I had a wonderful time in California with Emily! First we went off in search of appropriate colored ribbon with Marissa in order to avert a style disaster at Geoff and Rissa's wedding.

Would you like spin with that?

Fast Food Nation and I got off to a rough start. On page eight of my paperback copy, Eric Schlosser did something I despise. He quoted statistics. Well, ok, that's not so bad, but he quoted statistics that provide a rather skewed view of the issue he is attempting to popularize. Specifically he says that adjusted for inflation minimum wage decreased in value by 40% between 1970 and 1990 (approximately).

Doesn't that suck? Yep, it does, sort of. As I understand it this number was generated using actual values for inflation in that time period. That's great, right? Well, not so much. The issue is it says as much or more about inflation as it does about minimum wage itself. For example at the beginning of that period inflation was in the double digits per year. Over that period, inflation proceeded to return to it's normal historical average levels. So, this number could be viewed as "Ok, so inflation reduced" or "Ok, so minimum wage has not been raised enough". He implied the latter.

Secondly, over the same time period he neglects to mention that the number of people being paid minimum wage went form 13.4% to 2.7%. He is quick to mention exactly how large the Fast Food industry is. An estimated $110 Billion is spent on it every year. And during this explosive growth the number of people being paid minimum wage dropped dramatically. Given how big this industry it is, there has to be some correlation here. Especially since I know many fast food places pay above minimum wage.

What does it all mean? I really have no clue. I'm not an economist or a statistician. I mention this not because I think this is wrong or outrageous but because it alerted me to a potential misuse of statistics. To me, this seemed like statistics were used as scare tactics to support a particular agenda. As such, it made me somewhat guarded for the rest of the book.

Cows, Cows everywhere but not a bite to eat

Meatpacking. Rendering. Ecoli spreading. This is the most useful thing about this book. I personally don't think most people need to be told that fast food is bad for you. It is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer (maybe I give people too much credit). Most large companies also engage in some kind of questionable practices. This is not new and needs to be continually monitored by authorities. However, the extent to which fast food has effected meat quality is..... insane.

I am somewhat torn on this issue as I am on many others revolving around capitalism. This is a prime example of how a capitalistic and democratic system can fail. The issue is that the people created the problem. When McDonald's and the others opened people flocked to them creating a high demand for their services. To meet that demand, companies did everything within their power to provide for it. This is as it should be.

The question is how do you fix the system such that it can adapt to new situations without limiting freedoms? I don't have an answer for this. I don't know that there is an effective way to prevent these things from happening. New industries break new barriers that can both help and hurt the world in the process.

The key thing that happened in the meatpacking industry is capitalism failed. Competition became slowly irrelevant as the companies joined and rejoined to become a handful of mega-meat-corporations. The government did not have the will or ability to step in and stop monopolistic practices. Even worse, now that the industry is one big side of corporation, the government is lax on enforcing or creating regulations. It is not inherently bad that an industry is dominated by a few large companies. It is bad if they use that collective power to put the consumer at risk.

Your Way or the Highway

Schlosser hits upon the solution time after time in the book. In the epilogue he says people should not go to fast food places. Consumers are the ultimate power in this market. I, however, would take it to a new level if I could. Much to my vegetarian and vegan friends, that level is not joining the dark side. Sorry to disappoint all of you.

No, my solution is far simpler. It also happens to be inline with things I already do. For starters, I rarely (and possibly now never) eat fast food at the big problematic fast food chains. Next, I already buy locally raised and slaughtered meat from a local butcher. We've done this not for health reasons but because we always thought this meat was far superior quality than the run of the mill grocery store stuff. I also attempt to buy lean, hormone free and fully organic meat. I will inquire about the specifics the next time I am at my butcher.

I don't want to stop there. As I've already said, I don't think giving up meat is the answer. As such I would like to promote better eating habits in this country. As with everything else, education is essential. However, what I would really like to see is a fast food chain created with the goal being to educate people on this topic. It should put its nutritional information all over the menu. The menu itself should be carefully selected to balance what people want to eat with what they should eat.

This chain should use local suppliers as much as possible. All suppliers should be subject to specific safety parameters or they are not used. I know it is not difficult to find a local supply of organic anything here in vermont. Workers should be paid with the goal to not have a huge turnover rate. Appropriate benefits should be paid for all workers. The company should be run almost as a not-for-profit. It probably should not be franchised in the traditional manner but should be built to expand quickly.

