Sherlock Homeboy

Maximilian Gravenstein. No. It should be Maximillionaire Gravenstein. Its a little longer, longer than it already is, but I'd be totally good with that.

That's right folks, I should be a millionaire but I was cheated by the chip. Lay's Potato Chips. I did them a favor by giving them a flavor idea. And they took it from me.

Lay's has a potato chip flavor of the wavy variety out right now called Greek Tzatziki. This flavor is a part of their Lay's Passport to Flavor promotion. During Lay's Do Us A Flavor promotion in early 2014 I submitted Tzatziki as a flavor. 

I don't have a million dollars. So I did a little investigating. 

via GIPHY

By investigation I mean I made one phone call.

"Your call may be monitored for quality assurance"
[elevator music plays softly]
*10 seconds later*
[music stops]
- Customer service, my name is [I forgot the name] how can I help you?
- Yeah hi, I think you guys have a Tzatziki flavor out right now
- That's correct. We do.
- So in 2014 I created a Tzatziki flavor for Do Us a Flavor and nothing happened. What do I do?
- Do you mind holding?
- No not at all.
- Let me check on that for you.
[Elevator music plays softly]
*3 minutes later*
[music stops]
- Are you still there?
- Yes.
- Ok. So ... I just checked on it and it looks like you signed a contract when you submitted your flavor. Which said that if you weren't one of the finalists they have the right to use your idea in the future.
- So basically because I didn't win, they have the intellectual property of my idea and can make money off of it.
- Yup.
- Ok. I appreciate you looking into it *silent tears*
- Have a nice day
- You too *silent tears*

Wow. They played me. But not really, they used a perfectly legal contract that I didn't read. Today's immediate lesson is to READ the contract. Now this isn't just a pity party, I decided I would also try the flavor.

Just for reference: Tzatziki is a greek sauce made of yogurt, dill, cucumber, and garlic that you eat with grilled meats

I put the crispy, pleated, paper-thin chip onto my tongue. *CRUNCH* *MUNCH* *CRUNCH* I looked around pondering the flavor profiles. HMMMM! Its like sour cream and onion but less tangy and more flat. Cardboard with an aftertaste of cucumber and garlic. I get my sister to try one. She hates it. I get my mom to try one. She is overall meh about it. (My dad eats the whole bag)

2/3 is pretty good. I'm relieved to know that the family consensus for "my" flavor is unfavorable. I'm happy that Lay's won't make too much money off of it. And I also disproved their old slogan: no one can eat just one ... until now.

Not Bad Apple

Evil Apple.

iPhone 7

The big takeaway: no more headphone/earbud jack, now earpods.

I'm not ragging on Apple. Samsung is not much better with its exploding Note 7's. I'm talking about obsolescence. (Watch if you have some time)

Planned obsolescence. It's what Apple does. Even if McIntosh didn't start the trend.

Planned Obsolescence
noun
the policy of deliberately limiting the life of  a product in order to encourage the purchaser to replace it.
 
General Motors started the trend. Our government saved these evil masterminds in 2009. Anyway... that's for another blog. So GM decided in 1924 to start making new models every year. The whole marketing scheme fueled from jealousy.

via GIPHY

The coinage of the phrase goes to Barnard London in 1932. He used the phrase to describe a way for America to get out of the Great Depression. London thought that the government should require the obsoletion of products after an artificially defined period of time. This would then hopefully increase consumer spending, leading to an increase in aggregate demand and eventually an increase in GDP.

In Vance Packard's 1960 criticism of capitalism, "The Waste Makers." He blames businesses for making us poor, unhappy (always wanting newer, more functional products), and wasteful. Packard helpfully divides planned obsolescence into two categories, obsolescence of desirability and the obsolescence of function.

Apple likes to promote the obsolescence of function in their products to make people buy their newest thing. They like to get people to install iOS updates on their older iPhones. This makes your phone really laggy and your battery doesn't last as long. New phone. Then there's this thing. They make their products with tamper resistant screws so you can't easily repair your own machine. If it breaks it breaks And if you happen to spill liquid on your keyboard. You're screwed. Its not covered by the warranty plan. New machine. They switched from microUSB to the proprietary lightning charger. UNIVERSAL serial bus, no longer universal. Just to get you to buy more of their stuff.

There is some aspect of the promotion of the obsolescence of desirability. They roll out with new iPhones every year. These unveiling events have a lot of hype. After the event people go to wait in line at the nearest Apple store. New machine. People get jealous. New machines.

The last straw. On the new iPhone 7, although its faster and water resistant and has a little better camera and battery life, doesn't have a headphone jack. You can just buy our earpods. They get rid of something that's useful to get you to buy more of their own products. Its not a conspiracy its a fact! (What all conspiracy theorists say.)

Rant, much?

