OK, so this is about Greek Yogurt, but it's mostly about how American consumers have to be awake all the damn time.
I went to the grocery store today and on my list was yogurt. The kind we normally get, Chobani, wasn't on sale according to the store advertisement, so I was going to pick up some Oikos, which is made by Dannon.
So I was about to pick up the Oikos containers, which were on sale, when I noticed that they seemed kind of small. Upon checking, I noted that they were 5.3 ounce containers, while the Chobani containers were 6 ounces. Some quick arithmetic told me that the .7 ounce difference amounted to seven ounces on 10 containers. Which is more than a full container difference. So, buying the Chobani product, which actually was on sale at a $1 per container, was a hugely better deal at essentially the same price and gave me an additional container of yogurt.
You have to keep your eyes open all the time, because corporations are always on the prowl for a way to increase their profit at our expense. Caveat Emptor indeed.
Monday, September 9, 2013
Saturday, August 10, 2013
No Love For The Love Boat?
Well, friends, time marches on and in case you needed proof, here's one for all the boomers: The Love Boat is being ripped up for scrap. Yep, the Pacific Princess, home to Captain Stubing and Gopher and the rest of the Love Boat gang is officially decommissioned. The ship could host about 600 passengers and that's just too tiny by today's standards, with cruise ships that host 3000 people.
Of course, the Love Boat never caught fire while on a cruise, never had all it's toilets fail at once, and never capsized while full of passengers. Both those sort of metrics are just so....yesterday.
Of course, the Love Boat never caught fire while on a cruise, never had all it's toilets fail at once, and never capsized while full of passengers. Both those sort of metrics are just so....yesterday.
Friday, August 2, 2013
Design By Committee
I recently rediscovered this brilliant cartoon that crystallizes what's wrong with creating things by committee. There's certainly a place for collaboration and it's often touted as the only way to success, but there are innumerable examples of how a committee screwed up a project.
I'm sure everyone can come up with examples of committee decision-making run amok. Click the image to make it larger.
I'm sure everyone can come up with examples of committee decision-making run amok. Click the image to make it larger.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Egotists are us
So NYC mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner is asked a question by a voter who wants to know how he can lead a city administration and expect employees to behave in an ethical manner when he can't. Watch this CNN video.
IMO the problem isn't that Anthony Weiner is a douche who can't control his fantasies, but that he's an egotistical, self-centered ass who can't ever admit that he isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread. He actually can't tell when he's gone off the rails. As a result, he can't see the utter contempt that he attracts.
New Yorkers don't have to settle this low for a mayor. The rest of us also have our own collections of egotistical, self-centered politicians pandering for votes. We shouldn't settle that low either.
In a related video, The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi tries selling a promising congressional candidate on going to Washington DC, despite its 535 obvious flaws. The conclusion?
IMO the problem isn't that Anthony Weiner is a douche who can't control his fantasies, but that he's an egotistical, self-centered ass who can't ever admit that he isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread. He actually can't tell when he's gone off the rails. As a result, he can't see the utter contempt that he attracts.
New Yorkers don't have to settle this low for a mayor. The rest of us also have our own collections of egotistical, self-centered politicians pandering for votes. We shouldn't settle that low either.
In a related video, The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi tries selling a promising congressional candidate on going to Washington DC, despite its 535 obvious flaws. The conclusion?
"Washington is too gridlocked to attract the kind of results-oriented politicians we need to break the gridlock."
Friday, July 12, 2013
What's that? I can't hear you!
Monday, July 8, 2013
Just Hose Out The Car
Well, it's been a while since I posted here. And a TV commercial inspired this one.
I'm watching TV, minding my own business, muting all the ads for an appalling range of drugs, and all of the sudden, I get sucked into an ad for a floor mat company. It's a sneaky commercial, with cute little kids in the back seat of an upscale car. Then there are images of laser devices measuring floor dimensions intermingled with shots of the cute kids dropping food and assorted other trash on the floor of the upscale car. And mom is smiling. A lot.
After a half a minute, I'm not sure what is being advertised. Is it a car? Is it some sort of sound system? Kids with some newly discovered medical inability to hang onto stuff?