I want this chain to be appropriate for deployment in schools. The menu must include similar traditional fast foods in appropriate serving sizes as well as healthier alternatives. I'd like to see the government use it in school cafeterias to encourage healthy and fast food eating among children. It does need to retain the fast food look and feel as that is a lot of what people want.

That's my story. If I could open one of these in a decent location tomorrow, I would.

It has been announced that the Imus in the morning show has been cancelled by MSNBC...

Let me say that I am not a particular fan of Imus. I find him to be refreshing in that he says what he thinks and doesn't care what anyone else may think about it. I am not a regular patron of his show (leave out for the moment that I have no desire to be up at that time of the morning). Nor do I have a particular attachment to his form of stupidity.

That said, I am amazed that MSNBC has the gall to cancel a show based on an unfortunate and misguided opinion. If this is the precedent within the media then nearly every talk show needs to be cancelled due to outrageous comments. Yep, I'm talking about Rosie O'Donnell, Bill O'Reilly, Jon Stewart and perhaps even Oprah (not sure on this last one, she's pretty balanced). I can't even think of a radio or tv talk show that has not said something outrageous. Let's not even talk about Howard Stern (the radio guy, not the Anna Nicole guy ;P ).

This issue terrifies me. Where is the line? Does this mean every time someone offends a minority group that their job is at stake? Will Al-Sharpton-alikes be able to control media free speech by directing advertising dollars away from those stations they don't like.

This is all forgetting the fact that Imus has done a lot of good for this world. You know, that Imus ranch thing? Helps cancer children? Raises money for injured Iraq war veterans? You know, does the government's job for them. Those little things?

If the people are so outraged that Imus says infantile, ridiculous, immature, unsupported things, then don't watch him! We all know that won't happen given that Howard Stern is a popular radio and tv personality. But there it is.

I am personally canceling the MSNBC station over this. In my mind, this is an affront to free speech. While I think Imus says some asinine things, his job should not be at stake over it. Is it more terrifying that free speech is at jeopardy or that my only cable news channel is now fox news?

Toodles.

This is my response to an article I read on slashdot. This article lists six reasons why announcing the iPhone at the january macworld is a mistake. I am responding to each individually as I believe every one of them missed the mark.

1. Jobs raised buyer expectations too high:

This is what the man does. His reality distortion field makes people want the simplest of products beyond rational reason. Apple functions on the premise of making 80-90% of what someone does with a product extremely easy. I am a huge apple fan. But, I can't think of a single apple product that does everything its competitors do. iPhoto? iTunes doesn't do nearly all the stuff winamp can do these days. Do I care? Nope. It does everything I need. The iPod is another excellent example of this.

Apple products do what they are designed to do. They do it with extreme ease and utility. The iPhone will be the easiest phone on the market to use. I can't tell you how tired people are with all the gadgets phones come with. They want to be able to make a call and have the thing work. No, it won't do everything. It is exactly why people will want the phone.

2. Jobs raised wall street expectations too high

This is not new behavior from Steve. He sets sights and expectations of everyone involved high. He hypes it up to the point where people believe the product should have that kind of market share. He knows that if people believe a product will do well, it does well. Selling 10 million iPhones is not beyond reason in the first six months. The price point is not much beyond the upper level ipods.

Being on cingular could be a deterrent. I know I would love an iPhone but the cingular issue may very well keep me from buying one. I just renewed my phone contract with verizon and got a shiny new RAZR. I am considering getting the iphone as a purely business or purely personal phone in addition to the phone I have. My chief problem is I'm on verizon because I live in the middle of nowhere. Most people don't live in the middle of nowhere and will be happy on cingular.

3. Jobs gave competitors a head start

I have always wondered why jobs kept products so secret for so long. It could part of the reason apple has always been the market minority. Look at Vista. We all know it's there and we all knew it was coming. Microsoft announces its products practically before there is any decent code written to build them. Maybe Jobs is going this route for once?

