Half-assed resolutions aside, there are a number of ways you can examine the success of your new year thus far. If you don’t believe in ‘starting the year off wrong’ since our concept of years/the calendar is completely fabricated (or other various reasons), good for you. You don’t have to superstitiously worry about hidden omens in your day-to-day life which predict the happiness or unhappiness of the next 12 months. For the rest of us, here are 10 reasons you know that 2012 is off to a bad start.
 

Fighting Through New Years

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While everyone else is partying and having fun, you and your mother are tearfully screaming at one another in the kitchen. Or maybe you and your significant other can be found in the back of the party, quietly sulking as everyone else tries to ignore you (friends have already tried to cheer you up to no avail; they were scared away from the bad and back into the party). It’s a bad sign to be The Sulker at any party, let alone the one that’s supposed to be the first giant extravaganza of fun and happiness in 2012. If you’re kicking off the new year by emitting negative vibes to everyone around you, just go home. Don’t kill yourself, but go home if you aren’t going to at least try and enjoy it. For some, trying to improve things may even worsen the situation. If you’ve ever had a significant other who sometimes embarks on a spiteful hellpath to make you feel terrible about every positive attempt you make, you can relate to this — and should probably get rid of them as soon as possible. If you dump them before the party ends, you can even pick up where you should have left off and actually experience fun for a few hours. 
 

Waking up Sober on New Year’s Day

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While waking up without a hangover that could murder God might be counted as a good thing, it can also be an indicator of a terrible year to come.  Assuming for a minute that you’re not Mormon or a teetotaller, New Years Eve comes in slightly behind “Your Birthday” and “The Day You Got Dumped” as the most drinkingest day of the year.  It is the one day of the year specifically associated with a type of alcohol (champagne), something that even your uptight grandmother will have a glass of at midnight.
 
So if you wake up feeling perfectly spritely on New Years Day, something must be terribly, terribly wrong.  Where the hell were you last night?  Enjoying a refreshing sparkling cider while watching TV at a reasonable volume?  I bet you didn’t even fall over and nearly get arrested while peeing/vomiting in an alleyway.  I bet absolutely no puerile joy-filled irresponsible times were had with friends last night. 

You’ve Already Failed Your Resolutions

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So perhaps you’ve decided that 2012 is going to be the year when you turn your life around.  You have set yourself a stiff list of resolutions that you are determined to keep to.  Much like all the years previous in your life, you set out to make this one different with sheer will power and careful planning.  Look out 2012 — here comes a thinner, more ambitious you! 
 
As often as you’ve likely failed at your resolutions, somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% of people with resolutions actually manage to keep them past February.  But you’re more likely in the remaining 80% unless you’ve laid out clear, realistic goals and a schedule for achieving them.  In which case your 2012 is likely off to a bad start because of the near-universal inability to keep promises to yourself. But don’t be too hard on yourself…unless you want to make matters worse. Sulking or being upset about broken resolutions is going to increase your level of self-loathing, not productivity or success.

Christmas is Over, but You’re Still a Scrooge

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Hate Christmas? So do a lot of people. If you were too immature to suck it up and at least not complain to people who do enjoy the holiday, people most likely ignored you with a bit of patience and ‘they’ll get over it’ attitude. Now that the holidays are over, however, it’s time to drop that Christmas-induced depression and come back to reality. Acting like a scrooge around the holidays may be forgivable, but maintaining that attitude afterwards just makes you a plain old jerk. No one likes those. Unless you’re trying to lose friends and break off connections with people, try to let go of the negativity that’s weighing you down (or at least quit doling it out to others). Maybe you could even be nice to other people on occasion — you’d be surprised at the doors that will open up just from acting kind, or, at the very least, decent.

Multiple Arrests

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Multiple arrests in the past month? You’re doing it wrong. Our incredibly flawed laws and justice system may have roped you into the courtroom on frivolous charges (smoking pot, peeing on the side of the road, bludgeoning a prostitute) once or twice, but you should probably try not to make a habit of it. If you’re continuously caught committing the same offense over and over, you should pick new methods or a different crime. As long as you have no use for your criminal record nor are you concerned with it interfering with your ability to work, this isn’t so bad after all. But for those who woke up on New Year’s day covered in blood in the drunk tank at some random police station while being expected to show up at the office the next day, you should probably brush yourself and move on — with a three drink limit in effect.

Permanent Vacation

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For those of us living in the real world, vacations can only last so long before work demands that we return or a lack of money forces us back into the workforce. While it’s unrealistic to expect anyone to be thrilled with a transition from sipping drinks on the beach to sitting in a cubicle 8 hours a day, the disappointment of returning to the real world should be tempered or at least partially masked. Everyone already knows how miserable you are to be sitting back in front of your old Trinitron; there’s no point in making it known unless you want your bosses to take notice and start narrowing their eyes at you. It’s also a bad sign if you hate your job so much that a small respite has caused you to forsake it entirely, which leaves you ‘working’ in the office after you’ve mentally checked out. It’s bad for productivity, your own personal health, and the future of your job to let your vacation linger on as a long string of small-to-moderate office offenses: showing up late, taking too many days off, making more mistakes than usual, cutting corners, etc.
 

Dumped in Anticipation for Valentine’s Day

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Valentine’s day is coming up. Your significant other cares — but not about you. You’ve been dumped just in time for the holiday, and they’ve either run off with someone else or are thrilled to finally be alone. Whatever the reason, getting the boot right before one of America’s favorite days to consume, consume, consume, is not a great feeling. It leaves you sulking at home while everyone you know is scrambling to do something sweet and impressive as a means of courting the one they want to get sexy with. You may feel like getting dumped is a terrible start for the new year, but you should really be rejoicing: not only will you save money, but there are plenty lonely and horny singles on the cesspool that is OKCupid.

Indicted by the IRS

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That about sums it up. You’re screwed. Now you’re poor forever and the government owns everything in your life, including you. 2012 certainly sucks the big one, and it’s only just begun.

Existential Crisis

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Already? Put down the Dostoevsky and go outside, please. Existential crises can last for months, years, or even the rest of your life. In fact, it will most likely plague you until you die. Accept it and move on; dwelling on the meaninglessness of your existence is going to make it hard for you to reach all those goals in 2012. Goals? Who cares about goals? Goals don’t mean anything. Nothing means anything.

Having and then cultivating your existential crisis at the beginning of 2012 is a terrible sign of things to come. Get out while you still can, even if it means reading the books on Oprah’s book club list or your old copies of Animorphs, lest you find yourself in a pile of chinese takeout boxes and bedsores at the end of the year.
   

You Care Too Much About Starting the New Year Right

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You should really get over it. Bad stuff happens, good stuff happens, and then other stuff happens. None of it means anything about the future (except for that one about the IRS — if this happens, you have no future). There are no omens, and no psychic foreshadowing. The only foreshadowing that happens in real life is the kind that can be used to alter the future, such as your girlfriend hinting at the idea of seeing other people and then suddenly wanting to actually do it two months later. In a case like this, you can make decisions or start conversations that will help you decide what you want to happen a few months down the line. In a case like ‘New Year’s was bad so this year will suck, too’, you’re being ridiculous and should probably live your life without the pressure of a completely imagined black cloud looming above you. The things that happened in the past happened and are gone. Nothing has happened in the future yet, because it’s the future. What’s going on right now? That’s what your priority should be — not predicting how you’ll feel 12 months from now, reflecting back on a time that hasn’t even happened yet.

