Kentucky Fried Cruelty

From the Onion... KFC no longer allowed to use the word "eat" in their advertisements.

WASHINGTON—Issuing a condemnation of Kentucky Fried Chicken's recent Boneless Variety Bucket commercials, the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday fined the fast food giant $600,000 and ordered it to discontinue all broadcasts containing "false and misleading suggestions" that its heated chicken products are intended for consumption.

In keeping with the false advertising subchapter of the FTC Act of 1914, the fast food chain is prohibited from setting its commercials in a kitchen, dining room, or any space generally associated with the act of eating. It is also not permitted to show people chewing, rubbing their stomachs contentedly, or exiting a bathroom stall with a look of relief that suggests they have digested the product. Utensils of any kind are also expressly forbidden, even when held by an animated character.

See PETA's campaign against KFC.

Breaking News

From CNN.com:

GM, racing against a restructuring deadline, says major bondholders have accepted a revised deal to swap debt for equity.

Looks like they finally came to their senses. Or maybe it was the threat of owing me personally for my losses.

GM Bondholders and Bankruptcy

I am a GM bond holder. And I am pissed. I bought my GM bonds a few years ago when it looked like the company was going to turn itself around. I didn't buy for steady interest payments or stability. I bought because of the 9% yield and the low price so I take responsibility for my losses. It was risky and I bet on the wrong side.

Apparerently not enough bondholders approved GM's debt for equity offer to keep the company out of bankruptcy. The idiots who turned down this offer are the ones I am pissed at.

Let's look at our options:

• Take the offer, accept 225 shares of stock, currently worth $268, but worth over $450 as of Friday.
• Turn down the offer and get whatever bankruptcy court decides to give, most likely under $100.

I can understand that people aren't happy with GMs offer, you want more, that isn't a fair offer. The government gets 70% of the company and the bondholders would get 10%. The time for negotation is gone. Thanks to your being offended at the low offer all of us bondholders will now get maybe 10% of our investment, the company goes bankrupt and everyone loses.

So I am going to hold all of the greedy people who turned down the tender offer responsible for my losses, as well as for anyone fallout from the bankruptcy. You can send me a check for the money.

How to Rave

Real Food

This is a topic which has been very much on my mind lately... Even what is sold as health food these days is more often than not just a giant corporation trying to sell you some chemical crap by marketing it as "healthy."

Nine-year-old Olivia is a cancer survivor and she is on a mission to find out, What is Real Food? She takes us to the Farmer's Market and to her school. The video has been entered in a "Real Food is" video contest for the National Farm to Cafeteria Conference. It's all about getting fresh, locally-grown food into schools.

How the Internet Changed Music

A Time magazine article on whether the internet has saved or killed the music industry. The conclusion seems to be that some people are taking advantage of the internet to download music instead of buying it, while for others they hear something on the internet and their interest is piqued and they go out and buy it.

I haven't bought any music in a long time. Probably close to 10 years. I do buy records, but I buy used vinyl records so I'm sure the recording industry doesn't really care about that. The music I download is either stuff I already have on record and want for my iPod, or music that I had before and lost the CDs.

I haven't bought a CD in even longer. Definitely over a decade. So, if the record labels want to say that I am killing their profits go ahead. I say make some decent music and maybe I'll consider buying it.

What will save rock 'n' roll?

In an article on CNN.com Little Steven talks about the sorry state of music these days and how to fix it.

"[Rock 'n' roll] is a craft that has to be learned," he tells CNN. "There are things you learn by listening to great records, copying heroes." He believes that he said some things that people were thinking, but haven't said out loud.

Within that rock 'n' roll world, he worries. Today's bands, he says, look down on performing covers, and as a result many have gotten lost in a musical wilderness. "The result is an extraordinary amount of mediocrity," he says. "There are no standards to live up to."

This brings to mind one of my pet peeves. Not only do people look down on cover songs, they look down on musicians that don't write their own music. That really bugs me.

Division of labor improves productivity. This is one of the drivers of the industrial revolution and one of the pillars of our current economy. The basic concept is that some people are better at some things and if they focus on those things society as a whole will be more productive.

Take me for example - I am good with computers. Someone else is good at farming. If the farmer starts trying to write computer programs and I try to start growing my own food we will both be wasting our time and decreasing overall productivity.

Similarly some people are good at playing instruments, some people are good at singing, and some people are good at writing music. To get the best possible music we have everyone do the thing that they are the best at. Sinatra didn't write his songs. Ella Fitzgerald didn't write her own music.

The whole singer-songwriter thing really just started in the 60s. Up until then the performers didn't write their own music. Since then it has become a requirement to be taken seriously as a performer that you write your own music. This is ridiculous. The people who can sing should sing, the people who can play saxophone should play saxophone, the people who can play piano should play piano. I'm sure Charlie Parker could play the piano but who would want him to when he can play the sax like he did?