Either way, I do not think this is an issue in this particular case. Phones are not new. Apple is not releasing some incredible product that no one else has ever done before. This is not a ground breaking new product. It is a ground breaking revolutionary product. Having the market be abuzz with iPhone jazz will have everyone sitting forward in their seats waiting to see how it shakes out. With apple taking the lead in MP3 players, people are wondering if they can do the same in other home electronics. Both the iPhone and and to some extent apple tv are geared for this. They are breaking into an existing market. This requires marketing time and lots of buzz surrounding them.

4. Jobs undermined apple tv

No. The apple tv is geared for a much slower buildup. I would almost call the apple tv an experiment. People will realize they can buy a product that allows them to play all their existing iTunes stuff through their home entertainment system.

This is the successor to airtunes. It's a logical extension of the converting computer media to tv media to fit with apple's roadmap. This product sells itself to the millions of movie buying, iTunes Store loving, home theater enthusiasts. It is not trying to break into a niche or even compete with TIVO or other DVR products (as the iphone is). It's a product built to fill a gap that should have an existing user base that would love to spend $299 to watch their Battlestar Galactica downloads on their 70" HD tv set. It will also open the iTunes Movie Store door to people like me who don't want to watch iTunes movies on their 15" macbook or 19" CRT displays.

5. Jobs put ipod sales at risk

Not so much. I would guess that the iPhone will cause a delay in some iPod player sales. But the product is geared more for a new niche of user. The mobile professional who doesn't have time for an iPod cause they are tinkering with their dysfunctional black berry. The iPod in the phone is more of an aside than a product. It's a nano, serious ipod buyers won't even look at the iPhone as an iPod. Nano buyers certainly won't look at the iPhone because of cost. They may, however, want the phone. iPod video buyers won't look at the phone because of memory size. I predict a small delay in sales with a quick rebound as this logic occurs to people.

Secondly, I predict a new iPod product. My guess is a true video touch screen iPod with a 100 or 120gig drive size. Probably priced $450-$500 and match the look of the iPhone. I know I would like to own both products. Apple is using the "it has an iPod" as a marketing device for the iPhone. It makes the product unique, provides a tipping point for unconvinced buyers and fills a niche. Loading a single movie on to the iPhone for your commute to and from work everyday sounds like a decent feature for a device that you need anyway.

6. Jobs wrecked cisco talk

The very fact that it is being talked about is incredible marketing for the iPhone. It was on national television news, not because of a new apple product but because cisco is suing apple over this revolutionary new product. This is incredibly good free marketing. This keynote reached millions more people because of cisco. Maybe this is the start of a good conspiracy theory?

No one cares. Seriously, this doesn't matter in the slightest. If anything apple fanatics will be pissed at cisco. The rest of the world won't give a damn. Worse case is apple changes the name to apple phone to match apple tv. Which, frankly, might be steve's plan from the beginning. Besides, anyone who has the gall to trademark i*Anything in the face of apple is really asking for a fight with apple. I imagine apple could counter-sue saying cisco taking the iPhone is just trying to use apple's marketing glory. Get over it. This has been great for apple.

So why the rush?

This is definitely uncharacteristic for Apple. Is it a mistake? The iPhone is not the type of product people will leap into. Because of the crappy nature of phones and their annoying attributes, apple has to convince people that the apple phone will be different. This will take marketing time and money. That said, not every apple product survives. I think this one will, but if it doesn't I don't think the announcement will have much to do with it. I suspect it will hit its goal before 2008.

After that, it will be up to the product itself. Personally, I think we have a case of the Nintendo Wii on our hands. The Wii can't do half the crap Xbox 360 or PS3 can do. But which console is selling like mad? Yeah, you figure it out.

I think the first thing anyone should understand about my family is that we are all insane. If you haven't seen the pictures, you really should head on over there and see for yourself. The next thing you should know is we have interesting gift exchange practices. The size of my family makes gift giving somewhat prohibitive. In order to bring order to chaos we've attempted several different strategies.

The first of these strategies is we separate the family into age groups (usually just adults and children) and do pick a name out of a hat style gifts. This has worked well for quite a few years. The adults switched to doing a group lottery where everyone would pitch in to buy lottery tickets and the winnings would be spent on more lottery tickets until they get tired or run out of money. Eventually some of us older cousins decided to break off and do our own thing. Having 20+ year olds mixed with 5 year olds for a gift exchange just didn't work.

