Washington navy yard shooting has renewed debate about guns-control  laws and the need for improvement of the mental-health system in US. And Starbucks has become a target for gun control advocates because Schultz said Starbucks would not ban customers from wearing guns into its stores. To show the support to Starbucks, more guns rights advocates went to Starbucks with guns in recent months.

Considering the bad effect of more guns in Starbucks, the Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz claimed that Starbucks customers should no longer bring guns into its stores or outdoor seating areas. This decision really started a controversy among customers. Some guns rights advocates said they would not go to Starbucks any more while some other guns control advocates feel  much better with the decision made by Starbucks. Schultz said that the gun would make other customers feel uncomfortable and he cannot make both guns control advocates and guns rights advocates satisfied. He just clarified his company’s position.

Citations:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/starbucks-says-guns-no-longer-welcome-1.1858745

http://www.kimatv.com/news/local/starbucks_gun_poll-226319331.html

Today, there is a scarcely of children who doesn’t recognize Ronald McDonald nor a parent who is nagged to visit the Golden Arches. But these years there are so many sounds that wish Ronald McDonald a speedy retirement.

Almost 50 years ago, McDonald’s showed a clown named Ronald McDonald first which exploited the marketing vulnerabilities of children worldwide. From then, McDonald’s became one of the top corporations in the world. The colourful and funny clown attracted the children all of the world and became the most well-known character just second to Father Christmas in US.

But as a result, in the past 30 years, the percentage of obese children has tripled in children ages 2 to 5, and quadrupled in children ages 6 to 11. Most people who care much more about health appeal that it is time to stop using such attractive character to children to advertise the harmful food to children. Because kids are not like adults, they are vulnerable to marketers’ manipulation and even cannot grasp Ronald’s persuasive intent. Most of them are attracted to those unhealthy food in McDonald’s just because of the attractive Ronald!

For our kids, it is time to retire Ronald.

Citation:

http://www.retireronald.org/

http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/04/time-ronald-mcdonald-retire/

In recent years, the sales of point-and-shoot camera have a steep fall compared with the significant rise of the sales of single lens reflex cameras as well as that of the smartphone cameras.

In the first place, the use of smartphone cameras really changes people’s reliance on point-and-shoot phones. Many phones such as iphones, android phones and windows phones continuously develop the capabilities of their smartphone cameras. For instance, Nokia recently released lumia 1020 with a powerful 41-megapixel camera which enables the sharper images even when zooming. It is much more convenient and accessible for moat people to use the phones to record everything around them rather than to use the point-and-shoot cameras.

In addition, while point-and-shoot camera sales are down these years, SLRs are up 5 percent compared to last year. The big amount of photos taken by people because of the convenience make many people especially the shutterbugswant to make better photos which can be different from others. The super awesome image qualities of SLRs exactly cater to these people who do not want to compromise to the quality of their images and want to absolutely control their cameras every aspects like focusing.

Being attacked by smartphone cameras and SIRs, the decline of sales of point-and-shoot cameras is accelerating each quarter. The situation of point-and-shoot cameras’ market is not optimistic.

Citation:

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/10/05/point-shoot-collapse-why-big-camera-companies-are-the-next-blackberry/?__lsa=a375-3133

http://www.kare11.com/news/extras/article/1040719/26/Smartphones-create-unique-trends-in-camera-sales