I watched a few episodes of the Crocodile Hunter in those first few months with Jareth when it seemed I lived on our recliner.
He was hugely enthusiastic and passionate clearly loved what he was doing, educating people about wildlife in his own unique way. It was never just a documentary with him, he made the wild hands-on and up close.
I can only say it's fitting he died doing exactly that. Some people you just know aren't going to die in their sleep. He wasn't hit by a drunk driver or something stupid like that. And, no, it wasn't even doing some stupid-seeming animal stunt like I think a lot of people expected him to die. He was stung by a stingray--just an accident while filming at the Great Barrier Reef.
But I don't have anything profound to offer. I never met him, although I would have liked to. He would have been a fun person to just hang with. Too many people never experience passion like that.
Thank you for not holding back, Steve. Maybe your next life will be something wild, too.
I saw a CNN piece earlier in the week about controversy surrounding an exhibit at the Tampa Museum of Science and Industry called Bodies.
(Very cool article about it here.)
They're real cadavers from China, preserved in a plastic resin. They are posed in a number of actions, and are peeled down in differing layers. One man's muscles dance with his skeleton as the partner.
An ethics committee, along with others in Florida, were trying to prevent the exhibition's opening. It looks like it opened anyway. Part of the complaint revolved around people thinking it wasn't preserving the dignity that the dead should be treated with.
One of the exhibit designers, was asked why real bodies when it could have all been done with plastic.
His answer was that with plastic you can show what the body looks like. But it's still an artificial display. With real bodies it's, well, real. You can't deny it. It's all the more valid that way.
As to the dignity thing, I have no problem with it. Cadavers get donated to medical school for students to practice dissecting. I would rather my body be used for an eye-opening and educational exhibit than to be turned into just an object for practice. But maybe I have a different idea of dignity.
News story shared by a poster at The Cauldron:
A witch in Vermont decorated her lawn with a display of a scarecrow style witch breastfeeding a baby witch. There's even a gourd breast.
Apparently there's been one complaint so far. I think it's amusing, but my sense of humor isn't exactly mainstream.
Two news story links:
US Newswire: Tyson Sued for Maintaining Segregated Work Areas: 'Whites Only' Sign and Padlock Placed on Bathroom Door
Reuters: Tyson Foods denies racial discrimination after suit
And it's not like Tyson is just some little company. Admittedly, the plant may have been a little removed from headquarters. That's still no excuse. Local management should have known what was going on.
*Sigh*
At work yesterday someone left a Chicago Tribune by the water cooler. One of the headlines caught my eye, so I photocopied the article so I could read it. They also have it online: New menu at Sara Lee
Sara Lee is selling or spinning off businesses that account for about 40% of sales. Quite a bit, although looking at what they're getting out of, they're not going to see much drop in profit. Most of it is very low margin stuff or stuff that was managed poorly to begin with:
They're getting out of Branded Apparel (Hanes, L'eggs, Champion, Bali, Playtex, Wonderbra, Barely There --okay, some of those had money in them) US Retail coffee (Hills Bros, Chock full o'Nuts, Chase & Sanborn, MJB), Meats in Europe and a direct selling division that wasn't a good idea to begin with.
Their portfolio summary had at one point been "packaged consumer goods," which was at least a useful definition, even if it's just consumerism.
Getting out of retail coffee, that one I get. Most of it's canned crap anyway. There's much less profit in there, and it's a harder market to play in. Price is a big enough market driver there that it's not necessarily worth competing there.
Getting out of apparel at first glance seems like a bad idea. There's some good brands there, some good products, and they're recently worked pretty hard to be innovative. Tagless t-shirts will be an industry norm pretty soon, probably, and they're the ones that started it.
On the other hand, the whole apparel group was managed poorly. Here's a little insider perspective from about a year ago:
Much of my job there (in the coffee end of things) was managing inventory for merchandising. That included a lot of shirts. When possible we used Sara Lee products for that. We had a lot of logos printed on Hanes t-shirts, for example.
