bookofjoe

Planter's Mixed Nuts — It all depends on what the meaning of 50% is

Robert L. Wolke, in his "Food 101" column in yesterday's (January 10, 2006) Washington Post Food section, wrote the following:

"Peanuts are the cheapest of all nuts in the United States, a fact that has spurred the packers of Planters Mixed Nuts to note on the can that it 'Contains less than 50% peanuts.' But that's by weight. If you examine the contents, you will find that two-thirds of all the nuts are peanuts."

Variously attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, Mark Twain and others is the famous saying, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

You decide which type the Planters note is.

But maybe you need more information.

No problema.

My crack research team went deep and returned with something truly wonderful: a detailed, copiously photo-illustrated, step-by-step examination of the contents of a can of Planter's Mixed Nuts by people who — unlike me — clearly have too much time on their hands.

Long story short: Planters is not just being deceptive but out-and-out lying: there were over 50% peanuts by weight, measured by a team of crack nut scientists.

As opposed to a crack research team.

But I digress.

As any good scientists would do, they repeated the experiment with a second can: same result.

You can study the details of this superb research on peanut percentage right here.

The photo at the top of this post illustrates the results better than a thousand words possibly could.

On another note entirely: want to know what's it's like to put out a blog?

90% of the time it's equivalent to counting the number of peanuts in a can.

Maybe 95% of the time, now that I think about it.

Gimme that cashew.

What?

You ate it?

Would I care for a peanut instead?

What do you think?

Pants Stretcher — 'Eliminate Ironing'

Hey, I did that years ago and I didn't even know about this nifty invention.

But perhaps you prefer a real crease to a faint suggestion of one.

I feel your knife-edge pain.

From the website:

Pant Stretcher

Eliminate ironing!

Save time and effort with our easy to use Pants Stretcher.

Wash your pants, slip a pants stretcher into each leg, adjust to a snug fit and your pants will have a "just ironed" look.

Fits adult sizes up to 38" x 13".

Use for jeans, cords or chinos.

Rust-resistant steel.

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$7.98 (pants included? Don't get me started...).

A note on convergence

It's been clear to me for years that Bernie Ebbers, back in the day of WorldCom, had it right from the get-go when he declared that his company's goal was to transmit "Voice, Data, Video."

I'll add: "Anywhere Anytime to/from Anyone."

And that will nicely wrap up the next five years of telecom news.

Oh, sure, every day we see breathless stories with headlines like "Verizon Wireless Unveils Live TV Broadcasts to Cell Phones," "

They'll continue to take up space because people like to see concrete evidence of progress being made.

So stuff like "A Personal Computer To Carry In A Pocket" will remain New York Times Business section front-page news.

Guess what?

It's all bits travelling to and from screens and microphones and cameras.

Whether the screens are an inch or ten feet across is trivial, in the purely mathematical sense.

We already know how this story ends: the rest is just details like the iPhone and its successors.

But there are billions of dollars to be made along the way by paying close attention to those details.

Sure, "Yahoo Introduces Mobile Service Software" is quite important to Motorola, whose phones will come preloaded with Yahoo's "Go for Mobile 2.0" software.

To you and me, it's no biggie — nor should its ilk over the next few years be.

Now, "It from bit" is an entirely different kettle of fish.

How do you spell "CAD?"

Give me a holler circa 2010 — "Anywhere Anytime to/from Anyone" — and tell me I wasn't right on the money.

In a figurative sense.

I'm still trying to figure out the literal one to my best advantage.

I'm slow — but like Timothy the tortoise, I eventually do arrive.

I wonder if I can trademark AAt/fA?

Why the heck not?

AAt/fA™.

That wasn't so hard, was it?

Ugly as heck, though, I must say.

Better send it back to my skunk works for some reshaping, what?

Got fire? Too bad you don't have a PyroBlanket

From the website:

Kitchen PyroBlanket

Snuffs Kitchen Flare-Ups In Seconds

PyroBlanket is the best way to snuff sudden kitchen fires and flare-ups, protecting your home without the damage and mess that fire extinguishers cause.

It’s so easy to use: simply unfold the blanket and throw it over the flames.

PyroBlanket’s high-performance fabric has been thoroughly tested to meet the standards of the National Fire Protection Association; it won’t burn or emit toxins when hot — and it’s reusable.

.....................

What makes this tool especially useful is that long after your fire extinguisher has expired — go ahead, I dare you, check the expiration date on yours: if it's still valid I'll send you a $2 bill. But I digress... — the blanket will still snuff out your grease fire.

I must say, though, that the lady up top about to snuff what looks pretty much like an everyday occurrence here at chez bookofjoe — I mean, how do you spell Bananas Foster? — seems a little quick on the draw.

$49.95 (for the PyroBlanket, not the Bananas Foster, booboo).

Google — 'Calculated Simplicity'

Albert Einstein would have approved.

After all, he once remarked, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

Alan Sipress wrote an October 3, 2006 Washington Post Business section front-page story about the "calculated simplicity" of Google's home page ever since the beginning.

You can read it here but I found the proof of the pudding —

in the form of a sidebar slideshow series of WayBack Machine-like images from the get-go — far more compelling.

The earliest appears up top and successive iterations follow.

In order, they hail from December 1998; May 1999; June 2001; February 2002; February 2003; August 2004; March 2005; and October 2006.

$85 a share seems like a steal now, doesn't it?

What is it?

Answer here this time tomorrow.

'A Dream Come True' — by Julie Myerson

The Financial Times Saturday "Home is Where..." columnist last weekend brought us her best yet.

As a girl Ms. Myerson was enchanted with Daphne Du Maurier (above); she writes, "Du Maurier was my heroine."

