Orange juice is a vile and mostly industrial substance

Since the word “juice” printed on a package legally means that the substance inside is 100% juice, you could be forgiven for thinking that especially “not from concentrate” orange juice would be some fairly straightforward stuff. But you would be horribly wrong, because actually orange juice is a vile and mostly industrial substance (via), which sits around in huge vats, and has chemical flavoring added to restore the flavor lost through processing.

Weekendly clickables VII

Concerts at the White House

Stevie Wonder performed at the White House. Cool enough. I say let’s do a concert a week, and let’s move them outside. Here’s a few folks I’d like to see performing in the rose garden (in addition to the obvious choice of George Clinton):

  • Public Enemy
  • Anthony Braxton
  • Rage Against the Machine
  • Willie Nelson
  • M.I.A.
  • Dixie Chicks
  • Anthony and the Johnsons

More suggestions?

Blackburn Neuro bicycle computer instruction manuals

Blackburn Neuro bicycle computer instruction manuals. I bought one of these last year after my cheapo cateye let me down for the last time. Not a bad product. Blackburn doesn’t include a printed manual in the box, which wouldn’t be so bad, except that the PDF’s aren’t available on their website. I just came across the CD, so I’m uploading them here in expectation of loosing it sometime in the future, and for the benefit of those who have already lost theirs (and hopefully will to find their way here by the miracles of web search).

Mac vs. Windows part 1

So, we got an iMac at work. I’ve used Macs before, but I was particularly interested in whether I could get it to talk to our Windows network, and how much prodding it would take. Our network is a little squirrely, and getting a new Windows machine to talk to it is always a bit of a hassle (and occasionally brings seasoned IT pros close to tears). Well, I plugged in a cable, turned on the iMac, clicked the hard drive, and there it was: all the computers on the network just showed up in the sidebar. I clicked on one, entered a password, and from then on everything worked seamlessly. It hasn’t asked for the password again since.

So, screw you, Microsoft. On other thing. 5 years passed between Windows XP and Windows Vista. You employ like 100,000 people, right? And like a third or something are working on Windows? Well, I see where Vista is an improvement and everything (frankly, it’s got tons of things wrong with it, too), but aside from the cosmetic stuff the changes are really pretty modest. What the hell have you people been doing all this time?

What’s up with Dubai?

What’s up with Dubai? I have been reading a lot about the financial crisis over the last couple of weeks. Surprise: it’s not that interesting or even particularly complicated. But yesterday I heard someone mention that India has been experiencing a relatively small slowdown, on account of not being nearly as leveraged in the banking/speculation domain. If the USA has been living large off irrational exuberance, and Iceland has been living X-Large … well, I couldn’t help but think of Dubai. Wouldn’t their completely absurd growth over the last five years or so be well explained by their XX-Large dose of the medicine of confidence-leveraging. And if that were so, they’d be going into an extra-steep nosedive right about now, right? Yep (via).

Jonathan Lebed’s Extracurricular Activities

Oddly topical in light of the S.E.C.‘s recent and spectacular ball-droppage is Michael Lewis’ spectacular story Jonathan Lebed’s Extracurricular Activities, about the agency’s case against a 14-year old day trader. It’s the opener of The New Kings of Nonfiction. The editor, Ira Glass, raves about the story and plugs the book on this episode of The Sound of Young America, of which this to be via.