Now, I could order shirts through a contact at the apparel group, and I could get them at cost. Then I just needed to get them printed, for which I was supposed to use a printer that the apparel group used. It was a preferred vendor kind of thing, and was supposed to leverage the large-scale purchasing power. But I had a local printer I used, because him buying the shirts, printing them, and selling them to me was still cheaper. Why? He was able to buy them below cost. And that makes sense how?
Yep, there were a few preferred-vendor things that didn't make sense. There was an official approved printer for all the paper stuff, business cards, letterhead, sales brochures, all that stuff. The theory was that every Sara Lee division all did their printing through that one source for a massive bulk discount.
Except it never worked. We were supposed to send all the printing there. Instead we gave them the chance to bid on every print job. They were never once the better deal. In ever case we had someone else who could do the same quality at less cost.
The trick is, the approved printer gave a rebate back to Sara Lee corporate for all the volume. So the individual branches paid more so that corporate would get this big rebate. The corporate bottom line won out. Steve McMillan got his multi-million dollar bonusses every year while the individual divisions had to freeze wages and hiring and lay people off to make their numbers every year.
The beverage division made solid profit every year I was there. And yet somehow the whole time we had raises frozen because we weren't quite making the numbers corporate targeted for us. How much of it was because we were carrying the burden so that corporate could get the benefit.
The good news is that Steve McMillan is stepping down. About damn time. I can't say enough good things about him. Okay, I can't say any. But I doubt the new CEO will be much different. She's the one starting this current round of restructuring. And it isn't to streamline the brand portfolio. It isn't to weed out brands and businesses that don't fit the corporate mission. No, it's because they considered underperforming on paper. It's the bottom line of the balance sheet. It's Corporate America.
Somewhere between be afraid...very afraid and Don't Panic falls my reaction to the news that there's a soon-to-be-released, new Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movie.
The IMDB.com listing has some interesting tidbits. Like Alan Rickman and John Malkovich being in the cast, for one. And Warick Davis. I'm suspecting that he physically plays Marvin the android, while Alan Rickman provides the voice. The rest I'm not recognizing yet.
I have this worry that it's either going to be a very fun movie, or very, very bad. Somehow I'm not feeling much room for middle ground. I guess we'll just have to wait and see...
A couple days ago on the way home I heard an interview with some executive type at Bates College in Maine on NPR.
One th thing that makes Bates College unique is that they don't require SAT scores in their admission process. Originally it was to give a chance to students denied opportunity elsewhere. So submitting scores with applications was optional.
They tracked the performance of those who submitted scores versus those who didn't.
The differences in GPA between the two groups? About .05 GPA points.
The differences in graduation rates? About .1%.
Pretty small difference for a test that's practically used as the yardstick of academic potential, huh?
In a little fishing village in Thailand, elders pass on ancient knowledge of the sea. One news story tells how their knowledged saved every one of them during the tsunami.
They knew that when the waters suddenly recede, that they will return with force.
So they ran up the mountain to a temple while neighboring villages went out to the beaches to gape and gather fish on the suddenly waterless beach. The little village of 181 were saved for remembering ancient lore.
Our lessons come to us from so many places, don't they.
One of the earrings Amy gave me for Christmas is an anchor with rope twined around it. I wear it today to honor those who honor the sea by respecting it and living in touch with it. Sail on, friends.
The headline at money.cnn.com read "Blockbuster drops late fees".
There were actuall two notable pieces of information in the article. Yes, Blockbuster is dropping late fees. There's a one-week grace period. Keep it longer than that and they charge you the purchase price minus the already-paid rental fee. You can return it for credit less a restocking fee. Now, returning for credit is not the same as returning for refund, mind you.
For me it just means not paying a late fee if I forget to drop one off on the way to work. It happens now and then. So that change I'm okay with.
But the second half of the article concerns me. Blockbuster is bidding to buy out the second biggest video chain, Hollywood Video. Now, Hollywood doesn't have any locations near us. I wish they did--we get coupons for them on cereal boxes. Free movies... but with a half-hour drive each way twice suddenly doesn't seem like free anymore.
