“I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.� - Oscar Wilde

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QDx2ez6eMM

Say that 3 times fast!

A Humpback Whale carcass was washed up on our shores yesterday. It was dragged out to sea and sadly it was beached by the later tide. We went down to have a look at them dragging the poor thing out a few miles further and it reminded me of what happened to a Sperm Whale in Taiwan and how they decided to dispose of a Whale in 1970’s Oregon.

This is in relation to Franks post below, re Capitalism. You can apply this to one of many food types produced but one that mystifies me is a sweetener called ‘High Fructose Corn Syrup’ (HFCS). HFCS was developed in Japan (circa 1970’s) and adopted by the Corn Belt of the USA as a stable and cheap method of obtaining sweetener. It is more complicated to make than cane or beet sugar, but is cheaper in overall end-cost and easier to manipulate, transport etc.

I got to wondering why, when I pick up something produced in Europe you rarely saw HFCS on the label and it seems that every food stuff you pick up and read from the States has HFCS?

Well after a bit of digging I found out that in the EU, HFCS is very rarely used as an ingredient because the price of natural sugar is at market level. So cheap natural sugar in the EU is supported and encouraged. It seems to me that the strong Farmers Union in the USA have lobbied to have HFCS used in food production rather than change or adopt other sugar types due to economics. Now I know the reason why so much of the food from the States has HFCS and apparently these companies are now trying to relabel HFCS as a natural sweetener!! Reasoning, it comes from corn. But if you actually look into how HFCS is made it is far, far from natural and totally genetically modified. HFCS is linked to under development of children, obesity, diabetes and coronary disease.

People now complain that natural food has become more expensive. Isn’t it funny how in a few short years convenience food has flipped from a luxury to cheap stable? But once again it is simple economics, supply and demand. All done for the corporate greed, due to an invented and facilitated need for the convenience of living the fast life. When you shirk your responsibility for the food you eat, and pass it on to a corporation, what do you expect. Inadvertantly for some of us our jobs are related to fat cats like these. But when I go home, I eat my own food and support the farmer as much a possible. You can’t avoid these things all the time and it seems everything will kill you these days. But watch out for HFCS kids, because even in the States it’s not allowed in baby food. Now what does that tell you!

Back in the 80’s ‘Max Headroom’ was (supposedly) an animated computer talk show host. The show was successful in the UK. Its origins were in the USA, where the TV/Movie was actually based on a reporter being replaced by a computer generated version of himself. This was set in a TV dominated future world. So much for TV’s dominance, thank you YouTube!

Today we are interacting with computer generated customer service systems and animations. For example AT&T have Ask ‘Allie’, I wouldn’t even click on it again. IKEA have ‘Anna’. I’ve taken the piss out of Anna a lot, due to an IKEA created frustration but there doesn’t seem to be any real AI behind her.

Now we have a truly animated, somewhat AI bot called ‘George’ over at Jabberwacky. The animation is shite but George is based on millions of chat room interactions and mathematical things like algorithms etc. George is learning from human chat interaction all the time. He gives appropriate and somewhat weird answers but can hold a conversation. Hopefully George or his programmer will work out some of our human quirkiness he has inherited over time. (Bif you’re his stunt double! lol) Our near future it seems, will have more intelligent AI’s giving us tech support online, which is good for 24/7 communication. But what do we do with our human frustrations?