On Hiatus

I’m taking a break from writing posts for this blog. Will be back in the future, maybe. Probably. Well, we’ll see. 

Keep you eyes wide and don’t let the bastards drag you down.

// Jules Manning

Groupon

Here’s a business proposition to consider. You are a merchant running a small restaurant. To increase traffic into your eatery you offer a 75% discount. This yields a heavy influx of one-time visitors who enjoy the deep, profit-destroying price cut for a meal but they never return to eat at your restaurant again. After the discount period ends you find yourself financially worse off than before. 

Sounds pretty stupid, yes? But loads of businesses have signed up to do this through Groupon, a deal-of-the-day website that features discounted gift certificates usable at local or national companies. Here’s an example of the way it works:

• Merchant offers a $20 item for $10 on Groupon. 
• Consumers buy the item coupon for $10.
• Merchant and Groupon each take half of the $10.

As you can see, the merchant is only taking in $5 for an item that is normally priced at $20. A lot of businesses have ended up selling at a loss this way, not taking in enough to cover the cost of the product sold. Taking in less profit to attract customers is one thing. But partially paying customers to buy at your shop is just plain dumb. For some it has hastened their path to bankruptcy.

Interested in learning more about what a swindler Groupon really is? Check out these articles and blog posts:

Groupon Is A Disaster

Groupon Is A Scam

A look at Groupon’s extremely lopsided merchant agreement

Still on the Groupon bandwagon? Great! I’ve got some nice ocean-front property in Omaha for you. Great half-price deal, too. 

// Jules Manning

Regretsy

Ever been to Etsy? Most folks have browsed around the site and have checked out some interesting hand-crafted creations. There’s a lot of pretty awesome stuff up for sale there. But every so often something peculiar shows up that really shouldn’t be there. Items such as racist blackface paraphernalia, underwear shoulder bags, fetus soap and extremely crappy PhotoShop picture “art” somehow find their way onto Etsy each day. Do the creators really think this stuff is worth selling?

Lucky for us Regretsy has been cataloging and archiving these embarrassments for our viewing pleasure. I love Regretsy. It’s such a convenient place to point and laugh. Plus it makes pretending to work so much more enjoyable.

// Jules Manning

Organics

Putting the word “organic” on a product is a privilege reserved for companies that meet strict government regulatory standards. The circular “USDA Organic” label found on food items throughout your local supermarket conveys a strong message to the eco-conscious consumer who wants to buy items that are holistically beneficial to humans and the Earth. But what does the label really mean? What makes a product organic and can the designation really be believed? 

There are three categories of organic certification in the U.S. Products made entirely of organic ingredients can be labeled “100% Organic”. Items with at least 95% organic content may be labeled “organic”. Both of these categories can display the USDA seal. Products with at least 70% organic ingredients fall into the final category and can be labeled “made with organic ingredients”. 

Farmers seeking organic certification must comply with a rigorous process that entails a number of activities. Among them are extensive studies regarding a farm’s history, its current set up and the presence of chemicals in its soil and water. An annual inspection of the farm is required, which may also include an examination of day-to-day records covering all farming and marketing activities. A fee between $400 to $2000 is paid each year to keep the organic certification.

The strict nature of the certifying process and the accompanying financial costs prevent many operations from seeking out organic status. Smaller food producers have little extra money to devote to the certification. Larger companies complain that the required changes to make supply chains organic erode their ability to make the kind of profits shareholders demand. 

Both groups know the high value of organic labeling and unethical food growers do whatever they can to circumvent regulations. A common tactic is to use undefined terms such as “natural” “wholesome” and “authentic” on packaging. These words are effectively meaningless but many shoppers falsely equate them with the term “organic”. The vast majority of foods by the well-known Kashi brand (owned by Kellogg) are labeled as “natural” yet most of these items are conventionally produced with genetically-modified crops. News recently came out that some Kashi breakfast cereals had tested positive for pesticide residues, hardly the “wholesome” image the brand wants you to envision when eating their food.

In Washington, D.C. lobbyists try to open loopholes by pushing for amendments to regulations and exceptions to meticulous rules. The end result can mean that legally organic may be far from actually organic. Manipulating regulations dupes the public into believing and buying something that is not genuinely organic. 