There was a third competitor mentioned, but it was a company I've never heard of. So basically that means the video giant buys out their only notable competitor and they Wal-mart the little guys. I sincerely hope the regulatory folks don't let that happen. That'd be like Microsoft buying Apple. Yeah, there's still another little competitor, but really...
So there's hoopla about those jelly bracelets Madonna made big in the 80s. Apparently they're The Hot Thing again. And some kids are calling them sex bracelets. Pull one of the bracelets off, and you get basically a coupon for a sex act. Color-coded and everything. Apparently you can get pretty much anything you want if you can get the right color.
Is it real or urban legend? Opinions vary. CNN seems to lean to myth. NBC found several kids to confirm it. So, it does seem to be real at least among a probable minority. Probably a small minority, but those tend to be the ones to get the attention.
A couple of thoughts immediately come to mind. For one, man, did I miss out as a kid! :-)
So, as my public service for today, I offer the solution.
If your child is wearing these bracelets, it doesn't mean the kid is promiscuous, or even having any. So don't confront the child, that'll just cause problems. Similarly, don't take them away. They might just be a harmless fashion fad.
Instead, get some yourself. You and your spouse wear them around the house for a couple evenings. The kids will either think you're trying to be hip and don't get it, or they'll get grossed out, and they'll stop wearing them. If that doesn't do it:
Amy is better at day-to-day blogging than I am.
but here is a Progressive Grocer article that maybe the blog circles haven't hit yet. But it's another one from the corporate intranet site.
In short, The Maryland General Assembly has rejected a proposed snack tax. The new tax might have raised as much as $16 million (not a huge number from a government perspective, but enough to be significant at the state level, I'm sure).
But here's the quote that caught me:
...selectively taxing foods disproportionately affects low-income families who can least afford to pay more for groceries.- Elizabeth Avery, VP of government affairs for the Grocery Manufacturers of America.
Personally, I see a missed opportunity here. There's already a tax on food, at least here in Illinois. So, what can the goals of a program for this be?
1 - Raise a certain amount of tax money.
2 - Possibly encourage healthy eating, while not unfairly penalizing anyone.
There's already extra taxes on tobacco and alcohol, presumably under the theory that those are luxuries, not necessities of life (although some will argue that point, probably). But there's already a tax on food (even if maybe it's just called sales tax, that $2.99 gallon of milk consistently costs me $3.03), so there's precedent we can play with. Every grocery trip I pay taxes, even if it's just for food.
I think foods are taxed at a lower rate. 3% seems to come to mind, but milk at least seems to come to 1.5%. So, let's say the existing food tax is 2%. Right or not, we can work with it for the sake of argument.
First, we have to establish criteria for what is "junk food." I don't want the government saying, "you can't eat Twinkies," but I'll use them as my example.
Once you have criteria to create the "food" pile and the "junk food" pile (I don't think "snack" is the category to use), you sort everything. Taxes on "food" either drop by half, or go away completely. Maybe food is 1%, and organic food is tax-free (now we even have some socially responsible behavior we can encourage). Twinkies go up to 3%. Not a huge jump, just enough of an increase to slightly more than offset the lost money from taxing other food. I don't know what the current numbers are, but I know that a large chunk of consumer spending is on snack foods, desserts, and the like. We probably wouldn't have to tax junk food hard to make up some money.
I also think that tax avoidance is a useful way to motivate people. I've always thought that. How many people do you honestly think would give the same amount they give now to charities if they weren't going to be able to write it off anymore? Now, I'm not going to try to claim that taxing junk food is going to make any big change in eating behavior. Raising tobacco taxes didn't lower smoking rates. People are going to spend money on the things they want. The way I see it, the biggest benefit to raising taxes on junk foods is that we could reduce taxes (and therefore prices) on the healthier foods that the lowest income brackets need.
