Archive for February, 2008

what is the theme of this?

Monday, February 25th, 2008
Kimberly asked:


Flight to the South Pole

1 Thanksgiving Day, November 28th, brought what we wanted. At noon, the Geological Party radioed a final weather report: “Unchanged. Perfect visibility. No clouds anywhere.” Harrison finished with his balloon runs, Haines with his weather charts. The sky was still somewhat overcast, and the surface wind from the east southeast. Haines came into the library, his face grave. Together, we went out for a walk and a last look at the weather. What he said exactly I have forgotten, but it was in effect: “If you don’t go now, you may never have another chance as good as this.” And that was that.

2 The mechanics, Bubier, Roth and Demas, went over the plane for the last time, testing everything with scrupulous care. A line of men passed five-gallon cans of gasoline to several men standing on the wing, who poured them into the wing tanks. Another line fed the stream of gear which flowed into the plane. Black weighed each thing before passing it on to McKinley and June, who were stowing the stuff in the cabin. Hanson went over the radio equipment. With de Ganahl, I made a careful check of the sextant and the watches and chronometers, which were among the last things put aboard. For days, de Ganahl and I had nursed the chronometers, checking them against the time tick broadcast every night from the United States. We knew their exact loss or gain.

3 The total weight was approximately 15,000 pounds.

4 Haines came up with a final report on the weather. “A twenty-mile wind from the south at 2,000 feet.” I went into my office and picked up a flag weighted with a stone from Floyd Bennett’s grave. It seemed fitting that something connected with the spirit of this noble friend, who stood with me over the North Pole, on May 9th, 1926, should rest as long as stone endures at the bottom of the world.

5 There were handshakes all around, and at 3:29 o’clock we were off. The skis were in the air after a run of 30 seconds–an excellent takeoff. A calm expectation took hold of my mind.

6 Had you been there to glance over the cabin of this modern machine which has so revolutionized polar travel, I think you would have been impressed most of all–perhaps first of all–with the profusion of gear in the cabin. There was a small sledge, rolled masses of sleeping bags, bulky food sacks, two pressure gasoline stoves, rows of cans of gasoline packed about the main tank forward, funnels for draining gasoline and oil from the engines, bundles of clothing, tents, and so on ad infinitum. There was scarcely room in which to move.

7 June had his radio in the after bulkhead on the port side. From time to time, he flashed reports on our progress to the base. From the ear phones strapped to his helmet ran long cords so that he might move freely about the cabin without being obliged to take them off. His duties were varied and important. He had to attend to the motion picture camera, the radio, and the complicated valves of the six gasoline tanks. Every now and then, he relieved Balchen at the wheel or helped him to follow the elusive trail.

8 McKinley had his mapping camera ready for action either on port or starboard side. It was for him and the camera he so sedulously served that the flight was made. The mapping of the corridor between Little America and the South Pole was one of the major objectives of the expedition.

9 Balchen was forward, bulking large in the narrow compartment, his massive hands on the wheel, now appraising the engines with a critical eye, now the dozen flickering fingers on the dials on the instrument board. Balchen was in his element. His calm, fine face bespoke his confidence and sureness. He was anticipating the struggle at the “Hump” almost with eagerness.

10 It was quite warm forward, behind the engines. But a cold wind swept through the cabin, making one thankful for heavy clothes. When the skies cleared, a golden light poured into the cabin. The sound of the engines and propellers filled it. One had to shout to make oneself heard. From the navigation table aft, where my charts were spread out, a trolley ran to the control cabin. Over it, I shouted to Balchen the necessary messages and courses; he would turn and smile his understanding.

11 That, briefly, is the picture, and a startling one it makes in contrast with that of Amundsen’s party, which had pressed along this same course eighteen years before. A wing, pistons and flashing propellers had taken the place of runner, dogs, and legs. Amundsen was delighted to make 25 miles per day. We had to average 90 miles per hour to accomplish our mission. We had the advantages of swiftness and comfort, but we had as well an enlarged fallibility. A flaw in a piece of steel, a bit of dirt in the fuel lines or carburetor jets, a few hours of strong head winds, fog or storm– these things, remotely beyond our control, could destroy our carefully laid plans and nullify our most determined efforts.

12 Still, it was not these things that entered our minds. Rather, it was the thought of the “Hump,” and how we should fare with it.

13 Soon after passing the crevasses, we picked up again the vast escarpment to the right. More clearly than before, we saw the white-blue streams of many glaciers discharging into the Barrier, and several of the higher snow-clad peaks glistened so brightly in the sun as to seem like volcanoes in eruption.

14 Now the Queen Maud Range loomed ahead. I searched again for the “appearance of land” to the east. Still the rolling Barrier–nothing else.

15 At 8:15, we had the Geological Party in sight–a cluster of beetles about two dark-topped tents. Balchen dropped overboard the photographs of the Queen Maud Range and the other things we had promised to bring. The parachute canopy to which they were attached fluttered open and fell in gentle oscillations, and we saw two or three figures rush out to catch it. We waved to them and then prepared for settlement of the issue at the “Hump.”

16 Up to this time, the engines had operated continuously at cruising revolutions. Now Balchen opened them full throttle, and the Ford girded its loins for the long, fighting pull over the “Hump.” We rose steadily. We were then about 60 miles north of the western portal of Axel Heiberg, and holding our course steadily on meridian 163° 45′ W. with the sun compass.

17 I watched the altimeters, of which there were two in the navigation department. The fingers marched with little jumps across the face of the dial–3,000 feet; 3,500; 4,000; 4,500. The Ford had her toes in and was climbing with a vast, heaving effort.

18 Drawing nearer, we had edged 30° to the west of south, to bring not only Axel Heiberg but also Liv Glacier into view. This was a critical period. I was by no means certain which glacier I should choose for the ascent. I went forward and took a position behind the pilots.