If you are interested in keeping informed about the authenticity of so-called organic and natural foods visit the Cornucopia Institute website. There you can read reports and scorecards on a variety of products including cereal, eggs and baby formula. 

I don’t know about you but I prefer my breakfast sans poison.

// Jules Manning

Peace Corps

For too long the Peace Corps has promoted a myth through its recruiters and marketing materials that falsely presents a favorable image of an agency that in actuality is in desperate need of reform. The true experience for those serving in the nearly 70 Peace Corps countries around the globe is one riddled with problems brought on by poor program management, bad site development and a culture of disrespect for Volunteers when speaking out about such issues.

From 2005-2007 I was a Volunteer in Eastern Europe and fell victim to the incompetence of in-country management of a failing Peace Corps program. I was sent to a site where my skills were poorly matched with a municipal government office and I spent most of my time doing nothing. After bringing up my concerns to program managers in an attempt to improve the situation I was summarily sent home. What happened to me is not uncommon.

Volunteers are routinely sent to places where their expertise is not matched to the needs of the sites requesting help. Some are even told by country directors to forget about doing anything more than just hang out for two years and have a cultural exchange. This is hardly the image of Americans engaging in rigorous international development work that Peace Corps promotes to the public.

In recent times there has been a notable effort to introduce meaningful reform to the way Peace Corps is run. In 2007, former Volunteer Senator Christopher Dodd introduced the Peace Corps Volunteer Empowerment Act, which would have mandated multiple operational reforms for Peace Corps. After the bill was defeated through the lobbying efforts of Peace Corps and the National Peace Corps Association, two-time Volunteers Chuck Ludlam and his wife Paula Hirschoff put together a twenty point plan of reform to strengthen the Peace Corps. The plan has been widely circulated among Volunteers and has gained their support. Peace Corps still resists change. The question that remains is why? 

A wealth of information on the topic of Peace Corps reform is posted on the Peace Corps Wiki located online at: peacecorpswiki.org. I have found the site to be a invaluable resource in learning more about the inner workings of the organization, which routinely resists transparency and stonewalls with unreturned phone calls and e-mails. Of note are country post evaluation reports published by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Not surprisingly, I found the program I served in received a scathing analysis and a recommendation by the OIG for it to be discontinued. The report was compiled shortly before I arrived to begin my service.

In January 2011, ABC’s 20/20 program aired a piece about the tragic murder of Kate Puzey. Kate was a Volunteer serving in Benin in 2009 who informed her country director that a Peace Corps employee was sexually abusing students at her site. Because her message was not kept confidential the man Kate exposed retaliated against her and killed her as she slept one night. 20/20 shows how Peace Corps was more interested in maintaining its image during the aftermath than helping Kate’s family through this tragedy. Perhaps Kate Puzey would still be with us today had Peace Corps been mandated to reform itself. It is also quite probable that many Volunteers currently serving are in jeopardy of being harmed because of Peace Corps continued disrespect for their serious and valid concerns.

Too many people who sign up to serve in Peace Corps are being wasted due to the continuous poor management of programs and the prioritizing of bureaucratic interests of over the needs of Volunteers. Life is calling so hang up the phone on Peace Corps.

// Jules Manning

Tell Me About It

Sometimes user reviews make up for poorly designed products. Check out these classic gems submitted to Amazon. I’ll take one of each please.

// Jules Manning 

Realitynet

photo of a Sony Trinitron TV CRT by Arnold Chao

The Internet is really a big time suck. It’s mainly a wasteland, give or take a few great places where pretty good informative stuff is being posted (i.e. TED talks, Wikipedia). But the vast majority is just a huge distraction. Take my own experience. I just squandered a couple hours looking for something to write about here. As I was checking into the fat content of frozen yogurt and uncovering the meaning behind ‘astroturfing’ I was pulled in all directions with infinite distractions. It was like some shady guy calling me over, “Psst. Hey buddy, wanna check out some boobs? It’ll be research. Yeah, that’s right. You’ll be finding out how to see which boobs are real versus fake. That’s good for this blog.”

