This rant was originally published in Westender magazine in Vancouver. It reminds me of Mark’s comment on a previous post where he mentions that right-wingers could go off on anyone at any time for any reason:
Worst Foot Forward
Another extremely annoying thing happening nowadays besides loose lips flappin’ on cellphones is women’s noisy shoes. Have you noticed? Both are noise intrusions, noise pollution, and a lack of respect and courtesy to other people’s quiet space. These cheap, trashy shoes are even heard in hospital corridors. We live in a society that lacks good style and good common sense. I’m ready to take these noisy shoes off these starving-for-attention females and beat them over the head.
- Peter, Rantline caller
Could Peter’s last name be McCain?
I recently ran into a noisy shoe issue, but the offender was a DUDE! He was a VIP flyer on United who - rather than kick back in a lounge chair like everyone else - paced around the lounge while scuffing his rubber soled moccasins with every step. He was not a particularly proficient pacer.
Unlike Peter, I laughed at the absurdity of the situation and smirked at the “Peters” who clearly were close to beating the business traveler over the head with his moccasins.
Don’t even think about creating shoes with Adidas style stripes on the sides. Payless Shoe Stores learned that the hard way, as U of MN law professor, William McGeveran, explains on the “Info/Law” blog:
The Oregonian reports that Adidas won an astronomical $305 million trademark infringement verdict against discount retailer Payless Shoes this morning. Trademark blogger Marty Schwimmer can’t think of another infringement verdict even close to this size, and neither can I. Most trademark litigators would consider any case worth more than $25 million a very big one.
What surprises me is that the jury found Payless to be infringing on Adidas’ trademark even when they used 2 stripes or four (pdf) rather than the 3 that define the Adidas brand. While the intent is clearly there to ride on the Adidas brand is clear to me, aren’t knock-off brands like the ones at Payless simply a gateway to the major brands? If so, could knocking Payless out of the knock-off shoe business actually hurt the demand for Adidas long term?
A Shakopee Cub Foods had a scare on Tuesday when store employees thought there was a gas leak. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. Here’s what really happened:
After inspecting the store, someone from Centerpoint Energy determined there was no gas leak and the smell was from sewage, according to an emergency dispatcher.
Ah, much better. No problems here. Back to business as usual. It’s just a sewage odor.
Wait a sec. Is that normal in Shakopee? Personally, I don’t expect to smell sewage inside places I shop for groceries.
The Freakonomics blog points to a study that found a correlation between the food options and obesity rates of residents:
The study found that neighborhoods with dramatically more fast-food restaurants and convenience stores than supermarkets also have significantly elevated rates of obesity and diabetes.
Here’s a nugget from the press release about the report where I’ve placed an emphasis on the last sentence:
The study found a strong and direct relationship between the RFEI of the area in which someone lives and their likelihood of being obese or having diabetes. California adults living in high RFEI (Retail Food Environment Index) areas (RFEI of 5.0 or higher) had a 20 percent higher prevalence of obesity and a 23 percent higher prevalence of diabetes than their counterparts living in RFEI areas of 3.0 or lower. A higher RFEI was associated with a higher prevalence of obesity and diabetes for people living in lower-income and higher-income communities alike.
Beyond income, the report explains that this correlation holds true, “regardless of household income, race/ethnicity, age, gender, or physical activity levels of respondents.”
Why?
The report doesn’t answer this, but I’m interested in hearing your theories. Here’s mine: The distance you drive to buy groceries effects how you shop.
How this breaks down for me: I often walk over to SuperAmerica to buy a cookie. It’s only a couple blocks from my house, so I tend to only buy 1-2 cookies when I go there. When I drive to a local grocery store like Cub I tend to buy a package of cookies rather than 1-2 individual cookies. And guess what? I’ll probably end up eating more than 1-2 cookies after I get home from the grocery store. Now scale this to driving to a Costco where I’d probably buy a box of packages of cookies because they’re such a good deal.
The further I drive for cookies, the more I’ll buy when I’m there. I’ll spend more sedentary time riding in a car and end up consuming more calories by bulk-eating my bulk purchases.
I see some correlations here with what I’d consider European styles of food shopping and eating. If you shop more often, you’ll buy fresher food in more sane quantities and have less urge to snack yourself into obesity on “family packs” of processed corn.