19 The schemes and hopes of the next few minutes were beset by many uncertainties. Which would it be–Axel Heiberg or Liv Glacier?

20 There was this significant difference between flying and sledging: we could not pause long for decision or investigation. Minutes stood for gasoline, and gasoline was precious. The waste of so little as half an hour of fuel in a fruitless experiment might well overturn the mathematical balance on which the success of the flight depended. The execution of the plan hung on the proper choice of the route over the “Hump.”

21 Yet how well, after all, could judgment forecast the ultimate result? There were few facts on which we might base a decision. We knew, for example, from Amundsen’s report that the highest point of the pass of Axel Heiberg Glacier was 10,500 feet. We should know, in a very few minutes, after June had calculated the gasoline consumption, the weight of the plane. From that we could determine, according to the tables we had worked out and which were then before me, the approximate ceiling we should have. We should know, too, whether or not we should be able to complete the flight, other conditions being favorable.

22 These were the known elements. The unknown were burdened with equally important consequences. The structural nature of the head of the pass was of prime importance. We knew from Amundsen’s descriptions and from what we could see with our own eyes, that the pass on both sides was surrounded by towering peaks, much higher than the maximum ceiling of the heavily loaded plane. But whether the pass was wide or narrow, whether it would allow us room to maneuver in case we could not rise above it, whether it would be narrow and running with a torrent of down-pressing wind which would dash a plane, already hovering near its service ceiling to the glacier floor–these were things, naturally, we could not possibly know until the issue was directly at hand.

23 I stood beside Balchen, carefully studying the looming fortress, still wondering by what means we should attempt to carry it. With a gesture of the hand, Balchen pointed to fog vapor rising from the black rock of the foothills which were Nansen’s high priests, caused no doubt by the condensation of warm currents of air radiated from the sun-heated rocks. A thin layer of cloud seemed to cap Axel Heiberg’s pass and extended almost to Liv Glacier. But of this we were not certain. Perhaps it was the surface of the snow. If it were a cloud, then our difficulties were already upon us. Even high clouds would be resting on the floor of the uplifted plateau.

24 There was then a gamble in the decision. Doubtless a flip of the coin would have served as well. In the end, we decided to choose Liv Glacier, the unknown pass to the right which Amundsen had seen far in the distance and named after Dr. Nansen’s daughter. It seemed to be broader than Axel Heiberg, and the pass not quite so high.

25 A few minutes after 9 o’clock, we passed near the intermediate base which, of course, we could not see. Our altitude was then about 9,000 feet. At 9:15, we had the eastern portal on our left and were ready to tackle the “Hump.” We had discussed the “Hump” so often, had anticipated and maligned it so much, that now that it was in front of us and waiting in the flesh–in rock-ribbed, glacierized reality–it was like meeting an old acquaintance. But we approached it warily and respectfully, climbing steadily all the while with maximum power, to get a better view of its none-too-friendly visage.

26 June, wholly unaffected by the immediate perplexities, went about his job of getting the plane fighting trim, less heavy. He ripped open the last of the fuel cans and poured the contents into the main tank. The empty tins he dropped overboard, through the trapdoor. Every tin weighed two pounds, and every pound dropped was to our gain. June examined the gauges of the five wing tanks, then measured with a graduated stick the amount of fuel in the main tank. He jotted the figures on a pad, made a few calculations, and handed me the results. Consumption had thus far averaged between 55 and 60 gallons per hour. It had taken us longer to reach the mountains than we had expected, owing to head winds. However, the extra fuel taken aboard just before we left had absorbed this loss, and we actually had a credit balance. We then had enough gasoline to take us to the Pole and back.

27 With that doubt disposed of, we went at the “Hump” confidently.

28 We were still rising, and the engines were pulling wonderfully well. The wind was about abeam and, according to my calculations, not materially affecting the speed.

29 The glacier floor rose sharply, in a series of ice falls and terraces, some of which were well above the (then) altitude of the plane. These glacial waterfalls, some of which were from 200 to 400 feet high, seemed more beautiful than any precipitous stream I have ever seen. Beautiful yes–but how rudely and with what finality they would deal with steel and duralumin that crashed into them at 100 miles per hour.

30 Now the stream of air pouring down the pass roughened perceptibly. The great wing shivered and teetered as it balanced itself against the changing pressures. The wind from the left flowed against Fisher’s steep flanks, and the constant, hammering bumps made footing uncertain in the plane. But McKinley steadily trained his 50-pound camera on the mountains to the left. The uncertainties of load and ceiling were not his concern. His only concern was photographs–photographs over which students and geographers pore in the calm quiet of their studies.

31 The altimeters showed a height of 9,600 feet, but the figure was not necessarily exact. Nevertheless, there were indications we were near the service ceiling of the plane.

32 The roughness of the air increased and became so violent that we were forced to swing slightly to the left, in search of calmer air. This brought us over a frightfully crevassed slope which ran up and toward Mount Nansen. We thus escaped the turbulent swirl about Fisher, but the down-surging currents here damped our climb. To the left, we had the “blind” mountain glacier of Nansen in full view; and when we looked ahead we saw the plateau–a smooth, level plain of snow between Nansen and Fisher. The pass rose up to meet it.

33 In the center of the pass was a massive outcropping of snow-covered rocks, resembling an island, which protruded above and separated the descending stream of ice. Perhaps it was a peak or the highest eminence of a ridge connecting Fisher and Nansen which had managed through the ages to hold its head above the glacial torrent pouring down from the plateau. But its particular structure or relationship was of small import then. I watched it only with reference to the climb of the plane; and realized, with some disgust and more consternation, that the nose of the plane, in spite of the fact that Balchen had steepened the angle of attack, did not rise materially above the outcropping. We were still climbing, but at a rapidly diminishing rate of speed. In the rarefied air, the heavy plane responded to the controls with marked sluggishness. There is a vast difference between the plane of 1928 and the plane of 1937.

