Archive | 11:52 am

Picture Postcard Thursday- Staten Island Boat Graveyard

17 Mar

March 17, 2011- midday

You may have heard of this. On Staten Island there is a place where old boats go to die. The inlet is littered with rusty wrecks so thick that at some places you can walk on them.

Google it for more info. It isn’t too easy to get to. On this particular day a friend and I decided to see some S.I. urban decay and of course, as is becoming usual with these stories, we picked the worst possible day. A storm hit that was so severe that parts of Staten Island lost power. Other parts were flooded. During the worst of the storm we were walking around- OK, trespassing in an abandoned insane asylum. I did not make that up. (And for some reason I actually miss her.)

To take the first of these pics we walked into a gravel company yard and after asking for permission, and being told in no uncertain terms to get the Hell out of there, we took a few pictures anyway. Not smart. There were some angry (and wet, it was raining) and very burly men heading our way so I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and valiantly got out of Dodge. The others were taken from an overgrown lot next door.

We never did find the entrance to the graveyard but we made up for it in sheer wet. I was drenched by the end of the day.

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Have 250 Milliliters of Coke And a Smile.

17 Mar

March 17, 2011

Once again they’ve changed the way they present calorie information on packages. Until recently it was good enough if it was on the package in a standardized nutritional display. Now the push is to put it on the front of the packages. Soda bottles are leading the charge.

What’s the point? No one drinks Coke for their health, and if they’re worried about calories they drink diet soda. I have no problem with displaying the nutritional information but it comes to a point where it simply gets insulting. Is it too hard to turn the bottle? Do we really need it shoved in our faces? Has anyone complained that one inch and 90 degrees is too far away?

Of course, all of this assumes that the bottle will be facing you in the cooler. If isn’t, then what happens? Will they design a bottle that rotates itself?

HL Mencken once said the no one has gone broke underestimating the intelligence of the public, and I’ve done my share of it too. And I’m about to do some more. The label, in nice big figures, says 110 calories/250 ml. So for every 250 milliliters there are 110 calories. Fair enough, but it is in a 591 ml bottle. Therefore, the bottle is not 110 calories, as they hope the public will think, it is really 260. A more honest label would tell you the total calories in the bottle. Like it or not, no one will do the math. and if they do, who measures out 110 milliliters?

Remember when you could go out and buy a soda in a small cup that was actually small? Today a small, if you find one, is about the size of a Volkswagen.

Again, I think it is great to give people all the nutritional information they need to make informed decisions. I dislike the fact that this label assumes we are too stupid to figure it out without having everything brought down to the lowest common denominator and shoved down out throats. I find it insulting.

 

The bottle of the future.

 

 

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