It's a floor mat company (which I refuse to identify based on the fact that the ad made me angry). The ad ends with the smiling mom hauling the custom made (and undoubtedly expensive) mats out of the car to hose them off.
So the message is it's easier to hose out your car than to teach your children to not be pigs and drop all their garbage on the floor of the car. And that's what made me angry.
I'm watching TV, minding my own business, muting all the ads for an appalling range of drugs, and all of the sudden, I get sucked into an ad for a floor mat company. It's a sneaky commercial, with cute little kids in the back seat of an upscale car. Then there are images of laser devices measuring floor dimensions intermingled with shots of the cute kids dropping food and assorted other trash on the floor of the upscale car. And mom is smiling. A lot.
After a half a minute, I'm not sure what is being advertised. Is it a car? Is it some sort of sound system? Kids with some newly discovered medical inability to hang onto stuff?
It's a floor mat company (which I refuse to identify based on the fact that the ad made me angry). The ad ends with the smiling mom hauling the custom made (and undoubtedly expensive) mats out of the car to hose them off.
So the message is it's easier to hose out your car than to teach your children to not be pigs and drop all their garbage on the floor of the car. And that's what made me angry.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Who Thought That Was A Good Idea?
When natural disasters strike, it's sometimes hard to grasp the magnitude of the disaster, whether it's a forest fire, earthquake, or hurricane. Sometimes a single photograph can perfectly capture the scope of the disaster. Like this one, a photo published in the Chicago Tribune on 4/20/13 showing a flooded neighborhood in Des Plaines, IL, a Chicago suburb (north at the bottom).
In this neighborhood, the river forms a tight loop and the street of houses inside the loop are completely flooded. Towards the bottom of the photo, you can see an area which is a spillway into a lake, presumably to give the river a place to go when the water gets high. In this case, the spillway was no match for the river.
This is a google maps image of the neighborhood (north at the top):
So, here's the question: who on earth thought this tongue of land surrounded on three sides by a "flat" river that often overflows was a good place to build houses? These are not vacation homes, they're year-round homes about 8 miles from O'Hare International Airport. I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but was it a good idea to build houses there? Really? And undoubtedly repair or rebuild them over and over? Really?
This river is one of several in Northeast Illinois that are flat, meandering rivers that don't have much in the way of river banks to hold them in their channels. For many years, anytime there's a significant rainfall, these rivers tend to fill up and overflow, although not as badly as was caused by last week's 6-7 inches of rain in 24 hours. So if the "weird" weather patterns of the past several years is any indication of what's happening climate-wise, we might expect that flooding is going to get more frequent.
I suspect that we ought to be having a discussion about moving residences away from flood-prone rivers as well as from coastal areas that are repeatedly hammered by hurricanes, and hillsides prone to mudslides. But I doubt that we'll have that conversation.
This is a google maps image of the neighborhood (north at the top):
This river is one of several in Northeast Illinois that are flat, meandering rivers that don't have much in the way of river banks to hold them in their channels. For many years, anytime there's a significant rainfall, these rivers tend to fill up and overflow, although not as badly as was caused by last week's 6-7 inches of rain in 24 hours. So if the "weird" weather patterns of the past several years is any indication of what's happening climate-wise, we might expect that flooding is going to get more frequent.
I suspect that we ought to be having a discussion about moving residences away from flood-prone rivers as well as from coastal areas that are repeatedly hammered by hurricanes, and hillsides prone to mudslides. But I doubt that we'll have that conversation.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Sometimes You Just Want to Unplug From The World
So yesterday was a bit weird. I received a letter from Capital One, thanking me for "applying for a credit account from the above merchant," and informing me that they were "unable to approve" my application "at this time." I examined "the above" and found "Best Buy Company." Here's the problem: I hadn't applied for a credit card from Best Buy.
I was a little alarmed and called the number in the letter that had been provided for obtaining "specific reasons or to review" my application. I think I reached someone who was in the U.S., but it quickly became clear that it was someone who was working only with scripts and had little or no idea what Capital One did or why. I explained that I had not applied for a Best Buy credit card and she stumbled through changing scripts to the "fraud" script. After a lengthy pause, she asked me for name, address, date of birth, and the "reference number" in the letter. After several more pauses she told me that someone applied online using my name and that it was OK, because Capital One required "additional verification" so the application had been denied. I asked if that meant someone had used my correct name, address, and date of birth. I'm not certain what her answer was, because she stumbled through that part of the script also, repeating Capital One's requirement for "verification."
