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will

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shut out everything. Two people in love in a world of their own. A higher 
plane where huge crabs did not exist, oblivious to everything else. 
Euphoria."                         Guy N. Smith - Origin of the Crabs

Coke's war on water
by David Rowan
You've finally plucked up courage to ask a sniffy waiter for a glass
of tap water and the worst you're expecting is a passing scowl of
disapproval. So you had better hope he hasn't been trained by
Coca-Cola in its latest corporate mission - Just Say No To H2O. 
Concerned at the vast potential profits lost by diners not paying for
liquid refreshment, the world's largest soft drinks company has been
working with restaurants to teach staff "beverage suggestive selling
techniques". 
The plan - codename H2No - involves briefing staff to "influence"
customers to reduce what is known as "tap water incidence". Each time
a glass of water is requested, waiters must "emphasise the wide range
of beverage selections available, including soft drinks,
non-carbonated beverages and alcohol". Especially, no doubt, those
produced by Coca-Cola. 
The strategy appears to be working: at least one restaurant chain has
reported higher profits since training serving staff in the H2No
programme. The result, says Coca-Cola, is sending "a powerful message
to the entire restaurant industry - less water and more beverage
choices mean happier customers". 
Details emerged when the company's website told of the plan,
highlighting profits at The Olive Garden restaurant chain. Under the
headline "The Olive Garden targets tap water and wins", the website
says: "Many customers choose tap water not because they enjoy it, but
because it is what they always have drunk in the past." 
To encourage them to spend more money, the American chain developed a
competition with Coca-Cola offering company merchandise and an
allexpenses-paid trip to Atlanta to staff who met monthly targets.
"When the contest was completed, almost all participating restaurants
realised significant increases in beverage sales and reduced levels of
tap water incidence," the company claims. 
The corporation researched why customers might order tap water, and
suggested what might make them choose something else. For the 30 per
cent who cite weight or other health considerations, the best
strategy, it says, is to offer lighter or noncarbonated alternatives. 
For those who ask for water "because it's there", waiters should never
offer a glass unless it is specifically requested, and then not before
using "suggestive selling techniques" to promote drinks with a price. 
A number of websites have criticised the strategy. On plastic.com one
email reads: "Jesus guys, we know you're in it for the money, you
don't have to pretend you actually care." Such criticisms have
prompted Coca-Cola to take down web pages relating to H2No lest people
"who aren't in a sales-related business" misunderstand its purpose. (A
copy has, however, been stored at this address:
www.stayfreemagazine.org/public/coke.html.) The company says the
campaign, launched in the US, has not been extended to the UK. 
London restaurateurs told about the scheme had little sympathy for
Coca-Cola's campaign. "They're wrong about it improving the dining
experience," insisted David Wilby, Antony Worrall Thompson's partner
at Wiz in Notting Hill. "The way to give the customer a better
experience is to give them what they want - we wouldn't raise an
eyebrow if someone ordered tap water." 
At The Savoy, Olivier Thomas, food and beverage manager, said: "We
have no problem serving tap water and wouldn't think of charging for
it." Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay also saw nothing embarrassing about
asking for water. "I love tap water," he said, "in a really nice
decantered jug". But he added: "It's only visiting chefs who ask for
it." 
Still, Coke's on to a winner whatever customers choose. It is selling
tap water in pretty blue bottles under the brand name Dasani. The
drink has been "enhanced with a special blend of minerals for a pure,
fresh taste", but is otherwise straight from the local water supply.
What tap water fans might call the real thing. 

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 03 2001 
Sex in space: thin blue line keeps crews in check 
BY MARK HENDERSON, SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT 
ASTRONAUTS on the International Space Station (ISS) have been supplied
with DIY pregnancy tests in case the enforced intimacy of space travel
prompts mixed crews to try for the 200-mile-high club. The test sticks
have been included in the station’s medical pack in one of Nasa’s
first admissions that its astronauts might have sex in orbit. 
Although the US space agency has always taken a prudish attitude
towards such activity, the kits are intended for its aftermath: female
astronauts take a pregnancy test before launch and are not allowed to
fly if it is positive. 
Scientists know little about the effects of space travel, particularly
those of weightlessness, on human embryos and any astronaut found to
have become pregnant on board the ISS would almost certainly be
returned to Earth at the earliest opportunity. 
The station’s present crew will not need the kits: all three are male.
The crew they replaced recently, however, included a female flight
engineer, Susan Helms, and the next crew but one will also have a
female member, Peggy Whitson. 
Details of the pregnancy test and directions on how to use it have
emerged from a set of leaked Nasa documents on emergency and medical
procedures obtained by the website SpaceRef.com. The documents provide
astronauts on board the ISS with guidance on dealing with situations
ranging from a crew-mate becoming suicidal or psychotic to diarrhoea,
motion sickness, nosebleeds and dentistry. Nasa would not comment on
the handbook. 
Keith Cowing, editor of SpaceRef.com and a former Nasa scientist, said
that the tests were clearly aimed at detecting conceptions in orbit. 
“Since the crew get a good physical exam before flight, and I doubt
that anyone would deliberately fly while pregnant given our sparse
knowledge of what might happen, one has to assume that this test is to
detect a particular medical condition that developed while the
individual in question was already in space,” he said. 
“There is a rather short list of ways whereby this specific condition
can arise. Nasa never discusses the possibility of sex in space, but
it does not look like they’re worried about what an astronaut might
have done with her husband the night before launch.” 
It remains unclear whether or not the 200-mile-high club already has
any members. There is no suggestion that any astronauts have had sex
on board the ISS since its launch in 1998, but many believe that the
increasing length of time spent on board — the last crew were in space
for 165 days — makes it more likely that such a relationship will
develop. 
Harry Stine, a former Nasa technician, said that the agency had
conducted experiments in the simulated weightlessness of a flotation
tank, but never in space itself. In his book Living in Space, Dr
Stine, who died in 1997, said that Nasa staff at the Marshall Space
Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama, had used a buoyancy tank that
simulates low-gravity conditions to test the possibilities of
weightless sex. “It was possible but difficult,” he said, “and was
made easier when a third person assisted by holding one of the others
in place.” 
Nasa has always been coy about the idea of sex involving its
astronauts, but some cosmonauts have been more forthcoming. Valeri
Polyakov, who spent 14 months on Mir between 1992 and 1993, said to
mission control shortly before his return: “No need to say what we are
longing for.” 

Category: Uncategorized

WAR ON THE WORLD: I FORESAW IT

The Character Assassination

The Stereotype Assassination

The Category Assassination

The Context Stomp

The Level Lunge

The Slight-Of-Hand Strawman

The Zecious Zero

The Extrapolation Explosion

The Insinuendo

The Jane-You-Ignorant-Slut

The Mortar Lob

The Loaded Word Gambit

The Semantic Death Spiral

The Curse and Recurse

The Old Post Resurrection Embarrassment

The Drunken Master

The Pedantic Nightmare

The Dennis Miller

The Vocab Blitz

The Link Slam

The Psuedofact Slam

The SYGIGH

The False-Falling-On-Ones-Sword

The Overpost Armageddon

The Teflon Don

The Consistency Spasm

The Circular Thrash

The Running-To-The-Edges

The TrapperKeeper

The Tom Whore