A big chunk of entrepreneurs using Facebook, Twitter and so on belong to the small business industry. It should be noted, however, that even the Fortune 500 companies are also taking advantage of these sites.

Apart from the real time communication that the sites offer, it’s absolutely free to promote a business and keep in touch with customers. One does not need to have technical skills to be able to manage a social media account and this ease of using the sites is what primarily attracts business owners to use them.

Below we share an infographic design from Infographic Labs showing the latest studies and surveys on how businesses are using and benefiting from the top social networking sites. Recent figures tell only one thing – entrepreneurs regardless of the field they’re in will continue to tap social media for their marketing campaigns.

 
If you missed the blackout of thousands of sites across the Internet on January 18th, including Wikipedia and a black bar over the Google logo…well what the hell are you doing reading this, grandma?! I told you not to Google my name.  SOPA and PIPA are two bills that would be absolutely devastating for freedom on the Internet.  Thanks to the Herculean organizing efforts behind the January 18th blackout, SOPA and PIPA are effectively dead. 
 
But SOPA/PIPA were not the first and will certainly not be the last attempts to stifle Internet freedom.  So prepare your DDoS attacks, don your Guy Fawkes mask, and definitely don’t forget your provisions of cute cat pictures; these are the next battlefronts in the war on the Internet.   
 

People Who Don’t Understand the Internet

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While it may seem adorable when old people ask you what “The Google” is, or what all the buzz about “Twatter” is—perhaps adding an Andy Rooney-esque vignette about actually talking to people in their day—it’s actually quite dangerous.  These older people are police officers, FBI agents, judges and politicians.  And they are the ones setting legal policy in regard to the Internet.  Too often, in their opinions, the internet—this strange newfangled thing their kids and nephews use—isn’t as sacrosanct as, say, a vault of physical files in your attic.   

The problem is, to those of us who’ve had the Internet for most of our lives, our gmail account is our dusty box of personal information in the attic.  But to the FBI, pretty much anything you post online is considered part of the public domain.  Let’s not even get started on the subpoena by the Boston Police department that ensnared thousands of innocent accounts simply because they included the hashtag #BostonPD.  If either the judge or the district attorney had any idea what a hashtag was, they would have never allowed the subpoena to go forward, because of its gross invasion of privacy.  It’s almost as if they’re feigning stone-cold-ignorance of how technology is used in a deliberate effort to expand their legal reach, which is actually a lot scarier.  For now let’s just hope that they’re actually that stupid.   
 

The RIAA and MPAA (even without legislation)

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The chief forces behind SOPA/PIPA and suing children, the MPAA and the RIAA are like the cackling, evil villains of the battle for Internet freedom.  If you believe their numbers, Internet piracy is destroying the American economy, disenfranchising artists (because we’ve all noticed the lack of entertainment being produced), and probably kicking puppies and molesting children (who knows?).  And if you don’t do what they tell you to, MPAA president Chris Dodd will straight up prison-shank you. 

Well SOPA/PIPA was defeated, right?  What do we have to fear from the MPAA and RIAA if they can’t get their legislation passed?  When you have millions of dollars and friends in high places, you can exert a lot of pressure even without laws.  Even excepting the RIAA’s practice of suing people for exorbitant amounts of money, there are plenty of examples of them pressuring search engines, ISPs, Universities and even entire countries to get what they want.   

The DMCA

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The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was a 1998 copyright law intended to take copyright law into the 21st century.  Ostensibly a good idea, the DMCA was supposed to allow the Internet to continue being awesome, while also protecting the legitimate copyrights that could be easily infringed in the new digital environment.  But of course you’ll notice that this law was passed almost a good decade before streaming video was extensively widespread.   

This has led to several interesting abuses of power.  Under the law (and subsequent court decisions refining its scope), the owner of a copyright has the right to request infringing content be taken down.  That sounds all fair and good, but we’re trusting overly-litigious, private companies to responsibly claim copyrights and not use it as a cudgel to suppress customers and competitors.  Which is exactly what they did (the cudgel part, not the responsible part).  They’ve repeatedly claimed that they don’t need to consider “Fair Use” when taking down a video.  And according to Google, almost 40% of claims are illegitimate, and as many as 50% of claims are directed as competitors. 

The law’s in desperate need of updating, but assuming that it will be re-written by politicians who openly admit they have no idea how the Internet works and are solidly in the pocket of companies that get physically ill whenever someone doesn’t pay them, odds are it will only get worse. 

Private Companies

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In all the talk about SOPA and dangerous government censorship, it’s worth remembering that your Internet check goes to a private company, full of fallible individuals that can’t be booted out of office in the next election.  And there are many, many companies out there with millions of dollars and vested interest in controlling how they are portrayed on the Internet. 

The list is extensive and reads like the lovechild of George Orwell and Eugene V. Debs.  The Boston Globe and Diebold edited Wikipedia extensively to make themselves look better.  Verizon blocked the messages of an abortion rights group because it policy forbids the transmission of “unsavory” information.  Multiple companies shut off third-party donations to Wikileaks.  The cases go on and on.   

Internet Service Providers

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You likely have a long, torrid relationship with your Internet Service Provider (ISP) that, like any good relationship, is filled with hate and resentment.  Many of you may be familiar with Comcast, the proud winner of “Worst Company in America”.  But aside from the worst customer service on the planet, they’re also have a long history of doing their damndest to section off the Internet into little boxes and charge an exorbitant admission fee.  All while tracking your personal information and handing it over to the government at the drop of a hat.  

All the major providers are quickly jumping on to the Tiered Pricing bandwagon, ostensibly to provide cheaper Internet to those who only use it for light browsing and e-mail, and bigger, more expensive Internet for those with huge bandwidth requirements. 

Then there’s something known as Deep Packet Inspection. To oversimplify, it basically allows an ISP to know just about everything about your online activity.  Whether you’re browsing webcomics or Lexis-Nexis for work.  Whether you’re on a Skype call or browsing porn.  They can use this information to selectively block traffic they don’t like (or hand over information about traffic to the government).  Award-winner Comcast has already used this to block P2P traffic, and then threatened to fire anyone who talked too loudly about it.  

Protecting Children from Pornography

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Who doesn’t want to protect children from being exploited for pornography? That’s the premise behind the Protecting Children from Pornography, and act that started working its way through the bowels of the American legislative process in 2011.  The purpose of this bill is to allow law enforcement personnel to peel back the protections of the anonymous Internet, and track down child pornographers. 

A noble goal that pretty much no one argues with.  The problem really needs no jokes, scare language or dressing up to be absolutely chilling: this bill requires your ISP to track all of your personal information—your name, address, credit card number, browsing history, etc…–for 18 months.  And they’re supposed to turn it over to law enforcement without a warrant.  All the officers need to do is ask.  To be fair, the bill specifies that they must say “please with sugar on top” and they have to promise to be “extra special careful that this isn’t used irresponsibly”.   

NSA Warrentless Wiretapping

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But before you get too up in arms about Protecting Children from Pornography, rest easy in the fact that the government can basically track you without a warrant anyway.  Remember that whole warrantless wiretapping thing a few years back?  Well despite all the hopey changey-ness floating around Obama, he’s continued using this method.  While it’s not a complete database on every American searching the Internet available at the drop of a hat, it’s pretty damn close. 

The “good” part about the NSA wiretapping, is that they still need to get approval from FISA courts, and the suspects need to be part of an ongoing investigation.  Which makes me feel so very safe knowing that this terribly powerful tool will never be misused or abused by our sterling elected officials and their record of professional ethics that are beyond reproach. 

