Even at 77, activist investor Carl Icahn is a master at multitasking who shows no signs of slowing.

But he sure has hands full these days. Icahn is trying to persuade Michael Dell to abandon his $22.4 billion bid for the struggling computer company he founded and instead recapitalize Dell (DELL) and make a rich dividend payment to shareholders. Icahn has raised his investment in Herbalife (HLF), the multilevel marketer at center of his multibillion-dollar battle with a hedge fund titan. And he's blasting Transocean's (RIG) "ill-advised" mergers and has urged the offshore driller's board to raise its dividend.

What makes Icahn especially powerful lately is that he no longer manages money for clients, so he can do whatever he wants. 

If you spend a lot of time traveling on business and living out of your suitcase, you might have noticed something odd about bathrooms in many of the newer hotels. That is, their lack of a bathtub.

Certainly, many travelers still enjoy a long soak while on the road. And, of course, families with small children may need those tubs for their kids' cleanliness, playtime and as a transition to bed.

But on the whole, "less than 2% of people ever use a bathtub in a hotel room -- except at a resort," veteran hotel consultant Michael Matthews told Joe Brancatelli at BizJournals.com several years ago.

So, the hotel industry is now taking note of consumer trends while saving bathroom space -- and overall costs -- by installing luxurious showers instead of tubs in their new and renovated rooms.

 

Twenty grams. That's 0.7 ounces here in the U.S. and, as Gawker points out, translates to a strip of bacon, a small sausage, a thin slice of ham or 20% of a hamburger. It's also how much processed meat the typical person can eat a day without increasing the risk of developing cancer and dying early.

That's not exactly a fun fact for the world's omnivores, but then again the world isn't a very fun place for meat eaters these days.

Nor it likely to cheer up McDonald's (MCD) and other fast-food chains or packaged-food companies like Kraft (KRFT) or Hormel (HRL) that count on an eager market for processed meats.

And meat is a particularly touchy subject now in Europe.

 

Good news, everyone! We don't have to pay you anymore!

That's the two-part message employees of hyper-local news site Daily Voice received after CEO Zohar Yardeni resigned last Friday and set off a company cliffhanger that spanned the weekend.

 

The ending was a bit of a letdown, though, as a whole lot of people were sent packing.

After Yardeni stepped down on Friday, Daily Voice Chairman Carll "Two Ls" Tucker sent an email that employees understandably saw as a harbinger of great things to come.

The text, reported by The Huffington Post but leaked to Gawker, read as follows:

 

Powerball mania reached a fever pitch once again as the current estimated jackpot for the multistate lottery hit $150 million Thursday. No one matched all the numbers drawn in last night's drawing, though a few players came close.

A ticket worth $2 million was sold at a Food Lion in North Raleigh, N.C. That ticket matched the five white balls but not the red power ball, according to the News & Observer newspaper. Two $1 million tickets were sold in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. There were two winners each in West Virginia and New Mexico and one each in Illinois, Arizona and Minnesota.

Of course, the odds are against people striking it rich.

According to the Powerball website, the odds of striking it rich are roughly 1 in 175,223,510.00. To put this in perspective, you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning in a given year (1 in a million) or becoming the next "American Idol" (1 in 103,000 who audition).

 

If it were a relay race, you could say Reebok dropped the baton. Adidas (ADDYY) bought Reebok in 2005 for $3.8 billion in an effort to catch up with sports-apparel front-runner Nike (NKE). But setbacks at the Reebok brand in both the U.S. and Latin America have been cited in Adidas' unexpectedly weak fourth-quarter performance, announced on Thursday.

Adidas had a fourth-quarter operating loss of $310.9 million (€239 million). Analysts had been expecting a profit of around $37.2 million (€28.6 million).

The company made a goodwill write-down of $344.7 million (€265 million) on Reebok at the end of the year. That charge is linked to several serious missteps at Reebok in 2012. Its attempt to expand into the fitness market, particularly muscle-toning footwear, didn't fare well.

 

Could things get any worse for J.C. Penney (JCP)? Nearly every day of the past week has brought fresh news about something going wrong at the struggling retailer.

It's hard to keep track of all the misfires surrounding the company right now. Thursday, news emerged that Penney had laid off 2,200 employees in its stores and corporate offices. The layoffs actually cheered investors up a bit: Penney's stock price was up more than 2% in afternoon trading.

Here's a list of the setbacks Penney and CEO Ron Johnson have suffered recently:

Analysts losing faith. There aren't many analysts left who remain bullish about the stock, and two high-profile ones pulled their support Wednesday. Analysts from Citigroup (C) and Oppenheimer cut their ratings to "neutral" from "buy." 

A college meal plan does funny things to a person's eating habits.

Students who haven't had sugary cereal since grade school and were raised on grain-and-fruit blends buckle in the face of ubiquitous Cocoa Puffs and Cap'n Crunch. Undergrads who'd never even heard of a Monte Cristo sandwich before entering the dining hall start eating them two at a time. Soft ice cream becomes an appropriate side dish to any meal.

Then there's Columbia University, where the chocolate-hazelnut spread flows freely, and ongoing thefts of the large brown jars add up to $5,000 a week, according to The Columbia Spectator.

But why Nutella? Is there a black market for a dessert spread being lost at an estimated 100 pounds per day?