American Madness

I have been reading about Fizzy Fruit for a while. It is a company that makes carbonated fruit. No, not fruit juice, carbonated fruit- a fizzing apple slice or grape. Don’t ask me how they do it, I am sure some chemical process is involved, but anyway, I have been interested in them ever since I first heard about them a bit ago.

I was so intrigued when I first heard about them a year ago that I checked out the companies website (which said they would soon be sold locally across the nation), when I contacted to ask when and where I might be able to get it they told me they had yet to secure a distribution deal and that it would be in the future that they were actually sold across the nation at various food places. I recently came across them again and decided to see what was new on the website. Apparently not much, the same messages are up that were up last year, I emailed them asking where I could find them in New York and if they could possibly send me a sample.

They still are not actually sold anywhere and they told me they couldn’t send me a sample since it costs upwards of $250 to ship a single one of these containers due to the problems in shipping a carbonated fruit.

Today I, once again, came across a blog post that mentions these elusive fruits and an article from last weeks USA Today about them (stating that they are available in some select 7-11’s and will soon be available at Wal-mart… in the South-East and -West).

In the comments section of the blog post “the Revealer” reveals to us a way to make these Fizzy Fruits at home on your own:

Secret process? BAH! I discovered how to do this a few years ago. Here’s the steps:

Required items: dry ice, fruit, cooler

steps:
1. Place dry ice in cooler.
2. Place fruit of your choice in cool, but NOT touching the dry ice.
3. Close the cooler and let it sit overnight.
4. Enjoy your carbonated fruit!

Explaination: the dry ice gives of carbon dioxide gas. Through the night, the fruit has almost nothing to be in contact to but that gas. It seeps through creating “carbonated” fruit!

Keep in mind: the fruit is like a soda… keep it in the air for too long and it will go flat. Notice how the “Fizzy Fruits” are kept in a can.

Apparently, while Fizzy Fruit is currently focused on Grapes and Apple slices, if you do it with oranges you can create your own, fresh-squeezed orange soda. Looks like I might have to start searching for a dry ice distributer in my neighborhood.

The Thing sounds pretty interesting. It is another mail-based art project. The website, I think, says it best, describing it as:

A quarterly periodical in the form of an object. Each year, four artists, writers, musicians or filmmakers are invited… to create an everyday object that somehow incorporates text. This object will be reproduced and hand wrapped in brown paper packaging by the editors and then mailed to… subscribers with the help of the United States Postal Service.

Of course the downside to a project like this is its price tag. At $120 a year per issue, plus an additional $10 for shipping each issue that makes each thing $40. With no previous issues and no real track record that is a pretty steep price tag for a mystery art periodical. Conceptually I am intrigued and would love to see more, though not intrigued enough to dole out $40 an issue.

Also, it looks like the Thing for the first issue is a white window shade painted with the words “If this shade is down I am not who you think I am.” As I said, interesting concept

Steven Levitt might have called Robert Oxoby before deriding the professor’s humorous “experiment” in his NYTimes blog.

Levitt wrote here:

August 20, 2007, 2:55 pm
This Is What Happens to People Who Listen to Too Much AC/DC…
By Steven D. Levitt

They grow up to write economics papers like this one, which looks at whether participants in lab experiments get closer to efficient outcomes when exposed to one lead singer of the rock band AC/DC versus another.

I hope for this guy’s sake he has tenure.

I read the thing and instantly thought: this is a total joke. The purpose of the paper is to answer the question: “with respect to the rock band AC/DC, who is the better vocalist: Bon Scott or Brian Johnson?”

Maybe Levitt knew it was a joke, but I didn’t get the sense that he was joking. I think the post was meant as derisory, and so did the early commenters.

I commented:

You guys are WAY up on your high horse, but I think this is a joke.

I once took an English class in which most of my peers thought A Modest Proposal was a historical truth from a darker time.* They also had no sense of humor.

Just to be sure, I wrote to Oxoby. His response:

“Of course it’s a joke. Why is this paper all of a sudden getting attention? I’ve received 20 emails about it.”

* True story: I couldn’t believe my classmates thought Swift was advocating infanticide, but there you go. It’s not like my High School is ranked 24th in New York State or anything. Now I know why we weren’t at least in the top 20.

For this post, I had also considered the title: Freakin’Asshole. I really enjoyed reading Freakonomics and I get an RSS feed of Levitt’s blog, so I’ll reserve asshole judgement if he decides to once again bravely crap on another professor who doesn’t have his platform, fame or resources.

Nearly a month ago, Sprint told me they would be changing my contract. I can no longer freely send or recieve international text messages in my text package. I will have to pay 15 cents per message. They said if I was unhappy, I had 30 days to quit with no penalty.

At first, I thought, I’d quit and get a Blackberry, which could be very useful. Now I’m wondering if it wouldn’t make sense to quit using a cell phone altogether.

Sure, my cell phone lets me keep in touch with people, but usually I make plans to meet someone. Cell phones are also the reason why people are now late to everything with impunity. They can just text a mea culpa. Cell phones are also expensive. I must pay an average of $60-$70 a month. That’s a lot of money to waste on a convenience. And then there’s the lack of privacy.

Actually, I’ve been trying to think of good reasons why I need a cell phone. Convenience? So that I can be late to meetings? Well, New York City still has public pay phones every where you look. I don’t know if $70 a month should be the price I pay for not having to carry a couple of quarters around with me wherever I go. Emergencies: this one is somewhat compelling, but when am I going to find myself alone and not surrounded by other people who have cell phones? I don’t take many drives down lonely Texas roads in cars prone to break down. (If I do plan to travel somewhere, I can easily buy a prepaid disposable cell phone.)