Government Censorship (Under Existing Law)

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For all the dangers that private companies and groups and represent to Internet freedom, they have nothing on governments around the world, who have been censoring things since Caveman King Grog didn’t like Torg’s word for “rock” and ordered Torg executed by smashing.  We’re a little bit more civilized these days, and politicians at least have the decency to pretend like they’re protecting us from something terrible (usually pedophiles, sometimes democracy).  For all the fear surrounding SOPA/PIPA, the US government has no problem causing hell for websites it doesn’t like.  Just ask MegaUpload and Wikileaks, both which were shut down briefly without due process. 

And let’s not even get started on censorship in other countries.  Not even counting giant blockers like China, even developed nations who should know better have been blocking access to thousands of sites.  One of the more hilarious examples is the censorship regime in Australia, which is probably the most famous for using the “Won’t someone think of the children!?!?!” justification.  But when a secret blacklist of blocked sites surfaced, it turns out Australia was in fact using over half its time protecting its citizens from the dangers of dentists and dog kennel websites. 

Zombie SOPA

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Reports of SOPA’s death may in fact have been somewhat premature.  The bill is not becoming law any time soon, but it’s only been shelved for the time being.  It still enjoys the support of at least 65 representatives in the House, not to mention the piles of money the MPAA will continue to put into buy votes. 
 
It’s a guaranteed certainty that this bill, in some form, will rise from the grave and wreak havoc of the freedom of the Internet once again.  Lamar Smith, the bill’s chief sponsor, isn’t going anywhere and—keeping with the venerable Washington tradition—will continue to be dumber than a pile of rocks about the Internet.  The bill will likely be quietly passed through a committee and voted on before the Internet can notice and mobilize a counter-attack.  After all, you can’t expect apathetic Americans to care about politics all year long, right?  That’s just exhausting, we have episodes of Glee to catch up on.  And they can’t black out Wikipedia several times a year, can they?   
 

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

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Sometimes referred to as “SOPA’s evil twin”, ACTA is a multilateral trade agreement designed to create a new and more robust system for protecting intellectual property.  Did you get the impression that this was a legitimate piece of legislation?  Sorry it’s actually a jumbled mess that was mostly negotiated in secret, outside of the current international body governing intellectual property, and without the input of most developing nation.  

So what’s so bad about it?  Well part of the problem is, no one really knows.  The treaty is too much of a chaotic mess of overlapping, overly-vague provisions that prescribe unnecessarily harsh punishments for levels of piracy that are never clearly defined.  One specific provision that has people especially worried is the removal of safeguards that shielded ISPs from legal repercussions as a result of the actions of their users.  Meaning that if you pirate a song on AT&T’s network, the copyright owner can go after AT&T.  And God knows what that lack of protection will do to ISP’s already draconian policies toward users.   

ACTA is so overwhelmingly unnecessary, and has already led to protests number in the tens of thousands in Poland and other cities in the European Union.  After the pitched battle over SOPA/PIPA and now this battle over yet another 4-letter word, it just leaves one wondering: in the middle of one of the worst economic downturns in recent history, with their approval ratings hanging around the single-digits, why are they so obsessed with passing an obscure and oppressive copyright law?

From: Top Business Degrees

Another interesting point in the infographic is that being a member of the Girls Scouts seems to drastically increase a woman’s chances of political office. It would be interesting to know if this holds true for males and Boy Scouts as well.

In 1930, BBBs developed Truth in Advertising Standards, something most consumers can appreciate. According to the inforgraphic, Harry S. Truman said of BBBs, “They have gone to work to clean out the shady areas in the commercial world.”

Eleanor Roosevelt said in 1951, “it’s a service I think we’ve all taken for granted.” In 2010 they helped resolve one million consumer complaints and provided four million reviews of businesses. With over 88 million instances of service in 2010, that statement may no longer hold true.

BBB 100th Anniversary [Infographic] compliments of Better Business Bureau

A lot of tech companies often start out with the most humble of beginnings – in this case: Google. Now standing as one of the most powerful companies in the world, their journey has been chronicled since the conception of “Backrub” – the first search engine for the world wide web.

The interactive infographic you’re about to see sheds some light into the world of Sergey Brinn and Larry Page’s brainchild we’ve all come to know, love, and respect.

Created by Online PhD

 
 We all know and accept that failure is a natural part of the business cycle.  Bad ideas will be rejected by the market, and good ideas will flourish and lead to a more prosperous and efficient economy.  Hell, even perfectly good ideas that outlive their usefulness will slowly die ignominious deaths no matter how marketable they were a few years ago.  But some business ideas are so catastrophically awful, so based on warped views of what the market wants, that they fail quickly and often in spectacular fashion.  And we’re not just talking about your local artisanal cheese shop that failed to flourish in a down market.  Most of these ideas had tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars and big name companies backing them, and still couldn’t manage to survive more than a year.
 

Motorola Iridium

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Way back in the late 90s (kids), there were phones that connected to the walls using cords, and voice messages were sent over these vast “wire” networks. But also around this time, the cell phones that we all know and love were beginning to gain widespread popularity (despite their giant size and weight), especially among the wealthy business elite. 
 
The problem was, they didn’t quite work everywhere.  And when savvy business execs were negotiating ways to exploit children in southeast Asia, they had some trouble getting reception because this was Vietnam in 1997, where the locals were lucky to own shoes―much less advanced electronics.  The only solution at the time was a satellite phone, which were outrageously expensive, bulky, unreliable and altogether impractical. 
 
There were several sane approaches to this problem at the time:  Pick up a normal phone.  Wait a few years for infrastructure to catch up and cell prices to go down.  Not worry about it because Motorola is a cellphone company.  Instead, Motorola went the super villain route and launched a dozen or so satellites into low-Earth orbit at the cost of several billion dollars.  After several years of work and billions invested, Motorola was finally ready to reveal…another brick of a satellite phone that cost thousands of dollars and was generally unreliable.   

Not to mention that the areas where it was necessary to use this device (poor, impoverished, devoid of infrastructure), were also the last place you wanted to pull out a $2,000 phone on the street.  Oh did we mention that the phone, like the GPS in your phone now, needed a clear view of the sky to work?  To top it all off, by the time the network was complete, cell phone service had started to become widely available in just about every corner of the globe.  The network was essentially dead upon launch.  The Iridium network is still there, and is reportedly quite popular with Arctic and Antarctic researchers. 
 

Webvan

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Obviously the dot-com boom of the 90s encouraged some of the most spectacular expenditures on the most bone-headed business ideas, so let’s start getting some of the more hilarious examples out of the way.  Webvan was founded in 1999 with a simple idea you think would take off quickly in the Internet age: we have all this Internet shopping, why not allow people to buy groceries online?  A few massive infusions of capital later, and Webvan was off, quickly building facilities 10 US cities, guaranteeing a delivery time of 30 minutes or less, and greedily eying another 16 markets. 

Hoping to copy Amazon’s success as a first-mover in the space (i.e., the first major player can scoop up market share and hedge out future competitors), Webvan’s executives spent like there was no tomorrow, gobbling up warehouses and delivery trucks.  There was just one, tiny, itty-bitty problem: no one had any freaking idea what they were doing.  None of the executives had any experience with grocery stores or retail food sales at all.  And this led them to miss one all-important detail that you think would have come up in earlier discussions when people were throwing millions of dollars at them: Profit.   

