This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and check out other Battle of the Brands posts.

Imagine that you were only allowed to watch one sport on television for a whole year. Worse yet, imagine that you had to choose between two very popular sports all by yourself. The choice is up to you. Which will it be, NASCAR or the NFL? Will you select the gridiron wars or the need for speed? I shudder just at the thought of having to make such a life-altering choice.

On the one hand, I revel in the bone-crunching, close contact rivalries that play out every week on those hundred yard fields. The talent, the strategy, the sheer brutality of it. On the other hand, horsepower runs in my blood. The tension is palpable when watching those precisely tuned cars fighting for inches of superiority at the hands of fearless drivers. How could I choose between the pavement or the mud? How unfair would that be?

Continue reading Battle of the Brands: NASCAR vs. the NFL

Battle of the Brands: NASCAR vs. the NFL originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 03 May 2008 11:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

For the purposes of this examination, let's set aside the fact that you can find reliable clinical research that shows that tobacco smokers cost the insurance industry less over their lifetimes than svelte nonsmokers do. This is simply due to the fact that we tend to die sooner. But that's a matter of insurance industry/government/pharmaceutical hijinx, to possibly discuss another time.

That aside, the item I'm bringing forward today is how the issue of lying smokers should be pursued by Whirlpool Corp.(NYSE: WHR). I'll not take issue against Whirlpool's insurance plan demanding a different level of premium payment from smokers. I'll not take issue against Whirlpool asking smokers to document their participation in the addiction. I'll not take issue against Whirlpool taking action against smokers who lied when claiming that they don't smoke. What I do argue against is the ludicrous notion that Whirlpool employees have turned on one another. It appears that's what the company expects us to believe.

Whirlpool management wants you to believe that they had 39 instances of one employee reporting another for serving their nicotine addiction in violation of what should be a confidential declaration of status. Whirlpool expects you to believe that these company "rats" know which smokers lied on their paper work and which didn't. Whirlpool expects you to believe that all policy violators are of hourly status and that violations by management staff either don't exist or aren't yet worth pursuing. Whirlpool expects us to believe that the company itself wasn't at the root of this all.

How shall Whirlpool handle its lying smoker issue? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Are you concerned about the amount of time you or a loved one spend playing video games? You aren't alone - the American Medical Association is too. In fact, they were so concerned they commissioned a study of the possibility of video game addiction.

In a conclusion that might concern the industry, including Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:ERTS), Playstation maker Sony Corp ADR (NYSE:SNE) and xBox's Microsoft (NASDAQ :MSFT), the study raises serious concerns about the pastime.

That concern falls into two categories - the first, the potential for game activities to shape the non-game behavior of participants, hearkens back to the long-running concern over television violence. The AMA study points to a number of small studies that find a causal link between violent games and the aggressive behavior of those who play them. However, it also recognizes that industry-sponsored studies found no such link.

Continue reading AMA study calls for video gaming addiction diagnosis

AMA study calls for video gaming addiction diagnosis originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.