Wisdoma by Brian Kindsvater

For months – years in fact – we’ve been hearing about how Sacramento County does not have any money, has a huge budget deficit, needs to lay off non-managers, and so on.

Now the yearly State Fair is upon us.

Animals. Rides. Fried Twinkies. Fun to be had by all.

Sacramento County inspectors will be out in full force. Not to make sure rides are safe. Not to make sure people are having a good time.

But to inspect over 150 food vendors to make sure there are no artificial trans fats in any food they may sell.

The Sacramento county food inspectors will be testing anything cooked in oil, any food that is not baked or pre-made such as hamburger buns, pre-prepared box mixes, and batter.

Just keep this in mind whenever you hear the County squealing about budget problems.

The money is there. It’s just a matter of prioritizing what you want to spend it on.

It used to be that all my Internet searches were with Google. But the last couple months have seen a drastic change in Google – none for the better.

Now, Bing gets most of my searches. Then Yahoo. Finally Google – mainly just because I’ve used the service for so long and still feel some need just to ‘check it’.

I have even changed the primary search engine in my Firefox browser from Google to Bing.

How did this happen? Changing from the ‘no evil’ startup Google back to the corporate borg Microsoft.

– Relevancy. Google is simply not returning as relevant of search results. It appears Google has lost its way while trying to diving what every searcher is “really” searching for. How about: exactly what I am searching for. Not what some computer thinks I should be searching for.

Google still shows more results. But more of what? Irrelevant pages which only seem to make using Google feel even more useless.

I’m not referring to spam or junk pages, although there is plenty of that on Google. The results are clearly not as relevant as they were a year ago.

I’ve done many searches and found Bing and Yahoo have similar, but not identical results. They do a good job returning primarily relevant results.

Google? It’s now from another planet.

– Poor details about search results. This is harder to articulate, but the informational snippets from pages Google is showing in its search results are often unintelligible. A mass of gobbledy-gook on the page.

– Junk all over the search results page. Google used to have a nice clean interface. Just search results. Now, it is mainly ads, menus and submenus of options and more menus, and then some results.

– Google’s Ego interferes with its results. Have you noticed that more and more of the search results are simply pages Google owns? For instance, medical searches. Google now shows at the top a page from Google. A page of information that is merely copied from a federal website. Ouch. The Google of old would have had as its top listing the actual federal website so a searcher would directly go to the most relevant information.

Now, Google thinks of itself as another website to compete with all other websites – instead of a world class search engine directing people to the most relevant information.

It’s not just medical searches. There are only 10 search results shown by default on the first page of Google. Between Google’s own pages. Google’s books. Google’s products. Google’s news. Google’s YouTube videos. There isn’t much space left for the billions of web pages.

Apparently, Google search is becoming a search of Google.

Google has become the new evil. Bing is now focused on quality for its customers.

Maybe Google should focus on search instead of the 100s of other products it has become involved with that now demand its attention and resources.

Is “terrible” too strong a word?

I thought this was a current book, created now in 2010 with ‘Megatrends’ projections for the next decade. I read the original Megatrends, thought it was really good, so was anxious to read the 2010 version.

Wrong was I.

Megatrends 2010 was published in 2005. Meaning it was written in 2004.

That’s OK. Perhaps better as one should now be able to see clearer some of the effects and truthfulness of the new Megatrends.

Unfortunately, all that has been proven is that this book is a bunch of liberal, Ivy-league, idealistic clap with little mooring to reality.

The premise of the book is that the Age of Information is dead. Gone. No longer exists.

Now, we have the age of “Conscious Capitalism” by which companies seek to maximize the common good for all people on the planet – and not profits.

Yeah, right.

Imagine if you will, a college student writing an essay. And then (trying to appear smart) going through and changing every other word so it is at least three syllables. The more syllables the better. The more amorphous and ‘enlightened sounding’ the better. No sentence is less then three lines long. Each paragraph includes references to transformation, consciousness, spirituality, etc. (Not just one of these terms – all of them.)

In other words: unreadable.

After slogging through much of this mess, it becomes quickly apparent (before page 1) that this is a morass of utopian ideas – such as the need to save capitalism (which is dying) by corporations becoming more socially conscious of their empirical and not theoretical need to transform the spirituality of consumers for the ethical advancement of humankind. [Hee, hee – just had to throw in the type of writing this book uses for the fun of it 🙂 ]

Needless to say, I was a little surprised – having remembered that I enjoyed Megatrends so many years ago. Turns out, the author of Megatrends 2010, Patricial Aburdene, is the ex-wife of the author of Megatrends (John Naisbitt). Or, as she put it, a co-collaborator.

That’s fine. But this book is not about future trends. It is not about trends proven true that few years. OK, I’ll give the book a bone. Everyone is calling themselves “green” – but not due to increased spirituality and increased participation in yoga. (For some reason, the author refers to yoga a lot. Apparently, everyone is doing it.)

Hey, this blog is green. I’ll call it that to get you to read it. Or to sell a product. That doesn’t mean “conscious capitalism” exists.

FYI: The Age of Information is not dead. Capitalism is not dying. Rather, just the opposite is true. I will not be buying any more books from Ms. Aburdene.

There is a story that sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican”, according to the Holy See’s chief exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth.

Father Amorth apparently became an exorcist in 1986, and has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession.

That’s a lot of demons.

Since the Times Online in London, where the story came from, was too lazy to consider what was being claimed, let us help them out.

70,000 cases over 25 years is 2800 per year. Working 365 days a year, that is 7.7 cases per day, every day, for 25 years.