Grocery stores, as opposed to the hodge-podge of items being sold on Amazon, have razor-thin profit margins―some of the lowest of any business in the world.  And they can’t leave a product on a shelf for weeks, or even days, hoping that someone will buy it.  Webvan went from tens of millions to hemorrhaging millions within the span of a few months.   

The Kardashian Kard

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If only this had been called the “Kool Kardashain Kard”, every joke about the Kardashians that every needed to be made would have. Imagine the thrilling board meeting where this idea came up:  having exhausted all their make-up, reality shows, marriages, and divorce merchandising, some incredibly boring accountant walked into the room and said, “You know what’s exciting and kool? F*CKING DEBIT KARDS!” 

The idea here was that (shudder) tweens could live the lavish Kardashian lifestyle with this stylin’ debit card without learning a single thing about money.  It’s the American Dream!  Just like the Kardashians, kids could symbolize everything decadent and destructive about modern America. They could do it in style and possibly even without a sex tape.   

Fortunately, the Kardashian Kard of Koolness ran into several roadblocks, the first being outrage from parents and advocacy groups.  Associating important matters of finance with pop culture and a symbol of status led to outcry as some argued it would teach personal finance through opulence, rather than responsibility.  Additionally, the Kards came with various fees which could easily add up to more than $100 a year.  The second and more serious problem was pre-paid debit cards are just plain boring and way too much of a hassle.  Why buy something, put money on it, then use it to buy season one of Keeping up with the Kardashians when you could just guilt your estranged parents into buying it for you?  Unsurprisingly, the kard was a huge flop. 

Kozmo.com

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Much like Webvan, Kozmo.com jumped on to the hysterical “everyone will buy things on the Internet and everything will be delivered”-bandwagon of the late 90s and early Aughts.  Only Kozmo took the Amazon idea and dialed past 11 into 13 territory.  They promised to deliver anything, virtually anywhere inside their markets, even if it was only a $0.50 pack of gum.  It quickly became a favorite among young professionals and college students, but because this was 2000, the end was coming. 

Contrary to popular belief, the idea of delivering just about anything wasn’t all that crazy.  The problems Kozmo suffered from were twofold: low margins and jittery investors.  Seems that paying someone to deliver a pack of gum tends to cost a lot and not net the company too much money.  After an initial capital investment of $280 million, Kozmo had to find a way to make themselves profitable after overextending to too many unprofitable markets.  Believe it or not, they actually succeeded, and their top 6 regions were actually briefly profitable. 

Of course this was shortly after the NASDAQ tanked.  Kozmo’s executives went to investors with their profits, expecting the money needed to go forward with a merger that would keep them afloat.  That’s when some genius in the boardroom realized that, even though Kozmo was turning a profit, the margins were still too razor-thin.  They wouldn’t see the principle on their $280 million dollars for years down the road, not to mention to two to threefold return on investment they’d begun to expect in the dotcom era.  And that is the reason why we all have to get up off our asses and actually walk to the corner store like savages for gum. 
 

XFL Football

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In 2001, Vince McMahon and NBC got together to fill the NFL off-season with something other than reruns of Friends.  They decided to start a hip, new league with lots of boobs and perhaps the most annoying commercials ever played ad nauseum. 

The XFL was supposed to be a meaner, tougher, grittier version of football, designed to attract a younger demographic and, as McMahon elegantly put it, “people who watch movies”.  They cobbled together a bunch of sub-NFL level athletes and threw the whole gaudy, over-hyped mess on TV for precisely no one to enjoy.  To everyone but McMahon’s lack of surprise, it set new records in how small of an audience a sporting event could get. 

But despite our hindsight hatred of this thing that invaded every commercial space from December through February, it’s more football, isn’t it?  Who wouldn’t cheer the chance to not have to wait almost 6 months for the new season to start?  The problem was that in trying to brand the XFL as a new, edgier, more sensational football league, McMahon and NBC managed to alienate all of their viewers who like football.  The overwhelming reason cited for not watching the XFL season was “it looks too much like wrestling”.  Fans refused to believe that the entire exercise was genuine and not staged like every other thing McMahon puts his hands on.  Though it was slated for at least two seasons, the incredibly low TV ratings of the XFL led to its cancellation after only a single season. 
 

Kibu.com

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Kibu.com opened its doors to much fanfare in the fall of 2000, but quickly became yet another victim of the dot com bust.  So who cares?  Hundreds of seemingly promising businesses back by millions of dollars died in that virtual firestorm.  What makes Kibu, a site targeted at adolescent girls, any different than the hundreds of sites that thought they could get rich quick off of ad revenue alone (heh)?  Well Kibu set something of a record, even in the crazy dot com era.  A short 46 days after their opulent launch party in a San Francisco neighborhood, they shut their doors.  In less than a month and a half, the entire company tanked. 

So what happened?  Well it’s kind of unclear.  What’s likely is they made the same mistake countless other dotcoms did, they targeted a tiny, fickle, difficult-to-capture market, and expected minuscule advertising revenue to lead to the astronomical returns on investment their backers were expecting.  Still, Kibu remains as one of the shortest-lived vs. most-hyped dotcoms of the early Aughts, despite having a name that sounds like some sort of Japanese fetish site. 

The Edsel

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One of the most famous flops in business history, the Edsel was a series of cars produced by Ford from 1958-1960.  Spending a mind-boggling $400 million to develop and market the cars, the Edsel (named after Edsel Ford) was supposed to be Ford’s newest and most exciting entry, a shot over the bow of its competitors.  Instead it became one of the swiftest and most expensive flops in automotive history. 

By all accounts, the Edsel should have succeeded wildly.  It was slickly marketed, price-competitive with competitors, and a generally well-built with plenty of top-of-the-line features.  But as they rolled them out, Ford started hearing disconcerting stories about consumers taking one look, then walking out of the dealership.
   
So what was the problem?  Well there are many differing opinions on the subject, ranging from the price, marketing, appearance and reliability.  All of which sound like an exercise of “It should have worked, buuuuut”

Price: It should have worked because the Edsel was only slightly more expensive than the basic Ford models.  Buuuut, no one quite knew what the Edsel was supposed to be (a luxury car? A budget alternative?) — and so the price still seemed too high.

Marketing: The slick marketing campaign built a lot of anticipation around the Edsel’s release by only showing the car through unfocused lenses and thin, gauzy sheets. Buuuut, again, like above, no one knew what the hell the Edsel was supposed to be.  Also the name is ugly as sin.

Appearance: Even by today’s standards, the Edsel is not a bad looking car.  It’s a bold design to be sure, but it’s still slick and classy.  Buuuut, at the time it looked like “an Oldsmobile sucking on a lemon”

Reliability: On paper, the Edsel was a sturdy car built with good parts and meant to last.  Buuuut, the assembly of the Edsel often took place in different plants, making quality control nearly impossible.  Some cars were shipped to dealers only partially assembled, with instructions in the trunk.

On paper, the Edsel must have looked like a slam dunk to Ford executives, but it’s amazing that with all the numerous tiny problems, no one pointed a single one out.   

Premier Smokeless Cigarette

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By now you’ve likely ran into at least one douchebag at a party smoking an E-cigarette while gushing about how healthy it is.  If he’s really a douche, he’ll straight smoke it in bars and then yell self righteously when he gets thrown out and ruins everyone else’s night (Steve).  This futuristic-looking smoking device doesn’t burn tobacco, but instead vaporizes a nicotine gel.  The smoker gets their nicotine fix without having to tear up their lungs. Why didn’t anyone think of this before? 

