Jonathan's blog

All is not well with Coke.

First all, Coke seems to have abandoned C2, my favorite soft drink. WIth only 70 calories for a 12-ounce can (1/2 the calories of regular Coke), it doesn't taste "diet" and seemed to be to be a great compromise between taste and calories. However, it's sales have been disappointing and lately I haven't seen any in stores. I think it's dead. Secondly, a story in the New York times reports that the University of Michigan recently became the 10th college to boycott Coke "...because of concerns arising from accusations about the company's treatment of workers in bottling plants in Colombia and environmental problems in India."

Labor activists have said that Coca-Cola, through its Latin American bottlers, has been complicit in the deaths of eight union leaders and in continued harassment of unionized employees. In India, a different group of activists have accused Coke of polluting the soil and groundwater near several bottling plants, of severely reducing groundwater levels in drought-prone areas and of failing to install adequate filtration systems that would remove pesticides from the water used to make its products. Coke has denied all of the accusations. In April, the company announced the findings of a report by CSCC, a consulting firm in Los Angeles. The report, which was paid for by Coke, addressed current conditions, not the deaths, which occurred from 1989 to 2002. It found no violations or abuses of labor or human rights in Coke's bottling plants in Colombia. Unsatisfied, the University of Michigan and five universities that still sell Coke products have called for an independent investigation of both the Colombia and India situations. The University of Michigan had set today as a deadline for Coke to select an auditor and agree on the terms of the investigation. But talks between the company and the university broke down.

From a story in The Detroit News:

A year ago, prompted by a dream about his deceased parents, a Detroit father of two bought a pair of lottery tickets, stuck them in the pocket of his new coat and promptly forgot about them...That day, for the first time, he was wearing a leather coat that his wife had given him as a gift. Truth be told, he didn't care for the jacket. He stashed the tickets in the pocket, hung the coat in a hall closet and didn't give it another thought. His wife recently bought him a second jacket, but it still wasn't to his liking. So on Jan. 2, she told him to fish the second jacket out of the closet so she could return it. He told lottery workers that he was drawn, for reasons he couldn't explain, to the first leather jacket. Checking the pockets, he found the tickets, noticed they were about to expire and headed back to the store to compare his numbers -- 4, 5, 7, 10, 21 and 23 -- with the year-old winning numbers...Today, he's $573,815 richer after he and his wife showed up unannounced at lunchtime Monday at the Michigan Lottery headquarters to collect what had been billed as a $1.5 million winner. Had he appeared 4 1/2 hours later, the ticket would have been worthless...The nervous couple drove to Lansing on Monday to pick up their jackpot, opting for the one-time payout rather than the 30-year, $50,000-a-year installment option.

A quote from my Franklin Planner on MLK day:

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

According to an article in the Mail & Guardian Online:

A deeply pious Dutch businessman is well on his way to completing a faithful reconstruction of Noah's Ark in scaled down form on the basis of biblical texts, the Volkskrant newspaper reported on Thursday. Johan Huibers (47) plans to take his 70m vessel on a tour of the Dutch waterways once it is complete, hoping to set out in spring next year.

After church this morning we had lunch with the Wanous and Dresden families at the China Palace buffet. Then we went home and watched the Steelers-Colts game. My expectations weren't too high, so I was prepared for a Steelers loss. Then they jumped out to a dominating 21-3 lead. Then the Steelers and the refs tried to give the game to the Colts. We were thrilled to see the NFL's most -accurate kicker miss a 46-yard field goal to preserve the Steelers' win. It reminded me of last year's playoff game against the Jets, except the Steelers deserved to lose against the Jet's but benefited from missed field goals. Big Ben is now the first quarterback of the Super-Bowl-era to lead his team to the conference championship in both of his first two seasons.