There's one demographic that tends to get overlooked in a lot of diet and healthcare discussions. The ones being hurt the most, the ones having the most problems with obesity, are the poorest groups. Imagine you're hungry, with practically no money to spend on food for you and some children. All day long you're bombarded with advertising for chips and candy. Your kids see those same ads all day long, and you bring them into the store and all they want are chips and candy and soda. You walk into the store, and the soda and snacks are the first thing you and your children see. Produce? All the way in the back. Milk? All the way in the back. Ice cream? That's right in the middle so that you have to pass right through it—probably twice.
Ever hear a child screaming, "Mommy, I want milk" to a woman who's trying to pick ripe fresh veggies? I didn't think so.
But I have seen a mother use food stamps to buy Haagen Dazs. Just a couple weeks ago I watched a mother of four unload her cart at the register. What did she have? Doritos, Pepsi, nacho cheese Lunchables, Fruity Pebbles, no milk, two big containers of Fieldcrest (which is at least the cheapest) ice cream. Now, obviously it wasn't her main shopping run for the week. Now, to complete the picture, all five of them were either at or past the border between overweight and obese.
Where am I going with all this? Hell, I don't even know anymore. I think I had a point when I started. Last week Amy bought us a box of Pop-ems. Over four or five days I ate probably three quarters of them. They were good, damnit!
I guess my point is that no one thing is ever going to be the solution. I think that education needs to be an important part. I think that advertising and marketing deserves a fair share of the blame. I'd love to see a company spend the kind of money spent advertising Oreos to promote health food education.
But now I have breakfast to cook. There's potatoes and veggies to hack up. It's gonna be a breakfast skillet day. Amy needs to get started with dinner stuff early, which means waking her earlier than normal. Hearty breakfast is a good help with that.
Thanks to The Witchs' Voice for finding this Sunday Herald article.
Back at census time, a number of people decided to write in Jedi in the religion box on the form. Some thinking it would be funny, a few actually serious.
I remember reading a couple of interesting sites where people were sincerely trying to build a recognizable religion around the ideas that George Lucas built with bits and pieces of existing philosophy and ideas. The Jedi isn't new other than it may be the first time that some of those elements have been brought together before. In a way, just New Age Samurai.
So it turns out that at least in Scotland a lot of people claimed to be practicing Jedi. 14,000 of them Enough so that Jedi is listed as the fourth largest religion in Scotland.
Now, in England and Wales the number is 390,000, although the UK didn't take those people seriously and listed them as Atheists.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. Truth really is stranger than fiction.
Not exactly current news, but I came across a cnn.com article that I had intended on posting about earlier.
So, a woman was driving drunk, and talking on her cell phone. She drifted over the centerline and hit a pickup truck head on. Driver of truck dies, wife in passenger seat is still in a coma. She was pregnant at the time, the baby born by c-section five months after the crash.
Part of the sentencing is that the woman must carry a picture of the dead victim with her at all times during her five-year probation.
The dead victim's mother got to supply the picture. It's him in his casket. The woman protested, thinking it should be a photo of him in life. The judge let it stand. The best quote is from the mother:
"That's where she put him — in a casket. That's what she did for him. I'd just shut my mouth if I was her."I love people who speak honestly.
The Intranet at work has a news article collection that gets updated all the time. It pulls from just about every text news source. From there I find out all kinds of interesting things.
According to the Dow Jones (in part quoting the Washington Post), Royal Ahold (the Dutch food retailer, possibly the biggest food retailer in the world once you add it all up) is going after some executives that caused some trouble.
The executives in question, three of the top people at Ahold's US Foodservice division, were mucking about with earnings statements, overstating profits by over one billion. Ahold took a $3.1 billion write-off last year because of it.
So Ahold is demanding they give back part of their 2000 and 2001 bonuses. Smart. Hit them where it hurts. I don't think major executives fear jail. They have lawyers to help them dodge that. Oh, but their lives are built on their money and their power and their status. Take all three of those away from executives? That makes an interesting deterrent to the others.
We'll see if it gets followed through on. I'm not sure if there's legal ways to force it to happen.