Mast Brothers Started Their Chocolate Business in Their Apartment

The Masts provide another example showing the possibility of entry into the candy business. The issue is relevant to the claim of those who support sugar quotas, that a decline in sugar prices would not be passed on to consumers in the form of lower candy prices. If there is easy entry into the candy business, then the business is traditionally competitive, and lower costs of production will be passed on to consumers.

(p. A20) In an interview on Sunday [Dec. 20, 2015], Rick Mast, who with his brother began making chocolate in a Brooklyn apartment in 2006, said the allegations were untrue — for the most part. But on the claim that the Masts were “remelters” at the start, Mr. Mast confirmed the brothers did use industrial chocolate, what is known as couverture, in some of their early creations, before settling on the bean-to-bar process for which they are now known.

“It was such a fun experimental year,” Mr. Mast said, adding that the brothers were transparent “to anyone that asked.”

For the full story, see:
SARAH MASLIN NIR. “Unwrapping a Chocolatier’s Mythos.” The New York Times (Mon., DEC. 21, 2015): A20 & A22.
(Note: bracketed date added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 20, 2015, and has the title “Unwrapping the Mythos of Mast Brothers Chocolate in Brooklyn.”)

Textile Production Moving from China Back to United States

(p. A1) INDIAN LAND, S.C. — Twenty-five years ago, Ni Meijuan earned $19 a month working the spinning machines at a vast textile factory in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.
Now at the Keer Group’s cotton mill in South Carolina, which opened in March, Ms. Ni is training American workers to do the job she used to do.
“They’re quick learners,” Ms. Ni said after showing two fresh recruits how to tease errant wisps of cotton from the machines’ grinding gears. “But they have to learn to be quicker.”
Once the epitome of cheap mass manufacturing, textile producers from formerly low-cost nations are starting to set up shop in America. It is part of a blurring of once seemingly clear-cut boundaries between high- and low-cost manufacturing nations that few would have predicted a decade ago.
Textile production in China is becoming increasingly unprofitable after years of rising wages, higher energy bills and mounting logistical costs, as well as new government quotas on the import of cotton.
At the same time, manufacturing costs in the United States are becoming more competitive.
. . .
(p. A3) Ms. Ni, one of 15 Chinese trainers at Keer’s Indian Land plant, complained softly of American workers’ occasional tardiness. In China, she said, managers can dock the pay of workers who show up late. But here, she said, she felt frustrated that she could not discipline tardy staff.

For the full story, see:
HIROKO TABUCHI. “Chinese Textile Mills Are Now Hiring in Places Where Cotton Was King.” The New York Times (Mon., AUG. 3, 2015): A1 & A3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date AUG. 2, 2015, and has the title “Chinese Textile Mills Are Now Hiring in Places Where Cotton Was King.”)

Ten Quit, or Were Fired, “to Honor the Other 290”

(p. 1) A hellbent quest for authenticity produced some indelible on-set moments for Alejandro G. Iñárritu as he directed “The Revenant,” his two-and-a-half-hour opus of death, love and improvised surgery in the American West of the 1820s.
. . .
(p. 20) There were enough grumblings from the crew about delays, safety and overall misery that The Hollywood Reporter published an article in July in which one source described the experience as “a living hell.” Ten people either quit or were fired during filming, Mr. Iñárritu said, and he will not apologize for that.
“I have nothing to hide,” he said. “Of the 300 we started with, I had to ask some to step away, to honor the other 290. If one piece in the group is not perfect, it can screw the whole thing up.”
. . .
“Standing in a freezing river and eating a fish, or climbing a mountain with a wet bear fur on my back — those were some of the most difficult sequences for me,” said Mr. DiCaprio, who is considered a strong contender for an Oscar nomination for his performance. “This entire movie was something on an entirely different level. But I don’t want this to sound like a complaint. We all knew what we were signing up for. It was going to be in the elements, and it was going to be a rough ride.”
. . .
In person, . . . , Mr. Iñárritu has the chilled-out affect of a man who meditates every day and loves long walks. The only hint of intensity, and just a tinge of anger, comes when he discusses other movies. Too many of them today are like the products of fast-food chains, he said, ordered up by corporations that prize predictability and sameness over all else.
“What about going to a restaurant to be surprised?” he all but shouted. “That’s the risk that everybody avoids! In the context of cinema now, this movie is a bet.”
Raised in Mexico City, Mr. Iñárritu, 52, is the son of a banker who would eventually file for bankruptcy and end up selling fruit and vegetables to hotels and restaurants. The younger Iñárritu started off as a radio host, playing music and writing provocative, comical sketches with a political bent. He studied theater and learned to direct by shooting brand-identity commercials for a television station. By the time he landed his first feature, “Amores Perros,” released in 2000, he had spent hundreds of hours behind a camera. Then came “21 Grams” (2003), “Babel” (2006) and “Biutiful” (2010).