Sure, I guess. But who really cares? There’s too much talk about all manner of high-tech gizmo obsessions. So what if Google Maps can create a virtual world out of the actual world where we can fly through cityscapes around the world without having to poke our pasty faces outside. Why not just experience reality? Why do we need to have a billion virtual ways to hide ourselves from it? Realness is easy to access and doesn’t have a recurring monthly access fee attached to it.

Here’s the point for this week’s post: turn off and get out. That’s right, spend some time enjoying the real world. The ones posted online don’t live up to the splendor of what’s been evolving for millennia.  

I’ll be tip-toeing through the tulips. Come join me.

// Jules Manning

Need More Gig

If you have ever purchased an external hard drive of any type (USB, Firewire, thumb drive) you may have noticed that the storage space advertised on the packaging does not always match the actual capacity of the drive. This is due to advertisers manipulating measurement units. The capacity of hard drives is determined in terms of decimal multiples, where a megabyte equals 1,000,000 bytes, a gigabyte equals 1,000,000,000 bytes and a terabyte equals 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. However the convention for determining memory or RAM is expressed using binary multiples where a megabyte equals 1,048,576 bytes, a gigabyte equals 1,073,741,824 bytes and a terabyte equals 1,099,511,627,776 bytes. 

Actual usable hard drive space depends on what operating system is used on your computer. Windows machines use the binary method, which leads to various percentages of capacity overstatements. With megabytes the difference between advertised versus actual is 5%. The discrepancy increases to 7% with gigabytes and nearly 10% with terabytes. Mac machines, beginning with OS X (SnowLeopard), use the decimal method, which eliminates the inconsistency.

It’s anyone’s guess why a single convention has yet to be adopted by computer hardware manufacturers. Even after a class-action lawsuit was filed against Seagate and Western Digital in 2000 for deceptive advertisement the companies still promote their products in the same misleading manner. Like most things relating to computer technology industry leaders seem to want to keep the general public confused and a slave to their indecipherable coded double speak.

Here’s my message to them: byte me.

// Jules Manning

Swept Away

Have you seen the pictures of brooms standing on end all on their own? These pictures have made their way around the Internet with folks claiming a number of incredible things to explain away this oddity. Some propose that a planetary pole shift has occurred while other lay claim to the gravitational pull on either the spring or autumnal equinox as reasons for the visually puzzling phenomenon.

Allow me to burst everyone’s fun bubble. The truth appears to lie in simple transfer-of-weight physics. Check out this short video for a full demonstration and debunking:

http://youtu.be/iADKBCE6szU

// Jules Manning

Don’t Forget The Crazy Bread

Consider the following telephone conversation that took place in 1993: 

Agent: Hello. I would like to order nineteen large pizzas and sixty-seven cans of soda. 

Pizza man: And where would you like them delivered? 

Agent: To the Southwood Psychiatric Hospital. 

Pizza man: To the psychiatric hospital? 

Agent: That’s right. I’m an FBI agent. 

Pizza man: You’re an FBI agent? 

Agent: That’s correct. Just about everybody here is. 

Pizza man: And you’re at the psychiatric hospital? 

Agent: That’s correct. And make sure you don’t go through the front doors. We have them locked. You’ll have to go around to the back to the service entrance to deliver the pizzas. 

Pizza man: And you say you’re all FBI agents? 

Agent: That’s right. How soon can you have them here? 

Pizza man: And you’re over at Southwood? 

Agent: That’s right. How soon can you have them here? 

Pizza man: And everyone at Southwood is an FBI agent? 

Agent: That’s right. We’ve been here all day and we’re starving. 

Pizza man: How are you going to pay for this? 

Agent: I have my check book right here. 

Pizza man: And you are all FBI agents? 

Agent: That’s right, everyone here is an FBI agent. Can you remember to bring the pizzas and sodas to the service entrance in the rear? We have the front doors locked. 

Pizza man: I don’t think so.

*Click*

Would you have believed the caller? Turns out that it was an actual FBI agent who was indeed calling for a pizza delivery for his 60+ colleagues. After a raid the team had been working all day looking through financial records in connection to reports of insurance fraud. Sometimes things are as they seem to be. Check out Snopes for the full story.

// Jules Manning