At first the older cousins did a simple name swap exchange as well. This became boring so we started a yankee swap. This is a game where everyone brings a gift and all gifts are piled in the center of the room. In some determined order people either pick a new present and open it or take an already opened present from someone else. This continues until the last person picks the last present. We've been doing this for the last few years. It can lead to somewhat rowdy and involved interactions.

Last year our yankee swap resulted in absolutely no exchanging gifts. People just picked one present after another and it was over. This year I was determined that that wouldn't happen. I carefully selected a gift that everyone would fight over once it was opened. The perfect gift: an ipod shuffle. So the gift trading starts and my gift is the sixth one open or so (of nine this year). The war starts. Everyone tries for the ipod but soon realize that only the most determined are going to actually obtain it. It comes down to Chrissy, Tim and Steve. Since I'm still in the game, I try and pick presents to mix it up a little by taking other presents that will cause people to go after the ipod.

Words cannot really explain the chaos that ensued. The only rule is you can't take a gift that was just taken from you. Tim, Steve and Chrissy literally just passed the ipod back and forth for five minutes with the occasional strategic change-up. They would take a gift from someone who wants what they have so that person takes the ipod to have it taken from them so they can get their gift back. Two other gifts (one just money and another a gift card and "blue ball" ornament) were part of the ipod regular rotation. It was amazing and quite successful. This year, the adult group did a gift swap as well.

Happy New Year!

I had an interview at Democracy for America (DFA). I never thought I'd seriously consider working in politics but this place has a lot of attractive features. I usually find the politically charged nature a little overwhelming or annoying. I'm independent because I simply don't get along with extremists on either side of the spectrum. However, I do respect everyone's opinions so as long as we can agree to disagree, I'm fine.

DFA is the remnant of the Dean presidential campaign. They just changed it to Democracy For America and kept the initials. They try to support socially progressive and fiscally responsible candidates in campaigns all over the country. They seem relatively sane and like a great group to work with. Plus, they are in burlington vermont! I've wanted to move there since forever!

Ok, don't have much else to say.

I've been working on putting up an alumni web site for my college. It is available www.truesr.org. It's developing rather quickly and works surprisingly well.

There are new developments in the Crocodile Hunter Conspiracy.

Apparently, Stingrays have begun attacking random homo-sapien sapiens. In florida, earlier today, one such creature leapt from the water to maul an innocent bystander.

It is suspected that this is a stingray faction formed to retaliate against the recent anti-stingray activities performed by Crocodile Hunter cultists. The stingray was captured and held in a holding tank during interrogation. It reportedly said it will never stop until it rids the planet of the human infestation.

Is this the beginning of a human/stingray war?

Liberal activists are already gathering to blame President Bush for this attack. They say his maltreatment of stingrays is what initially caused the attack on the crocodile hunter. Since then the violence has escalated.

Return here for more on this conspiracy!

*tries not to die from laughter*

I bet you think this post is going to be about star wars. Well, you're wrong! sort of. I walked past the limited edition in BJ's Warehouse today. It was sitting there staring back at me. Apparently, they don't even have it as a box set. You have to buy all three movies separately. And, despite my previous rant about star wars I was sorely tempted to buy them. But, no, I came to my senses and resisted the dark side.

Instead, I bought my 3rd copy of Lord of the Rings trilogy on dvd. This new limited edition has both the Theatrical and Extended cuts in one box. One smaller box. Infact, they are on one dvd in the two disc set. So, now I have the theactrical, the extended and one with both. Very exciting! It also has some more new bonus materials. It is the new holy trilogy.

The other thing I bought today is Warcraft III Battle Chest. Though I've played the game, I do not actually own a copy of it. I definitely never played the expansion. I'm an avid supporter of blizzard games and own multiple copies of most of their titles. As far as I'm concerned, there's Blizzard games, and then there's everyone else. I'm still thrilled that the Mac and Windows versions come in the same box.

It should be noted that I went into BJ's looking for dual-layer blank dvd's and west wing seasons. Neither of which they had. *sigh*

The last few days free time I've been spent updating all the written sections of my personal site. There are hobbies and philosophy now! Keep in mind that none of this has been edited. I just wanted to get it out there so my personal side isn't quite so bare.

I also disabled RSS temporarily while I work on some site issues. They have been re-enabled for this blog and job status. Hopefully they will stay that way as I update the site.