Of course, ‘dealt with’ does not necessarily mean a full-bore investigation and exorcism – although Father Amorth is an exorcist and not an investigator.

Either the math is wildly wrong, as in 70,000 is too high a figure – or maybe the Vatican needs more exorcists as it appears to be a losing battle.

According to the article, anything bad that happens is the work of the Devil.

But more importantly – WHERE ARE THE EXORCISMS OF THE PEDOPHILE CATHOLIC PRIESTS? Surely if this is the work of the Devil, a top priority would have been exorcising the Devil out of priests.

Sooo, right smack in the middle of a huge public discussion about health care, insurance costs, bills in Congress to regulate costs and providing health care, and demands by the President, the tone-deaf idiots at Wellpoint, owners of Anthem Blue Cross, decide to raise insurance rates in California by up to 39 percent. Let’s call it honestly – 40 percent.

Does the company have a death wish?

Now, it has no rate increase. My prediction – it never will get anything more than a token increase.

Publicity is now trained on this company and its billions in profits. It had a 50+ increase percent in profits during the last year – a year when supposedly the country was in the great recession.

In February 2009 Anthem Blue Cross in California had to reinstate a couple thousand members and pay a one million dollar fine. Why? Because it was dropping subscribers once they got sick and had expensive care.

And of course the California Insurance Commissioner is publicizing 700 recent legal violations by Blue Cross, and that fines of up to $10,000 per violation will be sought. That is $7 million in potential fines. Here’s hoping Wellpoint gets whacked. Another prediction: lots of lawyers are looking for potential angles to sue.

But that is nothing comparing to the whacking the company is about to take in Congress. If a bill is passed regulating health insurance at the national level, Wellpoint Anthem has only itself to blame. Instead of laying low they have pointed a huge bullseye on their back.

If you’re looking for a Laser Tag place in Sacramento, as I have been, there are surprisingly few options – and no directory of area locations. So here ya go!

Laser Tag of Carmichael – website – This appears to be the largest laser tag facility, and really the only one devoted just to laser tag in the Sacramento area. Phone: (916) 972 – 7395. Location: 6031 Fair Oaks Blvd, Carmichael, CA 95608.

Pricing: $5.25 per game.

Country Club Lanes – website – This is a bowling center known for its glow bowling, which also has a laser tag facility. Phone: (916)483-5105. Location: 2600 Watt Avenue, Sacramento, CA 95821.

Prices: $8 per game. Worth noting – the prices for bowling are ridiculous. Ever heard of bowling alley charging $55 per hour??

Lazer Knights – website – Golfland, which is really known as SunSplash, has a laser tag room. Pretty much an afterthought. Haven’t played there as never could find someone who was running the desk, games, etc. Phone: (916) 784-1273. Location: 1893 Taylor Rd, Roseville, CA 95661.

Price: $6.50 per game.

Lazer City – website – A little out of the area in El Dorado Hills (and make sure you get a good map for this place, on the backside of some commercial buildings), this is a very nice facility. Phone: (916) 939-8799. Location: 5037 Robert J. Mathews Parkway, El Dorado Hills Parkway, El Dorado Hills. Recommended.

Prices: $7 per game.

Ralph Lauren is in the news for using what appears to be a photoshopped ad of a model whose head is larger than her pelvis. Is that humanly possible?

It appears to be a vain effort to change the looks of its models to fool the public into buying its clothes – as in – photoshopping models to appear thinner to supposedly enhance the look of the clothing on a person.

But that was only the minor news. No one would have heard about it.

Until, Ralph Lauren’s stupid attorney (or maybe its Ralph Lauren’s ad agency’s stupid attorney), Roxanne Elings from GreenbergTraurig, started sending copyright infringement notices to websites displaying the questionable ad and talking about the propriety of photoshopping models in ads.

Then, like an attempt to ban a book, the story and ad went viral – appearing on Yahoo and all over the net. How many “banned” books, commercials, ads, etc., can you find on websites, YouTube, etc? Yep, it’s the dumbest tactic that almost always backfires.

Now, Ralph Lauren has a much bigger publicity problem.

First step, if I were Ralph Lauren, would be to fire Roxanne Elings.

Second step, models are already disproportionate in size to the average person buying the clothes. There is no need to photoshop ads.

Oh yeah, you can see the ad below and make up your own mind about it. Obviously, I’m not afraid of Roxanne Elings either. It is one thing of something is engaged in copyright infringement by copying material trying to profit from it.

It is quite another when a bad ad is displayed as an example of a bad ad, especially in the context of the ongoing debate about whether models are too thin (think European actions against rail thin models) or whether photoshopped fake pictures (think of the OJ magazine picture) should be permitted without a disclaimer and notice, and threats are made as a result.

Update:

Ralph Lauren has issued this apology:

“For over 42 years we have built a brand based on quality and integrity. After further investigation, we have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman’s body. We have addressed the problem and going forward will take every precaution to ensure that the caliber of our artwork represents our brand appropriately.”

Burger King announced it is making over its restaurants to make them look ‘edgier’ – at a whopper of a cost at $500,000 per restaurant.

It had been about 7 years since I’ve eaten at a Burger King or McDonalds, but recently while on the road travelling I was really hungry. So I stopped in at a San Jose Burger King and ordered an original chicken sandwich.

My mistake.

Yuck. Tasted more like cardboard than food. It wasn’t food. Didn’t even taste like chicken. Just something to put in your stomach.

Please, if I ever feel like trying Burger King again stop me. They need a food makeover, not a seating makeover.