This is the obviously PR-powered splurge from the CEO of MGA Entertainment when questioned about the dubious nature of their Bratz dolls:

”Unfortunately, it is the polluted mind of some adults who ’see sex’ in everything. If you ask the kids [and we have] what do they think of Bratz, they will tell you they are beautiful, inspirational and multiethnic,” Larian said.“Bratz dolls show the society and the girls …

“The first thing that we have to remember is that the good guys need to win – it makes the world better.”

By Max McKeown & Philip Whiteley. ISBN 0-273-65614-7.

There are plenty of oh-too-believable horror stories of show-pony bullies, egomaniacs, and win-at-all-costers who do bad things, hurt people and spoil businesses. More importantly, the authors present plenty of evidence that the nice guys …

We live by rules and principles daily. We modify our behaviour to work within (or outside of) them on a continual basis. On the surface, they both affect (or control) our actions. But there is a subtle and important difference between them.

Principles are: bought-into, believed-in, understood innately, interpreted individually (inclusive of individuality), lived, makes sense to the individual, congruent with individual and organisational …

“Marketing, Content, Usability, Design and Behavior are the main factors that make a website work.”
Of the five factors discussed, the fifth is the most interesting.

“5. Online Behavior is a combination of Interactive Ethics (do the authors/owners have a positive open-minded attitude? Do they follow the basic rules of good manners?) and Democracy (Are they working towards a democratic open web or do they work only for their own …

“People with high LQ value life and invest it wisely in what really matters in the larger scheme of things. They do not ask how they can get the most from life, but how they can give their uttermost to life. Their starting point is not how they can be happy, rich and famous, but how they can be most useful …

From the St James Ethics Centre:

Ethics is about relationships
It’s about struggling to develop a well-informed conscience
It’s about being true to the idea of who we are and what we stand for
It’s about having the courage to explore difficult questions
It’s about accepting the cost

“…the term astroturfing describes formal public relations (PR) campaigns that seek to create the impression of being a spontaneous, grassroots behavior. Hence the reference to the “AstroTurf” (artificial grass) is a metaphor to indicate “fake grassroots” support.

The goal of such a campaign is to disguise the agenda of a client as an independent public reaction…”

Read the full entry on wikipedia.

As the …

We have fair-trade coffee and various other ethically sourced and manufactured goods such as non-sweat-shop clothing.

Given most electronics manufacturing is now done in countries like China where labour is cheap and plentiful, and where sweat shops have most opportunities to grow, far from the eyes of Western consumers; is it now time for ethically manufactured electronics?

Read the article about Apple’s iPod factories on MacWorld UK.

Read the …

While out and about on another hot and humid Sydney day, I spotted three shoppers taking turns carrying their heavy shopping to the train station.

The heavy shopping was a large plastic canister of drinking water. It must have weighed 15kg or so – a lot of weight to be carrying around on a hot day. This was not buying water to drink there and then because we were …

A very human and positive story from Stilgherrian.

Read it: Competitors or colleagues?