They did,  in 1988. It was called the the Premier Smokeless Cigarette. Company spokespeople often said that if smokers would just stick it out, they’d quickly acquire a taste for the new cigarettes.  Which is unfortunate because consumer studies showed that few smokers made it past their first Premier.  Premier survived less than a year, which is amazing because that’s a hell of a lot shorter than Camel Snus and I dare you to find a single person not on an airplane who enjoys those. 
 

Netflix Price Raise

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Last July, the popular Netflix service decided to split its streaming and DVD services into two separate deals.  Netflix would remain a streaming service, and DVDs would be delivered through a separate account called “Qwikster”.  Oh and the price for both services combined went up by around 6 dollars.  The justification generally went that Netflix delivered hundreds of free movies instantly for one-fifth the price of your average cable bill.  Certainly a small increase shouldn’t bother anyone.   

Except they ignored one of the first rules of business: don’t raise prices without offering additional services.  As if that wasn’t enough, customers who had DVDs delivered were now responsible for two accounts, and typing in two website addresses is like, really a lot of work, man.  Trying to perform damage control, Netflix offered a sincere and heartfelt apology which was about as sincere and heartfelt as Darth Vader and Skeletor’s lovechild.   

Eventually, Netflix called it quits.  They kept the price increase, but they gave up on the unnecessarily separate services.  But not before they lost much of their “Not Comcast” credibility, upward of 800,000 subscribers, and 10% of their quarterly revenue. 
 

boo.com

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This high-end online UK retailer launched in 1999.  They left the gate with $135 million in venture capital and launched simultaneously in most major European countries. They burned through their venture capital in less than 18 months, which is more than $250,000 a day.  Unsurprisingly, the capital ran out before sales caught up, and the company went into bankruptcy in 2000. 
 
The funny story here is that boo.com was actually not doing that terribly when the company fell apart.  By the time the money ran out, sales were close to $500,000.  While that’s roughly two days of expenditures at boo, in any other environment that would have been enough to justify further capital investment. But this was the dot com era, and investors were vacillating wildly between “Where are my 300% returns in two years!” and “I need to horde my money it’s the end of the world!”.  $500k simply wasn’t enough to justify further investment.   

But the real reason behind boo’s failure wasn’t investment, it was their terrible, terrible website.  While it might not look so bad nowadays, it combined all the terrible popups and animated logos of the late nineties with the bandwidth-heavy flash widgets of 2003.  And this was in 1999, when somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% of their customers were still using dial-up. 

PAW-PALS

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A tiny little shop in Oroville, California, PAW-PALS is probably the worst business idea you’ve never heard of.  You know you’re off to a bad start when the origin story of this quaint little store began with two people walking their cats.  This is an activity that precisely not a single sane person in the world participates in, but oddly founder Jeffrey Sentose thought was a large, under-serviced market demographic.   

The story goes that Sentose was out walking his cat one brisk morning.  All of the planets and stars and quasars and brown dwarfs and asteroids and comets in the universe apparently aligned and he met yet another person out walking their cat.  The two cats got along so well that Sentose, who according to the article never met a terrible idea he didn’t try to make money off of, decided to create a lavish store for people to bring their cats for cat play-dates. 

If you’re shuddering right now, it is because you have actually owned more than one cat and know that cats are evil, angry hellspawn.  Especially when other cats are around.  And especially when they’ve been plucked from the sunny perch they’ve been lounging on for the past 72 hours to go hang out with other cats and other humans.  Cats are the hermetic, possibly homicidal, Ted Kaczynskis of the pet world, and yet Sentose decided he should open a place to bring all these murderous little furballs together like some sort of feline Madrassa.  As proof that there is some justice in the world, PAW-PALS failed within a month, presumably because those strange enough to actually visit the place were never heard from again―a point bolstered by noise complaints that (quite seriously) complained of “frequent mrrrowwwwwwwws [sic] loud and shrill enough to chill the bones of any man”.
 
[PAW-PALS is not actually real.  But honestly, could you could tell the difference?]

 
With 2011 now several weeks behind us, the time comes for us to look ourselves in the mirror and honestly assess our New Year’s Resolutions.  This is likely the time when we’re all thinking “f*ck it, a few extra pounds isn’t that bad, going to the gym is so hard.”  Don’t worry, you’re not alone.  Studies show that somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 out of every 5 resolutions set forth are quickly broken.  We are all failing spectacularly at improving ourselves—but don’t worry, it’s called ‘Life.’ If it gets you down, just meet the rest of us at the bar.  Unless one of course your resolution is to cut back on drinking, in which case we’ll see you there on Thursday when you finally give up.  In celebration of so many hopes and dreams being crushed under the steel boot of apathy and mediocrity over the next few weeks, let’s chronicle some of the resolutions that fail the most frequently and swiftly.   
 

The “Turn My Life Around” Resolution

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We’ve all known someone (perhaps it is you) that, at the dawn of the New Year, realizes their life is a tumbling pile of nothingness inhabited by fear, self-loathing and probably a lot of dirty laundry and unwashed dishes.  The crushing weight of their failure seems too large to be lifted by a few paltry resolutions, so they resolve to simply overhaul their life.  In their mind, the way to act out this goal is simply to act counter to their natural impulses, as these are the impulses that have led him or her to this point in the first place. 

“I’m too lazy to do laundry” becomes “Nope, clean everything!”.  “I should just keep my head down at work” becomes “I will demand a raise and possibly shit on my boss’s desk after hours!”.  The way is so clear, so simple — why didn’t you think of this before? 

Why You Will Ditch It: 
Scientifically, the best and most successful resolutions are ones that are small and highly specific.  This is both huge (“I’m going to change everything”) and incredibly vague (“All of…uhm…those things…”).  It’s simply too huge to be attainable, assuming you can even define what “turn my life around” really means.  Even for those who set specific goals for this life turn around (“I’m going to smoke less, drink less, spend more time with my family, work harder, keep things cleaner, etc…) is setting up too many goals to achieve, much less remember.   
 

Lose Weight

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This is probably the most commonly heard resolution around New Year’s.  Even relatively thin people wouldn’t mind losing an inch or two around the waist.

It’s an unfortunate consequence of a world where completely sane, heterosexual men have been heard saying they don’t think Christina Hendricks is attractive but would be all over Jennifer Aniston. 
 
Why You Will Ditch It: 
If you’re on the husky side of euphemisms for being fat, losing weight actually isn’t that difficult.  It’s losing those last few pounds and keeping them off that’s the trouble.  Long story short, when you start losing weight (which for most of human history was a terrible thing survival-wise), your body starts freaking out, and your hormones conspire to get that weight back.  Not to mention the fact that you’ll likely have to overhaul your diet and start setting aside at least 3-4 hours a week to hit the gym.  The point is, you’re not only combating your own laziness that tells you the gym is too much work and microwave dinners for 3 meals is totally okay, you’re battling millions of years of evolution.  And you’re doing it with a New Year’s Resolution, which is second only to “The Weather” in the list of half-hearted conversation topics.   

Stop Smoking

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We all have vices that we pretend we’d like to drop but secretly wish we could keep doing for the rest of our lives without consequence.  Smoking, along with rampant unprotected sex and black-out drinking, is one of these.  Unfortunately, we are all mortal and so every New Year’s we have to pretend to our parents and friends that we’re totally going to quit smoking.  Soon.  I’m down to only 2-3 a day, really I’m like almost there.   

