Coke Pimp Leaves NZ with Case of Sour Grapes

For offshore readers, the other big item of what passes for news around here (apart from the dead whale) is the departing words of Coca-Cola Amatil's Man in NZ for the last nine years:

The outgoing boss of one of our largest firms has taken a parting shot at New Zealand's attitude towards big business, saying an ingrained anti-corporate mentality is stifling the growth of companies...

He said that while entrepreneurs were admired in New Zealand, big businesses were seen as "nasty and untrustworthy".

Everyone from union leaders, business leaders, business commentators, Plebber and Plebook have been putting the boot into this whining lolly water pusher. If there's one thing that brings this country together in solidarity, it's a little rich suit facing a white man's burden.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, Coke admits its adverts for its new range of "Vitamin Water" are nasty and untrustworthy.

Violently shopping

The style of the British riots brings to mind a recent Foreign Policy story highlighted by Arts & Letters Daily under the byline “Television is more important than food!” If you can't be bothered clicking through, it's about poverty and bordeom. Orwell gets a mention.

At least no-one's died yet, which is more than you can say about the Yank's Black Fridays:

Five gyres not one

It seems that there's not one (North Pacific) gyre, not two (North Atlantic) gyres, but five, five gyres of plastic soup poisoning its way through the food chain. Here's what the average teenage mutant injured turtles are eating:

The environmental desk is now on self-medication leave.

Bits and bobs

# Wellington's Carter Observatory has finished refurbishment and will be celebrating with an Open Day this Saturday.

# Victoria University alumni might be interested in acquiring a piece of Grant Buist's Quad mural:

As part of the Quad redevelopment, I learnt today that my mural is being “decommissioned”, which is a military euphemism for ‘binned”. This mural, which took me four years to paint, is made up of 18 panels, each of which is 1.2 metres wide by 1.6 metres tall, painted on hardboard which varies in weight from damn unwieldy to OMG this thing is heavy. It’s one of the projects of which I’m proudest.

Now, I could bung the entire thing on TradeMe, but I think I’d prefer to give it away panel by panel to people who have fond memories of staring at it in the Quad during lunch. The only condition is that you’d probably have to turn up at Vic and haul the thing away yourself.

So, hover your mouse over your favourite panel, note the title and number, contact me here, and reserve it.

# Peter at Dub dot dash points to this smoking version of I Put A Spell On You, a collaboration between Nick Cave, Chrissie Hynde, Mick Jones, Johnny Depp and others to raise funds for the Haiti quake survivors:



# The Wellington nights are getting colder and the heating bill for the Hobbit Hole is sure to rise. One way to keep warm and stay fed is to bake your own bread. Lifehack gives a quick and easy way to make One Minute Prep Ciabatta bread. Nothing is better than a very low oven proving dough to warm up the room as well as the smells of baking bread to lift the spirits.

# The Story of Bottled Water, brought to you by the same team who gave us the Story of Stuff:

Interesting things

# I've just spent the best part of today re-installing a clean dual boot system, the better part of which is Karmic Koala Ubuntu 9.10. There has been a quantum leap forward from Jaunty, from file system through to software management. While the Synaptic Package Manager still lurks for the intermediate user, the new Ubuntu Software Center (sic) makes it so straight-forward even a Windows user could use it.

There's still a few things you need to know. Various lawyers have caused needy bits and bods to be excluded from Ubuntu point blank; Adobe, which is currently getting passive aggressive with Apple, has some exclusion principle with the Ubuntu distribution. Proprietary codecs have similar issues.

But where there's a law there's a loophole. The Silent Number has an excellent list of what is missing and where to find it. There's also a whole heap of stuff for everyone. OK, I don't have a need for an atomic clock widget, but the Restricted Extras are a must, the media centre gear is useful, and the real beauties are the Electric Sheep Screensaver and the Themes Kit. Very very nice.

# The Economist has a very good look at the multinational conglomerate of Nestle. It looks at the mass customisation of food, as well as the perils that can arise. It's not just milk powder in Africa that should be a worry, but also right here in NZ. Breast is best but stuff all Mums do it these days, seeing how convenient the formula is.

# Michael Coote at the NBR looks at another angle on the food commodity trade. It really amazes me how much of the world's diet is reliant on eight varieties of crop:

• Coffee
• Corn
• Lean hogs
• Live cattle
• Soybeans
• Soybean oil
• Sugar
• Wheat

Talk about putting all your bananas in one Cavendish.

# New Scientist has a beautiful and enlightening photo essay on the rise and fall of American mental asylums, including the Gothic inspiration for Arkham Asylum. Out of curiosity, I went looking for our little NZ experiment, Lake Alice.

# Johann Hari looks at two recent Ayn Rand biographies over at Slate, shedding light on what could only be described as a cult of personality. On the subject of deconstructed personalities, Ron Rosenbaum goes to town on Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger.



HT Andrew Sullivan.

Fanta and mtDNA

A common preservative in Fanta and Pepsi Max may cause damage to DNA:

"Sodium benzoate has already been the subject of concern about cancer because when mixed with the additive vitamin C in soft drinks, it causes benzene, a carcinogenic substance...

Now, an expert in ageing at Sheffield University, who has been working on sodium benzoate since publishing a research paper in 1999, has decided to speak out about another danger. Professor Peter Piper, a professor of molecular biology and biotechnology, tested the impact of sodium benzoate on living yeast cells in his laboratory. What he found alarmed him: the benzoate was damaging an important area of DNA in the "power station" of cells known as the mitochondria."