She told me the "least she could do" (I swear that's what she said a couple of times) was put a notation on the application file that it had not come from me and she would also enter it into Capital One's "fraud database." I asked if that meant that should I actually apply for credit from a business that uses Capital One, I would be subject to providing additional "verification" information. Her response: "That's a good point." I wanted to ask what was the "most she could do" but by that time, it was clear it was the same as the "least." That was apparently all her scripts told her.
The letter also included information about the credit bureau Capital One had used, Trans Union, who I could ask for the information used from their records, since "our credit decision was based, in whole or in part, on information provided..." by Trans Union. There was an 800 number to call, so I called it. As might be no surprise, Trans Union has designed its phone system to shield their employees from any contact with the public, and all the options were for automated systems to buy one of their "products," or obtain a copy of my credit report. There was no one to ask if my credit report, going forward, will show I was denied credit from Best Buy.
Just a couple weeks ago, we had to close a credit card account because the bank (not Capital One) had identified a questionable online charge, which in fact, was not made by us. So they issued new cards. I don't know if it's coincidence, or if I should be very worried about what's going on. I know Capital One has had a number of humorous TV ads over the years, but my encounter with them makes me wonder whether they are a real bank or that they know what they're doing. They are clearly not invested in customer service.
The credit bureau report I looked over yesterday showed nothing unusual, so for the moment, everything's OK. I can't wait to see what's in the mail today.
I was a little alarmed and called the number in the letter that had been provided for obtaining "specific reasons or to review" my application. I think I reached someone who was in the U.S., but it quickly became clear that it was someone who was working only with scripts and had little or no idea what Capital One did or why. I explained that I had not applied for a Best Buy credit card and she stumbled through changing scripts to the "fraud" script. After a lengthy pause, she asked me for name, address, date of birth, and the "reference number" in the letter. After several more pauses she told me that someone applied online using my name and that it was OK, because Capital One required "additional verification" so the application had been denied. I asked if that meant someone had used my correct name, address, and date of birth. I'm not certain what her answer was, because she stumbled through that part of the script also, repeating Capital One's requirement for "verification."
She told me the "least she could do" (I swear that's what she said a couple of times) was put a notation on the application file that it had not come from me and she would also enter it into Capital One's "fraud database." I asked if that meant that should I actually apply for credit from a business that uses Capital One, I would be subject to providing additional "verification" information. Her response: "That's a good point." I wanted to ask what was the "most she could do" but by that time, it was clear it was the same as the "least." That was apparently all her scripts told her.
The letter also included information about the credit bureau Capital One had used, Trans Union, who I could ask for the information used from their records, since "our credit decision was based, in whole or in part, on information provided..." by Trans Union. There was an 800 number to call, so I called it. As might be no surprise, Trans Union has designed its phone system to shield their employees from any contact with the public, and all the options were for automated systems to buy one of their "products," or obtain a copy of my credit report. There was no one to ask if my credit report, going forward, will show I was denied credit from Best Buy.
Just a couple weeks ago, we had to close a credit card account because the bank (not Capital One) had identified a questionable online charge, which in fact, was not made by us. So they issued new cards. I don't know if it's coincidence, or if I should be very worried about what's going on. I know Capital One has had a number of humorous TV ads over the years, but my encounter with them makes me wonder whether they are a real bank or that they know what they're doing. They are clearly not invested in customer service.
The credit bureau report I looked over yesterday showed nothing unusual, so for the moment, everything's OK. I can't wait to see what's in the mail today.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Debate in the Legislature? Imagine that!
Yesterday, the Illinois House of Representatives had something extremely unusual, a free and open debate on a topic of great interest, including votes on individual components of possible legislation. It was about gun control and concealed carry of firearms, and was caused by a December Federal Court decision that invalidated the State's existing prohibition on concealed carry of firearms. I am not a fan of Democratic Speaker of the House Madigan and can't know what his motivation was for the unusual debate yesterday, but it is a welcome breath of fresh air.