For the full story, see:
DAVID SEGAL. “That Bear and Other Threats.” The New York Times, Arts&Leisure Section (Sun., DEC. 27, 2015): 1 & 20.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 22, 2015, and has the title “About That Bear: Alejandro G. Iñárritu Discusses Making ‘The Revenant’.”)

Innovators Need Time for Tedious Tasks

(p. 3) Innovation isn’t all about eureka moments. In fact, the road to creative breakthroughs is paved with mundane, workaday tasks. That’s the message of a recent study that might as well be titled “In Praise of Tedium.”
In the study, researchers sought to examine how extended periods of free time affect innovation. To do this, they analyzed activity on Kickstarter, the crowdfunding website, in nearly 6,000 American cities.
. . .
Over a period of about nine months, the researchers found a sharp increase in the number of new projects posted during the first few days of school break periods. The spike, they suggest, is tied to people having more time to perform the administrative aspects of Kickstarter projects — working on a manufacturing plan, say, or setting up a rewards schedule. While people may be using some stretches of free time to nurture those much lauded light bulb moments, the process of innovation also appears to require time to carry out execution-oriented tasks that are not particularly creative but still necessary to transform an idea into a product, the study indicates.

For the full story, see:
PHYLLIS KORKKI. “Applied Science; Good Ideas Need Time for Tedious Legwork.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., AUG. 16, 2015): 3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date AUG. 15, 2015, and has the title “Applied Science; Looking for a Breakthrough? Study Says to Make Time for Tedium.”)

The academic paper summarized in the passages quoted above, is:
Agrawal, Ajay, Christian Catalini, and Avi Goldfarb. “Slack Time and Innovation.” Rotman School of Management Working Paper #2599004, April 25, 2015.

Serendipitous Fix for Colorblindness

(p. 3) The eyeglass lenses that Don McPherson invented were meant for surgeons. But through serendipity he found an entirely different use for them: as a possible treatment for colorblindness.
Mr. McPherson is a glass scientist and an avid Ultimate Frisbee player. He discovered that the lenses he had invented, which protect surgeons’ eyes from lasers and help them differentiate human tissue, caused the world at large to look candy-colored — including the Frisbee field.
At a tournament in Santa Cruz, Calif., in 2002, while standing on a grassy field dotted with orange goal-line cones, he lent a pair of glasses with the lenses to a friend who happened to be colorblind. “He said something to the effect of, ‘Dude, these are amazing,’ ” Mr. McPherson says. “He’s like, ‘I see orange cones. I’ve never seen them before.’ ”
Mr. McPherson was intrigued. He said he did not know the first thing about colorblindness, but felt compelled to figure out why the lenses were having this effect. Mr. McPherson had been inserting the lenses into glasses that he bought at stores, then selling them through Bay Glass Research, his company at the time.
Mr. McPherson went on to study colorblindness, fine-tune the lens technology and start a company called EnChroma that now sells glasses for people who are colorblind. His is among a range of companies that have brought inadvertent or accidental inventions to market. Such inventions have included products as varied as Play-Doh, which started as a wallpaper cleaner, and the pacemaker, discovered through a study of hypothermia.
. . .
EnChroma was still struggling to solve its marketing conundrum when another serendipitous event occurred: A paint company wanted to finance an ad campaign featuring the glasses. The idea was to introduce color to the colorblind. To that end, videos were made of EnChroma users wearing the glasses for the first time while looking at things like sunsets, colorful artwork and, of course, paint samples.
The ad campaign increased EnChroma’s sales and spurred a trend: New EnChroma customers began filming and sharing their experiences online. The company placed inserts in its eyeglass boxes encouraging customers to participate.
Prompted by the insert, Bob Balcom, a 60-year-old retired high school science teacher and labor relations specialist in Chatham, N.Y., uploaded his first YouTube video in March. Shot by his wife, it shows Mr. Balcom putting the glasses over his own eyeglasses and staring up at the sky quietly for several seconds. “The blue sky is deeper than I’ve ever seen,” he says. “It reminds me of Colorado. And the pine trees, they’re just so green.” Tears stream down his cheeks and into his gray beard.