Over the past few years, it’s even gotten harder and harder to be a smoker.  Good luck finding anywhere inside to smoke, and if you live in certain areas of the country, good luck smoking at all.  When asked if they smoke or how much they smoke, smokers are now required by law to say “Yeah, I really need to quit though it’s terrible.” 

Why You Will Ditch It:
To paraphrase Mark Twain: it’s really easy to quit smoking — I’ve done it hundreds of times.  If you’re trying to quit smoking, your odds of success are in the single digits.  First off, smoking is so incredibly addictive, it’s kind of unbelievable.  Nicotine as a drug leads to addiction in close to 70 to 90 percent of regular smokers.  Compare that with alcohol, where only 2.7% of regular drinkers report a level of alcohol usage indicative of dependance.  In addition, most smokers smoke compulsively: with coffee, with alcohol, after meals, before bed, right after waking up, etc… if you’re quitting smoking, odds are there aren’t many activities in your life that aren’t closely linked to having a cigarette in your hand. 
 
A good smoking cessation plan takes weeks of preparation, and often entails involving friends, family, and support groups in your plan.  Resolving to quit on New Year’s just because the calendar has changed a digit isn’t going to cut it. 

Spend More Time With Friends and Family

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Believe it or not, spending more time with those closest to you ranks as one of the more popular New Year’s Resolutions.  Let’s pretend for a moment that we’re not all shriveled, misanthropic husks of cynicism and give this idea some credence.  It’s a well-studied fact that people derive some of the deepest and longest-lasting joy in life from having a strong and supportive network of friends and family members.  So it’s understandable that people who feel that these things are lacking in their lives would seek them out.  
 
Why You Will Ditch It:
First off, this goal falls into the trap of so many resolutions in that it sounds simple and straight forward, but is actually maddeningly vague.  How much time is enough?  Is some time more valuable than other times? Is spending time playing catch with my son the equivalent of taking him to Disneyland?  Should I spend more time with my family or my friends?  A simple way to fix this would be to set aside some time every week to spend with friends and family, say sitting down to dinner every night and setting a weekly bowling date with buddies.   

While nice, this doesn’t address the second, more serious reason why this resolution gets ditched: if you feel like you’re not spending enough time with your family and friends, there’s likely something else, good or bad, that keeps you from doing this.  Maybe you’re a workaholic, in which case your resolution should focus on not devoting so much time to work (though that might be impossible if you want to keep your job).  Maybe you’re estranged from your family because your parents were abusive and they engendered a lack of an ability to trust that has prevented you from forming meaningful relationships.  In this case your resolution should be to see a therapist.  Or maybe you’re just an insufferable asshole and few people can put up with you for extended periods of time.  In this case your resolution should be to go into the financial industry so you can buy friends.   
 

Get In Shape

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The “lose weight” for people who aren’t fat or don’t want to admit that they’re fat, the “get in shape” resolution usually comes after a fit of wheezing and gulping breaths after climbing a flight of stairs.  It’s usually followed by phrases such as “tone up”, “cardio”, “core strength training” and “protein shake”.    This wonderfully meaningless phrase is basically a way for people who aren’t visibly out of shape to commiserate with those who are.  It is the “oh my god I’m so fat” for people who aren’t women who watch too much TV.     

Why You Will Ditch It: 
For all the same reasons that it’s difficult to get your ass off the couch and lose weight, it’s difficult to get in shape.  You won’t have the same sort of hormonal diet-rage as people who just dropped 30 pounds, but you still have to set an exercise regimen, and keep to it consistently for the rest of your life.  Thick or thin, waking up at 5am to get a three mile run in before work while abstaining from harmful drugs sounds appealing to precisely no one and Mormons.
 
But the worst part, and the reason this resolution is probably dropped more quickly and frequently than losing weight is there’s nothing obviously wrong to begin with.  If you’re a healthy weight, don’t smoke and drink in moderation, no one is going to give you shit about being unable to run three miles in less than 30 minutes.  If you wake up every morning, look in the mirror and are able to honestly say “meh, good enough” all motivation to improve upon that goes out the window.  Though to be fair, if you’re able to do that, your low-stress life will probably have you living longer than a marathoner.   
 

Enjoy Life More

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This is another resolution that shows up with remarkable frequency in polls of people’s goals for the year.  When asked to elaborate, “take it easy” was the winner, showing up in 86% of replies.  “Smell the roses” was a close second with 73% of replies with third place going to “You know, just live, maaaannnn”.  When asked what specific activities ‘Enjoying Life More’ would entail, there were widespread reports of listening to the Grateful Dead and using this resolution as an excuse to drink more.   

Why You Will Ditch It: 
This resolution falls into the awful trifecta of New Year’s Resolutions:  It’s vague, difficult to know when you’ve achieved and the result of so many factors that are nearly impossible to address all at once.  How can you tell if you’re enjoying life more?  Do you keep a daily chart of how often you’ve sniffed some angiosperms?   

On top of all this, there’s usually a reason you feel like you’re not enjoying life and it likely doesn’t have much to do with how easy you take it or how often you take long, thoughtful walks through the woods and admire the foliage.  Odds are if you don’t have much time to enjoy life, it’s because you’re committed to a career or something else that sucks your time.  Losing that thing in order to “enjoy life” more thoroughly will likely be catastrophic for your finances and responsibilities.  Similarly, if you’re not strapped for time but find yourself unable to enjoy life despite a lack of an obvious antagonizing factor, you should probably see a therapist as that’s a classic symptom of depression that isn’t going to be fixed by a simple resolve to feel better about life in some abstract sense.   

Cut Back on/Quit Drinking

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Almost everyone has been hungover at work or during classes, sometimes more than once a week.  While this increases in frequency the younger you are, odds are just about everyone reading this now would like to cut back on drinking a bit, at the very least.  Some of you reading this right now should probably quit drinking altogether.  On top of the long-term damage it can do to your body in the form of increased cancer risks and liver scarring, most of us are just sick of the hazy feeling that comes from a night of even moderate drinking.   

Why You Will Ditch It: 
Alcohol will still be everywhere around you.  You never quite realize until you try to quit or cut back just how many of your activities and friendships revolved around at least some drinking.  Unless you spend a lot of time drinking alone, odds are most of your drinking isn’t a compulsive need, but simply a desperate attempt to make your friends more interesting.  Even the most casual of drinkers is still surrounded by a world where every get together that takes place after 7pm and isn’t Bible Study usually involves a few rounds.   

If you’re a heavy drinker and trying to cut back or quit, the story gets even scarier.  Have a look at this list of symptoms for the condition known as Delirium Tremens.  Long story short, a heavy drinker can expect some pretty severe withdrawal symptoms from insomnia, irregular heartbeat and motherfucking seizures.  You don’t even have to be a heavy drinker, as these symptoms have shown up in patients who drank as little as 20 drinks a week (still a lot but well within a college student’s weekend).  

So even if you muster the willpower to reign in your drinking, you are going to be surrounded by it for what is likely to be the rest of your life, assuming you don’t die from withdrawal.  I give you until Valentine’s Day.   

Get Out of Debt

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In this hip, new second decade of the 21st century, many people are responding to the latest economic fashion trends and resolving to join those cool kids without any debt.  Unsurprisingly, this resolution has become increasingly common in a world where millions of mortgages sit underwater and middle-class wages have stagnated.   

