First Monday: Coming up in May
— -- Monday: United and Delta airlines are among the major carriers that begin charging passengers $25 to check a second bag. Other big airlines will start charging in coming weeks.
Tuesday: Mortgage financing giant Fannie Mae releases its first-quarter financial report.
Through Wednesday: The Food Marketing Institute has its four-day show in Las Vegas.
May 16: The government releases its report on April housing starts.
May 20: Fresh insights into consumer spending habits could come when Home Depot, Staples, Target and Saks release earnings.
May 27: The government's report on April new-home sales comes out.
WATCH, LISTEN & READ
On TV
Burning the Future: Coal in America
Sundance Channel, May 13, 9:35 p.m. (ET/PT); May 16, 10:35 p.m. (ET/PT); May 18, 3:35 p.m. (ET/PT) DVD available mid-May at www.burningthefuture.org.
For coal companies, mountaintop-removal mining represents a cost-effective, efficient system of extracting coal: Explosives blast away the rocky top of deforested mountains, then machines scoop out the coal.
For government, it's providing a domestic source of energy for a country where more than half the electricity produced comes from coal.
But for a group of residents living in the coal fields of southern West Virginia, it's meant brown tap water, health problems, flying rocks containing sulfur, increased flooding and the destruction of the natural resources that help sustain them.
Documentary filmmaker David Novack ably highlights the plight of these often overlooked communities by following a grass-roots effort to halt mountaintop removal led by unlikely activists.
"In many regards, we treat Appalachia as a Third-World country where the nation goes in, extracts their resources and really leaves very little money behind," Novack says.
Interviews with government officials and coal-company representatives are interspersed with devastating, eye-opening stories: the unemployed man who has little choice but to drink and bathe in his brown tap water, children so afraid of flooding they can't sleep when it rains. These images will stick with viewers as they blithely recharge their laptops and go on about their daily business.
Tougher in Alaska
History Channel, premieres Thursday at 10 p.m. ET/PT
How hot is Alaska on the small screen? Let us count the ways: The Alaska Experiment, Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers, Men in Trees, and now Tougher in Alaska. Yep, tougher to get a hotel room thanks to all the TV crews.
History's new series showcases the occupational hazards of making a buck (or several) in the wilds of the beautifully remote state. Longtime Alaska resident and journalist Geo Beach, a growling bear of a fellow, gamely tackles rugged tasks ranging from stringing electric lines by hand to logging by helicopter.
To distinguish itself among a sea of similar shows, Tougher in Alaska edits in fascinating historical footage of the same work being performed long ago, when men — not machines — gutted fish and when gold prospectors trekked long distances to their claims burdened with equipment without the benefit of bush planes.
Podcast
Small Biz Tech Girl
Quick and Dirty Tips for Growing Your Business with Digital Tools, hosted by Aliza Sherman; available free at www.quickanddirtytips.com and on iTunes
Ever get the feeling technology has become a foreign land, full of Second Life avatars Twittering in lolspeak? Sherman, the original Cybergrrl and author of The Everything Blogging Book, translates the gibberish in a new weekly, six-minute podcast that focuses on helping businesses capitalize on the marketing potential of the Internet and gadgetry. Among Sherman's topics this month:
•Microblogging. Use services such as Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce to establish your brand and expertise, not to tell customers what kind of muffin you had for breakfast.
•Social Networking. Promote your business on sites such as MySpace and Facebook without abusing your social-network friends.
•Widgets. Use these small pieces of code on your website to display content, that would interest your customers, dynamically from another source.
Sherman plans to keep it down to earth. "I've spent many years trying to make technology accessible to everyone. Though I make a living from teaching about and writing about tech, I am not a techie," says Sherman, adding that she's recording the podcasts from her daughter's nursery in their home in Alaska.
Books
While America Aged: How Pension Debts Ruined General Motors, Stopped the NYC Subways, Bankrupted San Diego, and Loom as the Next Financial Crisis
By Roger Lowenstein (The Penguin Press, $25.95, out Monday)
Former Wall Street Journal reporter and author of Origins of the Crash, about the 1990s dot-com bubble and corporate corruption, turns his attention to "a crisis of epidemic proportions" — the collapse of America's pension system at the very moment its population is rapidly aging.
Lowenstein spends the bulk of While America Aged dwelling on the history of pensions in this country, using General Motors, public transportation in New York City and San Diego to illustrate "how the pension system went so badly off course."
In his conclusion, Lowenstein supports a uniform level of national health coverage and calls Hillary Clinton's solution to retirement funding — national 401(k) accounts with matching credits to lower- and middle-income earners — a sensible approach.
It's a busy time for Lowenstein. The paperback version of his 1995 best seller, Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, has just been released by Random House with a new afterword covering Buffett's skillful dodging of the dot-com bubble and subprime-mortgage mess, and his decision to slowly transfer the bulk of his Berkshire stock to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
C-SPAN2 Book TV
May 18 (3 p.m. ET), Rogue Economics by Loretta Napoleoni (Seven Stories Press, $24.95).
Economist/journalist connects the spread of democracy with dark economic forces that have fostered a wide range of ills, from slavery to Internet fraud to the subprime crisis.