For the full story, see:
CLAIRE MARTIN. “Finding a Niche for the Accidental Spectacles.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., AUG. 16, 2015): 3.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed dates, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date AUG. 15, 2015, and has the title “EnChroma’s Accidental Spectacles Find Niche Among the Colorblind.” )

Canadian Cartel Seizes 20,400 Pounds of Robert Hodge’s Maple Syrup

Video interviews related to the New York Times article quoted below.

(p. B1) The scenic and narrow lane that leads to Robert Hodge’s sugar camp is surrounded by a cat’s cradle of plastic piping that draws sap from 12,000 trees. At the end of the lane, a ramshackle hut contains reverse osmosis pumps to concentrate the harvest. A stainless steel evaporator, about the size of a truck, finishes the conversion into maple syrup.
Just one thing is missing: the maple syrup.
For weeks, security guards, hired by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, kept watch over Mr. Hodge’s farm. Then one day, the federation seized 20,400 pounds of maple syrup, his entire annual production, worth about 60,000 Canadian dollars, or nearly $46,000.
The incident was part of the escalating battle with farmers like Mr. Hodge who break the law by not participating in the federation’s tightly controlled production and sales system.
“It’s a good thing that I’m not 35, 40 years old because I’d pack up all my sugar equipment that’s movable, and I’d go to the United States — oh yes, in a minute, in a minute,” said Mr. Hodge, 68.
While many Americans associate Vermont with maple syrup, Quebec is its center. The province’s trees produce more than 70 (p. 4) percent of the world’s supply and fill the majority of the United States’ needs. The federation, in turn, has used that dominance to restrict supply and control prices of the pancake topping.
. . .
Mr. Hodge is similarly intransigent. At this point in the season, Mr. Hodge would normally have sold his syrup, turning his attention to his cattle and other crops. But this year he had nothing to sell. He contends that farmers should be allowed to set their own level of production and sell directly to large buyers, regardless of what the law says.
“They call us rebels, say we’re in a sugar war or something. I’ve heard rumors of that,” said Mr. Hodge, at his farm in Bury, Quebec.
“Yeah, I guess you could call it that.”
Across the table, Whitney, his 20-year-old daughter, who also farms, looked up from her smartphone and interjected.
“A war over maple syrup, like how pathetic can you get?”
. . .
Prices are set by the federation, in negotiation with a buyers’ group. The federation holds most of the power, given that it controls a majority of the world’s production.
Such domestic systems are facing scrutiny in a global marketplace. One major hurdle in the talks over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a major trade deal with 12 countries, has been Canada’s refusal to dismantle a similar quota system for dairy and poultry farmers.
Maple syrup buyers, including some American companies, have bristled at the federation’s tactics. They appreciate the steady supply. But some have taken issue with the aggressive enforcement efforts, including large fines for companies buying from Quebec producers outside the system, and the rising prices.
The situation, critics contend, could prompt buyers and producers to shift to the neighboring province of New Brunswick, and Vermont in the United States. Or consumers might simply pour artificial syrup instead.
“People will always eat chicken,” said Antoine Aylwin, a Montreal lawyer who has represented several buyers in disputes with the federation, including some American companies. “But they will not always eat maple syrup if they think that they can’t afford it.”

Defying the Law
Mr. Hodge was shocked in 2009 when the federation demanded 278,000 Canadian dollars for not joining the system and for selling directly to a buyer in Ontario.
Most years, Mr. Hodge’s sugar bush grosses about 50,000 Canadian dollars. About half the money goes to cover electricity for the vacuum pumps and oil for the evaporator.
“I’d have to give them 100 percent of what I gross for five years, and I would have nothing for production cost,” he said. “That just ain’t possible.”
Mr. Hodge openly acknowledges that he is defying the law. When the quota and centralized selling system were introduced, he continued to sell directly to a buyer in Ontario.
. . .
Like others who have invoked the federation’s wrath, Mr. Hodge’s battle seems as much about principle as avoiding a potentially crippling fine.
In Mr. Hodge’s view, the system’s restrictions are stunting the growth of Quebec’s industry. It is less bureaucratic and less expensive, he explains, for buyers to go to Vermont or New Brunswick. He said that he had no problem with paying the federation its 12 cents a pound tax for various services, like promoting maple syrup in new markets, particularly in Asia. But he will not adhere to the quotas.
“Well, I don’t accept the system because I don’t believe in not being able to sell our product,” he said. “We just think that that product is ours. We bought the land. We’ve done all the work. Why should we not be able to sell our product the way we want as long as we legitimately put it on our income tax?”
That’s a question that exasperates Mr. Trépanier of the federation. While Mr. Trépanier studiously avoids calling the organization a cartel, he has described it as the OPEC of maple syrup in the past, referring to the group of oil-producing countries. The system, he said, is doomed to collapse without production discipline.

