Whole Foods is Nuts!
This product, Hand-Ease - which Whole Foods gives away for free - is a remarkable waste of natural resources, as well as money.
I couldn't figure out why there were cardboard disks at every register, so I had to ask the cashier. She proceeded to chuckle (acknowledging the silliness of the product) as she told me that they're intended to make it more comfortable to carry multiple heavy plastic bags - which often crease your hand... I asked her if they charge people for them (which would be consistent with them taking $0.05 off for each plastic bag you don't take) - she said no. I asked if many people use them & she laughed when saying "people love them!"
For a company that brands itself as an environmentally friendly, this is a disgusting & hypocritical move. They should take note of what was done today in San Francisco (the first city in the US, but far behind many other countries...) - where they passed a ban on plastic bags. Supermarkets will be required to offer paper bags or reusable cloth bags. By offering these discs, Whole Foods is going completely against the ban in San Francisco by making the use of plastic bags more convenient, rather than curbing it all together.
Note: After visiting Melbourne, Australia and Kingston, Ontario, I noticed a trend: everyone brought a cloth bag with them to the supermarket. Why? Because in Melbourne, they don't offer plastic bags, and in Kingston, if plastic bags are offered, you must pay $0.05 each. Since then, I started carrying a shoulder bag with me everywhere, and refuse the plastic bags no matter which store I'm at. You should try it too.
Labels: environmentalism, green, ridiculous
This entry was posted
on Mar 28, 2007 at 3/28/2007 10:31:00 PM.
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Israel Defending itself
I have one question maybe someone can answer. After 9/11, America went (with the full support of the world - both ideologically and militarily) to Afghanistan, and blew the shit out of that country. Note the US traveled half way around the world to do this - it was that high of a threat.
The logic was that Afghanistan had been hijacked by the Taliban, and that since the country couldn't do anything about the Taliban, the US and several other countries had to go in and take care of the problem.
Would civilians die? Yes. Would infrastructure be torn apart? Yes. Did anyone seem to care? Not really.
So, as for my question. With noting the facts above... How is the situation Israel is confronting now ANY DIFFERENT? Other than Hezbollah is still lobing bombs 9 days in a row, and is sitting on Israel's border, a few hundred feet away, not half a world away?
I've certainly developed more "left-leaning" ideas in the past few years... but in this case, where Israel was attacked for no reason other than what every "Arab Expert" is saying on TV "for their crimes committed since 1948"... what's going on now is outrageous.
It really makes me sick to see the news media give so much air time trying to dissect the questions of "is Israel responding too hard?" and "when will Israel stop?" and "will there be a ceasefire?"
These are totally inappropriate questions to be asking as long as Hezbollah continues to lob bombs, retain Israeli hostages, and be the instigator. Just as in Afghanistan, if Lebanon is unable to contain and control Hezbollah, they have no right to ask Israel to stop defending itself. Lebanon may not be directly responsible for Hezbolla's actions - mainly because they're not strong enough to combat Hezbollah - but they will suffer the consequences of harboring a terrorist entity.
Maybe if the UN, the EU, and the news media at large would focus on sending in their own forces to help Israel dismantle Hezbollah (as they did in the wake of 9/11), the fighting would stop, and Iran would get the same message the Saudis did - support terrorists and you'll feel the wrath of the world.
Labels: Human_Rights, Israel, ridiculous, war
This entry was posted
on Jul 20, 2006 at 7/20/2006 01:28:00 AM.
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Coordination? ummm not here
Someone is finally "C"ing the light!!
And others aren't!
Back when AOL bought TimeWarner, I was excited that TimeWarnerCable (TWC) would work with AOL to convert all of AOL's dial-up subs to be RoadRunner subs.
Well, that didn't happen. TWC stole customers from AOL, touting how much faster RoadRunner cable modems were than dial-up. All the while, AOL foolishly pushed forward with their dial-up model, and their expensive BroadBand option that was basically BroadBand with an AOL filter (which cost extra - but was required). It took them ~4 years to realize it was a mistake, and decided to make their service free. They firmly believed no subs would leave b/c no one wants to part with their "@aol.com" email address. Ha, what a joke. In Wednesday's First Quarter '06 report they write: "[AOL p. 3]: Revenues declined 7%... due to a 13% decrease in Subscription revenues..."
Fastforward to today - 5 years later, TimeWarnerCable is pushing their VoIP service. They're even touting it as a big revenue driver. In Wednesday's First Quarter '06 report they write: "[TimeWarnerCable p.3]... significant growth in Digital Phone revenues ($108 million)." So what does AOL do? Offer free VoIP, with a real phone number (sorta like Skype-In). I'd provide a link to AOL or TWX's sites with a news release, but I can't find anything. Let me know if you do.
And if you want to talk about competitive positioning among non-sister companies, somehow AOL always finds ways to be a day late and a few million dollars short. In this article they point out that as of last week, AOL has 80 million subs between AIM & ICQ. Skype has 100 million. This doesn't surprise me. For a week I've been trying to register a new AIM screen name for a project I'm working on. There's a bug in their system that won't let me do it - and there's no way to email them to tell them. You have to leave a message in a general message box that they don't respond to.
And this is precious; AOL is partnering with Clearwire to offer wireless broadband.
When is someone at TimeWarner going to get their children to play nicely together? This game of last man standing might be fun for the CEO's, but it's not fun for shareholders or employees.
Labels: commerce, ridiculous, synergy
This entry was posted
on May 5, 2006 at 5/05/2006 03:17:00 PM.
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This product, Hand-Ease - which Whole Foods gives away for free - is a remarkable waste of natural resources, as well as money.
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