Ramanisblog

Tag: McDonald’s

  • Shakespeare Tweets! Retweets

    Really innovative and were Shakespeare to Tweet what it would have been?

    Shakespeare
    Shakespeare (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    If Shakespeare was around today he would have undoubtedly used Twitter, and he probably would have loved this.

    It’s hard to imagine what it would be like to follow him. I suppose every now and then your feed would pop up with a little nugget of literary might that sends the re-tweet world into overdrive.

    While these poems are a far cry from his escalated word-smithery, they are still very entertaining.

    They are winding sonnets reflecting moods from around the world, touching on topics of the day, drawing individual thoughts and musings and entwining them into prose.

    They are made by a website — or automated system of some kind — that simply peruses the world of micro blogging, searching for iambic pentameter to piece together into sonnets.

    The site, Pentametron, simply says: “With algorithms subtle and discrete / I seek iambic writings to retweet.” Above winding tales of frenzied anecdotal narrative.

    It builds the sonnets by “digging through hundreds of thousands of tweets per hour,” looking for the rare few which happen to be written in the traditional construct. They are then posted on the Pentametron Twitter feed, and published on the website.

    It is a clever system, and a creative one too. The website explains how it works — in simple terms, thank goodness:

    “Pentametron takes each of the 30-60 tweets it receives each second, and looks up each word in a dictionary which lists the stress patterns of every word. If the rhythms of all the words put together seem to add up to iambic pentameter, Pentametron retweets the tweet. In the future, when it has more data to work with, it’ll start trying to create rhymes.”

    Such new-age media creativity rarely goes unnoticed, not when it is as interesting as this, and as comical, too. The poems are an eclectic mix of often random, usually trivial thoughts that alone stand forgotten; but together, make up some sort of story. They will be better still if and when they rhyme.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-barrie/pentametron-twitter_b_1417443.html?ir=Weird%20News

    With algorithms subtle and discrete
    I seek iambic writings to retweet.

    RT @kittyphilia
    about 1 minute ago
    in spiders eyes a man becomes a fly.
    RT @NelleJolie_
    about 5 hours ago
    Show me a lil appreciation please .
    RT @BonnieBlazin_
    about 7 hours ago
    You had the ball and couldn’t make the shot,,,
    RT @ayebroitskelly_
    about 8 hours ago
    No more procrastinating, shower time 😀
    RT @alexa_matos
    about 8 hours ago
    Hoes want attention, women want respect .
    RT @Just_BeinqLOVIE
    about 8 hours ago
    Im Getting Sleepy GoodNight FUCK THE BULLS . 🙂
    RT @jjjesssii
    about 8 hours ago
    I cannot get in.shower fast enough
    RT @YouAlreadySnoMa
    about 8 hours ago
    Love isn’t complicated , people are..
    RT @jamesespinoza94
    about 8 hours ago
    That was a really sloppy ending tho..
    RT @Co0oJay
    about 8 hours ago
    No flex… Chicago did the do tonight
    RT @smr1353
    about 8 hours ago
    Your just a little devil aren’t you?
    RT @TDA_11
    about 8 hours ago
    Bout to devour this McDonalds tho
    RT @Air_Ezy
    about 8 hours ago
    I wanna dance and love and dance again!
    RT @1DUpdatesAU
    about 9 hours ago
    to Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth!!!

    http://pentametron.com/

  • 12 Hilarious Corporate Attempts to Look Green

    When companies like Exxon-Mobil and McDonalds think “green,” they’re thinking of cash, not the earth. And after all, what matters to unscrupulous marketers isn’t so much the reality of their brand or product, but how the public perceives it – which often results in greenwashing so absurd, it’s almost funny. These 15 examples of extreme greenwashing range from woefully ignorant to downright malicious.

    1. McDonalds Literally Greenwashes its Logo

    McDonalds wants everyone to know they’re going green…ish. The fast food monster is swapping the red in their logo for green in an effort to convince Europeans that they care about the environment. To be fair, the company has made some important strides — like using environmentally-friendly refrigeration and converting used oil to biodiesel — but this is still fast food relying on distinctly un-green factory farms for their supplies, to say the least.

    As GreenBiz.com put it, “This strategy is essentially the textbook definition of greenwashing: Promoting green in the abstract, literally re-painting your signage with the color green, while simultaneously making sparse, vague claims about environmental action.”