As far as resolutions go, getting out of debt is mercifully specific and entails a definite end-goal which is theoretically feasible given the proper steps.  On top of that, losing your debt is a great way to up your credit score, increase your long-term savings and earnings potentials and the sooner you do it the less money you’ll pay overall.  Especially if your debt is on your credit card. 

Why You Will Ditch It:
Unlike enjoying life, losing weight, spending time with friends and family and pretty much every other resolution, getting out of debt costs a hell of a lot of money.  If you don’t have a lot of disposable income (and if you do, why are you in debt in the first place?), eliminating your debt is going to entail a lot of sacrifices.  You have to make a budget and stick to it.  Every day of every week of every year for what is going to likely be at least three to five years.  And, much like drinking, all around you your friends will continue to buy nice things, eat out frequently and buy cars, houses, and wedding rings, whether they can afford them or not.  And that entire time (again, especially if your debt is on credit cards) you will see your principle shrink by very tiny amounts as you pay off the astronomical interest.  
   
Add to all this the sudden, unexpected expense that will inevitably arise and wipe out 6 months of good finances, and you’re likely to go back to making minimum payments before Martin Luther King Day. 

Get More Sleep

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As far as general things that you can do to improve your health, getting enough sleep comes in near the top of the list (assuming you’re keeping your resolution to quit smoking).  And in this crazy, fast-paced world where we’re pressured to lose weight, enjoy life, spend more time with friends and family, and balance our checkbooks, sleep is often the only area we can afford to cut time out of.  So come New Years, many people resolve to make sleep a priority in an effort to increase health and decrease stress. 

Why You Will Ditch It: 
When faced with two hours of sleep versus finishing a project that is due tomorrow, no one responsible will choose sleep.  As detrimental as long-term sleep deprivation may be to your health, a little bit of grogginess is a small price to pay to get something important done.  And good luck telling your boss/teacher/professor you didn’t finish the assignment because you are making sleep a priority this year.  Getting that extra 40 winks is viewed as a sign of laziness and lack of ambition. 

The big problem here for someone making this resolution isn’t that they aren’t getting enough sleep, it’s that they have too many other things going on in their life that are more important to them than sleep.  The reason this resolution will get ditched almost immediately is it’s attacking the problem from the wrong angle.  It’s like saying “I need to spend more time not smoking” instead of “I need to quit smoking”.  It’s a semantic play that allows people to resolve to do something they think is important, without recognizing that they’ll likely have to give up something else that is important to them in order to achieve this goal.   

Spend Less Time Doing (Wasteful Activity)

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We all have our fair-share of time wasters.  For some people, it’s watching a 4 hour long Mythbusters or General Hospital marathon.  For others it’s playing video games, or looking at cat pictures on the internet.  These activities don’t even have to interfere with work, school or other obligations (though they often do).  Most of us still feel a twinge of guilt when we sit on our asses not accomplishing anything for several hours—we could have been painting, or learning a new skill, or reconnecting with old friends or…crocheting…or…ok I don’t honestly know what do people do outside of browsing the internet for funny pictures. 

The point is, we all waste time, and we could be building a spaceship in our back yards (this is what I imagine I would have the time to do without video games). 

Why You Will Ditch It: 
You enjoy it too much, and there aren’t many negative consequences.  Come on this is America, not some utopia of productivity and conscientiousness.  If I want to sit on my couch for 6 hours and watch all three Star Wars movies back to back, not only will nobody dare criticize me, most people will join in and afterward we will say things like “That was awesome let’s do the Lord of the Rings next weekend!”.   
You may feel like you’re wasting your life and not being productive enough, but the truth is Americans are the most overworked citizens in the developed world.  Odds are you have already paid your dues during the work week, and even likely fielded several annoying calls on Saturday from your boss.  You’ve likely paid your dues, and a part of you already knows it.  This will probably be the quickest resolution to get ditched, simply because it doesn’t have a really good motivation behind it, unlike quitting smoking or getting in shape.  Unless you’re an unemployed, lazy slob, you’re likely just being mean to yourself for no reason.   

And so when the guilty part of your resolves to spend less time playing video games, the rest of your body screams “AW HELL NAW”, and sits your ass right back in front of that TV to participate in what is likely the most relaxing, gratifying and enjoyable thing you can easily do on a weekend..

Choosing a college is a big decision at any level, but choosing the right Masters of Business Administration (MBA) program can be crucial to your career. Whether you want the degree because you’re eyeing a high-powered position or you’d simply like to develop your leadership, management and entrepreneurial skills, you can’t afford to settle for second-best. Your competition won’t, especially now that the MBA has become one of the most popular degree programs in the nation. 

The obvious way to stay ahead of the competition is to base your decision on MBA program rankings – but how do you know which rankings are the most reliable and the most relevant for your personal purpose? Rather than flooding the market with another MBA ranking, we’ve decided to highlight the best MBA rankings out there, all in one place. Stay tuned to this space because the new year marks the beginning of rankings season and we’ll be adding new quality rankings as they become available.

Traditional MBA Program Rankings

U.S. News, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and Financial Times release the top three sets of rankings for traditional MBA programs. 

US News MBA Rankings
U.S. News publishes rankings for the top three-quarters of MBA programs. U.S. News bases assessments on selectivity of students accepted into the program, career placement information (such as employment rates and salary) and quality as determined by deans and directors of schools and MBA programs and by corporate recruiters. To be eligible for a ranking, full-time MBA programs must be accredited by the AACSB International and must have graduated at least 20 students during the past year. 

Bloomberg BusinessWeek MBA Rankings
Bloomberg BusinessWeek ranks business schools from the United States, Europe and Asia based on recruiter assessments, graduate satisfaction and faculty research. Graduate satisfaction and corporate recruiter assessments each account for 45% of the total ranking, and faculty research supplies the remaining 10%. Though Bloomberg BusinessWeek rankings include schools and programs beyond the United States, the amount of schools ranked is selective, with a starting population of only 101 schools and final rankings published for 75 in the 2010 rankings. 

Financial Times Global MBA Rankings
Financial Times uses 20 different criteria in determining its Global MBA rankings. Different criteria are weighted differently, but assessments are essentially based on three areas of data: career success of alumni, international influence of the school and MBA program and research associated with the program. Unlike Bloomberg BusinessWeek rankings, Financial Times Global MBA rankings base the majority of alumni data off of survey responses from alumni who have graduated three years ago rather than a few months after graduation. 

Distance MBA Program Rankings

With professional and personal obligations keeping adult students from the classroom, online and distance-learning MBA programs are more popular than ever. If you’re considering an online or distance MBA program, your best bet for reliable rankings is to review the “Smart Choice” Awards Online MBA Rankings, BusinessMBA Online MBA Rankings or Bloomberg BusinessWeek Distance MBA Profiles. 

SuperScholar “Smart Choice” Awards Online MBA Rankings
Like rankings of traditional MBA programs, the “Smart Choice” Awards Online MBA rankings base their rankings partially on considerations like school and program reputation in the business world and selectivity of applicants. Only accredited MBA programs are ranked, and awards earned by those programs are also taken into account. “Smart Choice” Awards also considers the cost of attendance in their rankings, basing their evaluations on programs’ value as well as prestige.