34 It was an awesome thing, creeping (so it seemed) through the narrow pass, with the black walls of Nansen and Fisher on either side, higher than the level of the wings, and watching the nose of the ship bob up and down across the face of that chunk of rock. It would move up, then slide down. Then move up, and fall off again. For perhaps a minute or two, we deferred the decision, but there was no escaping it. If we were to risk a passage through the pass, we needed greater maneuverability than we had at that moment. Once we entered the pass, there would be no retreat. It offered no room for turn. If power was lost momentarily or if the air became excessively rough, we could only go ahead or down. We had to climb, and there was only one way in which we could climb.

35 June, anticipating the command, already had his hand on the dump valve of the main tank. A pressure of the fingers–that was all that was necessary–and in two minutes, 600 gallons of gasoline would gush out. I signaled to wait.

36 Balchen held to the climb almost to the edge of a stall. But it was clear to both of us that he could not hold it long enough. Balchen began to yell and gesticulate, and it was hard to catch the words in the roar of the engines echoing from the cliffs on either side. But the meaning was manifest. “Overboard–overboard–200 pounds!”

37 Which would it be–gasoline or food?

38 If gasoline, I thought, we might as well stop there and turn back. We could never get back to the base from the Pole. If food, the lives of all of us would be jeopardized in the event of a forced landing. Was that fair to McKinley, Balchen, and June? It really took only a moment to reach the decision. The Pole, after all, was our objective. I knew the character of the three men. McKinley, in fact, had already hauled one of the food bags to the trapdoor. It weighed 125 pounds.

39 The brown bag was pushed out and fell, spinning, to the glacier. The improvement in the flying qualities of the plane was noticeable. It took another breath and resumed the climb.

40 Now the down-currents over Nansen became stronger. The plane trembled and rose and fell, as if struck bodily. We veered a trifle to the right, searching for helpful, rising eddies. Balchen was flying shrewdly. He maintained flight at a sufficient distance below the absolute ceiling of the plane to retain at all times enough maneuverability to make him master of the ship. But he was hard pressed by circumstances, and I realized that, unless the plane was further lightened, the final thrust might bring us perilously close to the end of our reserve.

41 “More,” Bernt shouted. “Another bag.”

42 McKinley shoved a second bag through the trapdoor, and this time we saw it hit the glacier, and scatter in a soundless explosion. Two hundred and fifty pounds of food–enough to feed four men for a month–lay strewn on the barren ice.

43 The sacrifice swung the scales. The plane literally rose with a jump, the engines dug in, and we soon showed a gain in altitude of anywhere from 300 to 400 feet. It was what we wanted. We should clear the pass with about 500 feet to spare. Balchen gave a shout of joy. It was just as well. We could dump no more food. There was nothing left to dump except McKinley’s camera. I am sure that, had he been asked to put it overboard, he would have done so instantly; and I am equally sure he would have followed the precious instrument with his own body.

44 The next few minutes dragged. We moved at a speed of 77 nautical miles per hour through the pass, with the black walls of Nansen on our left. The wing gradually lifted above them. The floor of the plateau stretched in a white immensity to the south. We were over the dreaded “Hump” at last. The Pole lay dead ahead over the horizon, less than 300 miles away. It was then about 9:45 o’clock (I did not note the exact time. There were other things to think about).

45 Gaining the plateau, we studied the situation a moment and then shifted course to the southward. Nansen’s enormous towering ridge, lipped by the plateau, shoved its heavily broken sides into the sky. A whole chain of mountains began to parade across the eastern horizon. How high they are I cannot say, but surely some of them must be around 14,000 feet, to stand so boldly above the rim of the 10,000 foot plateau. Peak on peak, ridge on ridge, draped in snow garments which brilliantly reflected the sun, they extended in a solid array to the southeast. But can one really say they ran in that direction? The lines of direction are so bent in this region that 150 miles farther on, even were they to continue in the same general straight line, they must run north of east. This is what happens near the Pole.

46 We laid our line of flight on the 171st meridian.

47 Our altitude was then between 10,500 and 11,000 feet. We were “riding” the engines, conscious of the fact that if one should fail we must come down. Once the starboard engine did sputter a bit, and Balchen nosed down while June rushed to the fuel valves. But it was nothing; to conserve fuel, Balchen had “leaned” the mixture too much. A quick adjustment corrected the fault; and, in a moment, the engine took up its steady rhythm. Moments like this one make a pioneering flight anything but dull; one moment everything is lovely, and the next is full of foreboding.

48 From time to time, June “spelled” Balchen at the controls, and Balchen would walk back to the cabin, flexing his cramped muscles. There was little thought of food for any of us–a beef sandwich, stiff as a board from frost, and tea and coffee from a thermos bottle. It was difficult to believe that two decades or so before the most resolute men who had ever attempted to carry a remote objective, Scott and Shackleton, had plodded over this same plateau, a few miles each day, with hunger, fierce, unrelenting hunger, stalking them every step of the way.

49 Between 11:30 and 12:30, the mountains to the eastward began to disappear, dropping imperceptibly out of view, one after another. Not long after 12:30, the whole range had retreated from vision, and the plateau met the horizon in an indefinite line. The mountains to the right had long since disappeared.

50 The air finally turned smooth. At 12:38, I shot the sun. It hung, a ball of fire, just beyond south to the east, 21° above the horizon. So it was quite low, and we stared it in the eye. The sight gave me an approximate line of latitude, which placed us very near our position as calculated by dead reckoning. That dead reckoning and astronomy should check so closely was very encouraging. The position line placed us at Lat. 89° 4 ½’ S., or 55 ½ miles from the Pole. A short time later, we reached an altitude of 11,000 feet. According to Amundsen’s records, the plateau, which had risen to 10,300 feet, descended here to 9,600 feet. We were, therefore, about 1,400 feet above the plateau.