    2. “Eco Smart” Hummer

    Recipe for a whale of a fail: Take one Hummer, the most environmentally unfriendly personal vehicle known to man. Plaster it with images of glistening green leaves and phrases like ‘EcoSmart’, which just happens to be the name of your company. Watch your company lose credibility instantaneously, and become an internet laughingstock among the very people you were hoping would become your customers.

    Even if this particular behemoth were somehow greener than your typical Hummer, that wouldn’t mean much – but would still be more forgivable than using one of these vehicles to advertise an “eco-smart” company.
    http://www.alternet.org/story/144557/12_hilarious_corporate_attempts_to_look_green

  • Junk food reigns in ads on Web sites for kids

    Junk food manufacturers must remember that they also have kids.Money earned by spoiling children’s ( for that matter any one’s) health is Sin Money.
    True, parents can not monitor mouse click of children.Solution lies with the Government, which could block this ads or penalize the companies, journalists/media and most importantly with the manufacturers with a conscience.

    Amy Norton
    Tue Dec 15, 2009 9:40am EST
    NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Advertisements for junk food may be cluttering many of the Web sites most popular with children, a new study suggests.

    When researchers examined 28 of the Web sites most frequented by children, they found that the majority of food products advertised there met experts’ criteria for “foods to avoid.”

    Ads for sugar-laden cereals, candy, soda or fast food populated a majority of the Web sites, which included sites one would not readily associate with food, like those run by Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network, among others, noted Dr. Lori Dorfman, director of the Berkeley Media Studies Group in California and one of the researchers on the study.

    In contrast, of the 77 advertised products across all the Web sites, only five were foods that children should be encouraged to consume, the researchers report in the American Journal of Public Health.

    Cartoon Network declined to comment on the study, and calls to Nickelodeon were not immediately returned. But a spokesperson for PBS Kids — cited for having “fast food brands represented” on its Web site — said that its representation in the study is “misleading.”

    PBS Kids does not accept advertising, and “it does not market food products to children,” said Lesli Rotenberg, senior vice-president of children’s media.

    Instead, the site carries, at the bottom of some pages, the logos of various PBS sponsors — which include fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A. “Children will never see an image of a food product,” Rotenberg said.

    She also noted that PBS Kids has Web pages — Fizzy’s Lunch Lab and Don’t Buy It — designed to teach kids about healthy eating and avoiding media influences, respectively.

    When it comes to the issue of media influences on children, TV ads have long been under fire for marketing junk food to children and teenagers.

    But the Internet has provided a whole new outlet for advertisers — and companies are expected to keep increasing the proportion of their spending devoted to online marketing, according to Dorfman’s team.

    “The public health implications are serious,” Dorfman told Reuters Health in an email, “because digital marketing such as what we found on Web sites popular with kids is much different than TV advertising, which caused the alarm in the first place.”

    “Digital marketing,” she argued, “is immersive, interactive and incessant — rather than 30 seconds watching a TV commercial, children are spending 20 minutes deeply engaged with the brand.”

    A recent study found that food manufacturers’ use of “advergames” — online games that companies use to boost traffic to their Web sites and promote their brands — may indeed influence kids’ eating choices.

    When researchers had children play advergames that focused on cookies and chips, the kids wanted those same foods afterward. But when the games featured fruit and orange juice, the children tended to want those foods for a post-game snack.

    For the current study, Dorfman and her colleagues assessed the nutritional quality of foods and beverages advertised on the 28 top children’s Web sites between July and August of 2007.

    Of the 77 products they found, 49 met the “foods to avoid” criteria set by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), an advisory body to the federal government. Another 23 products fell into the neutral category because they were neither junk foods nor nutritious enough to be encouraged; such products included lower-sugar cereals and certain baked snack foods.

    Only five of the advertised products — including oatmeal, milk and pure fruit juice — were foods that the IOM encourages children to eat.

    “Parents should be concerned because much digital marketing flies under their radar,” Dorfman said.

    But she also asserted that parents should not be given the job of monitoring the ads their kids see online.

    “The online environment is not like watching TV, something a family might do together,” Dorfman said. “It’s unreasonable, and unfair,” she added, “to think that parents could monitor every mouse click children make.”

    Instead, Dorfman argued, “food marketers and children’s media companies need to adhere to higher nutrition standards for the foods they market to children, especially when they do it out of earshot of parents.”

    SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, November 2009.

  • Food Ads on Nickelodeon Slammed in Report-ABC News.

