rapid prototyping, this process has typically been anything but rapid, with service providers often taking a week or more to deliver a single piece. But recent breakthroughs in automation coupled with the entry of global distribution companies like UPS have changed everything, in some cases leading to same-day production and shipping. These changes are dramatically collapsing design cycles. A product that would need a month to go through three or four design changes in the prototyping phase now takes a week. Products are getting to market faster, and companies are saving significant time and money.
The result of advances in 3D printing production will be an eventual blurring of the lines between prototype and product. Smaller companies will reap great benefit from this technology, introducing innovative products without huge inventory expense. Multiple versions of industrial parts or even consumer goods can be tested for use in the marketplace—the ultimate focus group. The sort of A/B testing that is constantly done in the digital world is now possible in the physical world.
3. Low volume production. With conventional manufacturing, a company has to commit to creating tooling or molds before a single end use part can be produced. If creating a mold costs $50,000 and each incremental part costs $.50, then the very first part will cost $50,000.50! This works out fine if you are producing millions of parts. But what if you only need 500? With 3D printing, there are no set-up costs whatsoever. Today, for production runs of less than 1,000 items, most companies will consider 3D production as a cost effective alternative. (Fast forward to the inevitable and not-so-distant future when prices for 3D printing production have dropped 95% or more, and “Made in China” tags are a collector’s item.)
4. Mass Customization. Until recently, if you needed to have your knee replaced, a nurse would bring a box directly into the operating room and the doctor would select one of the five possible knee designs that she felt most resembled your knee. Today, your actual knee is scanned and a perfect replica is printed and ready for you prior to surgery. This is an example of mass customization – where large quantities of an item are produced, each one customized. Invisalign has built a multi-million dollar business producing teeth alignment devices using 3D printing to completely customize every single device. With customization comes premium pricing (aka the Starbucks skinny mocha latte frappuccino vinni vicci). Nearly every company I talk with is exploring how to introduce product customization to better serve customers and increase profits.
5. Virtual Inventory. Manufacturing companies making a new product typically also manufacture a multi-year supply of spare parts, producing large quantities that are expected to meet demand for 10 years or more. But holding inventory is very expensive. Costs include the capital to produce the inventory, shrinkage (where parts are simply lost or stolen), obsolescence, warehousing, insurance, tracking and distribution. What is your company warehousing? How many times per year are those parts needed? Why not simply print them on demand instead? With 3D printing production, you make what you need, when and where you need it. Virtual inventory improves the efficiency of every business that uses anything manufactured. Inventories around the world will soon shrink dramatically as virtual inventory goes mainstream.
6. The Long Tail of Parts. 3D printing not only disrupts the initial stages of production where years’ worth of inventory is created; it fundamentally changes how companies view the end of a product’s life. Today, a ten-year-old refrigerator that works fine mechanically but is missing two shelves or a door seal would most likely be scrapped. After a decade of service, all the spare parts produced for it are depleted. The manufacturer will consider the product “dead,” and will no longer service it. But with 3D production, you now have “the long tail of parts.” Hold on to the digital design files, and you can print any part for as long as it is needed. Older but still-useful products don’t become waste; their lifespan need not be pre-determined by scale production limitations. The “long tail” fundamentally changes the way designers and engineers are thinking about and planning for a products existence well into the future.
We find ourselves at a key inflection point in history. The possibilities of growth and innovation are endless, and companies have already begun to seize on what is possible today. But the current uses for 3D printing in production are what email was to the Internet in 1994: an example of the incredible utility of a new technology, but also, merely a glimpse of the sweeping changes to come. In the next and final article in this series, we will all take an eye-opening step forward and see what it might be like to live in a 3D printed future. Hold onto your seats!
Saturday, January 30, 2016
Make-It-Yourself: The rise of the micro-manufacturers
Thanks to state-of-the-art design software and the latest computer-controlled laser cutters, 3D printers and other manufacturing hardware, designers and inventors are turning their ideas into reality and getting them to market far more quickly and cheaply than they ever could before.
Digital designs sent online to micro-factories situated locally or abroad are reducing costs, waste and supply chains.
And the objects being made are not just your traditional arts-and-crafts fare in plastic and wood, but high-tech gadgets and inventions that have gone on to sell millions - and make millions - around the world.
