Food

I finally finished reading Fast Food Nation.

I wrote previously that the book didn't contain many real surprises for me. I'd say that is still the case. The book has been accused of being merely anecdotal and spun heavily against the food industry, corporations in general, and Republicans. I came out with the same taste in my mouth. Although the book is painstakingly researched with 60 pages of bibliographical references, it does seem to me that the facts were carefully chosen to spin those forces in a negative light.

That said, the research and anecdotes seem undeniable, and I do feel affected by the content. The gory realities of feed lots and slaughterhouses; The questionable, albeit legal, manner in which livestock are fed and maintained; The effect of fierce price competition on all stakeholders including employees, franchisees, and consumers. It all definitely adds up to a bit of a sick feeling about the dark side of capitalism, democracy, and human behavior.

These are the points that stuck with me most:

- Livestock should not be fed the remains of other animals. It is a common practice in the US. It is not a natural feed and it opens the door for foodborne illness.
- The price of meat is determined largely by line speeds and safety practices at meat packing companies. Fast food companies often get better,safer meat than stores, because their brands depend on it. I may start buying higher priced meat as a result.
- More food than you think is flavored with chemicals that are not disclosed to you.
- Obesity costs far more to the economy than fast food companies earn.
- Advertising to children is powerful and probably should not be legal. It is already illegal in some countries.
- The US government doesn't have much power or inclination to protect the public from poor quality food. The large food chains are actually much more effective at creating positive change in the industry. And they answer mainly to their customers.

I have considered the possibility of becoming a vegetarian after reading the book. It probably will not happen, and it may not even be a good idea for me. But it's the first time the thought has ever crossed my mind. I fully expect, however, to eat better and think more about what I am eating all the time. Many people may believe that overthinking every aspect of life this way is a downer. I now see that attitude as a form of denial.

Open

I made my first contribution to the open source community today. I noticed a grammatical error on the George Pataki page of the Wikipedia. I knew that common folks were allowed to make changes to any page on the website and so I clicked edit, made my update, and bang, my change was made public without any sort of workflow approval process. Interesting.

I've also, coincidentally, just begun looking at SourceForge to see if there are any open source projects on which I might be interested in collaborating. It seems like a good way to use and improve my skills, and a good way to connect with the software developer community at large.

We'll see what I find.

Smart

I sometimes get the feeling, when pondering Google's inner workings, that the people there are so smart, their service sometimes seems like magic to us peasants.

They clearly seem to have the notion of "simple yet functional" down to a science. And functional is a tremendous understatement. They are the Ghooda.

I did some upgrades to my lyrics website last week, including 10,000 new song titles. Also, since my visitor volume has been up (about 150,000 page views in November), I decided to re-evaluate my advertising.

I looked at Google's AdSense optimization tips which suggested that my ad clickthrough rate might go up if I put my Google text ads across the top of my content (aka Leaderboard ad) rather than down the right side (aka Skyscraper ad). I figure they must have done plenty of research, so why not take their advice.

After a week using the new configuration, I noticed an unexpected trend. My clickthrough rate actually went down a tiny bit, but my earnings per impression went up by about 50%. What this means is that fewer people actually click through the ad links on the website. But the ads they click on tend to have a higher pay rate.

My conclusion from this is, although it is a bit early to conclude anything, is that Google actually rewards me for taking their placement advice by sending me more lucrative ad links. More likely is that they are ensuring they get the best possible clickthrough rates (due to placement) on the highest paying ad inventory, thus making more money for themselves.

Google tends to be very mysterious about their logic and policies on these matters, but at every turn, they always seem to be doing the smartest possible thing.

My advice: Always do what Google tells you to do.