    Very true.In India many of the products advertised assume moral overtones-Those who use a particular brand of tooth paste do not lie;Uni Lever advertisement declares their Lifebuoy plus protects you completely from Swine flu!
    CSPI Says, Nearly 80 Percent of Food Ads on the Popular Children’s Network Advertise Food of Poor Nutritional Quality
    (CBS) Nickelodeon may be a kid-friendly network, but when it comes to nutrition they are serving up the wrong ads.

    According to an analysis conducted by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), “nearly 80 percent of food ads on the popular children’s network Nickelodeon are for foods of poor nutritional quality.”

    During an obesity epidemic in the United States, it’s hard enough for parents to control what their children are eating – and the group says airing a lot of junk food ads on Nickelodeon doesn’t help.

    Although the findings show a modest drop from about 90 percent in 2005, it’s not significant enough to make a dent.

    The CSPI points out that between the 2005 and 2009 studies, the food industry instituted a self-regulatory program through the Council of Better Business Bureaus, the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI).

    But for junk food lovers, self-regulation doesn’t always work.

    CSPI took a closer look at the practices of the food companies that participate in that self-regulatory program.

    They found that “of the 452 foods and beverages that companies say are acceptable to market to children, that 267, (or nearly 60 percent), do not meet CSPI’s recommended nutrition standards for food marketing to children.”
    The list includes: General Mills’ Cookie Crisp and Reese’s Puffs cereals, Kellogg Apple Jacks and Cocoa Krispies cereals, Kellogg Rice Krispies Treats, Campbell’s Goldfish crackers and SpaghettiOs, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, and many Unilever Popsicles.
    “While industry self-regulation is providing some useful benchmarks, it’s clearly not shielding children from junk food advertising, on Nick and elsewhere,” said CSPI nutrition policy director Margo G. Wootan. “It’s a modest start, but not sufficient to address children’s poor eating habits and the sky-high rates of childhood obesity.”

    Puddings, cookies, or fruit-flavored snacks don’t meet CSPI’s nutrition standards – but they are fans of yogurt. Seventy-three percent of yogurts were up to par.

    •One of eight McDonald’s-approved meals, and 22 of 86 General Mills-approved products
    •Burger King only identified one meal as appropriate to market to children at the time of the study
    •A Kids Meal with Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, apple fries with caramel sauce, and a Hershey’s 1 percent milk

    Other foods that don’t meet CSPI’s standards include:

    •Fruit drinks, often high in sugar with little fruit juice as well as high-fat milk
    •PepsiCo’s 10 products that they say are appropriate to market to children
    •CSPI also has urged Chuck E. Cheese’s, IHOP restaurants, Topps Candy, Yum! Brands (which owns KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut) and Perfetti van Melle (maker of Air Heads candy) to join the CFBAI.
    •Four companies that belong to the CFBAI (Coca-Cola, Hershey’s, Mars, and Cadbury Adams) state that they do not advertise any products to children (according to the CBBB definition).

    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/2416px/health/healthy_living/main5761832.shtml?wpisrc=newsletter

  • 15 Horrifying Reasons to Never Let Anyone You Love Near a McDonald’s.

    No Comments.
    Story.
    The Golden Arches: the ultimate American icon. Super Size Me taught us that fast food culture brings obesity, heart disease, hypertension and a whole slew of other problems. How bad do you really want that Big Mac? Here are 15 reasons you’ll never let anyone you love get near those Golden Arches.

    1. Real food is perishable. With time, it begins to decay. It’s a natural process, it just happens. Beef will rot, bread will mold. But what about a McDonald’s burger? Karen Hanrahan saved a McDonald’s burger from 1996 and, oddly enough, it looks just as “appetizing” and “fresh” as a burger you might buy today. Is this real food?

    2. You would have to walk 7 hours straight to burn off a Super Sized Coke, fries and Big Mac. Even indulging in fast food as an occasional treat is a recipe for weight gain…unless you’re planning to hit each treadmill in the treadmill bay afterwards.

    3. Containing less fat, salt and sugar, your pet’s food may be healthier than what they serve at McDonald’s.

    4. In 2007, the employees of an Orlando-area McDonald’s were caught on camera pouring milk into the milkshake machine out of a bucket labeled “Soiled Towels Only.” That particular restaurant had already been cited for 12 different sanitary violations. Though McDonald’s proudly stands by its safety standards, and not every restaurant has such notorious incidents, the setting of a fast food restaurant staffed with low-paid employees at a high turnover rate arguably encourages bending the rules. (McDonald’s isn’t alone in this, of course – Burger King is actually ranked as the dirtiest of all the fast food chains.)