For example, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is the man behind another highly successful company, Square, which makes mini payment card readers that can plug into your smartphone or tablet.
The company has taken on the US merchant banking industry and is already worth $3.2bn (£2bn) after just two and a half years.
Virtual made real
Square co-founder, Jim McKelvey, made the prototypes for the dongle in a community-owned workshop in Menlo Park, California.It is one of several sites founded by TechShop, a pioneer in the "make-it-yourself" movement.
"You get access to your own personal research lab for the cost of a bad coffee addiction," says TechShop chief executive Mark Hatch.
Founded in 2006 using money raised from amateur investors and passionate makers, TechShop has six centres in the US, each with around 1,000 members.
But the company has just announced its intention to raise $60m from corporate and private investors to fund its expansion.
Using 3D design software from the likes of Autodesk, says Mr Hatch: "You can do all your modelling in the virtual world and then make them real."
Mr. Hatch rattles off a number of other TechShop success stories, including Type A Machines, a 3D printer manufacturer; Clustered Systems, which makes lower-energy cooling systems for data centers; and Lightning Motorcycles, creator of the world's fastest electric motorbike.
"These stunning innovations coming out of the maker movement are beating some of the biggest companies in the world," says Mr. Hatch.
"It's the democratization of the industrial revolution."
Entrepreneurship
Prof Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Center for Bits and Atoms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston is developing a similar concept with his Fab Labs - local digital fabrication centers aimed at stimulating invention and entrepreneurship.
According to a study by 3D printing industry analyst Wohler's Associates, the sale of "additive manufacturing" products and services will reach $3.7bn by 2015, rising to $10.8bn by 2021.
"In 20 years this new industrial revolution is going to have a much larger impact that the internet ever had," says Mr. Hatch.
"This is about the physical space, not the virtual space. It is already re-creating world."
'Tipping point'
Derek Ellery, co-founder of Ponoko.com, a make-it-yourself service provider, agrees."In the past you had to go and convince a manufacturer to make your prototype, then convince a retailer to stock your product.
"Now digital manufacturing and the internet have made it so much easier for you to create, make and sell your products," he says.
"We're at a tipping point in terms of the technology."
Ponoko has 100,000 designers using its services who have produced more than 300,000 products in total, says Mr. Elley. There are five manufacturing hubs around the world - Italy, Germany, San Francisco, New Zealand and London.
Creating the designs using Adobe Illustrator, she sends them to Ponoko for laser cutting and sells them on her own site and in online marketplaces, such as Etsy.com.
She has distributors in South Korea, Japan and Australia and retailers in Hong Kong, Germany and Belgium also stock her products.
"New technology allows an individual like me to become independent and create a micro-business," she says.
But she admits small-scale manufacturing is still more expensive per item than traditional mass manufacturing.
"Every dollar the customer pays on the product is not wasted because most products are made on-demand, so inventories and overheads are small and there is minimal waste of natural resources."
More materials
As the technology has developed the range of materials designers and inventors have available to them has proliferated.It now includes gold-plated steel and coated ceramic as well as the traditional plywood and plastics.
"Digital technology is lowering design and manufacturing costs by factors of 10 and 20 times," says Mr. Elley. "The cost of 3D prints has fallen by at least 300% over the last 10 years."
In the new era of efficient, flexible, distributed manufacturing he looks forward to the day when designers are treated like rock stars.
As the make-it-yourself revolution gathers pace, that day may not be far away.
Friday, January 29, 2016
What Is Digital Manufacturing? from wiseGEEK
Digital manufacturing is a method of production in which computer technology manufactures products in a desired style or quantity with little or no involvement from humans. The process is known by a variety of other names, including direct digital manufacturing, rapid manufacturing, instant manufacturing, and on-demand manufacturing. The technology utilized in this approach offers companies the ability to develop prototypes and plan and customize the production process from start to finish.
The creation of products through the mode of digital manufacturing is employed by businesses in a wide array of industries. The aerospace, automobile, consumer goods, energy, fashion, high tech, industrial, medical, military, packaging, and shipbuilding industries are just a sampling of the types of companies who use this type of manufacturing. It is especially popular with tool manufacturers as it allows for the on-demand production of direct tooling inserts.