BusinessMBA Online MBA Rankings
BusinessMBA.org ranks only the top 10 online MBA programs, taking into consideration the reputation of professors, the history of the institution and the demand for graduates of that MBA program. Each BusinessMBA ranking provides detailed information about the online MBA program, including tuition and a summary of positive qualities and pragmatic considerations like length of time required to complete a program. BusinessMBA rankings also state characteristics that distinguish each ranked online MBA program from others.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek Distance MBA Profiles
Bloomberg BusinessWeek evaluates online and distance-learning MBA programs in a different way than other college rankings sources. Rather than using a traditional ranking system, prospective students can view in-depth profiles of eligible online and distance-learning MBA programs. Profiles highlight admissions information, logistics of how a particular online or distance-learning program operates, graduation requirements and rates and career services offered. Profiles may also include numerical data about the institution and MBA program and financial data, like cost of attendance and financial aid prospects.

MBA Specialty Program Rankings

Within the world of the MBA is a wide range of specialties to help you develop your credentials in everything from accounting to marketing to entrepreneurship and earn specialty MBA degrees like the sought-after Executive MBA. For a broader spectrum of specialty MBA program rankings, consult U.S. NewsSpecialty Program Rankings or Bloomberg BusinessWeek U.S. MBA Program Rankings. If you’re looking for an Executive MBA program specifically, the Wall Street Journal’s Executive MBA Program rankings can help. 

U.S. News Specialty Program Rankings
U.S. News ranks specialty MBA programs according to reputation within the community of MBA academics. Deans of business schools and directors of MBA programs that are eligible for the U.S. News ranking of traditional full-time MBA programs are surveyed and asked to recommend as many as 10 MBA programs in each specialty. Ranking is assigned based on how many nominations a school or program has received, with the lowest-ranking schools having earned at least seven nominations. 

Bloomberg BusinessWeek U.S. MBA Program Rankings
Bloomberg BusinessWeek ranks eleven specialties of MBA programs according to corporate assessments. Specifically, recruiters evaluate the graduates of each program, taking into consideration skills like management attributes. In the most recent set of specialty MBA rankings published, a total of 57 schools were ranked. All 57 appeared in the rankings for each specialty, though their actual ranks in each specialty varied. Some schools with lower-ranked traditional MBA programs appeared competitively with higher-ranked schools in the rankings of specialty MBA programs.

Wall Street Journal Executive MBA Program Rankings
The Wall Street Journal publishes rankings for one ever-popular specialty MBA program, the Executive MBA. Based on graduate and corporate personnel assessments of the program and a joint assessment of graduates’ skills, The Wall Street Journal ranks the top 25 Executive MBA programs from a population that spans 18 countries. Executive MBA graduates evaluate the school and their skills improvement. Corporate figures, like human resources and management personnel, assess the quality of Executive MBA programs and the skills most required by their companies.

 
The fabric of our lives, naturally preserved artifacts, can be worth some serious dough — but people rarely get away with heisting these valuable artifacts due to the major security in museums all over the world. Riots and looting, however, sometimes trump these security measures and many artifacts are destroyed in the process. But shameless looters are not the only reason you won’t see your favorite Chinese tombs in a museum near you — natural disasters, careless construction workers and angry evangelists also make appearances on this list of 5 incredibly valuable artifacts that were destroyed.
 
 

The Museum of Egyptian Antiques

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Loot like an Egyptian? With political unrest reaching a fever pitch throughout Egypt earlier this year, a group of protestors in Cairo decided to focus their anger on the past instead of the present when they broke into The Museum of Egyptian Antiques . At first taking to the newly renovated gift shop and café for over-priced jewelry and snacks, the looters then moved into the museum itself and ran amuck on some of Egypt’s most valuable pieces currently in preservation. By breaking through the glass-paned ceiling and sliding down ropes, nearly 50 Tom Cruise-wannabes trashed various artifacts in the Late Period gallery, stole ancient treasures and destroyed a well-known statue of King Tut on a panther. Which is upsetting, because that sounds both incredibly noble and visually hilarious. 

National Museum of Iraq

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Looters were also the cause of more cultural devastation as groups of aggressors managed to steal more than 15,000 registered objects from the National Museum of Iraq during the month that preceded the 2003 Iraq War. While precautionary measures were attempted in order to secure the museum in the months leading up to the war, looters still managed to walk away with some of the museum’s most historically important pieces. Most of the stolen antiques were assumed destroyed, but nearly 5,000 items were later recovered –Three of which were determined to be the most valuable pieces missing: the Sacred Vase of Warka, the Mask of Warka and the Bassetki statue. Various items were reportedly scattered throughout Jordan, France and Switzerland; the headless stone statue of the Sumerian king Entemena of Lagash, however, was found in the good ol’ U.S. of A (along with almost 1,000 additional artifacts), thanks to aid from a New York art dealer who had encountered the piece. For his troubles, the dealer asked the Iraqi government for his full commission rate and a live scorpion. Neither was granted. 

Chinese Construction Mishaps

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So who’s the jerk in China who ripped into 100 ancient tombs like a 7 year-old on Christmas morning? No one seems to be certain, but because of the “improper excavation of the local cultural relic department”   in Xi’an’s Chang’an District in 2005, they’re all ruined. WAY TO GO, GUYS. The tore-up tombs were evidence of several dynasties (Han: 206BC-AD 220, Sui: 581-618, Tang: 618-907) found scattered in the Zhixin Cherry Blossom Garden in Guodo Town. Apparently this is becoming an unfortunate trend in China though, as construction workers in Nanjing accidentally destroyed 10 more ancient tombs in 2007. What were they working on, you ask? A magnificent cultural institution? A stately cathedral? Nope. An Ikea. They ruined artifacts dating back 1,800 years to construct a Swedish furniture store. Let’s hope they’re enjoying their Dagstorps and Karlstads, because who wouldn’t want a loveseat that lasts a year instead of a piece of history that has lasted lifetimes?

Women’s Club of Huntington Beach fire

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It was neither stupidity nor greed, but instead fire that resulted in the loss of a century’s worth of artifacts at the Women’s Club of Huntington Beach. In 2005, a tremendous fire, which required the attention of more than 50 firefighters and several gallons of always-comforting ice cream, burned the Women’s Club to the ground and engulfed everything inside it. The Women’s Club moved into the building in 1916, and some of the items lost included an antique grand piano, dishes that were used to serve regular meals to members during its inception and decades-old paper records. The club was renowned as an important part of the local community as well as an important part of local history. The members of the club helped establish the city’s first library and held countless educational programs in the early 1900s that were widely unavailable for women at the time. Women’s Clubs everywhere intended on holding candlelight vigils in memoriam of the tragedy, until they realized it was likely a fire hazard and drank wine instead. 

Nigerian Pentecostal Church burnings

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Several years ago, many members of the Pentecostal Church in Nigeria started burning centuries-old, extremely valuable African artifacts to blatantly erase history. Because if someone burns a shrine in a forest, it never really existed and no one ever prayed to it and congratulations, you are probably going to hell for that … right? Led by pastors of the Pentecostal Church, members have been urged to both reject and destruct any “paraphernalia of ancestral worship.”  That means that anything they own, as well as anything their neighbor owns, should most definitely be bonfired. One community in the rainforest belt has repeatedly had to defend its carved god figures and ceremonial costumes from looters and recently instated a gong to sound an alert for intruders. One participator happily confessed his involvement in the bonfires saying that “I had experienced a series of misfortunes and my pastor told me it was because I had not completely broken the covenant with my ancestral idols. Now that I have done that, I hope I will be truly liberated.” Let us know how that works out for you, buddy.