For the full story, see:
IAN AUSTEN. “The Maple Syrup Mavericks.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., AUG. 23, 2015): 1 & 4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date AUG. 20, 2015, and has the title “Canadian Maple Syrup ‘Rebels’ Clash With Law.”)

Communist Chinese One Child Laws Violated Basic Human Rights

On Sat., Jan. 17, 2016 I caught the re-broadcast of an interview with Mei Fong that C-SPAN’s web site suggests was first broadcast on Jan. 11, 2016. The interview focused on Fong’s book on the history, causes and effects of China’s one child laws. Fong is understated in her style, but it is clear that the Chinese communist government violated the rights of many Chinese citizens by forcing them to have unwanted abortions, and to undergo unwanted sterilizations. In many cases, when their “one child” died in a disaster, or of natural causes, parents desperately rushed to try to have the forced sterilization reversed.

Fong’s book, that she discussed on C-SPAN, is:
Fong, Mei. One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.

French Union Activists Rip Shirts Off Backs of Executives and Force Them to Escape Over Fence

(p. B3) PARIS — Angry workers stormed Air France headquarters on Monday [October 5, 2016] as top managers were meeting to discuss plans to shed more than 2,900 jobs, forcing two executives to flee over a fence and in the process ripping the shirts from their backs.
The violence at the Air France offices near Charles de Gaulle Airport broke out shortly after 9:30 a.m. Officials, including the chief executive officer, Frédéric Gagey, had informed the company’s workers council that 900 flight attendants, 1,700 ground crew members and 300 pilots could be laid off as the airline strives to return to profitability.
The talks at the company, which is facing headwinds from an economic downturn and competition from low-cost carriers, had been tense for more than a year. While violence had not marred previous negotiations, the protests Monday were the latest in a series of incidents in France in which workers have held company bosses hostage or damaged property to make their point.
As the Air France executives detailed the latest restructuring plan, union activists swarmed into the room, waving flags and chanting protests, prompting Mr. Gagey to make a hasty exit.

For the full story, see:
LIZ ALDERMAN. “Workers Storm Air France Offices as Job Cuts Are Discussed.” The New York Times (Tues., OCT. 6, 2015): B3.
(Note: bracketed date added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 5, 2015, and has the title “Angry Workers Storm Air France Meeting on Job Cuts.”)

Hiring Based on What People Can Do, Instead of Their Credentials

(p. B4) Compose Inc. asks a lot of job applicants. Anyone who wants to be hired at the San Mateo, Calif., cloud-storage firm must write a short story about data, spend a day working on a mock project and complete an assignment.
There is one thing the company doesn’t ask for: a résumé.
Compose is among a handful of companies trying to judge potential hires by their abilities, not their résumés. So-called “blind hiring” redacts information like a person’s name or alma mater, so that hiring managers form opinions based only on that person’s work. In other cases, companies invite job candidates to perform a challenge–writing a software program, say–and bring the top performers in for interviews or, eventually, job offers.
Bosses say blind hiring reveals true talents and results in more diverse hires. And the notion that career success could stem from what you know, and not who you know, is a tantalizing one.
. . .
“We were hiring people who were more fun for us to talk to,” says Mr. Mackey. Trouble was, they were often a poor fit for the job, according to the CEO.
So the company, which was acquired by International Business Machines Corp. last year, added an anonymous sample project to the hiring process. Prospective hires spend about four to six hours performing a task similar to what they would do at Compose–writing a marketing blog post for a technical product, for example.
. . .
The sample projects have unearthed hires who have turned out to be top performers, says Mr. Mackey.

For the full story, see:
RACHEL FEINTZEIG. “Why Bosses Are Turning to ‘Blind Hiring’.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Jan. 6, 2016): B4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date Jan. 5, 2016, and has the title “The Boss Doesn’t Want Your Résumé.”)