51 So the Pole was actually in sight. But I could not yet spare it so much as a glance. Chronometers, drift indicators, and compasses are hard taskmasters.

52 Relieved by June, Balchen came aft and reported that visibility was not as good as it had been. Clouds were gathering on the horizon off the port bow, and a storm, Balchen thought, was in the air. A storm was the last thing we wanted to meet on the plateau on the way back. It would be difficult enough to pass the Queen Maud Range in bright sunlight; in thick weather, it would be suicidal. Conditions, however, were merely unpromising: not really bad, simply not good. If worse came to worst, we decided we could out-race the clouds to the mountains.

53 At six minutes after one, a sight of the sun put us a few miles ahead of our dead reckoning position. We were quite close now. At 1:14 Greenwich mean time, our calculations showed that we were at the Pole.

54 I opened the trapdoor and dropped over the calculated position of the Pole the small flag which was weighted with the stone from Bennett’s grave. Stone and flag plunged down together. The flag had been advanced 1,500 miles farther south than it had ever been advanced by any American or American expedition.

55 For a few seconds, we stood over the spot where Amundsen had stood, December 14th, 1911, and where Scott had also stood, thirty-four days later, reading the note which Amundsen had left for him. In their honor, the flags of their countries were again carried over the Pole. There was nothing now to mark that scene: only a white desolation and solitude disturbed by the sound of our engines. The Pole lay in the center of a limitless plain. To the right, which is to say to the eastward, the horizon was covered with clouds. If mountains lay there, as some geologists believe, they were concealed, and we had no hint of them.

56 And that, in brief, is all there is to tell about the South Pole. One gets there, and that is about all there is for the telling. It is the effort to get there that counts.

* * * *
Sunday, Dec. 1

57 . . . Well, it’s done. We have seen the Pole. McKinley, Balchen, and June have delivered the goods. They took the Pole in their stride, neatly, expeditiously, and undismayedly. If I had searched the world, I doubt if I could have found a better team. Theirs was the actual doing. But there is not a man in this camp who did not assist in the preparation for the flight. Whatever merit accrues to the accomplishment must be shared with them.

Frank

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In the Lap of the Gods 13

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
nobles games
Steve Morgan asked:


“Let’s go after school,” Noble said. “We’ll meet behind the chapel and go from there.” What the Three Lawyers had planned was to go cross-country and over to the waterfall. It was a favourite sanctuary for seniors to go smoking.

Wesley College was an agricultural school in the small rural township of Paerata set up to teach students the rudiments of farming alongside the normal academic subjects. However the student body was predominantly made up of society’s unwanted. Many were from broken homes or from families where the stepfather, once remarried, didn’t really want any extra baggage. A good many were Island students or Maori students from farming backgrounds. The combination of miss-placed students and malicious staff was a volatile mix to say the least. If it weren’t for Steve’s previous boarding school experience he would never have survived. He knew about fagging. He knew about bullying and he knew about cruelty in teachers.

“Are we allowed to cut across the fields and visit this place?” Steve asked appearing to not really care but deep down he already knew the answer. They were breaking bounds, which meant they were setting themselves up to get caught. And getting caught had consequences he didn’t even want to think about. “When do we have to be back?”

“By five, in time for tea,” Treadray replied. “We’ll make it easily.”

“The staff have a meeting at this time every week. Old Marshall always likes to meet them on a Monday so we’ll be fine,” said Noble.

 



The beady eyes of the religious master missed nothing. He watched and waited like a black widow alert for any vibrations on the web. He’d spotted the boys behind the chapel and heard most of their conversation before they took off across the road.

“Well my little beauties I knew I’d get another chance sooner or later. We’ll organise a reception party for you when you return.” He smiled as he went about his business of setting the altar for evening service. He selected the hymn, ‘God Moves in Mysterious Ways’, and wondered if the trio realised its significance.

 

“That was fantastic!” said an excited Steve as he dried himself after plunging through the water into the cavern behind the waterfall. “Hadn’t we better get going though, it’s getting late.”

“If we jog we’ll make it ok.”

“Then let’s go!” yelled Treadray on the top of his lungs. His sheer exuberance was infectious and all three let out whoops and hollers as they skylarked their way across the fields and back to school only quietening down as they reached the perimeter of the buildings.

“We made it! See I told you it was easy,” Noble said turning round to face both boys whilst walking backwards. “Nobody even suspected.” They were puffed from their run but exhilarated from their adrenaline rush.

As they rounded the corner into the dining room they almost bumped into Barnett who was coming from the Headmaster’s office. He stopped in front of them and, just as they thought he was past, he turned and said, “Oh by the way lads, Mr Marshall wants to see you in his office after dinner.” Three stomachs lurched inwards. **** sphincters tightened, and three sets of eyes flew around the group each questioning the other. They looked as guilty as sin. “Enjoy your dinner. Sort of like a Last Supper don’t you think!” he chuckled, and strode off towards the dining room.

“Ddd… do  you think he knows?” stuttered, Noble deathly white.

“How could he?” Steve said not daring to look at Treadray, “No one saw us I’m sure.”

“Barnett knows, otherwise he wouldn’t have collared us and he was coming from the Head’s office. He knows alright!” said Noble nodding his head and looking pensive. “Take my word for it!”

“Then we’re for it then!” stated Treadray resignedly. “At least we get to eat dinner.” He seemed unconcerned as if it were his fate in life to always be caught, always to be punished; an unwanted product of an unhappy union. It’s not certain whether Treadray attracted trouble or trouble attracted him but his reputation around the staff was that he was uncontrollable and therefore fair game. No parent was going to complain if he got abused. They knew he was rebellious and would probably relish any discipline that could be dished out. It relieved them of any guilt of sending him to Wesley in the first place. No one knew about ADHD then and nobody cared.