    5. McDonald’s supports the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Much of the soy-based animal feed used to fatten fast-food chickens is grown in the Amazon. Are those chicken nuggets really worth acres of irreplaceable trees? (Especially considering how important carbon sinks like the rainforest are to halt global warming!) Fast food supports a completely unsustainable system of agriculture. It’s cruel to animals, unhealthy for humans, and bad for the planet.

    6. Even Prince Charles, while touring a diabetes center in the United Arab Emirates, commented that banning McDonald’s is key to health and nutrition. Don’t let the salads and chicken breasts fool you. The “chicken” at McDonald’s, by the way, comes with a whole lot more than chicken.

    7. As if feeding children high-fat, high-sodium, low-nutrition “food” weren’t bad enough, some Happy Meals in 2006 contained toy Hummers. It’s as if McDonald’s was encouraging a whole generation of kids not only to guzzle food, but to guzzle gas as well. Would you like a few barrels of petroleum with that?

    8. The processed fat in McDonald’s food (and other fast food) promotes endothelial dysfunction for up to 5 hours after eating the meal. Endothelial tissue is what lines the inside of blood vessels.

    9. For those who enjoy sex, take note: erectile dysfunction is connected to endothelial dysfunction. Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me commented that his normally healthy sexual function deteriorated in just one month when he ate only food from McDonald’s. Even his girlfriend commented on camera that “he’s having a hard time, you know, getting it up.”

    10. How many cows does it take to keep the world loaded with Big Macs? I had to do a some research and a little math, but according to a brief video inside one of McDonald’s 6 meat processing plants, about 500,000 pounds of beef is processed per day, per plant. If an average beef cow weighs 1,150 pounds, that means 2609 cows a day are turned into burgers. That’s 952,285 cows per year. And that’s just in the United States. Eating a hamburger may not be worse than driving a Hummer, but it’s bad. One hamburger patty does not necessarily come from one cow. Think about that. You’re eating bits of hundreds of cows.

    11. Maybe you just pop in for an inexpensive latte. Watch out for the caramel syrup (Sugar, water, fructose, natural (plant source) and artificial flavor, salt, caramel color (with sulfites), potassium sorbate (preservative), citric acid, malic acid) or the chocolate drizzle (Corn syrup, water, hydrogenated coconut oil, high fructose corn syrup, glycerin, nonfat milk, cocoa, cocoa (processed with alkali), food starch-modified, disodium phosphate, potassium sorbate (preservative), xanthan gum, artificial flavor (vanillin), salt, soy lecithin). Please don’t put that stuff into your body. Eat healthy cheap food instead – you can be well and still save cash.

    12. Are you a vegetarian with a French fry craving? You better skip McDonald’s because their fries actually contain milk (and wheat) and though they’re fried in vegetable oil, the oil is flavored with beef extract. (McDonald’s famously misled customers for years.)

    13. Do you want high blood pressure? Hit the drive-through. Eating a McDonald’s chicken sandwich (any of “˜em, take your pick) will give you about 2/3 of the recommended daily amount of sodium. And if you actually do have high blood pressure, that’s way more than you really need.

    14. Finally unveiled: the secret of the Big Mac’s “secret sauce.”

    Soybean oil, pickle relish [diced pickles, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, vinegar, corn syrup, salt, calcium chloride, xanthan gum, potassium sorbate (preservative), spice extractives, polysorbate 80], distilled vinegar, water, egg yolks, high fructose corn syrup, onion powder, mustard seed, salt, spices, propylene glycol alginate, sodium benzoate (preservative), mustard bran, sugar, garlic powder, vegetable protein (hydrolyzed corn, soy and wheat), caramel color, extractives of paprika, soy lecithin, turmeric (color), calcium disodium EDTA (protect flavor).

    Yum. Cheap oil and cheap syrup. Many people depend upon cheap food such as the sort offered at McDonald’s, whether due to the economic conditions we currently face or low incomes. So shouldn’t we be examining regulations that subsidize corn syrup but consider fruits and vegetables – the building blocks of a healthy body and green planet – to be “speciality” crops? Shouldn’t we be promoting urban gardening, community gardens and spreading information about low-cost farmers’ markets and CSAs? And focusing on the abundant choices of cheap food that are tasty and green?

    15. Still not convinced? Maybe this 1970s trip through McDonaldland will give you enough nightmares to keep your loved ones away forever.
    http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/141959/15_horrifying_reasons_to_never_let_anyone_you_love_near_a_mcdonald’s/?page=entire