The Republican Party's collective head exploded because it, in their words, was all a publicity stunt. The Republican minority complained that it was a stunt designed to force legislators to reveal their positions to the public. Imagine that??
The legislators debating an issue, as opposed to backroom discussions that lead to a final bill to vote up or down at the last minute, is the way legislative deliberation is supposed to work. The fact that is was so unusual is a damning commentary on how our State government normally operates (I hesitate to use the term "functions"). I can only hope that our esteemed State lawmakers liked the experience and demand similar behavior on subsequent issues.
NRA lobbyists and their sympathizers complained that the list of possible exemptions to allowing concealed carry was so long, there would hardly be any place left to carry a concealed weapon in Illinois. Pardon me while I shed a tear. If Illinois was the only State that did not allow concealed carry of firearms until the Federal Court ruled that could not continue, what's wrong with Illinois being the only State with a very long list of places that concealed carry is not allowed? Nothing. Schools, churches, mass transit, malls, stadiums, movie theaters, grocery stores? What the NRA just does not understand is that a lot of Americans do NOT feel safer knowing their neighbors may be carrying a deadly firearm in his/her pocket. They feel LESS safe knowing that the public, including unknowable numbers of hot-heads and unbalanced personalities, are armed to the teeth.
The Republican Party's collective head exploded because it, in their words, was all a publicity stunt. The Republican minority complained that it was a stunt designed to force legislators to reveal their positions to the public. Imagine that??
""This is a political stunt," said Rep. Dennis Reboletti, R-Elmhurst, a former prosecutor. "It demeans this process."A stunt? Legislators debating a matter of great import and trying to determine, in public what provisions might have enough support to become law? A stunt? Apparently being a former prosecutor is not great preparation for being a legislator.
The legislators debating an issue, as opposed to backroom discussions that lead to a final bill to vote up or down at the last minute, is the way legislative deliberation is supposed to work. The fact that is was so unusual is a damning commentary on how our State government normally operates (I hesitate to use the term "functions"). I can only hope that our esteemed State lawmakers liked the experience and demand similar behavior on subsequent issues.
NRA lobbyists and their sympathizers complained that the list of possible exemptions to allowing concealed carry was so long, there would hardly be any place left to carry a concealed weapon in Illinois. Pardon me while I shed a tear. If Illinois was the only State that did not allow concealed carry of firearms until the Federal Court ruled that could not continue, what's wrong with Illinois being the only State with a very long list of places that concealed carry is not allowed? Nothing. Schools, churches, mass transit, malls, stadiums, movie theaters, grocery stores? What the NRA just does not understand is that a lot of Americans do NOT feel safer knowing their neighbors may be carrying a deadly firearm in his/her pocket. They feel LESS safe knowing that the public, including unknowable numbers of hot-heads and unbalanced personalities, are armed to the teeth.
Democratic lawmakers voted in favor of prohibiting concealed weapons in places like casinos, libraries, hospitals, mental health centers, child care facilities, stadiums and amusement parks.Mr. Reis, maybe that's exactly the point.
"When they get done with this, you won't be able to carry anywhere," said Rep. David Reis, R-Willow Hill, expressing a frustration among many gun rights advocates as they watched restrictions get piled on.
Monday, February 4, 2013
How Will We Remember Ohio?
I'm not sure what I want to accomplish in this post, but I think it's pretty modest. I think I just want to make people aware of something, read a couple of articles about it, and think about it. That's not so much to ask, I think.
In August 2012, in Steubenville, OH, a night of teen partying went horribly wrong. If party after party of under-aged drinking wasn't bad enough, more than one of those parties apparently were the sites of repeated gang-rapes of a 16 year old girl. Since that night, as the local law enforcement and civic leadership essentially decided to protect the student athletes rather than the female victim, the Internet has stepped in. Publicity of the incidents, exposure of the students' web posts and tweets boasting of the repeated assaults, videos and photos of the attacks (including one showing the unconscious teen being carried from one party to another for more raping), and assorted other efforts to expose what Steubenville was apparently trying to ignore, have all occurred online.