There are numerous advantages to utilizing digital manufacturing over more traditional processes. Instead of producing mass amounts of a product, this type of manufacturing ensures only a predetermined amount is made. This helps in maintaining an efficient level of energy usage and guarantees material waste is kept to an absolute minimum. By allowing manufacturers to set up the precise quantity of products to be created, a business is given greater control over everything from production cost to product quality.
wiseGEEK
clear answers for common questions
The creation of products through the mode of digital manufacturing is employed by businesses in a wide array of industries. The aerospace, automobile, consumer goods, energy, fashion, high tech, industrial, medical, military, packaging, and shipbuilding industries are just a sampling of the types of companies who use this type of manufacturing. It is especially popular with tool manufacturers as it allows for the on-demand production of direct tooling inserts.
There are numerous advantages to utilizing digital manufacturing over more traditional processes. Instead of producing mass amounts of a product, this type of manufacturing ensures only a predetermined amount is made. This helps in maintaining an efficient level of energy usage and guarantees material waste is kept to an absolute minimum. By allowing manufacturers to set up the precise quantity of products to be created, a business is given greater control over everything from production cost to product quality.
wiseGEEK
clear answers for common questions
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Trade is sacking American workers, sinking family incomes
Trade is sacking American workers, sinking family incomes
Slow growth is often blamed for the dearth of good paying jobs and the administration’s inability to stem the decline in average family incomes.
The six-year expansion has averaged 2.2 percent annual economic growth and added 188,000 jobs per month. Coming off a similar bout with double-digit unemployment, the Reagan recovery accomplished about 4.6 percent annual growth and adjusting for the size of the economy, added almost twice as many jobs.
Now conditions in China are threatening to deflate or even derail the U.S. recovery. Its growth has slowed from double digits to less than 7 percent—at least as reported by Beijing’s number crunchers. Western economists peg growth at closer to 4 percent, and much of that is decadent and sterile.
Spending to build apartment and office buildings that fail to attract a single tenant and even entire ghost cities complete with utilities counts in China’s formal GDP tally but adds nothing to its productivity. Such wasteful outlays have helped rocket China’s combined public-private debt to 260 percent of GDP.
Nervous about a looming credit crisis, China’s private investors are heading for the doors—selling yuan for dollars to invest in foreign real estate and securities. That exodus is panicking global stock markets, pushing down the yuan against the dollar and making Chinese goods artificially more price competitive against American-made products than underlying differences in national costs warrant.
For all the talk of a faltering industrial dragon, U.S. imports from China were up, exports down and the bilateral trade deficit increased nearly $25 billion in 2015—killing at least another 200,000 American jobs.
Crippling debt is epidemic among emerging economies, as many borrowed in a mad race to expand manufacturing. Like Japan and the European Union, they now seek to cope with excess capacity and crushing interest payments by cheapening their currencies to boost exports and send their unemployment to the United States.
All of this makes foreign goods cheaper at Wall-Mart and U.S. exports too expensive, slows growth and adds to deflation that has the Federal Reserve flummoxed.
Those beggar-thy-neighbor strategies have pushed U.S. manufacturing into recession—employment in export-focused durable goods manufacturing is down 35,000 since June.
Trade should work better for America. After all we have a highly productive workforce and still generate most of the world’s cutting edge innovations, but commerce does not happen in a vacuum. Governments put up tariffs and impose administrative burdens on foreign goods and investment, and offer local businesses subsidies to boost exports.
Read the full article on the Hill.
The six-year expansion has averaged 2.2 percent annual economic growth and added 188,000 jobs per month. Coming off a similar bout with double-digit unemployment, the Reagan recovery accomplished about 4.6 percent annual growth and adjusting for the size of the economy, added almost twice as many jobs.
Now conditions in China are threatening to deflate or even derail the U.S. recovery. Its growth has slowed from double digits to less than 7 percent—at least as reported by Beijing’s number crunchers. Western economists peg growth at closer to 4 percent, and much of that is decadent and sterile.
Spending to build apartment and office buildings that fail to attract a single tenant and even entire ghost cities complete with utilities counts in China’s formal GDP tally but adds nothing to its productivity. Such wasteful outlays have helped rocket China’s combined public-private debt to 260 percent of GDP.