Her column tells the story of a unlikely series of events which led to her being invited first to speak at the annual Du Maurier Festival in Fowey, Cornwall, and then to dinner by Du Maurier's son at the novelist's long-time home.

Here's the piece.

A dream come true

Most of my teenage summers, we’d go to my stepfather’s sailing boat, which was moored in the estuary at Fowey in Cornwall. I loved and hated these holidays. I loved falling asleep at night rocked by the water and waking in the pink chill of dawn to hear the masts clinking and to smell the strange saltwater and petrol smell. I loved the cramped cabins and nylon sleeping bags and general adventurous inconvenience. I really adored rowing ashore to get provisions and feeling like Nancy in Swallows and Amazons.

But I hated it when we left the safety of the harbour and set sail. I hated the panicky flapping of the sails when we “went about”, the moment when the boat lurched and tilted right over as if it was about to capsize. I hated everything about sailing even though I adored, and still do adore, the sea.

Luckily I had something else to distract me in Fowey. I was in love. The object of my affections wasn’t a boy but something far more solid and enticing and mysterious: a house. A really fascinatingly beautiful and perfect house. I spent every spare moment — when I wasn’t being forced to risk life and limb on the water — curled wistfully in the hull of our boat, from where I could gaze uninterrupted at its delicious, creeper-clad face.

And it watched me, too. It stared back at me from across the water. First thing in the morning its face was in shadow but by late afternoon sun had crept all over it and turned it gold. And it stayed like that — lit-up and smiling — until the sun dropped behind the cliffs and the sky went dark.

Even without the romance of a history, this house would have been beautiful but it wasn’t just any old house. This was the house that the novelist Daphne Du Maurier’s family had bought in the 1920s, the place where I knew she’d once lived and written her first novel.

Du Maurier was my heroine. I’d read every word she’d written and then, when I’d finished doing that, I’d sent her a letter, care of her publishers, to inform her that I too was going to be a famous novelist. She wrote back warmly and politely. Completely forgetting that she might have other fans to reply to, I wrote straight back. She didn’t disappoint me. Over two or three years we corresponded several times and I still have all the letters and postcards. One of them reads “Well done on your O-level [examination] results!” (Did I really bore the poor woman with a summary of my grades?) Another letter mentions her beloved Menabilly, the house that surfaced in her books. “I hope you find your dream house one day,” she wrote. “Menabilly was mine.”

Well this house across the water was my dream house and at 15 or 16 I was reconciled to the idea that this was as close as I would ever get to it. And then, 30 years later, all that changed. I was asked by Virago, a company re-issuing Du Maurier’s novels, to write an introduction to Frenchman’s Creek. I was honoured and excited, though I so wished Du Maurier had still been alive. I’d have given anything to let her know that the Nottingham schoolgirl she so generously corresponded with was, if not exactly a “famous” novelist, still a proper enough one to be allowed to introduce her work.

When the book came out, I was asked to speak at the Du Maurier Festival, which takes place in Fowey every year. Of course I said yes. What fun to go back there, show my husband all my old teenage haunts. “Oh, and by the way,” added the publicist who was organising the trip, “we’ve all been invited to dinner at Daphne du Maurier’s son’s place. It’s that lovely house across the water.”

My heart flipped.

It was an early evening in May when the ferry took us over there. I smelled petrol and salt-water, heard the familiar clink of masts. When we stepped ashore on the other side, I remember that there was still sun on the face of the house — lit-up, smiling at me. I smiled back, in a trance.

What can I tell you about that night? I remember drinks in a long, low room overlooking the water and I remember glancing out and noticing the spot where my stepfather’s boat would have been so many years ago. I remember faces around a long dinner table, laughter, the warmth and generosity of Kits Du Maurier and his wife, the fact that I kept on wanting to pinch myself. Maybe best of all was the moment when I went up to use the toilet and found myself alone for several delicious minutes on the dark landing with so many Du Mauriers staring at me from the photographs on the wall. I just stood there and breathed.

We caught a very late ferry back across the water, waved our goodbyes in the suddenly chilly night. And then, back at our hotel, I couldn’t hold it in any longer, I burst into tears. My husband — amused and surprised — asked me what on earth the matter was. I found I couldn’t really tell him. I think the person who was sobbing was the 15-year-old girl lost somewhere inside me, who would have given anything back then to know that one day she really would be a guest in the house across the water.

Alkaline Battery Xtender

From the website:

Alkaline Battery Life Xtender

Recharge your batteries, don’t throw them away

Recharge any combination of AA, AAA, C and D size alkaline batteries.

Also safely recharges nickel cadmium, titanium, zinc carbon and nickel metal hydride batteries.

You can leave fully-charged batteries in the charger indefinitely, without damage, so they’re always ready.

Each individual station shuts off automatically when battery is fully charged.

So, stop throwing away batteries that you only thought were dead!

A typical flashlight battery can be recharged up to 36 times.

Plugs into standard 115-volt wall outlet.

NOT for 9-volt or lithium batteries.

Built-in battery testing station.

.....................

I say again: NOT for 9-volt or lithium batteries.

$39.95.

Are batteries included?

Well, stop a sec and think about it.

You're not naive: this isn't your first visit here — and if perchance it is, then welcome, stranger, you're a stranger no more... but I digress — and you know that this seems to be a repeated bone of contention in every single product that draws energy from batteries.

Hey, joe, just answer the question, will ya?

We've got places to go, things to do, we're important people.

Sorry.

My bad.

It's easy to forget what being important means when it's the least of your concerns.

But I've digressed yet again.

Okay, then: my best guess (99+% likelihood) is that batteries are not included with the Battery Xtender.

Now go do what needs doing.