Two students have been arrested and are scheduled to stand trial in juvenile court in February, 2013. None of the party-goers who witnessed the assaults, posted photos and videos of the assaults, and who failed to stop the attacks or report them to law enforcement have been charged. The online hacktivist group "Anonymous" has gotten involved and leaked some of the evidence and Roseanne Barr has also gotten involved in applying pressure to political leaders in Ohio to ramp up the investigation. Even porn actress Traci Lords has spoken about how she was raped as a ten year old when she lived in Steubenville, and speculated that the attack and "culture" in Steubenville must have had something to do with her embarking on a porn career.
The undercurrent to the entire sordid episode is that Steubenville has long revered their vaunted football team and is not likely to actively prosecute those students who participated in the rapes, observed the rapes, or failed to stop the rapes.
Read about it:
New York Times article, one of the first mainstream news stories about the rapes
Boston Globe opinion column on "stigma shift" from victim to accused
The Nation blog on media explosion
New York Magazine story on threats against NYTimes reporter
New York Magazine story about Roseanne Barr involvement
Buzzfeed interview of Roseanne Barr
So, the question is, will Ohio be known as a place that celebrates gang rape, or a place where it is aggressively prosecuted? I can't image what it must be like to be a female of any age in this town.
In August 2012, in Steubenville, OH, a night of teen partying went horribly wrong. If party after party of under-aged drinking wasn't bad enough, more than one of those parties apparently were the sites of repeated gang-rapes of a 16 year old girl. Since that night, as the local law enforcement and civic leadership essentially decided to protect the student athletes rather than the female victim, the Internet has stepped in. Publicity of the incidents, exposure of the students' web posts and tweets boasting of the repeated assaults, videos and photos of the attacks (including one showing the unconscious teen being carried from one party to another for more raping), and assorted other efforts to expose what Steubenville was apparently trying to ignore, have all occurred online.
Two students have been arrested and are scheduled to stand trial in juvenile court in February, 2013. None of the party-goers who witnessed the assaults, posted photos and videos of the assaults, and who failed to stop the attacks or report them to law enforcement have been charged. The online hacktivist group "Anonymous" has gotten involved and leaked some of the evidence and Roseanne Barr has also gotten involved in applying pressure to political leaders in Ohio to ramp up the investigation. Even porn actress Traci Lords has spoken about how she was raped as a ten year old when she lived in Steubenville, and speculated that the attack and "culture" in Steubenville must have had something to do with her embarking on a porn career.
The undercurrent to the entire sordid episode is that Steubenville has long revered their vaunted football team and is not likely to actively prosecute those students who participated in the rapes, observed the rapes, or failed to stop the rapes.
Read about it:
New York Times article, one of the first mainstream news stories about the rapes
Boston Globe opinion column on "stigma shift" from victim to accused
The Nation blog on media explosion
New York Magazine story on threats against NYTimes reporter
New York Magazine story about Roseanne Barr involvement
Buzzfeed interview of Roseanne Barr
So, the question is, will Ohio be known as a place that celebrates gang rape, or a place where it is aggressively prosecuted? I can't image what it must be like to be a female of any age in this town.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
National Curmudgeon Day
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| image from: http://www.greerviewmirror.com/ |
Hallmark, have you developed appropriate cards?
Saturday, January 19, 2013
It's Just Not Going Away
It's a good thing that so many people and news outlets and bloggers are now paying attention to the proliferation of guns. The DailyKos blog site is tracking news stories about a ridiculously long list of "gun fails" in which people have shot themselves, friends, neighbors, pets, and floors by accident or incompetence or both. Some of these incidents are actually funny in a sick sort of way, such as the Indiana case of a police officer responding to an emergency call to find a drunk guy with a pistol and shotgun, a jug of urine, along with a bunch of shot up television sets. Some are more disturbing, like the guy hired by a Michigan school as a guard after the Newtown murders, who left his pistol in a restroom "for a few moments." Read over this list at DailyKos and remember these people are all around us.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Can We Get Any Crazier?
Is it possible for America to get any more paranoid and schizoid about weapons in general and automatic weapons in particular? I think not, but I am not taking any bets on that.
