Monster on the Rampage
Another useless abstraction to chip away at the consumer has been created by the financial world. It is called a gift card. The "gift" apparently refering to what the issuer gets out of it(http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/02/gift_cards_congress.html). This is chutzpah to the power of googol. It would be interesting to see what percentage of the money on gift cards remains unused. Also issuers have obscure rules to benefit no one but themselves. Gift cards are no better than giving someone cash (or check, or money order, or cashier's check) as a present. If anything they are worse since they limit where the money can be spent and have other restrictions like loss in value over time. Yet norms now would have us believe this is some nicer way of giving a present than handing someone a check.
Kill this atrocious monster by promising never to feed it.

Yeh WADA Raha

WADA has finally decided that it will take on the PCB ADAC committee at the CAS (http://www.icc-cricket.com/icc-media/content/story/273311.html). The ICC believes it has no right of appeal. If you look at the list of WADA signatories (http://www.wada-ama.org/en/dynamic.ch2?pageCategory.id=270) the ICC is one of them. It is a little confusing that if ICC being a signatory does not have jurisdiction over PCB then who else can? The other Pakistan related signatories include Pakistan Olympic Association but cricket is not an Olympic sport. Keeping the National Paralympic Committee out of it that leaves Pakistan Anti-doping Association. It is hard to imagine that this should have jurisdiction over the PCB when ICC does not.
If you look at comparable US agencies then there is a US anti-doping agency and the US Olympic Committee (baseball is part of Olympics even though the big name US players do not show up for it). There is also the International Baseball Federation. None of these have ever been used by WADA to try and enforce anything on Major League Baseball (MLB) even though drug use has been rampant in MLB. Neither the PCB nor the MLB are direct signatories to WADA and in the case of PCB, ICC has ruled itself out as a challenger.
What legs does WADA stand on?