Here are a few more correlations one could test for:
1. People who buy food by the cart vs basket.
2. People who’ve bought a car based on how many groceries it will hold.
3. Grocery coupon junkies (How many coupons are for non-processed food?)
4. People who “work the perimeter” vs “work the center” of grocery stores. Usually, the fresh stuff is on the perimeter and the more calorie-dense processed foods are in the center of stores.
Perhaps this is being overly critical, but doesn’t the term “featured” imply that there is something of value? I mean, things are featured for a reason, right?
With that in mind, check out this “Featured Comment” from the sidebar of a StarTribune story today:
It’s great that the StarTribune is experimenting with new features like “Featured Comments” but I think a label such as “Random Comment” or “Our Readers Will Say Anything, and Here’s an Example that Proves It.”
Also, if there is only one comment (like in this case) is it really a “Featured Comment?”
A human touch could really turn this into something valuable rather than laughable. No human would refer to the only comment on a story as a “Featured Comment” but a script will if that’s the way it’s programmed.
As long as I’m in a sidebar bashing mood, how about bringing in some slightly more relevant stories than the ones shown? I imagine there were other U of MN or basketball stories that would be more relevant links for further reading. Jumping from basketball to fishing or football fans is a bit of a leap.
Ideally, labels should reflect the content. That’s all I’m sayin’.
Now, turning the mirror on The Deets for a sec, I run a sidebar type feature on here that’s currently labeled “Related Posts” where titles from previous posts that are, well, related in some way to the current post are displayed. Whadya think of that label? Over on MNteractive, the term “Algorithmically Related Posts” is used to describe the results of the plug-in that’s used to generate the recommendations. While that is more accurate, I think it’s a mouthful so have kept it simpler for now. What’s your take?
1. Be nice to Google. One thing I’ve done recently is update the copy in old posts that were pulling top-10 rankings to make them slightly more aligned with popular searches. This moved quite a few posts into the top-3 results on Google for relevant terms, bringing in an extra 10-15 visitors per post per day. That adds up.
2. Getting linked up on MNSpeak can deliver a lot of traffic. Here’show to make that happen.
3. It’s always great to see direct traffic rising, since that’s largely regulars who’ve bookmarked the site.
4. Google.com referrals are generally Google Reader or iGoogle. If you don’t think RSS drives traffic - even with full feeds - check that out.
5. As far as I can tell, the CityPages traffic came from Jim Norton linking me up a while back. Thanks Jim. Keep the links coming.
6. I publish a lot of images, and always include relevant ALT tags with the images. This seems to bring in a lot of traffic but the bounce rate is high. Basically, they rarely stick around to do anything. not a big deal, really.
7. Poor Yahoo. But at least it made the top-10 unlike MSN or Ask.
8. Outside.in. If you write about local issues, submit your site for inclusion. If you don’t consistently write about local stuff (like me) submit an RSS feed of local content (on wordpress, add /feed/ to a category’s URL to do this).
Game 6 against the Pittsburgh Penguins at the old Met Center.
It’s interesting to check out the sponsors on the boards. US West and Norwest are now part of Qwest and Wells Fargo. I don’t remember Northgate Computer Systems.
Oakwood offers a variety of activities. Sand Volleyball on the weekends. Horseshoes, shuffleboard, petanque, Texas Holdem Tournaments every Saturday night, swimming, archery range, club dinners, theme dances and much more.
Do nude poker players have additional “tells” to worry about? Would your body language reveal your pair of aces?
Marketers call it the product lifecycle. Every neighborhood goes through it, and Downtown Minneapolis is still on the upward curve. Once we mature a bit, the numbers will have a bit more meaning.
Until then, activity is still good. Showings for listings in our office are ahead of last year for roughly the same number of listings. New construction continues to sell, and not everyone is singing a sad song.
He may be onto something here. There is little new ground being broken at this point, so inventory comes from an ever-decreasing number of new units together with resales. Once you can’t buy something brand new for the cost of a used unit, pricing will enter a new phase. At least, until the market changes and new developments start taking shape.
The Deets is the personal blog of Ed Kohler. Views represented here are his own. Views of comments on The Deets are their own and Ed does not necessarily endorse the views of commenters. Ed's wishlist can be found here.
