Caveat Emptor And Watch That Yogurt

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.

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. 

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.

 

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? 

"Washington is too gridlocked to attract the kind of results-oriented politicians we need to break the gridlock."