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Miscellaneous

Boycott Coke

All is not well with Coke.

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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.

Lottery Ticket Found

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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.

 

 

 

New Blog

Well, here's our new-fangled blog. I got tired of doing the old one by hand. It was OK, but it wasn't convenient and was going to take way too much work for me to get it like I wanted it. So I thought I'd give Movable Type a try. If I decide to stick with it, then I'll move all the content from the old blog here eventually.

Ford Pulls Ads

From a story in The Washington Post:

Ford Motor Co. said it will stop running ads for its Jaguar and Land Rover brands in the gay press, helping to avoid a confrontation with conservative Christians but setting up a fight with gays and lesbians. The American Family Association, a conservative religious group, launched a boycott of Ford this year for extending marriage benefits to same-sex couples and giving "thousands of dollars to support homosexual groups and their agenda," the group said in written statement. The group criticized Ford for supporting gay commitment ceremonies and gay pride parades... Ford is the latest company to be ensnared in the culture wars over homosexuality, religion and American culture. Microsoft Corp. became a target of religious groups this year for its support of a Washington state bill to ban discrimination against gays and lesbians. The company withdrew its support for the bill, saying it was not caving to pressure but wanted to avoid taking a stand on a politically sensitive issue. After protest by employees, Microsoft reinstated its support for the anti-discrimination bill. Ford became a target of the American Family Association in May. The association was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of a United Methodist church in Mississippi at the time. It claims to be one of the largest pro-family organizations in the country with nearly 3 million supporters. The association owns 200 radio stations under the American Family Radio name, according to its Web site. In the past, the group has targeted Walt Disney Co. for extending benefits to gay couples and criticized the Fox television series "Boston Public" for sexually oriented story lines.

This, to me, is distasteful. It seems like bullying, meddling.

Chimpanzee Attack

I heard about this story in a segment of Science Friday, and it really struck me. Ferocity of chimpanzee attack stuns medics, leaves questions.

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