So we've had 20 kindergarten and 1st grade children murdered by a man with an assault rifle, a bunch of people gunned down in a movie theater by another guy with an arsenal on his back, a couple of volunteer firefighters murdered when they responded to a fire alarm by another man with an assault rifle, and the NRA has come up with a plan to fix our gun violence by putting armed guards in every school in the country. That was before the NRA put out an ad calling the President a hypocrite because he is opposed to arming all the schools while his daughters have armed guards (aka, Secret Service) in their school. Clearly the NRA has abandoned all pretense that they are anywhere near a mainstream organization and even some conservatives are now labeling them a "fringe group."
Never mind that it would cost in the neighborhood of $15 BILLION per year to put armed guards in all 100,000 schools in the country. Never mind that it's unlikely that even spending that kind of wealth would even prevent loss of life. Never mind that there is a flourishing conspiracy movement out there that has already declared the Newtown school murders didn't even happen.
One of the major problems is that the availability of military style weapons (or IMO any clearly non-hunting firearms) allows anyone to become a horrendous killer at the drop of a hat. It's the people who "snap" and have access to these weapons that worry me. These are people who will easily pass a serious background check (which too often doesn't even happen due to loopholes in current laws) because they haven't previously done anything horrible. But it seems that past behavior is not necessarily an indicator of future behavior (along the lines of that financial disclaimer that companies provide with their stock prospectuses: past performance is not indicator of future return). The person who has been law-abiding in the past may very well "snap" in the midst of a child support battle, buy an easily obtainable automatic (or semi-automatic) weapon, and kill his girlfriend and a couple of her family members. It would inarguably be harder to do such a thing with a 22 rifle or a shotgun; not impossible, but more difficult than with a semi-automatic pistol. As I said in a previous post, the U.S. in 2013 is simply not the same country it was in 1789 when the Constitution and its amendments were produced.
By the way, it's hard to know exactly when the guy in Tennessee "snapped." Was it when he went out to buy the pistol and acted "perfectly normal?" Or was it five hours later when he killed his girlfriend? Does "snapping" preclude premeditation?
No, I don't think we can get any crazier. We will, however, undoubtedly have more examples of our collective craziness in the future. And that is very sad indeed.
So we've had 20 kindergarten and 1st grade children murdered by a man with an assault rifle, a bunch of people gunned down in a movie theater by another guy with an arsenal on his back, a couple of volunteer firefighters murdered when they responded to a fire alarm by another man with an assault rifle, and the NRA has come up with a plan to fix our gun violence by putting armed guards in every school in the country. That was before the NRA put out an ad calling the President a hypocrite because he is opposed to arming all the schools while his daughters have armed guards (aka, Secret Service) in their school. Clearly the NRA has abandoned all pretense that they are anywhere near a mainstream organization and even some conservatives are now labeling them a "fringe group."
Never mind that it would cost in the neighborhood of $15 BILLION per year to put armed guards in all 100,000 schools in the country. Never mind that it's unlikely that even spending that kind of wealth would even prevent loss of life. Never mind that there is a flourishing conspiracy movement out there that has already declared the Newtown school murders didn't even happen.
One of the major problems is that the availability of military style weapons (or IMO any clearly non-hunting firearms) allows anyone to become a horrendous killer at the drop of a hat. It's the people who "snap" and have access to these weapons that worry me. These are people who will easily pass a serious background check (which too often doesn't even happen due to loopholes in current laws) because they haven't previously done anything horrible. But it seems that past behavior is not necessarily an indicator of future behavior (along the lines of that financial disclaimer that companies provide with their stock prospectuses: past performance is not indicator of future return). The person who has been law-abiding in the past may very well "snap" in the midst of a child support battle, buy an easily obtainable automatic (or semi-automatic) weapon, and kill his girlfriend and a couple of her family members. It would inarguably be harder to do such a thing with a 22 rifle or a shotgun; not impossible, but more difficult than with a semi-automatic pistol. As I said in a previous post, the U.S. in 2013 is simply not the same country it was in 1789 when the Constitution and its amendments were produced.
By the way, it's hard to know exactly when the guy in Tennessee "snapped." Was it when he went out to buy the pistol and acted "perfectly normal?" Or was it five hours later when he killed his girlfriend? Does "snapping" preclude premeditation?
No, I don't think we can get any crazier. We will, however, undoubtedly have more examples of our collective craziness in the future. And that is very sad indeed.
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