Month: November 2006

You’re Welcome, JSDA

So Google Finance has pages for all the different stocks and on those pages they list the most recent blog posts concerning that company. If that makes any sense.

Anyway, Jones Soda has a page through this and my post on their new and improved forumla has pulled some new viewers to J’s Notes:

Neat. So to you shareholders or would be shareholders who are visting J’s Notes, let me hook you up with a little (and perhaps illegal) insider tip:

I’m buying me a case of Jones Soda this weekend. Maybe two.

I’d say the stock’s a safe buy.

Jones Soda Is Making The Switch

From high fructose corn syrup to cane sugar:

The change at Jones Soda comes at a time when high fructose corn syrup, which became a common sweetener for sodas in the late 1970s and early 1980s, has received negative publicity as being linked to obesity and diabetes. 

Even Oprah Winfrey, who wields influence over consumers, has encouraged viewers on her show to avoid high fructose corn syrup. 

Jones is following the lead of other small bottlers who are touting the use of pure cane sugar as making their products taste better.

Not sure if they even still sell it, but last Summer 7-11 started selling their own brand of 20oz soda in their stores that used cane sugar in lieu of corn syrup and it wasn’t half bad. Not sure if it’ll really translate into more sales because, well, if you’re worried about corn syrup you’re probably just worried about soda in general. But if it makes it tastier, maybe it’ll be a hit. I wonder how it’ll make their Turkey and Gravy soda taste…

Crap

I had this really neat, long review of my experience with Sandisk’s Sansa e260 and then lost it when IE7’s pop-up blocker kicked in on an attempted spell check. So poo on that. All I’ll say now is I dig this puppy and highly recomend it to anyone looking for a low end entry level MP3/WMA player. Check out PCMagand CNet reviews here.

Tenacious D And The Pick Of Destiny

While at the Times-Dispatch I noticed that Daniel Newman reviewed the Tenacious D movie and obviously does not get it:

Kyle Gass is a passable guitarist, but Jack Black’s vocals are desperately inadequate. To compensate for this weakness, he clowns around vocally, turning his singing voice into a joke. And like all the jokes in the film, as we have said, it is not funny.

But even if the music were better and Black could sing (as he did in “High Fidelity”), there is still the problem of their words. Lyricists, they ain’t. Cole Porter could spend weeks perfecting a song, but Black and Gass must write their pieces in less time than it takes to sing them.

How else to explain their rhyming “honesty” with “honestly”? How else to explain the line (to the tune of “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”) “He is going to kick your bleeping bleep/And you know his name is Kyle Gass”?

How else to explain? How about, that’s the freakin’ point?

Tenacious D is not about making the best music in the world. No, it’s about writing a tribute to the best music in the world and mocking the metal genre while paying homage to it, highlighting its worst elements in the best way possible.

I caught this movie while in NYC for CMJ’s convention a few weeks back and I left impressed. I’ve been a D fan for a few years now and wasn’t so sure how the movie would play out, concerned that it’d just rehash the television show and also about Liam Lynch’s ability to carry a full length film given his short work wasn’t too impressive (“Siffle and Ollie” the exception). But they pulled it off. While the movie played off of some elements of the TV show, it was more as a hat tip toward the old fans than a repackaging of old ideas. The music, while not as good as their album, was good and played up the joke.

Pretty much, you have to get it to enjoy it. If you’ve never heard of Tenacious D I highly recomend you check out their album before their movie. If you have heard of them and weren’t too impressed, then save your $8 for something else. Like a decent sense of humor (oh, snap!).

If you’re a fan of the D, you’ll dig the movie.

Can We Still Call It The “Hole In The Ground”?

Yesterday’s Times-Dispatch reported that the Virginia Performing Arts Center will forever now be refered to as Richmond CenterStage:

The planned arts center in downtown Richmond that once was touted as a statewide project now has a city-focused name.

The complex, which is being funded largely by city taxpayers, will be known as Richmond CenterStage.

It will include the Carpenter Center and several smaller venues, assuming that $9 million in private funds can be raised by the end of next month.

“Richmond is the center of the metropolitan area. This is for all of the metropolitan area, but it’s in the center city,” said Susan H. Fitz-Hugh, a member of the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation’s board of directors.

So take pride in this project and the tax dollars it’s going to suck out of your pocket, Richmonders. It’s got Richmond in the name!

Can I call my apartment Richmond StageLeft and ask for tax subsidies?

Don over at SaveRichmond continues what has been a great effort to take VPAF to task for this whole debacle, coming away from the article with a shopping list of questions and concerns.

OJ Simpson’s New Series

OJ’s new book “If I Did It” isn’t a confession to the murder of his ex-wife and her male friend. No, it’s the first in a series of alternative history titles by the Hall of Fame running back! Yes, OJ Simpson rewrites history, detailing how he would have committed some of the most notorious killings of the past. Keep your eyes open for the Spring 2007 release of the second volume in this sure to be a bestseller series:

UPDATE: Breaking News: Volume Three!

Trusting Bloggers

Since today’s blogosphere conversations seem to be focusing on responsible blogging I figured I’d share the following checklist. The same things one should keep in mind when citing an Internet source for a paper also apply to blogs. Readers should keep the following in mind:

  • Is the information reliable? 
  • Check the author’s credentials and affiliation. Is the author an expert in the field? 
  • Does the resource have a reputable organization or expert behind it? 
  • Are the sources of information stated? Can you verify the information? 
  • Can the author be contacted for clarification? 
  • Check for organizational or author biases.

Not all bloggers are pretending to be journalists. But when they do, readers need to take a step back and really consider what they’re reading.

(Thanks, University of Southern Maine.)

The Content Of Virginia Political Blogs

Shaun and Waldo have been conversing today about the state of the Virginia Political Blogosphere and the decline of its content.  As Waldo wrote:

These days most Virginia political blogs make virtually no effort to persuade anybody to change their minds. A blogger will state his opinion, make no attempt to explain it, and insult those who disagree with them. Telling me I’m stupid does nothing to endear me to your cause. It is not persuasive, so it can have no impact on the political process. It reveals nothing about the blogger — at least, nothing flattering. No attempt is made to educate, so no new facts are gathered by the reader. If anything useful results from this process, I cannot understand what it is.

The result of this is that people take to reading only those blogs that espouse opinions that they already hold, because reading others is such an unpleasant experience. Such bloggers set the tone for the discussions, too, such that rational discourse is impossible. And thus begins the ghettoization of ideological positions and with it the end of the enormous value that once made Virginia political blogs so noteworthy.

Shaun agrees and mentions in his comments “The Daily Me” as coined by Cass Sunstein in her book Republic.com. The concept of “The Daily Me” is that while the internet provides outlets for ideas all over the spectrum, some readers are going to limit their selections to sites that simply echo their own thoughts and beliefs. People who fall into this rarely feel the need to detail why they feel certain ways and don’t look to other sites to do so either.

The last six months have seen some of the blogosphere’s big thinkers close up shop, namely Jaded JD and Chad over at VAConservative, while sites that spout the same talking points and market in rumor mongering are flourishing. The growth of the latter is going to be natural in an election year (which means every year here in Virginia). But I think that time will help weed some of these out. Not all will fold up, but personal observations over my five years of blogging has shown that many blogs don’t last more than six months, their writers either boring of the job or finding themselves without a market. Strong blogs with real content will out last the fly by night “splash and trash” operations.