Nervous about a looming credit crisis, China’s private investors are heading for the doors—selling yuan for dollars to invest in foreign real estate and securities. That exodus is panicking global stock markets, pushing down the yuan against the dollar and making Chinese goods artificially more price competitive against American-made products than underlying differences in national costs warrant.
For all the talk of a faltering industrial dragon, U.S. imports from China were up, exports down and the bilateral trade deficit increased nearly $25 billion in 2015—killing at least another 200,000 American jobs.
Crippling debt is epidemic among emerging economies, as many borrowed in a mad race to expand manufacturing. Like Japan and the European Union, they now seek to cope with excess capacity and crushing interest payments by cheapening their currencies to boost exports and send their unemployment to the United States.
All of this makes foreign goods cheaper at Wall-Mart and U.S. exports too expensive, slows growth and adds to deflation that has the Federal Reserve flummoxed.
Those beggar-thy-neighbor strategies have pushed U.S. manufacturing into recession—employment in export-focused durable goods manufacturing is down 35,000 since June.
Trade should work better for America. After all we have a highly productive workforce and still generate most of the world’s cutting edge innovations, but commerce does not happen in a vacuum. Governments put up tariffs and impose administrative burdens on foreign goods and investment, and offer local businesses subsidies to boost exports.
Read the full article on the Hill.
Greening the Global Economy: A Plan for Climate Change – And for Jobs
Greening the Global Economy: A Plan for Climate Change – And for Jobs
Americans who understand the challenge of climate change had to be encouraged by the Paris summit, where the nations of the globe, including the United States, pledged to work together to dramatically reduce the burning of fossil fuels – before it is too late to avoid disaster.
Activists who want the U.S. to do our part must confront a massive roadblock: the Republican majority in the House, Senate and many statehouses. These conservatives, funded by oil company political contributions, deny that global warming is even a reality or a problem – and they actively block every legislative strategy for change.
Do we need a carbon tax to make renewables more market-competitive? Conservatives in the Congress denounce the idea as a “job killer.”
Do you want to cut the huge tax incentives that promote carbon-based energy? Republicans, pocketing Koch brothers’ money, just renewed those subsidies.
Do you support President Obama’s plan to get states to cut power plant carbon pollution? Right-wing groups, flush with oil and coal money, are blocking it as a “job killer.”
Do you want public investment to retool the economy for renewable energy? Conservatives believe in austerity and cutting public spending.
But hold on. This is a fight we can win: a serious fight for public investment – to retool our energy economy and the jobs of the future. Americans care about good jobs. Most people also intuitively understand that shifting from a carbon, pollution-based energy system to a clean renewable energy system will require spending money. And they know in their bones that the transition to green energy and efficiency will create good jobs in a sustainable economy.
Read the full article on OurFuture.org.
Activists who want the U.S. to do our part must confront a massive roadblock: the Republican majority in the House, Senate and many statehouses. These conservatives, funded by oil company political contributions, deny that global warming is even a reality or a problem – and they actively block every legislative strategy for change.
Do we need a carbon tax to make renewables more market-competitive? Conservatives in the Congress denounce the idea as a “job killer.”
Do you want to cut the huge tax incentives that promote carbon-based energy? Republicans, pocketing Koch brothers’ money, just renewed those subsidies.
Do you support President Obama’s plan to get states to cut power plant carbon pollution? Right-wing groups, flush with oil and coal money, are blocking it as a “job killer.”
Do you want public investment to retool the economy for renewable energy? Conservatives believe in austerity and cutting public spending.
But hold on. This is a fight we can win: a serious fight for public investment – to retool our energy economy and the jobs of the future. Americans care about good jobs. Most people also intuitively understand that shifting from a carbon, pollution-based energy system to a clean renewable energy system will require spending money. And they know in their bones that the transition to green energy and efficiency will create good jobs in a sustainable economy.
Read the full article on OurFuture.org.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Technology is Destroying Earnings As One Company Dominates the Goble by Rodney Johnson
Technology is Destroying Earnings
As One Company Dominates the Globe
By Rodney Johnson, Senior Editor, Economy & Markets
By most accounts, holiday retail sales were a letdown. While retail sales climbed 3.3% over November and December, stores reported a 6.4% drop in foot traffic. So even though people might have spent a bit more, they were choosy in where they spent. When customers spend less, companies earn less, affecting the bottom line. This relationship is on display at companies like Macy’s, which warned that sales were off 4.7% in November and December. The company plans to close stores and lay off thousands of workers. The same story is unfolding at Gap.