Division of labor becomes a bit muddy in the arts because in order to write music you need to understand music and this probably involves playing an instrument. I guess the people who are technically good at playing their instruments start to think they should be writing songs and the people who write the really good songs want to perform them. That's fine with me... It just bugs me when people look down at musicians for not writing their own music. If we want the best music possible let people do what they do best.

Hipster Owls

Let those hipster owls know what's what.

Apple iTunes and Windows

I hate Apple. Why can't they make products that work for me instead of making me work for them? Why do I have to switch my wireless carrier to use their phone? Why can't I just use iTunes to give them my money without having to upgrade my OS or use their hardware?

My specific complaint is with iTunes on Windows XP x64, a stable, usable platform that has been stable for years. The only 64 bit Windows OS Apple supports is Vista, which is an unstable mess of a failure. Microsoft has all but disinherited Vista.

Not only that but in order to try to buy a single stupid song I had to uninstall a hacked, but working version of iTunes to try to upgrade, which I did on the incorrect premise that Apple had maybe finally written a 64 bit version of their installer, spend hours trying to rehack the 8.1 iTunes installer before giving up in frustration.

Now I have no iTunes on my machine, Apple didn't get my $1.99 or whatever for the song. Luckily Winamp has written an application which actually works which allows me to manage my iPod without iTunes, as I was never able to get iTunes to recognize my iPod with my hacked installer.

RC Glow

This is real marketing:

Google Elmer Fudd

Google in Elmer Fudd language:



They also have Klingon and Pig Latin.

Story of the Guy Who Blew Up Wall Street

This is an interesting story by the guy who wrote the software that made CMOs doable, and indirectly contributed to the financial crisis. Interesting article, although I suspect if he hadn't done it someone else would have.

Suggestions for Facebook

When I signed up for Facebook a few years ago I thought it was just a passing thing. I sign up for pretty much anything that's new just to keep up with the new technology and ideas. In the last year or so it seems that a lot of people I know have signed up and friended me and it has actually become a semi-useful tool for finding old friends.

I don't use it to keep in touch with people, I find people and then I keep in touch with them myself. The reason for this is privacy. The privacy settings are weak at best.

My main issue is that out of my 200 and some friends, maybe 20 of them are what I call "real friends," people that I actually know and talk to and email and really care about. Another 30 or so are what I call "semi-friends," these are people that I don't actively keep up with but care about keeping in touch with. The rest are "acquaintances," people I either knew in elementary school, or know in passing, but don't really keep up with, or care about keeping up with, other than those 30 seconds after they friend me where I say "how about that! I haven't heard from this person in 20 years!"

This causes several problems... First of all when Facebook suggests people I may know there is a big difference between someone who is friends with 10 of my "real" friends or even my "semi-friends" and someone who is friends with 40 of my "acquaintances." Facebook doesn't differentiate between these and as a result the suggestions of people I may know has become useless.

The other problem is that the privacy settings let me set privacy levels for the following groups of people:

1. Everyone
2. Friends
3. Friends of Friends
4. My Networks
5. Combinations of these

It does not differentiate between my custom lists of people (coworkers, high school friends, college friends, real friends) nor does it differentiate between my self-defined groups of "real friends" versus "acquaintances." I may want a real friend to be able to see my phone number but I don't want an acquaintance to even know where I work. The only way I can accomplish this is to be the most restrictive (not give out my information to anyone).

I know that Zuckerberg wants Facebook to mirror real social relationships, the "social graph" as he so often refers to it. My primary benefit from Facebook is reconnecting with people I haven't spoken to or seen or heard from in years. Some of these people I was good friends with and want to stay in touch with. Others are people I bumped into in the hallways of high school, and don't really care about keeping in touch with, but still want to have an idea what is going on with them. I don't want to limit my friends to only the people I would consider "real" friends because that would eliminate the majority of my benefit from using Facebook.

I never update my status. First off I don't care who is eating a taco for lunch and I don't want other people to know what I am eating for lunch. Secondly if there is anything I really do want my friends to know chances are I don't want my acquaintances to know it, or prefer to not share it with them.

So I would suggest that Facebook does the following:

• Differentiate between real friends and acquaintances. This would be for purposes of categorizing friends, showing updates in the news feed, and suggesting people you may know. This would also be useful for privacy settings.
• Allow privacy settings to be configured for user defined lists of friends. This would give me a level of control to let people know what I want them to know and would give me some more freedom to share information that I right now do not feel comfortable sharing.

Outsourcing

This is a joke, but seriously, this is the way to go:



"I take the money I would spend on coffee and pay someone in India to do it.

Free Hugs