Alternative Thinking

Engineers are from Venus and venture capitalists are from Mars, so top schools are teaching green-leaning geniuses how to sell their ideas. Read more

Dan Colarusso reminds Boone Pickens there are no victims, just volunteers. Yup, the oil baron is whining again. It's not, this time, about his wind farms and the flow of U.S. dollars to the Middle East. This time, it's about how he totally screwed the pooch investing in Yahoo and had to dump his 10 million shares at a loss. Reuters diplomatically said Pickens bought 10 million Yahoo shares in May, "backing a bid by activist shareholder Carl Icahn to bring the Internet pioneer back to the negotiating table over a $47.5 billion takeover offer from Microsoft." What Pickens was hoping, actually, was that Icahn's threats would goose the shares enough to make him a profit as sweet as the Texas crude that's helped line his prodigious pockets over the past 30 or so years. Last week, though, Yahoo reached a settlement to put Icahn and two of his nominees on its board in the wake of failed bids to revive a deal with Mister Softee. "I think that Yahoo management was pathetic," Pickens was quoted as saying to the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial board, according to Reuters. He sold his entire holdings at a loss, the report said. Now, with oil prices slipping Pickens will have to go back to talking his book on CNBC and hoping that hot air will power his new Texas windmills. ... Read more