However, the pain isn’t equally distributed. L Brands Inc. – owner of Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works – had the best December ever. The differences in what these retailer sell explain the disparate outcomes, and favors another company I haven’t mentioned – Amazon.
I love the Macy’s location on the lower east side of Manhattan. The historic store covers city blocks, and even after the recent renovation it has wooden escalators. It seems like the goods on display go on for miles.
But among the racks lie the source of Macy’s woes. They sell a lot of coats. And scarves. And gloves.
On Christmas Day the temperature in New York City reached 66 degrees, making it the warmest Christmas on record. The current El Nino weather system has been pumping moisture across the U.S., and until early January had kept cold weather systems at bay in Canada. The moderate weather during the holidays found people in New England spending time outdoors in shorts, and not very interested in buying cold weather gear.
Warmer than normal temperatures were expected, but not that warm! The weather caught Macy’s and other large clothing retailers off guard, and with a bunch of unsold inventory.
It’s not that consumers weren’t buying, to which Victoria’s Secret can attest. They just weren’t buying what a lot of major stores had to offer.
Which brings me to Amazon.
For years consumers have been migrating to online shopping. The move was expedited by high-speed Internet (remember the dialup modem sound?), which made browsing faster, and allowed sellers to offer more efficient fulfillment and return procedures.
On Black Friday weekend, brick-and-mortar stores experienced a 10% decline in sales, while online sales grew by 10%. Now, sales at physical stores are still about nine times the size of online sales, so the absolute dollar amounts don’t cancel each other out, but online sellers started their holiday offerings weeks before Thanksgiving. This allowed them to capture more sales sooner than physical stores, which had to wait for delivery of holiday items.
And then there’s the matter of what they sold.
Physical stores are limited by what they have on hand, whether it matches the temperature outside or not. Online, shoppers can browse for whatever they want, even at 2 a.m. on a Sunday.
This trend toward e-commerce, along with the sudden shift in weather-based demand, is music to the ears of online retailers, and no one in that category is happier than Amazon.
The e-commerce giant has branched out in recent years, introducing its Prime membership with free shipping, Amazon video and music streaming, and cloud computing for storage. But the main reason most people visit the site is to buy stuff. And boy, do they buy stuff!
Over the holiday season, Amazon accounted for 42.7% of all online sales.
Think about that for a second.
One company handled almost half of all Internet sales for the entire country. How’s that for reach? In fact, Amazon captured more sales than the next 10 closest online retailers combined, including Best Buy, Apple, and Walmart.
What’s more, the company doesn’t make many things. It’s typically a pass-through for other people’s stuff. If more buyers want swimsuits than parkas, who cares? Sell ‘em what they want!
Amazon’s ability to offer us millions of goods, and then put them in our hands within a day or two – sometimes the same day – without having retail locations is nothing short of a technical marvel.
The company is a bundle of Internet expertise, marketing savvy, and logistical prowess. They are giving us what we want, when we want it, and we’re rewarding them for it with astronomical sales.
They’re also destroying other companies in the process. Macy’s, Gap, Kohl’s, even Nordstrom are all feeling the heat from a competitor they can’t touch, can’t match, and can’t catch.
Those that can’t adapt to the new way of doing business will shrink. Earnings will fall as efficiencies drive down costs, allowing consumers to keep more of their dollars in their pockets.
As for Amazon, their global domination continues.
The company reports earnings on Thursday. I have no idea what they will report. Since inception, they’ve plowed almost every earned dollar back into growth, not focusing on profits. If the goal was to own their space and become synonymous with online spending, they’ve achieved it!
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?
Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?
http://blog.markdurie.com/2016/01/do-we-worship-same-god-wheaton-college.html
by Mark Durie • Jan 23, 2016
Cross-posted from Markdurie.com
Cross-posted from Markdurie.com
Originally published under the title "Do we worship the same God? Wheaton College, Larycia Hawkins and Miroslav Volf."
The recent suspension of Larycia Hawkins by Wheaton College is a symptom of a fault line among evangelicals about Islam. The question of whether the God of the Qur'an is the same as the God of the Bible is an important and complex one, but it is unhelpful to politicize inquiry into it by insisting that anyone who disagrees with one position or another is a bigot.