Open Offices Are “an Absurd Attack on Concentration”

(p. A11) Mr. Newport acknowledges the good intentions behind open offices: They are meant to encourage serendipity and teamwork. But he argues that burdening workers with perpetual distractions constitutes “an absurd attack on concentration” that creates “an environment that thwarts attempts to think seriously.” Sure, there’s collaboration–not least the unspoken camaraderie among coworkers who have shared in the cringe-inducing experience of hearing a colleague castigate her spouse over the phone.
Mr. Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown, is the unusual academic who will sully himself with matters as practical as: How can a talented employee rack up the rarefied and acute skills–writing, coding, scouring the latest mergers and acquisitions–that make someone indispensable? His answer? Expanding your capacity for “deep work,” ruthlessly weeding out distractions and regularly carving out stretches of time to sharpen abilities. Mr. Newport explains why honing an ability to concentrate can yield enormous professional payouts. Then he lays out rules for becoming one such rare bird.
Most corporate workers, Mr. Newport argues, don’t have clear feedback about how to spend their time. As a result, employees use “busyness as a proxy for productivity,” which Mr. Newport describes aptly as “doing lots of stuff in a visible manner”–blasting out emails, for instance, or holding meetings on superficial progress on some project.
. . .
The book’s best example is the Pulitzer Prize winning Lyndon Johnson biographer Robert A. Caro, known for working on a meticulous schedule in his Manhattan office dressed in a coat and tie “so that he never forgets when he sits down with his research that he is going to work,” as one profile of Mr. Caro put it.

For the full review, see:
KATE BACHELDER. “BOOKSHELF; Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?; Yes, open offices cultivate camaraderie–among coworkers who all cringe as a colleague shouts at her soon-to-be ex-husband over the phone.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Jan. 20, 2016): A11.
(Note: ellipsis added, italics in original.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Jan. 19, 2016.)

The book under review, is:
Newport, Cal. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016.

“Hey You, Get Busy” Bolted in Place

(p. D8) Most scientists rely on grants from the federal government and private foundations to finance their work. Michael W. Davidson turned to neckties.
Mr. Davidson, who died on Dec. 24 [2015] at 65, used sophisticated microscopes to create stunning, psychedelic images of crystallized substances like DNA and hormones, and he contributed to Nobel Prize-honored research about the inner workings of cells. His images were on the covers of scientific journals and, as unlikely as it might seem, on neckwear.
They found their way into men’s apparel in the early 1990s, when Mr. Davidson called Irwin Sternberg, the president of the necktie company Stonehenge Ltd., proposing a series of ties using his ultramagnified, wildly colorful images of vitamins. Mr. Sternberg, though skeptical, agreed to take a look.
“When I saw Michael’s work, I started to think I couldn’t get a designer more talented,” Mr. Sternberg said in an interview.
Stonehenge released a line of “vitamin ties” in September 1993. A year later, neckties with Mr. Davidson’s images of moon rocks were released on the 25th anniversary of Apollo 11, the first manned lunar mission. Ties with images of cocktails, beer and wine followed. Millions of ties were sold, and a slice of the profits — millions of dollars — went to charity. Mr. Davidson’s share went to his laboratory work at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
. . .
Mr. Davidson started college at Georgia Southern University, then attended Oglethorpe University in Georgia before earning a chemistry degree at Georgia State.
He arrived at Florida State in the early 1980s as a graduate student. He quit to start a business chrome-plating auto parts.
A few years later, Mr. Davidson returned to Florida State as a microscopy technician for a materials research laboratory. “He just came in and said, ‘I think there are things we can do,’ and he got hired,” said Kirby Kemper, a retired Florida State physics professor who was then associate chairman of the physics department.
To produce his work, Mr. Davidson hired an army of assistants. Some were undergraduates. Others were out of school with no credentials in the field. But the work helped propel many of them to successful jobs in academia and industry.
Eric Clark had been a nurse when Mr. Davidson hired him as an assistant in 1999. Now, as an application developer, he is continuing Mr. Davidson’s educational website and scientific illustration operations. (The molecular biology laboratory was disbanded.)
Mr. Davidson worked seven days a week, and he expected the same of the people who worked with him. On his door was a large metal sign that said, “Hey you, get busy.” MagLab officials told him to take it down. Mr. Davidson bolted it in place, and it is still there.

For the full obituary, see:
KENNETH CHANG. “Michael W. Davidson, 65, a Scientist Who Had an Artist’s Eye for Detail.” The New York Times (Sat., JAN. 16, 2016): D8.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date JAN. 12, 2016, and has the title “Michael W. Davidson, a Success in Microscopes and Neckwear, Dies at 65.”)