What do you think? American Madness gets about 250 unique visitors a day. Someone out there is reading this. Leave a comment with your suggestions/advice/analysis. What am I missing? Should I lose the cell phone?

Are you tired of Ebay? The idea of auctions intrigues you, but you prefer live interaction with people, the thrill of raising you paddle and out bidding other folks in classic auction style.

Actually being able to see and touch what you are bidding on rather then just have a cheap picture taken with some ones phone camera has its benefits now you have the chance to be a part of these types of auctions.

In fact, the US government has a bunch of these auctions on a fairly regular basis, you can attend auctions on anything from International Real Estate to Toys to Alcoholic Beverages, Airplanes to Digital Cameras to Jewelry. Te US Government has it all, and now you can find out where and when these auctions will be held with this nifty government website. Check out GovSales now for an auction near you.

A lot of companies are hesitant to take a stand on what they consider social or political issues. They feel the best bet is to keep their mouths shut and, by doing so, no one can have too big an issue with them. Not Manhattan Mini Storage!

The New York Sun reports that a new(-ish) billboard by the West Side Highway in Manhattan has the typical Manhattan Mini Storage look and branding. On the left side an image of a hanger in the background with the text “Your Closet Space Is Shrinking As Fast As Her Right To Choose.” An earlier ad of theirs read “Your Closet is Scarier Then Bush’s Agenda.” Wow! Way to take a stand.

Of course folks from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights are saying the sign is highly offensive and insulting (though I am not quite sure how since the New York Sun doesn’t have any details on that), Planned Parenthood loves it. The article claims that “Passers-by had mixed reactions” (of the two they mention one said they thought it to be a little tasteless and the other had no problem with it: not exactly a spectrum of folks with solid opinions).

The comments I found to be most interesting was from the editor of the conservative journal First Things, Joseph Bottum. He said: “Manhattan Mini Storage must have had a pretty good idea that the sign was not going to hurt it. ‘One of the things that has helped American democracy survive is the fact that commercial enterprises have not generally entered the political arena.’

Also it is interesting to note that the building that the advertisement is on is a Manhattan Mini-Storage. No surprise there.

So, as we get closer to Labor Day and the “end” of summer I figured it was a good idea to push beach week, just a little something so that folks can enjoy the last weeks of summer thinking about the beach- the warm sound, cool water and refreshing breeze- while they are sitting at their desks at work, staring at their computer screens.

To kick it off we have an interesting one from Rueter’s “Oddly Enough” section which touches not only on the beach, but also on Legos.

About 2 weeks ago now on the shores of Zandvoort, a Dutch resort, a head was seen bobbing up and down in the waters. Workers at the drink stand rushed out for the rescue and pulled in a lifesize Lego man.

Life-size? Well, they must grow them a bit bigger in Holland as the figure was about 8′ tall. But still, how random is that? The 8′ tall Lego’s torso says “No Real Than You Are” and was placed in front of the drink stand, almost as a icon of the valiant rescue by the stands workers. Talk about random.

Do you ever find yourself with a bunch of time on your hands, wishing you had something to do or something good to read? Checking your email on a regular basis, hoping for a well scribed note that gives you joy to read? Well, now there is a solution to these problems, well sort of…

DailyLit is a website inspired by serialized novels, the aim is to give you the time to catch-up on some of the classics you may have missed or have been meaning to get around to. Offering over 400 titles that are in the public domain, DailyLit breaks each one down into sections readable in about 5 minutes of time. ce you set up your account you can choose how often you get installments and at what time. Find yourself with a few extra minutes on your hand? Well, you can request the next installment immediately.

Books are easy to sort through and arranged by title, by author and even by category. So, what are you waiting for? Now is your chance to read War and Peace, broken down into 675 easy to read emails.

It doesn’t come as much of a surprise that PETA is not a big fan of KFC. To get this point across they have the website Kentucky Friend Cruelty to explain their problems with the fried chicken manufacturer.

Something you’ll find on the site that is a little different is the PETA video game Super Chick Sisters (SCS). Based on the classic Super Mario Brothers SCS is the story of two chicks who need to save the Princess Pam Anderson who was kidnapped by the Colonel for giving away the secrets of KFC (apparently the flavor comes from animal cruelty) through out the game there are little side characters who give you PETA talking points about the horrible things that KFC does to their chickens. Mario and Luigi even make appearances in the game, they are trying to recover from their Wii related injury because Mario feels that he is the nly one who can save “Princess Pam.”

I get it, KFC treats their chickens poorly and should probably have slightly more respect for the birds, but they are a fast food restaurant. They are not raising chickens to have a healthy and fruitful life, they are raising them until they are just plump and tender enough to cook. I am a bit torn on this one, while I am sure KFC should change their practices, I also find PETA’s message to be a bit on the extreme side. While KFC is probably a PETA problem I am not convinced that other companies, like say McDonalds, are treating the animals they raise for meat much better.

Oh, and another nod to Mario Brothers, at the end of the game, when you are battling the Colonel he starts off wearing a mask of the final villain from Mario Brothers. Oh, and beat the game and you will get a code to play as Pamela Anderson.

Besides Julia Child, there is another big birthday this week: 25 years ago today we saw the advent of the Compact Discs from the folks at Philips.

They changed the music industry drastically and opened the door for “next-gen” technology for computers and movies (like laser disc, DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray).

Just try and find a cassette, 3.5″ Floppy (let alone a 5″ floppy), video tape or laser disc any more and you can tell the impact that CDs have had on all of us.

Just because iTunes sold it’s 3 billionth song the other day, they still have a bit to go before they pass the 200 billion CDs sold in the last 25 years. I mean really, it is still the industry standard for music.

Anyway, happy birthday to Compact Discs, here is to another 25 years!