May 24 (11 a.m. ET, 11 p.m. ET): Stirring it Up: How to Make Money and Save the World by Gary Hirshberg (Hyperion, $24.95). Founder of organic-yogurt company Stonyfield Farm argues businesses are in the best position to save the planet — and they can grow and be profitable while doing it.
CHECK IT OUT
Viral expansion
Social-networking site Ning is a model of how to create an automagical growth machine, reports Fast Company in its May issue. Founded in early 2007 by former Goldman Sachs investor Gina Bianchini and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, Ning's "social networks for anything" platform hosts more than 230,000 social networks. About 40% originate outside the USA. Its growth embodies a concept called a viral expansion loop. Every time someone sets up a social network, he or she invites friends, family, colleagues and even strangers to sign up. They in turn create new networks and bring in more members. The company estimates that by New Year's Eve 2010, it will host about 4 million social networks with tens of millions of members, creating billions of page views daily.
Enduring greatness
Fortune magazine published its first Fortune 500 list in 1955, and in the years since, almost 2,000 companies have appeared and disappeared from it, observes management consultant Jim Collins. Only 71 companies in the original 500 made Fortune's 2008 list, Collins writes in today's Fortune 500 issue.
Some companies — Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and General Electric — are clear examples of enduring greatness. Others, such as Xerox, fall from greatness, right themselves and become great again. One lesson from these histories is that companies do not fall primarily because of what the world does to them or because of how the world changes. "They fall first and foremost because of what they do to themselves," according to Collins.
Economic intelligence
The U.S. economy is in far worse shape than we know, Kevin Phillips writes in May?s Harper?s Magazine. The political commentator argues that since the 1960s, Washington has been forced to gull its citizens and creditors by debasing official statistics. The effect has been to create a false sense of economic achievement, allowing us to maintain low interest rates, massive government borrowing and a perilous reliance on financial leverage. Phillips covers 40 years of statistical dissembling. The chicanery has tainted the very measures that shape public perception of the economy: the consumer price index, gross domestic product and unemployment figures. Adjusting for what he calls Pollyanna Creep, Phillips puts the real unemployment rate between 9% and 12%, inflation as high as 10% and economic growth since the 2001 recession at a mediocre pace despite a surge in the wealth of the super-rich.
Contributing: Gary H. Rawlins
5 QUESTIONS FOR ... GEORGE FOREMAN
By Laura Petrecca, USA TODAY
George Foreman was a powerful boxer, but he is also a savvy businessman. Known for his famous grill, Foreman's latest ventures include a namesake vitamin shake, footwear made for diabetics and the endorsement of health-focused food chain UFood Grill. In his rare spare time, the 59-year-old former heavyweight champ does motivational speeches, oversees a Houston youth center and preaches from the pulpit. Foreman — and his 10 kids — will also star in reality TV series Family Foreman, which begins July 16 on TV Land. Excerpts are edited for clarity and space.
Q: All of your ventures seem to have a healthy twist to them. Do you exercise?
A: I work out — you have to work out. I have no less than 3,000 square feet of gym in my house. Sometimes I'll exercise all night. There's no excuse not to (since it's in my home). I'll just get on the treadmill. And what I've fallen in love with now is the elliptical machine. I also get outside and ride the bike. And I still have a punching bag, of course.
Q: You sold your stake in Salton — your partner in launching the Lean, Mean, Fat Reducing Grilling Machine — in 1999. Do you still use the grills to cook?
A: Oh yes, the grills are a necessity. We've got a lot of grills in the house. People come over and I do their steaks for them. I still like doing that. (My kids) come home, and I see to it that they're eating the right protein. Sometimes I'm up at 5:30 a.m. getting steak ready. But I don't let them know my (cooking) secrets.
Q: Millions of grills have been sold. Do you think any of your new ventures will be as successful?
A: You don't want to be associated with anything just for success. Success to me is when people get benefits from your products. So, you've got to be really careful about what you endorse or what you put your name on. You look to do something with great quality. Don't go for the money. When you rest at night, you want to say, "I've done some good."
Q: At age 45, you became the oldest heavyweight champion in history. What's your professional advice on attaining goals?
A: In life, you're going to get knocked down sometimes. No one is successful all the time. Learn to brush off your bottom, spit in your palms and say, "I think I'll go another round." Then you'll be a winner.
You can lose 11 rounds. Then, you have three minutes in the 12th round, and in the last minute, you can get a knockout. Never give up. You just stay in there, and eventually you'll get it.
Q: Before National Football League quarterback Michael Vick was sentenced for his dog-fighting operation, you wrote the judge asking for leniency. Why?
A: I saw the whole world coming down on him. You always have to answer to the consequences if you get in trouble, but (it's also important to) have that human element where people will not give up on you. You gotta have a little ray of hope. At least he could say, "Human beings were with me."
So I wrote the judge and told him about my life. That I had been a bad boy (when I was young) but my life turned around. I told him that Michael Vick, if he was given the right opportunity, could make a better life for himself.
I never give up on a human being. I had it rough, but I found boxing and found some people that believed in me, and they never turned their back on me.