Wheaton announced that one of their tenured professors, Larycia Hawkins, was put on paid leave while they "explore theological implications of her recent public statements concerning Christianity and Islam." In particular Wheaton wanted to know whether Hawkins' statement that Muslims and Christians worship the same God is compatible with the college's Statement of Faith. Larycia Hawkins was asked to clarify her views. (Wheaton College Council has subsequently confirmed that the college has commenced a termination process for her position.)
The decision led to protests on the Wheaton campus. Miroslav Volf, Professor of Theology at Yale, published an article in the Washington Post criticizing Wheaton. Volf suggests that Wheaton is motivated by hatred towards Muslims, dressed up in dogma. His reasoning:
- Those who claim that Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God base this upon Muslims' denial of the Trinity and the incarnation.
- Jews deny the Trinity and the incarnation, yet Christians down the ages have not claimed that Jews worship a different God.
- Therefore, those who do not accept the "same God" thesis must be motivated by enmity, not reason.
There are problems with this reasoning. One is the premise. Wheaton had not itself stated that it objects to the "same God" thesis on the basis of Muslims' beliefs about the Trinity and the incarnation. However Volf appears to impute this thinking to all Christians who do not accept his "same God" thesis.
The Qur'an projects an understanding of God very different from that of the Bible.
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Another is the leap from pointing out a supposed inconsistency in the reasoning of other Christians to making a severe value judgment about their motives.
In reality the best and strongest reason for rejecting the "same God" thesis is not Muslims' disbelief in the Trinity or the incarnation. It is that the Qur'an projects a different understanding of God from the Bible. As Denny Burk of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville put it, "our books are very different."
The theological differences involved are subtler and more fundamental than ticking or not ticking the Trinity box.
Eminent Orthodox Jewish theologian Michael Wyschogrod observed that the Christian doctrine of the incarnation was grounded upon the fundamentally Biblical – and thoroughly Jewish – concept of the indwelling of God's Shekinah presence with his people. Christian beliefs about the Trinity and the incarnation developed out of Jewish incarnational theologies.
Unlike the Old Testament, the Qur'an completely lacks a theology of the presence of God. Although the Arabic term sak?nah – borrowed from Hebrew shekinah – appears six times in the Qur'an, it has been repurposed to mean 'tranquility', and the concept of the personal presence of God is not comprehended by Quranic theology. It is not just that Islam rejects the incarnation of Jesus: in complete contrast to Judaism its scripture offers no basis for an incarnational theology.
Judaism differs from Islam in its organic relationship to Christianity in two key respects.
Christians and Jews share scripture. Islam rejects the authority of the Bible.
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First, Christians and Jews share scripture. Judaism bases its understanding of God on what was the Bible of Jesus, the Tanakh or Old Testament. This is not the case with Islam. Muslims do not base their theology on any part of the Bible. Indeed mainstream Islam rejects the authority of the Bible, for reasons clearly stated in the Qur'an.
Second, Jesus was a practicing Jew, and so were his disciples, so it would be absurd to state that the God of the faith Jesus practiced is different from the Christian God. This same observation does not apply to Islam. Muhammad was never a practicing Jew or a practicing Christian, and, according to Muslim tradition, the large majority of his companions came to Islam out of paganism. This has deeply influenced the Qur'an and its understanding of God.
It is disappointing that Volf attributes fear-based enmity and loveless bigotry to Wheaton's leaders. He implies that Christians who disagree with his "same God" thesis must want to fight Muslims. Such rhetoric incites hatred and contempt over a theological difference of opinion.
It is unhelpful to politicize theological inquiry by demanding assent to the 'same God' thesis.
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The question of whether the God of the Qur'an is the same as the God of the Bible is an important and complex one. Christians do need to consider carefully to what extent the God of the Bible and the God of the Qur'an are the same or different. This has far-reaching implications. However it is not helpful to paint those who disagree with one position or another as haters.
It is a false step, in the name of love, to demand assent to the "same God" thesis. Christians are commanded to love others whether they worship the same God or not. Our common human condition should be enough to motivate solidarity with others. After all, Jesus never said to only "love those who believe in the same God."
Mark Durie, the pastor of an Anglican church and founder of the Institute for Spiritual Awareness, is a Shillman-Ginsburg