Four (or Five!) Reasons Why

1. For the most part, anything that your employer provides for free is unhealthy - soft drinks, chips, pretzels and candy just load you up with sugar and salt all day long. Of course, it’s cheaper to supply these things than having to pay for fruit, juices and vegetables.

2. Since free food and drinks are always around, it is impossible to ignore or resist them. Under normal circumstances, chocolate-covered pretzels would have little or no appeal but if they’re staring you in the face every time you go into the kitchen, your defenses eventually break down. Next thing you know, you’ve gobbled half the box.

3. It ruins your appetite for regular meals. Why eat lunch after you’ve had a pile of pretzels, some jujubes and an ice tea (complete with eight teaspoons of sugar!) as a mid-morning “snack”. And you know that dinner won’t look as appealing when the late-afternoon munchies have caused you to consume a bag of in-office chips.

4. Free food and drink are just more ways to kill productivity. It’s bad enough leaving the office for coffee and/or lunch, spending time on personal e-mail, eBay, Facebook and Twitter. But having food and drink in the office wastes even more time as you shuttle back and forth between your desk and the kitchen.

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1. Both baseball and cricket games take way too long. For baseball, a fast game these days takes about two-and-a-half hours, but often easily reaches well past three hours. Cricket, baseball’s illegitimate step-brother (or is it the other way around?), sees games range anywhere from one to five days. Who has that much time to watch? And how fulfilling can a sport be for spectators when after four days, it all ends in a tie? Honestly.

2. For both sports, players stand around doing nothing most of the time. There’s a lot of tossing the ball back-and-forth in both, and the occasional hit, but I would be very surprised if the total length of actual play was longer than a few minutes. Having said that, the players must get tired  - baseball players apparently need a seventh-inning stretch and cricketers need a break for tea and cucumber sandwiches.

3. The season is way too long for both sports. Fans never really get a chance to rest and recharge before training camps gear up again. While cricket generally has a shorter domestic season, international play means that there’s always a game going on. For baseball, the 162-game season means that there is a game almost every night for half the year. This doesn’t even include the playoffs. What fan can possibly watch 162 games? And how can players keep up the intensity over that span of games?

4. The games are mired, or buried, in statistics. Defenders of the games will argue that there a lot of strategy and the numbers are imperative to the game. But how exciting can the game really be if you have to spend more time mining for data than you would watching.

5. Cheerleaders. There are no cheerleaders.

Forget watching. Get off your ass. Get out there and do it.

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1. Food prices around the world are soaring. Between February 2007 and 2008, prices jumped 39%. Among the reasons cited are demand from China, India and other emerging economies, rising costs for fuel and fertilizer, and climate change.

2. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 37 countries may be facing a food crisis as prices for wheat and rice climb. After the price of rice hit a record high, the Philippines, the world’s largest rice importer, urged China, Japan and other Asian nations to convene an emergency meeting on the region’s food crisis to try and reverse export curbs.

3. IMF managing director Dominique Struass-Kahn said if the food crisis is not averted, “Hundreds of thousands of people will be starving. Children will suffer from malnutrition with consequences on all of their lives.”

4. If food prices continue to stay high and people become desperate for food, it is likely that violence will result. There have already been riots in Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mauritania and the Philippines. Meanwhile, troops in Pakistan and Thailand have been deployed to stop the seizure of food from fields and warehouses.

For more insight, check out this op-ed piece in the New York Times by Paul Krugman, who suggests that “Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past.” As well, Eat.Drink.Better has some thoughts on how this food crisis was created.

Technorati Tags: Food

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1. Rough estimates show that about 25 million trees are cut down each year in China to product 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks, with nearly half being sold in the export market. While official statistics show that forests make up about 18% of China’s landmass, most have been converted to low quality forests. More so, over-utilization has led to a significant loss in biodiversity, soil erosion, frequent flooding, a decrease of natural forest area, and a decrease in agricultural productivity.

2. With the exception of Kwytza Kraft which makes products from recycled chopsticks (all apparently very hygienic), nearly every disposable chopstick ends up in the garbage. At first blush, you may not think that it’s a problem. But when you think of the billions and billions that are used around the world each year, and the money it takes to dispose of them, the volume and costs start to add up.

3. Disposable chopsticks are symbolic of the throw-away culture in which we live. Whether you opt out from the ones on offer from your local take-out or bring your own when you eat out, saying “no” serves as a reminder that everyone can take action in some form or another.

4. Saying “no” may eventually save you and your favourite restaurant money. While re-usable chopsticks may cost more up-front, the movement toward taxing disposables is on the rise. The Chinese government imposed a 5% tax on disposable wooden chopsticks in 2006 and it is only a matter of time before governments around the world realize that this is a great way to get some PR for taking environmental action, as well as another way to raise tax dollars.

5. Disposable chopsticks cause cancer. Ok, that’s totally untrue. But people use to think so. There was an urban myth going around that they are full of carcinogens, but Snopes does a good job of debunking that nonsense.

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1. If you’re a member of Google’s AdSense advertising program, it’s sold as a way to share revenue with bloggers. Truth be told, Google is reaping the majority of any revenue generated but it’s impossible to determine just how much because Google never discloses the details on how AdSense exactly runs.

2. Google is buying all the cool start-ups and/or moving into areas (e.g. blog search) where all the cool start-ups are operating. Buying start-ups is a great strategy to acquire smart people and innovative technology, and moving into exciting new areas just makes sense but is it good for the Web’s innovation ecosystem?

3. Google recently made DoubleClick employees sign a one-year non-compete agreement after completing the acquisition of the advertising network. Most DoubleClick people though this mean their jobs were secure. A week later, Google turns around and, according to ValleyWag, announces a bunch of layoffs. Nice.

4. Google likes to act like a bull in a china shop but hates it when others behave the same way. Look at the moaning and complaining it did when Microsoft announced plans to acquired Yahoo.

Technorati Tags: AdSense, Google

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