“Let’s get it over with then,” he said.

“Shit you’re keen aren’t you,” Noble spluttered. “I’m not in a hurry to get the cuts.”

“Well, we’ve no choice so we may as well go now.”

“We have to go after dinner,” Steve reminded them.

“The condemned man ate a hearty meal,” Noble muttered striding towards the dining room. “Come on you two.” The evening meal was eaten in silence. The news had got out and was around the school like wildfire and it was as if the whole school was holding its collective breath. No one was particularly surprised when they heard it was Treadray and Noble but the new boy was a different twist. Let’s see how he copes with this, they all thought. A thrashing from the Head was no light matter.

When the dishes had been cleared Mr Marshall, the portly Headmaster of the college, made the dreaded announcement. “The three boys who broke bounds this afternoon will see me in my office after dismissal. If anyone else thinks they can escape punishment for breaking school rules then they have another think coming.” He nodded to the head boy who commanded everyone to stand while the staff exited. (Read Part 14 to see what happens to the hapless three)



Vincent

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Marketing Lessons from the Business of Football

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
nobles games
Paul Johnson asked:


People don’t go to football games to watch football. Oh, a few people do, but not enough to come close to filling the stadium. To find out who the pure fans are, you’d have to do away with the video screens, the mascots, the cheerleaders, the halftime shows, any foods more exotic than hot dogs, soft drinks and peanuts, and then see who’s left in the stands. Would you still buy a ticket?

Football is more than a game; it’s also a business. The business of football has grown because the promise included with each ticket has grown to appeal to more than just the pure fans. Does your business cater solely to your pure fans? If so, you’re sitting on a tremendous growth opportunity.

No One Wants Your Product

We forget that people don’t really want our product; they want what they can do with our product. Take coffee as an example. If we focus on the coffee itself, it’s easy to get caught up in the price per pound or per cup, and the qualities that make coffee taste good or bad. Yet when we think about what we can do with the coffee, those factors become almost insignificant.

The place where coffee is served (the coffee shop) becomes the backdrop for a social event with friends or business acquaintances; the price of the coffee becomes insignificant. Perhaps coffee is the warm, comforting friend that accompanies us on our journey into the new book we just picked up at a Barnes and Noble book store. Whenever we buy coffee or football tickets or your product or service, we are buying much more than what the label on the package indicates.

Get a Feel for the Game

Football organizations discovered long ago they can enjoy significant boosts in business by looking at all the ways to serve their customers during a football game. By expanding the core product — the game on the field — to appeal to a larger audience, their market grows beyond the pure fans to include their spouses, other family members and their friends. In the process, football organizations enjoy multiple up-sell opportunities while engendering customer loyalty that keeps fans coming back. You don’t have to love football to love going to a football game.

While your product or service may not be as flashy and exciting as football, you can apply football’s marketing lessons to improve your market share, revenues and profits. If you don’t, you risk seeing your sales fall flat and watching business go to your competition. If companies can apply these marketing principles to a product as simple as coffee, you can win using these strategies, too.

Unfortunately, we may be too close to our product to successfully apply these principles. We likely know the features and benefits of our product inside and out, and understand all the things our customers can do with our product. What’s more important is that we step back and work to understand how people feel while using our product. Find out the feelings your customers associate with using your product or service, and then think of ways to give them more of those feelings. Here are three ways you can do that.

1. Ain’t I Social!

Many people use a product or service as an excuse to get together with other people. Football tickets, coffee shops, birthday cakes, bowling leagues - people may buy these products solely to enjoy the feelings they get when they’re experiencing them with other people.

Think of ways to get people who share a common interest in your product or service to socialize around it. Consider:

*** Conferences

*** Online chat rooms

*** Reunions

*** Rallies

*** User groups

*** Advanced training sessions

*** Charitable work

Any event, really, can be the perfect excuse for your customers to gather and experience the great positive feelings that will generate customer loyalty and keep them coming back for more.

2. Make it Memorable

When customers have a good experience with your product, they’ll want to repeat it so they can recreate those good feelings. Ideally our customers will talk about their experience with their friends and associates long after the experience is over. You can extend the power of this word of mouth effect. Help your customers remember their positive feelings long after the experience that created them is over.

Memories are heightened when emotions are involved. The stronger the emotions, the stronger the feelings, the longer and more powerfully we remember them. At football games we watch instant replays of key moments; the turning points and dazzling plays worth remembering. We buy programs that allow us to engage at a deeper level with the personal aspects of the players. Sometimes we’re provided with heart-stopping opportunities to win prizes. Souvenirs allow us to take the football game home with us; we can relive the feelings we had at the game simply by looking at or holding our souvenir.

Get your customers emotionally involved so they’ll long remember the positive experiences they have with your product or service.

*** Provide mementos.

*** Give them a chance to win something.

*** Deliver a nice surprise they don’t expect.

*** Give them moments with industry celebrities.

*** Take pictures, especially of them, to give them vivid reminders of the great experience they had.

Do these things, and they’ll do business with you over and over again.

3. Include the Fringe

Around your core customers — the pure fans — is a fringe of secondary customers you can easily access. These secondary customers may be spouses or friends of your core customers who are easily reached through viral marketing. Give thought as to how to provide for their social needs and create positive, memorable feelings that will encourage them to try you once and then come back again and again.

The football business has this figured out. The football lovers in a household have an easier time getting to games when their non-football-loving spouse is eager to go with them. That’s why a football ticket provides so much more than the game these days. While marketing the game to pure fans is a simple endeavor, football becomes a much better business when the offer is expanded to include the social and emotional aspects that appeal to the secondary market. For example, the Super Bowl has become more of a party than a game. People plan for and look forward to the huge social event that engulfs this championship game. Millions watch the Super Bowl on TV, yet few watch it alone.