The above are why I don't use iPhones and never will use iPhones. I prefer the "people-sourced" android phones. They won't switch the most common connection on me. There aren't hyped unveiling events. So no one get jealous over which model you have. They're much easier to repair.

Obviously?

Obviously
adverb
1. in a way that is easy to understand; evidently
2. without subtlety
3. (sentence modifier) it is obvious that; clearly

Thanks to my friends at Collins English Dictionary for the definition.

So I'm sitting in my math class, trying to figure out what my professor is saying, in his accent, and the implications of what he's saying. We're going over the epsilon delta definition of a limit, a difficult concept to understand. "Wee well obviously choos a epseelon eequel to 1, to satisfy deltah." After that, I was done taking notes. I was just going to read the textbook. (Not the smartest move on my part)

I still don't have a concrete understanding of it. But I can understand him a little bit better. Progress.

I'm not quite sure how common it is for professors to say obviously or of course, but I imagine you've experienced it before. I think I may be able to begin to clear up the frustration by laying out the role of the professor and the role of the student.

The professor's role is to teach (interesting article from CMU), do research and contribute to the college community. The professor organizes old knowledge to teach it to their classes. The professor compiles and analyzes new results from their own research and adds it into the big picture of their subject.  Without the professor, there wouldn't be anyone to analyze their own specialized results. The professor is also to be a role model in the way they behave (New York Times). Influencing students to be studious and well-mannered.

The role of the student is to learn and to develop their skills and knowledge about themselves (Dr. Louis Joughin). This knowledge is then to be applied to something greater than themselves.

via GIPHY

We're done with the boring part!

Professors think their subjects are easy (at an introductory level). And they should. They've dedicated their entire lives to their subjects. Students on the other hand are in the class to learn. If I thought everything being taught in the class were obvious I would obviously be in a different class where I could learn. ARRRRRRGGGGH!

via GIPHY

Its as frustrating as...

But hey, maybe I'm interpreting it wrong. Maybe he was holding the class to such a high standard that he already expected us to have a general idea about the information.

Either way it wasn't a very good use of the word obviously.

Bad use of obviously:
"Coldplay fans are the best in the world. If you like Coldplay then you're obviously very intelligent and good looking and all-around brilliant." - Chris Martin

That's really not apparent. I mean listen to this. The first 13 seconds don't agree with me.

Good use of obviously: none

I don't think anything is really obvious. No one understands everything in the exact same way. Something that's easy for one person can be really difficult for another person.

Food for thought. (I hope)

Walkxting Muses

The word muse. A double meaning.

In Ancient Greek mythology, a muse was anyone of nine sister goddesses. These sister goddesses were given the duty of protecting a specific art or science. It also means to ponder on, usually in silence. *pen drops in background* Thanks to Collins English Dictionary for the definitions.

With my blog I will think about the little things, although relatively unimportant to most, important to me. I also hope to protect the art of rhetoric and civic life. *Aggahagkasdf* Shameless plug. 

The weekly muse, not the news.

So class lets out and you're walking (or #rolling in my case) down East Pollock Road. And what do you see? Well, maybe you don't even notice it anymore. As they're walking, students, necks strained, heads down, staring at their back-lit smart boxes.

walkx*ting
verb
     to walk while texting.
     "He was walkxting when he fell down a man-hole."

This is a problem. I'm sitting at the back of a big, steep lecture hall. The responses to the last clicker question are entered. Class is over. People start gushing out of the doors. And so I wait until the gushers have gushed. Now I think its time to make a break for it. I start getting into position to exit, the gush has now subsided to a trickle. They look at their phones. Climb three stairs. Look at their phones. Climb three stairs. And I don't want to cut in front for fear they'll end up in my lap. So I wait. The trickle is now more like a drip. And I'm able to sneak out.

It may seem like a selfish thing for me to be preaching about. But there are real dangers to walkxting.

Like not noticing gorillas in fedoras.


Or getting hit by a bus...

via GIPHY (I have two sisters)

That escalated quickly. When you text and walk you pay less attention to your environment and you're more prone to tripping and falling and getting hit by buses. Let's look at the facts. According to the Governor's Highway Safety Association, pedestrian fatalities peaked this year over the past 40 years. Pedestrian fatalities increased 10% this past year. YIKES! Smart phones are to blame, well sort of...

When Thomson/Reuters asked for an explanation for the increase in fatalities by a co-author of the report, Richard Retting, says that the increase in fatalities coincide with an improving economy and decreasing gas prices. For any of you taking macroeconomics, this would lead to increased discretionary spending. And it goes like this: parents start buying more cars for their teenage kids. Teenagers are at the greatest risk for car accidents. An increased number of people are more interested in their phones than their lives or the lives of others.

Smush. (I won't end all my blogs this morbidly)