Get in touch with your market and work to understand who your secondary customers are. Coffee shops gladly sell tea and soft drinks so their “regulars” can easily bring along their non-coffee drinking friends. Expand your marketing to include these secondary customers and you can boost your sales revenues by 50% and more.

The Game of Change

Football as a game hasn’t changed much over the decades. The proposal to permit challenge flags supported by video review was carefully debated by National Football League (NFL) officials before its adoption, all because the League knows this; never alienate your pure fans. They are the bedrock of your business. Keep delivering the solid, consistent product that keeps them coming back for more.

Don’t focus on improving your product. Instead, focus on improving the product experience. Once you understand the positive feelings your customers experience by using your product or service, look for ways to extend that experience. Sure, cream and sugar go with coffee. But so does a soft chair and soothing music. So does a well-written book of fiction. So does a table surrounded by family or friends.

Football is a game and it is a business. Look at your business like a game. How does it feel to do business with you today? Make your business social. Make it memorable. Make your business the game your customers are eager to play.



Judith

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The World Of Final Fantasy XI Explained

Saturday, February 16th, 2008
nobles games
Hunter Crowell asked:


Final Fantasy XI is an impressive game in many respects. It has been especially successful at creating and establishing its own world. The game world of Vana’diel is a complex and convincing environment, and has been realized with great power and vitality. It is a terrific place to experience.

The world of Vana’diel is the setting for Final Fantasy XI. Vana’diel is a large and rich game world, and possesses its own culture and history. Players are able to align themselves with one of the three main nations, Bastok, San d’Oria or Windurst. Their character will become a citizen of that nation and it will essentially be their home. This allows players to feel that their characters have a proper background and identity. They can be proud of their nation and will represent them in the game.

The nations in Final Fantasy XI are all very different and distinct. Bastok is a mining civilization, a force in industry and technology, and home to the Hume and the Galka. San d’Oria is an aging kingdom, with a noble and remarkable past, and has a royal family as its rulers. The Elvaan race lives there. Windurst is a very old nation, with its own port and woods, and is inhabited by the Mithra and the Taru Taru. The nations all have their own cities and political systems, and are lively, interesting places.

Final Fantasy XI is appealing because it contains an alternative world in which players can immerse themselves. Vana’diel is a virtual world that simulates life as closely and as authentically as it can. Players have their own home, known as a Moogle house, which acts as their personal living space in the game. There are all kinds of activities that players can do, like fishing, gardening and other crafts. The game world runs on a proper clock and calendar, and portrays both day and night.

Final Fantasy XI contains some truly splendid landscapes and sights. Vana’diel is a charming environment and is a pleasure to behold. The cities in the game are busy and attractive places, and are full of activity and life. The countryside is visually stunning, featuring an assortment of forests, deserts, mountains and plains. The game captures the thrill of exploration, and lets you visit all manner of fantastic areas and locations. You will quickly discover an imaginative and sumptuous world.

Final Fantasy XI showcases a world with its own features and social structure. A particularly clever aspect is that Vana’diel has its own economy. This economy has been organized in extremely elaborate detail. The currency in Final Fantasy XI is known as Gil (or G) and can be used to buy items and weapons. There are merchants and stores situated throughout the game. Players can accumulate money by taking treasure from enemies and activities like selling fish and mining.

The Vana’diel economy has become a thriving and lifelike system. As the number of people playing Final Fantasy XI has risen, there has been inflation and so item prices have increased. There is competition among players who sell items for profit. It can be necessary to spend money on crafting items before they can actually be put on sale. You will need to assess whether there is a sufficient demand for what you want to make and try to dominate the market.

The economy in Final Fantasy XI also revolves around trade. Vana’diel includes a large number of auction houses that can be used for buying and trading goods. This auction system functions as a global market that is open to every player of the game. You are able to sell and exchange your own items through an auction house, or search through the available stock to look for a worthwhile bargain. Once you have bought an item, a special courier will collect it for you and deliver it to your home.

Final Fantasy XI is compelling because it allows players to join a community. A huge number of people play this game and have their own characters in Vana’diel. The interaction between players is polite and friendly and Vana’diel is a welcoming place. The fact that the game is a cross-platform title means that a great variety of players can mix with each other. People from a vast geographical range can meet with each other and become friends. There is a lot of teamwork and this is also very enjoyable.

The world of Vana’diel is a remarkable game environment and is essential to Final Fantasy XI’s success. It is a highly realistic creation, and is perfect for exploration and social interaction. Vana’diel is truly the finest game world yet.



Deborah

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Can you Get Free Games for your Iphone

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
nobles games
Robert asked:


Are you one of the thousands of Iphone owners who has no idea that they can get free games for their Iphone? It’s pretty cool to download things from Itunes, but with a little research you can find thousands of other places to download from -check out our tips below to help you find out where.

The Iphone is staggeringly popular, although it hasn’t really come as much of a surprise – you only have to consider the Ipod as proof of Apple’s dominance with such gadgets. If you are lucky enough to be one of the early Iphone owners, check out these resources to help you get some free Iphone games.

1-It’s one of the most obvious ways to find anything these days, but a simple google search can yield excellent results when you are looking for places to get your downloads. The downside of this is that after a little while you begin to realise that many of these sites have a few things in common. The trouble is that the sites that make themselves the most accessible in this way are the ones that are simply looking to make money with their advertising. They get paid for you to click on their ads, so it’s in their interest to drag as many visitors as possible into their site, and for this reason you’ll find that many of them offer no real downloads at all.

2-There is a slight variation on the sites above, in that they will offer a couple of Iphone downloads, whether they be games or movies or wallpapers or whatever, but they will be very old and dated, and in many cases once you complete the download you’ll find it doesn’t work anyway. The point of this is, you guessed it, just to attract visitors who may then click on the advertising and make some money. Not exactly a noble business model, but I guess it works as there seem to be enough sites like that around!

3-The most obvious place for you to look when downloading just about anything these days is the torrent sites, peer to peer sites, or file sharing sites, or whatever they are called this week. I’m sure you know the ones-huge download collections, completely illegal to use, and yet it seems like everyone knows someone who has gone download crazy and downloaded huge amounts of things from there. Avoid these sites like the plague. It’s illegal to use them in most places, and also there are usually a fair amount of viruses etc to be found within their databases. Not cool!

4-Your best bet for free Iphone game downloads, and just about anything else for the Iphone is the newer type of download site. A few of these popped up a while back for the Ipod, and it seems like they are following the trend with the Iphone. Basically, they work by charging and admin fee up front, and once you pay that you then have access to their whole download database. Not just Iphone games either, you’ll find movies, games, tv shows, music videos and all kinds of stuff. Think of it like a version of Itunes where you pay one flat fee. Using sites like this usually works out far cheaper than something like Itunes in the long run.

Getting free Iphone games and other downloads can seem like a very far fetched idea, that is until you find the right places. Hopefully this article has helped you know where to look. Happy downloading!



Vivian

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Eat Only Chicken the Day of the Game

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
nobles games
Christine Wicker asked:


Excerpt

The following is an excerpt from the book Not In Kansas Anymore

by Christine Wicker

Published by HarperSanFrancisco; September 2006;$13.95US/$17.95CAN; 0-06-074115-5

Copyright © 2006 Christine Wicker

2.

Eat Only Chicken the Day of the Game

I don’t believe in magic, of course. Hardly anybody does, but we all live by it. It permeates our lives every day, and we wouldn’t give it up for all the science on earth. Most of us can’t. We can’t because we aren’t aware of how completely we live within its thrall. Who can break a bond they don’t know exists?

My first magical lesson came when I was five. I was playing with the crippled girl who lived down the street. We didn’t like each other much, but being the only children in the neighborhood, we made do with each other in a grudging, bickering way. At one point in our play she took two bananas off the kitchen counter and told me to pick the one I wanted. I wanted the bigger one. I knew I shouldn’t take the big banana. To take it from a crippled girl would be especially bad. But I wanted it. So I took it.

At this point, in defense of myself, I’d like to mention that I was cross-eyed. I’m not saying that cross-eyed trumps crippled, and to be completely truthful, it wasn’t much of a factor in my case — morally speaking, I mean — because I didn’t know I was cross-eyed. No one had mentioned it, and I wasn’t an observant child.

I might have forgotten about the bananas by now except that mine had a big brown soft spot in it that ran all the way down the side. About two inches of my banana was edible. Her banana was perfect, and she ate it while I watched. If I had been generous, she would have been eating the rotten banana.

I knew what this meant. Somebody was watching, keeping score. It was God maybe. Who it was didn’t matter. What mattered was that I got the message. I never have taken the big banana again. I’ve never taken the biggest piece of chicken or the last scoop of mashed potatoes or the cookie with the most chocolate chips. I’ve never pushed anybody aside at the bargain table. I say to myself that I don’t care as much about such things. I don’t want them as much as other people do, but that’s not the truth. The truth is that I am still ruled by the bad magic of the big banana.

I was smart enough not to tell anybody in my family about it. If I had, they would have given me the horselaugh and brayed, “Taught you a lesson, huh?” I didn’t call this experience magical even to myself, but it clearly was, just as magical as that bad witch who wasn’t invited to the party and got so mad that she cursed poor little Sleeping Beauty.

It was a curse for sure. Luckily the big banana curse was a minor, manageable spell, evoked by my behavior and not by a capricious universe. The behavior it evoked dovetailed well with my Christian upbringing. But the lesson of the banana was deeper even than Christian teachings because it didn’t have to be taught. It had been experienced, and it seemed to affirm something basic in the fabric of reality. It didn’t, of course. But it seemed to.

Life went on. My eye got fixed, sort of. The doctors call it satisfactory. It turns outward a little instead of inward a lot. It hasn’t been much of a handicap, as far as I know, and it has helped me

some. I understand outsiders in a way that not everybody does. Or I try to. Not because I’m smarter or more sensitive, but I know how it feels to be among those who can be summed up with one word of physical attribute. There are lots of them — cross-eyed, fat, crippled, bald, weak-chinned, spastic, crazy — and knowing what that feels like makes me listen harder. Or try to. If I wanted to make it a joke, I’d say I look at the world askance. Nobody who knows me would disagree with that.

I grew up. I became a big-city newspaper reporter, which is not a hopeful or fanciful or magical profession. If anybody had asked me two years ago to describe the age we live in, I’d have painted a picture right in line with what the world’s wise thinkers expected of me, except that it would be utterly dismal.

I’d have said science is our true God. I’d have said that we live in a world of marvels gone stale, adrift in an empty cosmos. We hear no voices but our own. We believe no omens, listen to no oracles. If otherworldly visions come to us, we close our eyes. And we never, ever think that we might have some great task, noble destiny, or grand calling. Such thoughts are generally believed to indicate a need for medication.

That’s how lots of people would describe life, but if an extraterrestrial were to watch these nonbelievers as they go about their lives, it would become quite clear that they do believe in much more than a material, soulless world. I first began to know about these hidden beliefs because I wrote a book on Lily Dale, a western New York community of Spiritualists where people have been talking to the dead for five generations. I wrote the book because I thought people with such extravagant ideas were rare, an oddity, something strange that would excite wonder. What a chucklehead.

Whether the dead talk back is a matter of contention, of course. I was careful about that, not wanting to be branded a crazy. But it didn’t matter. In writing the book, I’d been transformed. I’d become a person who could be told things. People all over the country started coming up to me in bookstores, at meetings, during parties to tell me stories they didn’t usually share with strangers.

They’d often start by glancing to each side. They would shrug as if they weren’t to be held responsible for what was coming. Then they’d say, “I don’t know what this means,” or, “I’m just going to tell you what happened.” One by one they came, butchers and bakers and candlestick makers. Few would have described themselves as believers in magic.

Once, for instance, I was in a Bible Belt state with a group of women who raise charitable funds for children’s hospitals. I talked about my book on the town that talks to the dead. When the talk turned to spirituality, heads nodded about the room as several women attested to their strong belief in Jesus Christ as their own personal, living savior and to their complete reliance on the Bible as the direct word of God, suitable for any occasion. I thought, Oh, boy. I hope they don’t go to praying and try to save me. I hadn’t needed to worry. They finished dessert, and then they lined up to tell me things.

“My mother read tea leaves all her life. If a relative was about to die, she always knew it,” said one. Another told me that her husband had second sight. His whole family had witnessed it.

The eighty-year-old former president of the group reached into her bosom to pull out a silver cross with a little charm next to it.

“Know what this is?” she asked.

“It’s the evil eye,” I said. According to magical theory, the eye on her charm would stare down the evil eye if it were directed toward her.

“Evil eye. That’s right. I’m Greek. All the Greeks wear them. Even the children.”

A blond woman of middle years asked, “Have you ever known anyone who had the evil eye put on them?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, someone put it on my daughter,” she said.

The daughter was about eighteen months old. She and her family were strolling along a New Jersey beachfront boardwalk when a man approached them. He was an actor from a fun house and was dressed in a monk’s robe. He had a rope around his waist. From it hung a cross, which he was twirling.

“Oh, what a beautiful child,” he said, looking intently at their daughter. Then he began to follow the family, continuing to stare at the little girl.

The man’s focus was so strange and his tone so eerie that the father turned the child’s stroller around and began pushing it away from the man, faster and faster until the family was practically running to escape. That night the child fell ill. She had a high fever and began throwing up. The next day she was still sick and crying constantly. A child who had always loved men, now she wouldn’t go to any of the men in the family. The mother’s sister had been on the boardwalk when the actor approached, and she was troubled by his actions. She called their aunt, who was of Polish heritage.

“He’s put the evil eye on her,” the aunt said. “You’ll have to remove it.” The mother’s sister was to take four straws from a broom and throw them over her shoulder into the corners of the room as she said a litany of Polish words. She was then to take a fifth straw, burn it with a wooden match, and drop it into a glass of water. They were to give the baby a spoonful of water from the glass.

“Make sure you do exactly what I told you,” she said, “and don’t let anyone who doesn’t believe be in the room when you do this.”

The mother, who didn’t know Polish, was so frightened that she would foul up and kill her daughter that she couldn’t do the spell. So her sister did it. The baby fell asleep immediately and slept four hours. When she awoke, the fever was gone and so was her fear of men.

“Are you telling me the truth?” I demanded. But I knew she was. She was as wholesome as Thanksgiving dinner and probably sat in the front pew of the Baptist church every Sunday.

Kids upchucking in the night and then getting better the next day isn’t all that unusual, but I didn’t say so because she knew that already and my saying it would have missed the point. The point of the story was that evil is alive, and good can defeat it in magical ways. It’s a good story, and the last part makes it better. No one told the little girl about that night, and she was too young to remember, but for the rest of her childhood she feared men in monk’s robes and would cry whenever she saw them.

As I heard a hundred tales and more, I also began to see magic everywhere, planted deep in the stuff of everyday life and flourishing. Britney Spears appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly wearing a red Kabbalah cord on her wrist. Paris Hilton had one, and so did Madonna, who adopted the name Esther to go along with her new faith in Jewish mysticism. The cords, which deflect the evil eye, were so popular that the Kabbalah Centre, where the stars go for instruction, tried to patent the string, sold for $26 to $36. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office declined that application.

Go into any large bookstore in America and you’ll find several books on regional ghosts and haunted places. Ghost hunters and ghost busters work all over the country. E- Bay sells haunted dolls and teddy bears. One week’s auction offered a haunted tuning fork, a haunted milking stool, a haunted gravestone rubbing, a haunted blanket, and a haunted bathtub.

Magic also penetrates our lives in ways that are quite mundane. It’s at the car repair shop when the engine stops pinging as soon as the mechanic appears and begins to ping again only when you pull out onto the street. It’s in the beauty salons when hair that spikes about your head like a scarecrow’s coiffure turns supple and silky on the day of the appointment. It’s at the restaurant when diners arrive only after the waiter sits down with his own plate and smokers’ food comes only after they’ve lit up.

You’ve heard of voodoo economics perhaps? Money magic is the most pervasive of all. Of course it would be, since money itself is the ultimate magic, a piece of paper that can do everything. Everyone wants good money magic, a way to win the lottery, gambling luck, an unexpected check in the mail, but the money magic of everyday life is more often bad. Win some money, get a bonus, have a little inheritance, and a major appliance will go out, the kid will get sick, a tire will go flat. Once you’re as poor as you were before the money arrived, life returns to normal. It’s as though there’s some kind of balance sheet that makes sure we stay at exactly the same level of prosperity all the time.

These are matters of life’s proceeding that hardly need to be commented on. They’re so common that they show up in jokes, and no one looks bewildered or wonders what’s being talked about. Trot out all the scientists you want, arm them with a million statistics. It won’t do any good. We know these things.

I often heard people talking about inanimate objects as though they were alive and powerful. This can opener never works for me, someone might say, or the bus always comes early when I’m running late. Or I always have to kick the machine before it will start. Or this computer only works for Mark — it hates the rest of us. Or it never rains when you’ve got an umbrella. No one is serious, you say? Maybe not, or maybe they’re whistling in the dark. It doesn’t matter which because language creates reality. What we name is what we notice, and that’s another argument for the inherent strength of magic. We’ve been programmed to ignore as much of it as we can, and still it pops up.

Copyright © 2006 Christine Wicker



Denise

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